Re: Any-other day I would have to have been sedated

By John Rogers26/12/2016 21:12Mon Dec 26 21:12:59 2016In response to Re: Any-other day I would have to have been sedated

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I'm going to try and focus on the positives to begin with.

The return of Diedhiou - clearly nowhere near match fit but worked his unmentionables off and dragged us back into the game.
Stanislaus - mobile, strong, linked the play really well and a quite wonderful strike to give us a half time lead.

Rob Wakeley talks about patterns of play and at times going forward with Murphy feeding Oliyide through the channels, and Karl linking up nicely with Reis, we looked good. However, that hard work means little when we are so brittle defensively.

Make no mistake, 5-4 flattered us today. After being 4-3 ahead at the break we put in another truly anaemic performance after the break and had Harrow been able to take their chances, they would have beaten us 8 or 9-4.

Second half I was kicking a ball around with my boy level with our penalty area. I lost count of the number of cheap free-kicks we conceded. There was no communication, there was no organisation, there was no-one putting a name on anything, there was no-one taking any responsibility. The ease with which sides can pull us to shreds is frightening. A simple ball into the box and it's not so much panic stations as DEFCON 1.

Twenty (20) goals conceded in our past five league matches tells its own story.

Last season's 5-5 draw after being 4-1 up hurt, today stings massively. It feels as though we are pinning all our hopes on messrs Maclaren (K), Brathwaite and Seeby to drag us out of the mire - three players who, for various reasons, have played about 25 matches between them since the beginning of 2015/6. That feels like a pretty ruddy huge gamble. Elliott hasn't played in the best part of 18 months, are we really expecting him to slot back in and be the centre half he was during 2014/5? He's going to have to, because what we have at the moment simply aren't up to it. Likewise with Kevin. Are we just expecting him to add the missing steel single handed? To roll up his sleeves and dig in alone hoping that some of the others might follow?

Last season, throughout our struggles, I always thought we would manage to survive, and we did, just. This time around, quite honestly at the moment, I can't - not if we are going to have to score four times just to have any hope of getting so much as a point from a game.

I hope that the return of injured players does help us and that we can turn it around. But it needs to begin pretty quickly because there is a chance that we could become cast adrift.

And I know this probably comes across as overly negative, but quite honestly, I've got the hump and I'm hurting.

I'm hurting because I was expecting better than this.

I'm hurting because I was promised better than this by people on a weekly basis in the local press.

I'm hurting because I don't like watching us concede three, four and five goals every week.

I'm hurting because the number of players that seem to turn up this season, ponce around for a couple of weeks and then sod off when the going gets a little bumpy seems to be getting towards an all-time high.

I'm hurting because we've had countless players talk a good game off the pitch and then go into five-a-side mode, or just play for themselves on it.

I'm hurting because Gary, Freddie, Mark, Simon, David Bedford, Mike Harte and Rob deserve so much more than they are getting from some at the moment for the amount of time, sweat and heart they put into getting things off the pitch right.

I'm hurting because those last two second half performances at home this afternoon and against Grays were not okay. They were lacking heart - not effort necessarily, but heart. This afternoon, you could see within a minute of the restart which side believed they could win and which were cowering on the ropes. It wasn't the team with the lead that looked all at sea.

Whoever wears the Green and Black will always get my full backing whilst they are on the pitch. But, if players are going to come off the pitch after a second half showing like that and share a chuckle with a mate waiting for them at the tunnel then quite frankly, they can join the various other charlatans that have shown attitude deficiencies this season in finding somewhere else to play their football.

It will be onto Staines and I shall be supporting the boys, as I will at Dulwich.

I dearly hope that we can begin to get ourselves out of this rut then...

COYG!