The Lounge

[Windlesham Don]

So the potential £1m match arrives with little buzz of anticipation. The vital 3 points at Walsall on Tuesday helped to ease the pain of another gruesome display on Saturday, but the fact that barely 150 made it up from south London shows how much of an impact Saturday’s horror show had.

Playing the ‘Wall will have much less glamour than West Ham – overpaid superstars will be replaced by hard working journeymen, silky passing replaced by knocking it down the channels. And it will be all the more difficult for us because of it…

Millwall have a cup pedigree and are managed by a former player who will be eyeing up a place in the last 8 – only one match from Wembley. They will not be “concentrating on the league”, they will be giving 100%.

To get anything we will need to scrap, we will need to work harder than we did against West Ham. We will also need the ball to bounce kindly for us.

Our best chance may be to hold out for penalties – at least the Millwall scouts will struggle to provide any information on where our takers will put them, as Betamax was probably in vogue when we were last awarded one!

Once again, we will travel with hope rather than expectation. However, as we found in 1988 hope can occasionally take you a very long way…

COYD!!!

[Colum]

Talking to some Millwall fans after the game, they think we were the better team. Personally I’m fed up with hearing that this season. We’re defensively OKish. In midfield we’re OKish on our day, but it depends who plasy there. Up front we’re severely lacking at best.

Yes it could have been different if Piggott had scored in the first minute instead of hitting the post, but that was really the only decent half chance we created all game. Saying us launch long balls up to a striker who can’t head the ball and who gets muscled off the ball way too easily, makes me groan out loud. The problem is we don’t have any other option.

OK young Michael Folivi did well in the second half. He obviously decided that he may as well play on his own, and did so effectively. Some of his mazy dribbles caused the Millwall defence all sorts of problems, but I lost count of the number of times today we had players out wide with the ball, but no one attacking the penalty area.

So now we concentrate on avoiding relegation. Can we achieve this? Not a chance with this current squad. The management are going to have their work cut out in the close season. The current squad is all Ardley’s making, and it just isn’t up to it.

[Singapore Don]

What a completely wasted opportunity. And to my mind, this was a manager’s defeat. Poor team selection, poor tactics, poor motivation. Why start Garratt who hasn’t played for ages, when McDonald has filled in so ably as left back? And why oh why not start the one player really fired up for this match, who fired the whole team with his dynamic play and two goals against West Ham? The one player who’s got the club a lot of publicity with his beard dyeing stunt – yes a stunt, but one we could have exploited by putting him on the field at some point! Utterly baffling and one can only assume from what Wagstaff and others have said that Downes was not impressed by the beard stunt and his not being given even a sub’s cameo role was a punishment.

We’re also paying the price for our manager not delivering on his promise of better options up front when he said back in December that he had five or six striker targets for the January window. Folivi may be silky, but he’s not ruthless, and he’s not looking like scoring any time soon. And the failure to tackle this Achilles heel is yet again costing us dear. Yes the injury prone nature of our existing forwards is not WD’s fault, but the lack of options is.

As for our one fit striker….well I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Pigott is not a League One striker. I doubt he’ll even cut it at League Two level. He has no pace, no movement, no agility, no strength, no ability to jump – he’s looked hopelessly out of his depth for quite a while now. I don’t think it’s just a confidence issue. It’s becoming clear it’s one of ability. At best he’s a third or fourth choice striker at our level. If he left us, National League might well be his natural home.

You’ll have picked up that I’m hugely frustrated. Disappointment is an understatement of how I feel after yesterday’s defeat. It’s the hope that kills you, as they say, and I really was full of hope yesterday. Hence my feeling very down and angry last night and again on waking this morning. We really threw away a golden opportunity to progress to the quarter finals of the FA Cup – and we also threw away an invaluable £360,000 prize winning money. I just hope Doncaster lost against Palace today so we do get half the EFL’s £250,000 money for the last League One team left in the competition. If Doncaster progress, yesterday’s defeat will have cost us half a million quid. Not good on the manager’s CV.

All round a bitterly disappointing day and end to our run in the Cup. I don’t see much hope for any League revival. Today definitely feels like season over.

[Singapore Don]

PS Hope to have a beer with you in Adelaide Liam! I arrive late Feb 25 and leave late March 7. Will be in Verdun and Hardwicke Bay over the ten days we’re there, but will no doubt be in Adelaide itself at some point during our stay. Are you in the city itself??

[Windlesham Don]

Singapore, I was thinking of writing something almost identical to your post! Incredibly frustrated at yesterday’s performance and I am placing the blame squarely at the feet of our new manager. It seems that we now have our own “tinkerman” in control, someone who has to change things around virtually every match, regardless of whether things need to or not. I am beginning to see why Wally has always been a coach and rarely a manager…

I feel that he has disliked Wagstaff since he took over and leaving him on the bench for 90 minutes yesterday was a slap down for attracting publicity over his beard. If this is the case then he is putting his own feelings over the performance of the team – if Wagstaff was fit then he had to start in place of Hartigan, who was never going to be effective against a physical Millwall midfield. Wagstaff has the energy that we desperately needed yesterday and would have fitted perfectly into a midfield three alongside Wordsworth and promising new arrival McLoughlin.

Similarly, the selection of Garrett was crazy. He has proven himself not to be up to League 1 standard so was never going to be good enough against Championship opposition. It was no surprise when he was ‘hooked’ at half time, it was just 45 minutes too late. McDonald should have started at left back and Thomas in the centre – if Thomas was fit enough to sit on the bench then he could have given us some time on the pitch, otherwise Kalambayi could have stepped in again.

Why oh why, didn’t he keep the same formation that had proven so effective against West Ham? Once again we were scratching our heads before the match at the selection and frustrated after it at the performance.

For me, Saturday was a big black mark in my ongoing assessment of the new management team…

[Windlesham Don]

PS – The other issue I find staggering is that the club have agreed to play the re-arranged match at Rochdale on Tuesday evening. We have played Saturday/ Tuesday/Saturday ahead of this fixture, whereas Rochdale have had 10 days to rest and prepare for us.

For the club to hand Rochdale such a massive advantage ahead of a match vital to our survival is criminal to my mind.

Three points from this match is an imperative for both sides and to hand the opposition such a huge advantage could be tantamount to throwing away our League 1 place.

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