The Lounge

[Tooting Womble]

Am increasingly thinking that obtaining substantial external investment is the only way of the current situation. The club has been losing money for years, and excluding exceptional items I can’t remember AFC recording a financial surplus since we were promoted to the Football League.
After all, the Club has admitted that it used £2m plus from the Kingsmeadow stadium sale to supplement the playing budget in order to retain L1 status.

Our current business model is not sustainable unless we dramatically reduce expenditure in line with a non-League perhaps even semi-pro set-up and I wouldn’t like to see that happen!

[Tooting Womble]

Am increasingly thinking that obtaining substantial external investment is the only way out of the current situation.
The club has been losing money for years, and excluding exceptional items I can’t remember AFC recording a financial surplus since we were promoted to the Football League.
As a consequence the Club has admitted that it had to use monies from the Kingsmeadow stadium sale to supplement the playing budget in order to retain L1 status.
Our current business model is only sustainable if we dramatically reduce expenditure in line with a non-League say a semi-pro set-up and I wouldn’t like to see that happen!

[Windlesham Don]

After a couple of horrendous weeks discussing whether we have a future it will be good to get back to football for a couple of hours!

With such a limited and injury-hit squad, Glyn and the boys have done well to get out of the relegation zone. I’m not kidding myself that this is due to outstanding play, more due to the ineptitude of the teams around us!

However, we find ourselves in a position to put a little space between us and the relegation places (if only we could have kept out the 95th minute equaliser last week things would have looked even rosier…)

Donny are no strangers to us this season and are a decent team at this level. However, they have been struggling in their last few games and our desperation for three points may see us sneak over the line.

Against us is our threadbare squad – Nightingale and Wordsworth are badly missed, Folivi gave us options from the bench. However, from the side which nicked a replay in the cup we should be able to add Forss and Sanders, which will definitely strengthen us.

Today I feel that Glyn will not want to lose. We are currently on a two match unbeaten run, which doesn’t sound much but in our position is something to grasp. A draw may not be seen as a bad result, but IMO there is the opportunity to nick it if the players are committed and want it more than the opposition.

A concern for me is the form of Kalambayi, who seems to be suffering from ‘second season syndrome’. He looks to me as though he is thinking too much, when last season he was just defending naturally. He possibly misses Nightingale next to him…

We need Forss ‘on fire’ and Sanders pulling the strings in midfield. O’Neill has returned and is looking good as the right side CB.

It is going to be cold and windy at KM and we need to ‘want it’ more than the opposition. We may nick it, but my gut feel is for a point apiece.

COYD!!

[Windlesham Don]

Well, an amazing afternoon at KM yesterday!

It started when the team was posted on Twitter – no Wagstaff, no Kalambayi, no Roscrow and Delaney warming the bench?! It was only when Glyn announced the team in the carvery did we get an idea that McLoughlin may be filling in at right wingback…

The outlook was gloomy in the bar pre-match, but not half as gloomy as it was at half time. We were utterly outplayed in the first 45, at times embarrassingly so as we chased shadows for long periods of play. We were just lucky that Donny were inept in front of goal, otherwise the game could have been gone by half time.

A word of praise here for our maligned keeper. We know that he doesn’t come for crosses and that is a problem for us, but as a shot stopper he is excellent and yesterday made a couple of excellent saves to keep us in the game – possibly time that we gave him a break..?

The second half started much the same, but a bit like George Foreman against Ali’s ‘rope-a-dope’ Donny started to run out of ideas and we started to get a minor foothold in the game.

The match turned IMO on two incidents – firstly our excellent outfield loanees, Sanders and Forss, combined to put Forss through. He was unceremoniously upended and the resultant (and undisputed by a single opposition player) was dispatched by a true ‘championship quality’ striker.

The other incident was a double substitution. Whether Osew had been distracted by the rumoured QPR interest I do not know, but he was awful for 60 minutes – his mind off the game and his energy levels down. If he was 100% fit then management need to have a word, as any scout present yesterday would have put a big cross through his name. He was correctly replaced by NGW.

And then there is Pinnock. He is simply out of his depth in league 1, too slow of thought and too deliberate off the ball. His defensive ability is non-existent at this level and his fitness is unacceptable. He was ‘hooked’ for debutant Rudoni.

Pulling level seemed to shake Donny’s confidence even more and the two new additions added energy and commitment to the side.

The winning goal was a magnificent piece of commitment and determination from the flying Finn, muscling a defender off of an aimless defensive clearance before heading for goal. He may have bagged a second as he bore down on goal, but fair play to Callum Reilly who sprinted the length of the pitch to join Forss and nicked the ball off him to slide the ball past a helpless keeper.

Twenty minutes of nail biting followed, with much talk of our failure to hold on to a lead and our concession of late goals, and when the number “4” went up on the fourth official’s board memories of last week flooded back. However, on this occasion 4 minutes meant 4 minutes and we held on for another morale boosting victory.

On to Tranmere next Saturday with an injury list that continues to grow. Nightingale, Kalambayi, Wordsworth, Wagstaff, Folivi, Roscrow and one other who I can’t be bothered to name. This is too long a list for a side with limited resources and we need some of them back for the key Xmas period…

[Colum]

Maybe I should miss a few more games. I was going to go. My wife even dropped me by the bus stop on her way out. It was then that I realised I’d left my oyster card at home. I could easily have walked back and got it and still made it to KM in plenty of time, but I just thought “sod it” and went home. Such is the air of depression I feel around what happening off the field at the moment. Perhaps I should have gone, but I think the first 45 minutes may well have pushed me over the edge. It could have prompted me to go home early from a game for the first time in my life. But where there’s a Forss, there’s a way. Don’t you just love a defender’s reaction when they know they’ve just handed the opposition a lifeline without even looking back at the ref. His fist into the turf was pure magic. Our winner said more about the type of player Forss is. His speed is something we haven’t had in a long time, and Reilly bursting a gut to get up there with him showed desire and just a little skill. It’s just a shame others around us didn’t slip up further. Still we’re three points off the relegation zone, which I’ll take for now. A couple of losses and we could be right back in the mire. This makes a win against Tranmere a necessity with Bristol and Oxford to follow. The later seem to have lost a head of steam recently, so wouldn’t it be nice to do one over Karl once again?

[Colum]

From the latest update on the Seedrs campaign…

“Everybody is committed to building the stadium as described during our crowdfunding campaign, with an initial 9,000 capacity, a showpiece fans’ zone and bar, plus vital income-generating facilities such as executive boxes, along with banqueting and conference suites. In fact, recent photographs on our own website clearly show such a stadium starting to take shape.”

Is this even true? The answer depends on what we manage to raise ourselves. If we can’t raise £11m, I’d say the majority are against external investment, and therefore a reduced scope for the stadium and non-league football.

I also take issue with the last sentence. It is designed to show we’ll have the finished stadium. Those pictures just show the shell of the west stand, which is all we’ll get if we don’t raise the full £11m. Whoever came up with this statement needs to think carefully before coming up with anything else.

[Author]

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