How shite must you be…. We’re winning at home

 Over the years I have loved how fans take the piss out of how shite their team is, with it being bottom of the league, unable to win, or like Cheltenham Town recently, unable to score a goal in 11 games from the start of this season. 

I wonder how many teams look at our home record when coming to Plough Lane and I don’t just mean this season, but overall since we moved into our home on 3^rd November 2020. Anything we do is never straight forward and the journey to Plough Lane included the Mayor of London calling in the planning application and delaying it as long as he could be bothered to, then we had a shortfall of around £11m to cover, and then finally Covid struck in early 2020 which then meant we couldn’t say a farewell to Kingmeadow and had the 2020/21 season behind closed doors at Loftus Road and then when Plough Lane was finally open, but with no fans allowed in. 

 

I was happy to leave Kingsmeadow for Plough Lane, however I was kind of gutted that we didn’t get to the final game of the season and have a send off, although nothing like the scenes for West Ham when they had Black Taxis and other shite when saying goodbye to Upton Park. I have always been curious what the plans we had for the send-off were and I would also imagine that we could have raised some additional funds to support the Plough Lane Bond money raised for us to complete as much as we could at Plough Lane. 

 

Comparing our home form at Plough Lane compared to Kingsmeadow is a non-starter simply as we spent many years in non-league and won many games on our way to numerous promotions, but one thing we can say was that our home form when were in the Football League was instrumental in us gaining promotion to League One and staying there, even if it was tight on some occasions. 

 

I am fortunate to show fans around Plough Lane for the stadium tours and they always comment on how much they love the Plough Lane matchday experience and it's what makes them love coming to games. The reasons they mention are the stadium bowl itself, the view from their seat in any part of the stadium, the Fanzone, our family stand and the atmosphere, but one thing they never mention unsurprisingly is they come back because we win many games in the stadium. 

 

Plough Lane has so much to offer, and I never grow tired of seeing the stadium when I arrive and walking into the club shop and then into the stadium bowl, but like many of us, winning more at home and creating classic Wimbledon games that become momentous are few and far between. 

 

Looking back over the 3 years we have been at Plough Lane the games that come to mind are the 3-3 draw against Bolton in 21/22, a few weeks later with our first win against Oxford 3-1 and that great finish by Jack Rudoni, coming from 2-1 down to win 3-2 against Harrogate in 22/23, our 2-0 win against eventual champions Leyton Orient under the lights and then this season our late comeback and win against Championship side Coventry City in the Carabao Cup. That’s not a lot for 3 years but enough for us to reminisce but we all want and need fresh memories of classic moments or even to discuss the wins we have had recently. 

 

Top level stats are not great at all and just including league games we have had 10 wins at Plough Lane from 53 games which is just 18%-win ratio. 

 

So far this season we have the single league win at home to Tranmere which is 1 win out of 7 league games and without our table topping away league form, we would be in the lower regions of the league. It got me thinking about how many wins we have actually seen at Plough Lane since fans were allowed in at the start of the 2021/22 season. 

 

The most we have won at home in one league season is 7 from 2022/23 in our return to League 2 and that is 30%-win ratio.   

 

I have included the league only as it becomes conflated when you look at cup games as they are naturally not always against teams at the same level, but for full exposure if you include the cup games [Not including EFL Trophy] from when fans were allowed back in, it would be 14 wins from 59 which is a 24% win-ratio.

 

If we wanted to include all league games at Plough Lane since the opening fixture against Doncaster Rovers in November 2020, we won 6 home games in the 2020/21 season as Mark Robinson secured safety in League 1 with a game to go. This would bring the total wins to 16 wins out of 72% with a win ratio of 22%. That season also saw a run of three consecutive home wins against Ipswich, Swindon & Oxford and this run of results could possibly explain some of the reasons as playing matches in front of no fans and effectively a game behind closed doors, takes away the natural pressure from the home fans. 

 

When we moved to Plough Lane I remember discussing with my mates that moving to a new ground has been challenging for other clubs that have done it in the last few decades and they have taken time to find their feet. 

 

If you look at Arsenal, they had a terrible time adapting, mainly because they had spent a lot of money financing the stadium build. An interesting quote from the then manager Arsene Wenger was “We built a new stadium, but we left our soul at Highbury.” Other examples are Coventry City, Sunderland, Cardiff City, Derby County and more at our level Oxford United. They moved into the Kansas Stadium in 2001 and after losing 13 of their first 17 games, they called in the Bishop of Oxford to perform an exorcism. It didn’t help as they fell into non-League but it shows they tied to do something and maybe it's time for us as fans to do our bit to help this, whatever it is that is impacting our home form. 

 

When Barry Fry was the manager at Birmingham in the mid-90’s he decided he needed to do something to stop the terrible slum in form they were having. He had heard that there was an old gypsy curse as it was on an old gypsy site, and they called in someone to get rid of the curse and he advised the only way to get rid of it was to pee in all four corners of the ground. Barry recalls that after 3 months of no wins at home he decided to do it and said it wasn’t as easy as it seems. 

The curse seemed to work as they went on to win 7 out of the next 10 home games, drawing once and losing one. 

Anyone up for this challenge? 😉