Watching us play reminds me of cooking a meal without following a recipe or measuring the ingredients. It feels like most of the memorable moments come from flashes of inspiration, rather than repetition of good habits. We just throw everything into a pan, hope to get the timing and seasoning right, and on a good day the result is tasty and enjoyable.
Until about a month ago we were generally serving up decent home performances, apart from a few too many defensive lapses. Suddenly we don't seem to know how to replicate what works for us, and it all looks increasingly haphazard.
A wider margin of victory wouldn't really have flattered Cray Valley yesterday, and Dillon Barnes saved 3 or 4 efforts that might have beaten some keepers without being at fault on any of those conceded. They retained all but one of their promotion winning squad (star striker Kyrell Lisbie, who joined Braintree) and added just a handful of newcomers. They've only lost 4 league matches since the start of last season, whereas we've lost the same number since the start of last month and since our last win. That's a shocking contrast.
Yesterday's opponents repeatedly threatened to score from open play, pulling our defence this way and that, with midfielders breaking into the box from off the ball runs. The #16, who scored the final goal, could have had a hat-trick, whereas our midfielders seldom even look like scoring.
Serious questions to bs asked of the management team if we haven't won by the end of January.
End of January? So 7 more games, and we're already winless in 7, with just 3 points. That would make one third of an entire season's league fixtures without a win, and I'm not sure we can afford to wait that long. We have 4 more games in the next fortnight, then it's just weekly Saturday fixtures. I reckon we need a
minimum 5 points (a win and 2 draws) from that sequence to feel confident of having turned a corner, otherwise the management need to ask some serious questions of themselves before anyone else does. Hopefully it won't come to that.
Comfortable mid-table mediocrity ought to be the bare minimum with our current personnel and resources. The sheer number of goals we've been leaking is horrific, with 3 or 4 conceded in league games on 7 occasions at the halfway point in the schedule. Only 2 clean sheets, in consecutive games either side of a third in the Trophy win at Dartford. It was a similar story last season, with one of the worst defensive records in the division.
