Windlesham Don

Good to meet up with Singapore Don for a beer and a chat (congrats on the work promotion BTW!) and great to see another uplifting performance from the boys.

Firstly, Burton, who were frankly awful. They lacked desire and fitness in my view. During the second half they resorted to some fairly crude challenges, which just illustrated that they…[Read more]

Triallists not good enough according to NA on radio interview and won’t be going to the pre-season camp in Wales for a few days.

Still looking for a midfielder and a striker, but not much in the budget to attract them.

Within 10 days my mood has gone from one of deep concern to one of guarded optimism.

Firstly, my apologies for wishing Jimmy Abdou ill. I have no idea how this particular ‘deal’ has been structured and the way the news came out was pretty poor, but I am happy to see that NA has recruited his fifth “first choice” signing, even if it is only a…[Read more]

Pretty shabby behaviour, Rob, but something we have come to expect from the modern footballer. Let’s hope that he rots on the bench for the season and is then released!

I’ll be going along today and should post some thoughts on Sunday. I’m pretty concerned with how our ‘skeleton’ squad will cope with the Premiership quality of Watford,…[Read more]

And finally from me…
5. The Coming Season – Last Christmas when NA had a good idea that Tom was going to leave the club started looking around for target men. However, there were none that we could afford and so NA decided that we would simply recruit the best strikers that we could acquire. With the arrival of Kwesi and Cody McDonald Neal…[Read more]

4. Last Season – Neal gave an amazing insight into last season from his standpoint, where once again his honesty shone through. He admitted that he made mistakes in his recruitment after the playoff final (and TBH with the list of new recruits reading Ryan Clarke, Chris Whelpdale, Dean Parrett, Dom Poleon, Sean Kelly and Tyrone Barnett it would…[Read more]

3. Transfers – I got the impression that Neal was disappointed at the fans’ reaction to our recruitment to date. He mentioned that we should be ‘dancing around our living room’ when we signed Kwesi Appiah. He belives that Kwesi and Deji Oshilaja are Championship quality players – it was also mentioned that Cardiff wanted to keep Deji.

In the…[Read more]

2. Lack of Academy Opportunities – Several questions were asked regarding our perceived failure to play any of our youngsters in the first team.

Neal pointed out that there is a vast difference between seeing kids play in the youth cup and seeing them up against League 1 adults. All of the gifted academy youngsters train with the first team and…[Read more]

1. Goalkeepers – Neal gave a comprehensive background to the selection of our new keeper.

Summarising, his view was that James Shea’s keeping had been variable over the last couple of years. His view was also that neither Shea nor Kelle Roos made enough ‘game changing’ saves. Several months before the end of last season NA had made the decision…[Read more]

Apologies for my tardiness in posting my summary of the MtM evening and thanks to Singapore Don for his quick summary.

I’ll probably break my summary down into subjects covered by the evening and break them up into a series of posts. Apologies in advance for clogging up the forum!

However, before I start I’d like to give an overall summary of…[Read more]

Another day and another departure. However, not many tears will be shed for the ‘wage drain’ that was Tyrone Barnett!

C’mon Neal, use the freed up wages to add a class playmaker, even if it is on a season long loan…

Just re-read my last post and it was too optimistic – I forgot to mention that integral to the current squad of 22 are Will ‘sick note’ Nightingale and Kwesi Appiah, who is returning from almost two years out after snapping virtually every ligament in his knee!

At the moment it is difficult to feel optimistic about our chances for next season. The League will be tougher, with strong teams coming up and down, and with some of last season’s survivors spending big.

Currently our squad could best be described as ‘threadbare’. Twelve contracted players have departed (eight of which could be considered…[Read more]

9/2 still available at Coral’s Devon – snap it up while it is still available!! ;o)

On the face of it George Long is not the type of keeper I was hoping for. His career has stalled in the last few years and he barely played any first team games last season. In 2014 he was returned from a loan spell at Oxford! I really hope I am wrong, but at first glance it looks like a Ryan Clarke style signing! :o(

If it is a striker then it can only mean that we have been successful in our attempts to offload Barnett!

We are not in a financial position to carry 5 strikers (not forgetting young Jayden Antwi).

IMO Poleon was really done for when NA changed the formation to play 3 up front. The two attackers supporting big Tom needed to fall into midfield when not in possession and Dom failed to grasp this role. In a three he was always competing with Barchy on the left (LTB occupying the right) and Barchy at least showed a willingness to work for the…[Read more]

£75k was the rumour. Sounds about right to me.

So Dom Poleon has gone to Bradford City. A shame, but nothing really to worry about as he was only a fringe player towards the end of the season.

So over to you, Rob – is Reeves still on the way out or was it journalistic crossed wires that had Jake leaving for a paltry £150k – I would be happy if we’ve got that for Dom…

Agree with Pete’s disappointment should Roos be the new keeper. However, the rumour now it seems may have been a wind up – I certainly hope so.

If Jake leaves then we must get more than the rumoured £150k, otherwise it would be a disaster IMO. We could never replace our playmaker for that money (no matter how woeful he is in front of…[Read more]