In a season where every weekend seems to be a new low for this football club of ours, today brings another new low. Last season we existed the FA Cup after a 1-0 defeat to Dover in what was a very poor performance. Today we exist at the same stage only this time after losing on penalties after a 3-3 draw away to Boreham Wood. In a way, for me personally today's result is worse than last years. Performance wise it was much better than that against Dover, we actually showed a bit of fight and a bit of passion, something we've lacked a lot of this season but despite that, it still wasn't enough to beat a very average National League side. If we've learnt anything from today though it is that at least next season we should be able to compete, just about. Make no mistake about it though, as a football league side it's always embarrassing to be beaten by a non league team. Trouble is, I'm so used to losing now that I don't feel embarrassed.
A big problem of ours this season has been scoring goals. Prior to our first today, we had gone over 650 minutes without scoring a goal from open play. A truly disgusting stat. Today though, we manage to score two goals inside the 90 minutes and another in extra time, away from home no less and still we can't win a game. For me, our biggest problem right now is the state of our defense and that starts with Mark Oxley. As an experience goal keeper, you'd be forgiven for expecting him to be a leader at the back, someone who organizes his defense, someone who commands his area.. this bloke has worn the captains armband for us for christ sake. In fact, what you get with him is someone who is very reluctant to come off his line. Someone who isn't very vocal, at all. Someone who will put his defense under needless pressure by throwing/kicking it to the opposition. Mark is a very good shot stopper but that's about it. Nobody can tell me that our defenders go in to games with confidence that he'll save them. The defense itself needs a major overhaul. We haven't kept a clean sheet since January and if we don't improve it's not unrealistic to suggest that we will before that stat becomes a year. Two out of the three goals again today were the result from poor set piece defending. This isn't a new thing, we've been poor at this for a few seasons now. My question is, what the hell do we do all week in training to prevent this? I'm not privy to what goes on at Boots and Laces during the week but given MM philosophy I'd hazard a guess and say a lot of what we do revolves around little five yard passes and general possession based drills rather than actually focusing on what our weak links clearly are. It's one of the reasons I'm starting to doubt whether we have the right man in charge. In my opinion, results won't start to get better until our defensive problems have been resorted.
On Mark himself, a couple on here were very vocal a few weeks ago whether he was the right man for the job. As the weeks have gone by and the results ultimately have got worse, more and more seem to have turned and until now I have always stood up for MM and defended him. Well, I think that now comes to an end. Whilst I will continue to believe that our off field problems and Ron in general will make it hard for any manager to succeed here, I just haven't seen enough improvement in us over the last few weeks to suggest that we are going to go in any other direction other than down under his stewardship. We have been told what a hard worker he and his staff our and that's all well and good but if you spend as much time as you apparently do watching and rewatching defeats and you still can't work out that our defense whether it be playing out from the back or from set pieces is where we are going wrong then I don't know what to say. Each and every one of us on here can see it, why can't they? Do I think Ron will get itchy feet and get rid of Mark this early? From what it sounds like no but with each defeat the shouts from fans will get louder and louder and eventually Ron will have to act.
If/when he does though, who next? Will we see the same old names thrown in to the mix? Those romantic ideas of Tilson coming out of the footballing wilderness to save us from certain doom? The dreamers of us who want to see Adam Barrett at the helm? Maybe even Craig Fagan be given his chance after doing good things over the last few years with the U23's. I really don't know. What irks me though is this week we've seen Mansfield sack Graham Coughlan (could he be a possible candidate?) and bring in Nigel Clough which for me is an excellent appointment at this level. Oh and they only went away to Sunderland today and won, talk about an instant new manager bounce! Is there any other names out there who could do a job?
Absolutely agree on Oxley.
