Just back from a rare visit to The Valley this afternoon. Overall we were by far the better team and deserved to win. Probably by more. We’ll finish mid table now, which will still be worse than last season so this season goes down as a big failure. Next season ? Depends on recruitment, but we are nowhere near top two and equally far away from relegation material. So mid-table again or possibly scrape into the play offs. Hardly major progress, so I still think the owners need to dig deeper into their pockets. But will they ? Thierry Small looks an excellent find and we need to tie him down to a longer contract ASAP. Makes Edun look like he was - a cheap punt which didn’t work. The back three were solid enough, but nothing special. Thomas is much better in the centre. I think we still need improvements here. T Watson was pretty anonymous and compared to Small on the other side, he offers very little going forward. Not good enough for a promotion push. Anderson was hampered by a ridiculous early yellow card for doing what everyone else did at every free-kick throughout the game. Coventry was decent but nothing special. Certainly not a Josh Cullen yet. Anyone who thinks we won’t miss Dobbo is barking. Every team needs someone like him and we should not be letting him go. Kanu gave 100% against some big defenders. Made the first goal and scored the second. Great potential if he can carry on filling out a bit. Alfie May is ridiculous. He just doesn’t stop running for the whole time he’s on the pitch. Closing down in the press. Tracking back when they counter and at one stage towards the end of the first half, he sprinted back from Carlisle’s penalty box to track one of their forwards as they attempted to break and ended up as our deepest defender, before REG told him to push forward as their player had run 5 yards offside, with Alfie still in hot pursuit. Got to love the bloke and again, anyone who doesn’t rate him (a certain moderator springs to mind) needs to give their head a wobble, fella. However, the less said about his tunnel jump the better. Wickham caused problems in his 20 minutes and set up the winning goal with a good flick-on header, which only he and Chuks would have been capable of winning. Ladapo couldn’t have burned more than 3 calories in his 9 minute appearance. Another win and some good individual performances but we are still a way off being serious promotion candidates.
That’ll do, that’s us safe. Am I right in thinking 14th in the 3rd tier is the lowest we’ve ever finished?
