This rollercoaster of a season just keeps on rolling, we've been high as 5th from the top, as low as 7th from the bottom of the table, and in a relegation battle for the third season in a row. Concord and Taunton also lost tonight, so didn't close the gap. But 11 wins from 40 games for a 27% win percentage tells the story, we're where we are for a reason.
It sounds like we made bad mistakes tonight, which may be due to the fantastic amount of effort put in against Bath catching up with us today, but we are finishing the season with 8 games in April, so fatigue will be our biggest opponent for the rest of the season, with hardly any recovery time between games. It is so crowded down there just 1 or 2 points may be the difference between staying up or going down, but at least none of the teams below us are in particularly good form, so our current 5 point gap above relegation is a ray of light. We're not dead yet!
Really good match for the neutral. It could easily have been a draw. I thought both teams played well with perhaps Chippenham Town edging the game by a whisker. Their No. 6 Will Richards was strong in their defence. We made sloppy mistakes for the goals we conceded. I think we still have enough in the locker to get the points we require but I would be lying if I said I wasn't feeling nervous.
We got 2 away goals against Chippenham, which is good news, and although they are a team in form it sounds as though it was a close match, where we beat ourselves with defensive mistakes.
Over the season a point a game is normally enough to keep a team up, but this may be an unusual one and slightly higher is needed, as towards the bottom of the table teams are fairly evenly matched, no teams miles behind.
Looking at our remaining fixtures to think where the hell points will come, actually there are 2 games one could be extra hopeful about, Dover have poor recent form, that could be winnable. And surprisingly the wheels have totally fallen off Havant, from being comfortably top 2/3 for most of the season they went on a losing run, and their manager moved upstairs to let in the person being groomed to take over. But results under the replacement stay bad, so they have now dropped out of the play off spots, which is unbelievable compared to earlier on this season. So that may now be a easier fixture than it would have appeared a few months ago, particularly if it is the last match of the season and they are out of sight of play offs so have nothing to play for.
Hampton on Saturday, they changed their manager in January and he improved their results, the managerial merrygoround in the bottom 10 teams is remarkable, 7 changes, only us, Cheshunt and Hungerford haven't changed managers.
The match highlights are up, Taylor's first goal was excellent, great control and striking of a ball coming to him from an awkward angle to control. It is why I get frustrated when he is wasted being used as a holding midfielder when he is so good in attacking positions. Chi got a great goal the other day, this one of Taylor's was great too, nice to see these skilful parts in our games.
As I mentioned on the match report thread, until reading the match report I hadn't realised realised we were missing 9 players for a variety of reasons. So in the circumstances this match was very good going by us.