Its just a ball of air!

 

How many times have you been told it's just a game? 

That it's just a ball full of air played with 22 men running around?

I think we all have at some point, however yesterday that ball of air in Accrington went into the onion bag 5 (FIVE) times! 

To expand on why I have added the wording for the number, as we have seen on Soccer Saturday many times when the full time scores are read - although big score lines are not that uncommon now - is before yesterday, we hadn’t scored in our last two away games and we hadn’t scored more than one goal away since Robbo’s first game in charge away at Wigan in early February. 

It was probably fitting that our journey for safety got a big boost at the home of Accrington Stanley, where in recent times it staged probably the most stressful, but enjoyable game back in May 2016 when we come back from 2-0 down on the night, to go through to the League Two playoff final at Wembley, with a Lyle Taylor goal after a Messi like run from Jake Reeves. We of course now have our own Morrocan Messi who scored a brace in our win at Accrington yesterday. 

Games against Accrington always seem to have goals and we scored 4 against them earlier in that promotion season when we came back from 2-0 down and 3-2 down to win 4-3 with a late winner from Lyle Taylor. That game was the second of ten games for Ben Wilson on loan from Cardiff City, who is now in Womble folklore for that save, erm assist, for 50 year old Jamie Cureton at home to Dagenham & Redbridge. Interestingly after that win at Accrington midweek, we then went to York City and won 3-1 at Bootham Crescent, which is now sadly no longer home for the Conference North team. York City spent years getting a new ground and it is mad to think they starting 3 levels below us at their new home after all the battles we had. I am still bitter after our 5-0 midweek rearranged fixture against them and Rankine and Brodie having shooting practice all night. 

Accrington have already guaranteed League One safety and had an outside chance of reaching the playoffs which we probably ended with our win yesterday. Accrington are a lovely club and anyone that has visited The Crown Ground will understand how small this town is and how amazing they are to be in the Football League let alone League One. Their owner Andy Holt is a regular on twitter and he is great to follow as he doesn’t hold back, but speaks on behalf of the smaller clubs fighting against rich owners and clubs that think they are too big to be playing in our league. It was fitting that he praised us and wished our team a safe journey home shortly after the final whistle. This was no fluke and we fully deserved our win, acknowledged by Nathan Baxter who was on co-commentary yesterday for Accrington’s iFollow as he is injured for the rest of the season. Nathan spoke well of us and mentioned on a number of occasions how we had called him for the last 4 transfer windows about joining us on loan. As Pigott was stepping us to take his free kick for our fourth goal of the afternoon, Nathan called it and said he would go over the wall as Nathan had researched Pigott’s free kicks when facing him earlier in his career when Pigott was at Maidstone. 

By the time Pigott scored our fourth goal, the game was beyond Accrington and they looked a beaten team after earlier goals from Ollie Palmer and Ayoub Assal.  Accrington have had a brilliant season and still had things to play for and we had to come from behind after an early set piece goal provided them the opening goal. The fact we broke down Accrington and effectively won the right to play our football is a great achievement. Nathan Baxter could not praise Nik Tzanev enough and even questioned why we bothered to try and get him on loan when we already had him in our squad. Tzanev made a big statement yesterday to keep mentally strong after the error at home to Fleetwood on Easter Monday and conceding the early goal. He never hid and was happy to receive balls to his feet and he made some important saves all afternoon as Accrington refused to roll over and have their bellies tickled. It was noticeable yesterday how we didn’t play passes for passes sake and moved up the field quicker and with more purpose. Bringing Ollie Palmer into the starting lineup in place of Ryan Longman was an excellent decision and he did all the horrible bits of centre forward play to allow Assal the space to work his magic. 

It's easy to think that Assal has been knocking on the door of the first team all season, however he was sent on loan to Billericay Town in September who play in the Conference South and his only goal was in a friendly against an Ipswich Town XI for a 5-0 win. There is a good chance he plays against their first team at Plough Lane on Tuesday and now has 3 goals to his name. Robbo mentioned again in his post match interview that football has an unconscious bias against smaller players and I would say I am in that camp after being brought up with the 90's Wimbledon team with the smallest player I can remember, being Paul Mcgee who was 5st soaking wet. The reason for my bias is that League One and below is made up of big, ugly teams who will bully you if you let them and we played a direct type of game that would pass the game by for players who weren’t 6ft plus. With Robbo changing our style to a passing game, Assal held his own yesterday and is a strong boy and uses his body well to keep possession. The only negative yesterday was a booking for practicing his technique at javelin for the upcoming Olympics. 

Assal’s weekend is set to come to a spectacular end as he will be on the 9yrspodcast’s Sunday Night Live with Ollie Palmer to discuss the win from 7:30pm tonight. 

This week saw a few new appointments in the football world and the most intriguing one was Simon Bassey being appointed Head Coach at Conference National team Barnet. His first move was to bring in another former Wimbledon manager in the shape of Dave Anderson to assist him who will also be their goalkeeper coach. Bassey has been scouting since he left Wimbledon and it's great that he has got this opportunity and I am confident he will do an excellent job for them. To top it off, Danny Kedwell was announced as the new manager at Cray Wanderers and it will be interesting to see how he gets on as he adds his name to a long list of former Wimbledon players moving into management. 

The next 10 days will provide us with a clearer picture of who will be stopping down a division next season. We have seven games to play along with Rochdale who are rock bottom, whereas Bristol Rovers have only five games remaining after conceding a late equaliser to fellow strugglers Northampton Town yesterday. Looking at the remaining fixtures for the teams in the bottom 6 places, Bristol Rovers, Northampton and Wigan have really tough fixtures, with a mouthwatering last day fixture with Swindon at home to Wigan which could be the winner takes all. We have given ourselves a great chance now to escape and ideally if we could get 5-6 points from the next 3 home games against Ipswich, Swindon & Oxford, it would give us some breathing space as we finish at home to Pompey and away to Lincoln on the final day. Lincoln will play every 3 days until the end of the season due to a Covid outbreak and had both games postponed over the Easter period. Hopefully they are shattered by the time we get to Sincil Bank. 

This season has been like no other and we will look back on it in years to come and just be amazed at how crazy it was. Home advantage has been seriously weakened and the only one home team got maximum points in League One yesterday was Fleetwood, with another seven away wins with big wins for us and Oxford at Crewe with a 6-0 away win. If anyone has watched the highlights from that game, Crewe do a Charlton and try to play their way out from the back in their own area. Since the change in the law that a goal kick doesn’t have to reach outside the area, teams now have centre backs in the area to receive short balls. This has resulted in kamikaze goals in the Premier League, so why players of a reduced technical ability try it in League One is beyond me. The Champions League has reached the quarter finals stage and for a competition of such magnitude to be played behind closed doors is just strange and even more so when Real Madrid beat Liverpool 3-1 at their training ground whilst Santiago Bernabéu is being expanded. I enjoy the Champions League once it is a straight knockout as you get some mouthwatering ties, but watching these games in empty stadiums is so hard to get excited about. 

It was great to see that Kevin De Bruyen negotiated his own new contract with Manchester City this week and didn’t need to pay extortionate agent fees, with the money going out of the game. Yes I accept that it’s probably easier when your not worried if the club are doing you out of a couple of hundred quid, but with the recent agent fees for last years being announced recently where we paid around £70k to agents, which went out of the game and would of enabled us to spend that money on player. I fully understand why players have agents, but surely at our level of the game the PFA could have recognised agents that they either contribute to their fees, or maybe even pay all of considering their outgoing chairman was paid millions of pounds a year. 

Just a thought!