The Lounge

[MacWomble]

Aha – are we now hearing the latest sproutings of a more widespread discontent with the Gaffer? The last time we had such a germination was about one and a half years ago. Clearly we need some new potting mixture upfront. Taylor appears to be a liability and Poleon was fortunate enough to have a purple patch upon gaining a first team place, but clearly requires more time to fully grow. Hey, can we get Dean Holdsworth back? Ah well, it is good for this site, as there is a strong correlation between posts and the performance of the Gaffer. That said, I do feel sorry for him. The average fitba manager (square ba’, on the ‘eid, that wisnae a penalty) is a numpty and the average player even thicker; so you can imagine the frustrations when the management tries to get their latest plan across the dressing room void and into the 11 craniums. Anyway, I love the bit about the hopping player. Very Australian.

[Singapore Don]

How on earth did we lose that? Shrewsbury were dreadful, lacking any goal threat, yet from two set pieces they managed to steal all three points. We have only ourselves to blame (although we can apportion a big dollop of blame with the ref who disallowed what looked like a perfectly good header from Elliott at the end of the first half – everyone, including Shrewsbury fans, were baffled as to why it was disallowed).

We have ourselves to blame because we failed to do enough up front again, and because we failed to defend two set pieces. It’s certainly true that luck deserted us today. Tom Soares had a wonderful power drive effort denied by the intersection of crossbar and post; Tom Elliott, as well as having his great goal disallowed, also hit the bar and had another great header cleared off the line. It was a relief that Barcham broke our four month duck of not scoring away, but it failed to deliver us the point or points we needed.

This was a much, much better performance by the Dons, just so frustrating that it resulted in nothing. Paul Robinson was at fault for failing to rise high enough and strongly enough to see off their defender who scored a superb header in the last minute. Others too will look back on crucial errors. Tom Soares, who has yet to impress me, was far too complacent and unaware of opposition players around him when he had the ball stolen off him leading to the free kick from which Shrewsbury scored their first goal, a deflected free kick. It was poor play by Soares, symptomatic of his rather casual approach too often for me. He has a lot to do to really prove his worth. Others rate him, I don’t – yet.

Elsewhere, Shea had little to do apart from pick the ball out the back of his net. Francomb played well at right back. It was good to see Charles back in the mix and looking strong in central defence. Fitzpatrick showed moments of speed and strength down the right wing, but faded and was rightly subbed. Elliott was superb up front again and was really unlucky not to be on the scoresheet. Taylor still looks lacking in any real goal threat.

All in all, it was one of those really depressing days watching the Dons. We were so much the better team, yet came away with nothing, losing to a last minute winner. It was really gutting. And now we’re just five points off the play offs, after getting only one point from lowly Coventry and Shrewsbury who were both really weak teams. If we don’t get three points against Gillingham on Tuesday, we could well be sucked down in to a relegation battle. The bare minimum on Tuesday is a point. But we really need three to calm some growing nerves on the terraces. I’ll be there in Kent willing us on to get the points.

[liamwimbo]

Hi Pete, thanks for the match report. Very much appreciated by all of us down under, even if it is a loss.
A big irony of football is that a poor performance (or two) can still yield a point, but a decent performance can result in nothing.
So now the anti-Ardley brigade are raising their heads again. We may not be in a good place at the moment and obviously not playing well, but surely calling for his head is just crazy. We still have time to turn things around before the end of March before any talk of the R word becomes pertinent. And without him, we would not be where we are.

For those of you on FB, there is a growing feeling that we must Keep the Faith. I totally agree with that. After all, We Are Wimbledon!

[Colum]

After two injury time equalisers, we can’t really complain too hard about losing at the death. At least we broke our away day goal duck. With Gillingham away on Tuesday, hopefully that will instill some confidence into the lads. We need three points on Tuesday like never before. If we succeed we could be comfortably mid table on 42 points. Lose and we remain where we are…in the doldrums! You’d have to say that the Gills are on a worse run than us, having not won since early December. So you’d have to put this one down as an away win, but it depends on which Dons team turns up. If we win, I won’t be worried. Lose and I may have to start getting concerned….just a little.

[onyadon]

Received this from Mark Robinson after reading the latest Wombles Downunder…

Thank you for sending over some interesting views.
Very kind words by Peter in his article on our Hull game and we were good that night. Unfortunately we let ourselves down at Preston. We should be playing a quarter Final against Stoke right now and giving the fans another night to enjoy as I would have fancied us against them having watched them already. We had a few things go against us v Preston but we got too many things wrong ourselves. It was a massive missed opportunity and the boys are still bitterly disappointed as they know they were good enough to win.

Thanks again.

Mark Robinson
Academy Head of Coaching
AFC Wimbledon Football Club

[Colum]

A point against Gillingham is the very least I’d have expected. Had we lost that game, the pressure REALLY would ramp up. We’ve got 40 points, so only 10 more and we’ll be at that magical figure. The positives to take from last night were our front men both scoring, the arrival in the squad of both Parrett and Nightingale, and the fact we didn’t lose. Looking forward, let’s hope we achieve the following:

Walsall – 3 points (although that looks tricky)
Scunthorpe and Bolton – 1 point
Northampton – 1 point
The unmentionables – 3 points obviously
Fleetwood and Southend – 1 point
Rochdale – 3 points

If we do that we have our 50 odd points with a month of the season to spare.

[Author]

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