Wednesday, 23 April 2025

Are we down & out?

I think like most fans, the defeat and performance at Gillingham left me feeling about as low as I have all season. Possibly even more so in my particular case, Aaron Sasu turning in such an insipid performance after I'd banged on about him all season made it all the worse. It's tempting for a fleeting moment at times like that to give up. Give up on the players, the manager, our situation, football, all of it. All over the Internet fans were downing tools in the immediate aftermath, from the scaffolded away seats of Gillingham people made their displeasure clearly known.

I absolutely get it. I'm sure the players and management do too. Even young Josh Neufville (who to my mind let himself down a bit by telling the fans to "eff off") will no doubt reflect that he ought to have done better there. The fans are 100% justified in their frustration, albeit from my perspective booing players and hurling abuse has never been a productive use of anyones time. Here's the thing though, EVERYONE is frustrated. I 100% believe Johnnie Jackson & Skivvers will be, the players too. The fans don't OWN frustration. Just like they don't own anger, desire to do well. Those emotions are shared by everyone involved, probably more so.

Once the dust settles though, as it has (for me) now, once you get to inspect the actual damage, things never seem so bad. They aren't THAT bad here either. Why? Well firstly, I've a strong hunch that even if we lose our last two games we'll still sneak into the playoffs. Providing we don't lose both games 8-0 or something, our goal difference I reckon will mean we already have enough points. I know it's mathematically possible we miss out, but it won't in my opinion happen.

So there's that. But what of the football I hear you ask? Well I'm not going to beat about the bush here. Over the last few months the games in which we've played really well (Doncaster away) have been the blips. By and large we have been utter shite. I know Johnnie has to come out and say "it was a tough place to come", "we dominated the first half", "we got in some great situations" and all of that old bollocks, but in his heart of hearts (unless he is mental) he will know that we are unrecognizable from the team which wore our shirt until Christmas. We all know the stats because some of our fans provide excellent analysis online, I therefore don't need to set them out/steal them. Suffice to say the stats confirm the naked eye analysis, we are playing shite and are currently not a great football team. At all.

The GOOD news is (and this is frankly a fucking brilliant thing), it doesn't matter at all. Yes, it's true. How we have played since Christmas, the leads we've thrown away (do yourself a favour, don't check out the "Up to 75 minutes on the clock" league table), the defeats at Morecambe, Swindon, Gillingham, all of that shit, NONE OF IT MATTERS. None of it matters even 1%, infact not even one billionth of one per cent. All of it is about as relevant to our current situation as who wins celebrity traitors, namely it totally makes no difference. You cannot impact on what has gone, all you can look to influence is what is coming. That's where we are. We hopefully have five more games to play (I think the automatics are gone) and from here, our focus should be all about how we win the playoffs final at Wembley.

If it was me (and thank God it isn't) I'd look to Saturdays game as a rehearsal for our home leg in the playoffs. We need an extra midfield player in there in order to enable us to play more football. We are seemingly wedded to the five at the back, so we MUST drop the idea of three strikers and we must play a 5-3-2. The three strikers doesn't work for Matty Stevens, and as he's the most likely scorer we should play to suit him. We cannot continue to launch it via Owen Goodman or Joe Lewis every time we get the ball, if we are going to create more chances we must mix it up and play a little more/some football.
DISCLAIMER-This more expansive approach increases the likelihood we will lose the game. It probably increases our chances of winning it too, but I'm more concerned with having a go at being more expansive. We are going to need to do that in the home leg of the playoffs, then at Wembley. God knows how it'd work out on Wembleys vast expanse of pitch if we played our "bazooka it forward and see where it bounces" style, but if that IS our plan we'd better take some oxygen tanks and a de-fib unit for the players if it's a warm day.

Against Grimsby, I'd go into it and play exactly the same way we have in nearly every game since Christmas. Namely make the game as tediously, mind blowingingly boring as possible, and go all out for a 0-0. That's to practice for the away leg of the playoffs. We're pretty good at this bit, having grooved the method over a sustained period.

I KNOW our situation is frustrating, I KNOW that many think we could have won it never mind been automatically promoted, but none of it matters now. ALL that matters is the next four games, do those right and we'll be at Wembley. From there, cometh the hour and all that jazz. Get behind the team, cheer them on, this could STILL be a great season. COYD

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