The Lounge

[onyadon]

Neal Ardley reaches six years in charge with @AFCWimbledon, at 46 the third-longest serving manager in the Football League and winning 33% of his 319 games. pic.twitter.com/BYPwziOOgI

— wombles downunder (@WDownunder) October 10, 2018

[martindownunderdon]

Is it time for a change at the top. Being a Don for over 50 years now I’ve seen it all the very highs and some lows. Have we been to good for our own good coming up though the leagues and our younger supporters only know the highs and want it straight away. Yes and no,am i looking too far back and should i be saying N A out we all know he loves our club he has brought in the best players he could with the money he had to play with,but has he got the motivation and the balls to have ago at his players we dont know. What is the answer i would love N A to turn it around but how many more games should he have. We still must get behind the Dons on match days and show our support to our great club,i know we are a fans owned but we have put in a committee to run the club on our behalf so give them the backing they need. COYD

[onyadon]

Sad to receive news of the passing of @AFCWimbledon supporter Duncan Johnson after a long debilitating illness. One of the original Radio One DJs and 10 years on Capital Radio with his own show. Duncan was a great friend of WDSA. We pass on our condolences to family and friends.

— wombles downunder (@WDownunder) October 11, 2018

#RIP Duncan https://t.co/Ygik9cCHTq

— wombles downunder (@WDownunder) October 12, 2018

[Windlesham Don]

Despite the wonderful prospect of returning home and to a sparkly new ground in Plough Lane, I find it very difficult to be optimistic about how things are going at the club at the moment.

Obviously, we seem to have the ‘deja vu’ on field issues, which the management team do not appear to be able to solve, but the problems in my view run deeper than just this.

There is a disconnect between the club and the supporters, which was brought to the fore by the debacle of the 80% Season Ticket attendance fiasco. In my opinion the DTB made a misjudgement in allowing this rule to be put to the supporters, and it illustrated that they had drifted away from their role as guardians of the interests of the club’s owners (namely the DT members).

This rift has been exacerbated by the match day experience this season:
1. The bars seem to have an inability to service the numbers wanting a drink, even though this is no different from previous seasons;
2. The new card readers are taking far longer than the old paper ST books, meaning long queues to get into the ground.

Given these issues it is no surprise to me that the atmosphere at games has been less than positive – poor performances are easier to handle if supporters have had a pleasant pre-match experience, but an inability to get a drink and a long queue to get in is not conducive to a supportive crowd.

All this pre-amble leads me to today’s game, and I find it difficult to be positive about the outcome. Toothless in front of goal and mistake-ridden in defence, we welcome the league leaders with their raucous bunch of fans. Anything from today will be a bonus…

COYD!!

[Devon Womble]

Even during last seasons lows… and there were too many to count, I would still sign up to idontfollow, or, if at work, run a sneaky check on the Live updates when I could.
Yet today, I just don’t have the heart to even bother checking until I get home tonight around 10pm GMT.
For someone who has followed the club since 74/75, I think that’s saying a lot.
3-0 Pompey, and NA out by end of October.
… and before any of my respected colleagues here asks how can we afford to replace him, I say this…
We bought in a star from the lower leagues (the ‘Pig’), so I’m damn sure there are eager stars among the lower league Managers who would just love a crack at our great little club. Anything, anybody, would be better than this.

[Windlesham Don]

As we say farewell to yet another gallant defeat, I feel that there may be a glimmer of hope in our second half display.

For me, today proved once again that this squad isn’t good enough to play passing football. Trotter and Soares in the centre of the park are too slow and too negatively minded to create anything going forward – their transformation for the first couple of games of the season is now just a distant memory (perhaps I was just imagining it?)

For me the hope springs from the switch to 4-3-3 in the second half, and to good old Route One, vintage 1980s Wimbledon tactics. The manager has to bite the bullet, accept that his summer recruitment has failed once again, but also embrace the serendipity of recruiting some tall and physical players who could bully some of the weaker teams in this division.

To survive this season we need something different to other clubs battling survival, and the answer could be ingrained in our very history, our Crazy Gang DNA.

In my opinion we need to embrace this tactic, go long and bypass midfield. If we do this then we may have enough to survive, if we continue to attempt to pass through midfield with the lumbering Trotter and Soares then I fear for the outcome of our season…

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