Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Monday 19 September 2011

19 September 2011

Your Guest Diarist predicted on Friday that Town would probably struggle to bring any points back with them from Stockport. What I didn't expect was they would lose in such a dispiriting, gutless way. I said Stockport under the managership of Didi Hamman (who managed to gamble away over half a million quid on, ermm cricket and American football according to the Times) had signed a few players who might cause us problems. Any team in the division would have caused Town problems on Saturday. And the one below that in all probability.

So, yet again, the side needs to rebound tomorrow against Kettering (where the Weetabix comes from). Still, Bradley Wood failed to get booked so lives to fight (almost literally) another day. But Town seemed determined to win the match from set pieces: the standard 'out' ball was long to the left hand corner. As some of us have suspected for some time Shouty and Shorty have turned us in to a set piece team.

One of the bloggers has been doing some adding up, and dividing and that, and reckons Town are nearly three times as likely to concede from a corner as score from one this season. They won't admit it I expect but the Shouty-Shorty theory says you can score from set pieces so lets just play for them. Except no-one in the side seems capable of delivering a variety of set piece kicks that are accurate and delivered in to the danger areas for our team to attack. And our strikers especially lack the confidence to take chances when they present themselves.

Poor as we were on Saturday our inability to defend crosses at one end and to score from them at the other were the only reasons we didn't return with points. You don't need to be good in this division. You just need to be adequate at both ends. And then only most of the time. The bar isn't really set very high is it?

Still at least the Yoof, with a very young side out, got a decent win on Saturday. The managers, still angry after the performance no doubt, were muttering about changing the team round tomorrow. Will it really make much difference? The strikers lack confidence (and yes they are not much cop either: not at scoring anyway) so ringing the changes won't really help there. Disley, I gather, had a poor game, but to drop him would seem ludicrous: likewise Coulson. Makofo got a kick so maybe Eagle will come in for him, and Church will be knocking on the Artus door. There's not much point beyond that as far as I can see unless Ridley is fit to return.

We might get a point tomorrow night: neither side have any real form behind them. But if that's all we get, and as the nights start to draw in, it looks more and more like a long, bleak season again. See yer.