After a wonderful family vacation, I'm back...
24 December 2015
The fixtures came fast and furious this autumn, as the Alfredians made it out of the qualifying rounds in the FA Trophy and FA Cup tournaments. Oddly enough, we knocked Dulwich Hamlet out of both competitions.
Our FA Cup tie against Barnsley, a League One club, drew a capacity crowd of 1500 to Alfredian Park. We put up a game fight, but their quality was just too much for us. We weren't lucky enough to draw Hereford United at home and, interestingly enough, we didn't play nearly as well against our Conference opponent as we did against our League foe.
If you look closely enough at our league form, you might notice that we haven't been quite as sharp in November and December. Perhaps it's simply a case of regression to the mean. We're a newly promoted side, and perhaps we've been punching above our weight. The board expects us to finish in a respectable position. Maybe that's a more realistic expectation.
But something else happened that might explain our recent form. In the 71st minute of our 3-2 victory away to Tiverton on Halloween, captain
Paul Douglas broke his foot. We're not expecting Paul back until February or March.
It's become very apparent how important the skipper's talents are to our club. My staff don't rate him all that highly. They call him a useful player, at best, and don't think he's as good as any of the teenage strikers who have come up through our youth system. But Paul brings something to the side that the lads who have played in his place lack. I don't think it's an accident that
Mick Hart has scored only two goals since Paul's injury, without the excellent service Paul usually provides. We're also missing Douglas's willingness to press opposing defenders and track back, qualities none of our other forwards demonstrate nearly as well.
Since Hart hasn't been finding the net like usual, we've depended on loanee
Rocky Upton to pick up the slack. He fired in five goals for us in recent weeks, but he returned to Chesterfield a week ago. They wouldn't renew his loan deal with us, because they want him to play with better players now. Fortunately, I discovered another good young forward on the loan list:
Nathan Thornton of Basingstoke. Think of him as a slightly quicker version of
Paul Douglas, with a little less physicality and slightly less creativity. Nathan will share playing time with
Neil Pelling as Hart's partner, and I can also use him to relieve Mick if I decide to give him a break while he looks for his scoring boots.
Luckily, our dip in form coincided with similar performances by the other league leaders. Because of the schedule adjustments required to accommodate our cup ties, we have games in hand against all the other top clubs, so our position is actually quite good. I hope we can hold on until Douglas returns.
Merry Christmas from Wantage Town!