With a bit of apprehension, but mostly excitement, the journey can begin. The board reiterated the need to reach the playoffs as a bare minimum for this season, they only handed me a 1 year contract and so my job will be on the line if we don’t make it. That would be a short story, although I am sure we will make at least the playoffs and my personal aim is to win the league, nothing less will do.
I mentioned that teams were floating around our star man and twice now he has had offers to go elsewhere. This being the confirmation that he signed a new non-contract deal to remain club captain and not be tempted elsewhere. Great news for us.
So on to the matches then, I want to keep things simple as mentioned before and so a standard wing play 4-4-2 is how we will line up. The team pretty much picks itself, other than on the left side of midfield where I am torn between the loan signing Haitham from Chichester and Jay Porter who impressed despite not being best suited to the wing. To start the season, I opt for Haitham.
Despite Haitham doing very little, we cruise into a 3-0 lead away at Hamworthy United and are flying. Then we ease off the throttle and nearly blow all our good work. We saw less of the ball and had lower xG than our hosts but a win is a win and I’ll take it to get off the mark. Notably no goals from either of the front men though, which is unusual for one of my teams.
Next up, we have our first home game of the season with Cowes Sports from the Isle of Wight visiting from a short ferry ride away. Given the dilemma I had for the left and Haitham’s poor debut, I opted to bring Porter in for the only change to the winning team.
A very comfortable and standard 2-0 home win, both strikers off the mark which is always nice. The 25 fouls Cowes committed really highlighted the quality gap and they resorted to the only thing they had in their arsenal, kicking lumps out of us.
On to the next and Alresford were our hosts, I made no changes to the team this time as I thought we looked more balanced with the more defensively capable Porter on the left to balance the raw pace of Hamilton on the right.
They had no answer to our relentless attacking and the scoreline didn’t flatter us in a landslide away win. It was great to see River Smith pick up a hattrick, as well as Porter getting himself on the scoresheet despite not having any attributes to suggest he could. A very good performance.
Next up was another away trip, this time to Lymington Town. Another game and another unchanged lineup for us, I am hoping the consistency brings some cohesion within the team considering how many of the squad are new signings.
A solid, if unspectacular away performance and we never looked like losing this one. In truth, we never looked like winning it either despite edging the stats. Can’t complain too much though, we are having a great start to the season.
The games are coming thick and fast, with our next match being away from home again. This time we faced Onchen AFC from the Isle of Man in the qualifying round of the FA Vase. Using the old “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” method, we lined up the same again.
On another day it would have been over within the 90 minutes, or Smith would have bagged another hattrick. As it was we had to settle for 1-0 after extra time to get beyond the weakest team we have faced so far. I did start to wonder if some of the players were starting to get a bit jaded, and if rotation might be needed. The trouble with that being that despite having good numbers of players, I really only trust a handful of them to deliver on a weekly basis.
With those thoughts rattling around in my head, we faced up to a home match against Brokenhurst. I figured that, as we are still unbeaten, I should show some faith in the players I have used so far and yet again made no changes.
My faith was rewarded with a fairly routine 2-0 home win, a goal a piece from the front men again saw us over the line to continue our good run.
Amesbury Town were our next opponents and the relentless run of away games continued with our fourth away game in our last five games. Broken record time but I stuck with the same lineup. However, the bench was changed for this game as I managed to loan in winger Donvieve Jones from Faversham to bolster the team and add some much needed pace from the bench. He arrives without us having to pay any wages either.
So with our new addition on the bench, on to the match.
A bore draw that even new blood couldn’t breathe life into, just one of those days. Away from home though we are getting more than our fair share of clean sheets, which is obviously pleasing and if we can win our home games and draw our away games then we’d get 57 points. I think that would be playoff form so if we track higher than that we give ourselves a chance at the title and the only automatic promotion spot.
Next up was a home game against Shaftesbury, where you’ll be shocked to know we named an unchanged team!
Smith amongst the goals again, cementing him as a key man and Hamilton picking up a penalty. Hamilton is quite frustrating to watch, his pace gets him in some great positions but it’s like watching Usain Bolt when he trialled out in Australia, sometimes he runs past the ball and other times trips over it. Still, he is a real threat at all times.
We hit the road again to Portland for our next game, for the first round proper of the FA Vase. This is a competition I feel like we can really compete in and want to have a good cup run to go with our good league form. As much as anything else we need the money as the club is losing money at a rapid rate despite not paying our players. The team is unchanged.
Routine win in scoreline but as the xG shows, this was far more even than the score suggests. We were clinical, captain marvel Stockford, fresh off of turning down 5 more offers to leave us, put on a long range shooting masterclass after Smith opened the scoring for us from closer range. On to the next round we go!
The penultimate game of this update was yet another away trip, this time to AFC Portchester. This is an old foe from my youth coaching days and so it would be great to get one over on them. The team picks itself for a key match.
Another good performance, but again we go away and don’t collect the 3 points. We are very close to being a devastating force at this level but let ourselves down in away games where we switch off for periods. I had flashbacks to some of those youth team games, as we found ourselves 2-0 down in just 26 minutes. However, we battled back, so I can’t argue with the character and grit in the team to not accept defeat, allowing us to rally to take a point from such a bad start.
The last game of this update is a top of the table clash where 3rd placed Christchurch came to Cams Alders looking to claw us back in the race for the title. I picked a very familiar looking team for the game.
An absolutely dominant performance with 2 goals and 2 disallowed goals, Smith getting himself top of the goalscoring charts and in double figures and Jones picking up his first for the club off of the bench. A very pleasing end to this spell and leaves us in a great position.
That win seals 10 games unbeaten for us too, a brighter start than I could have imagined.
Given we are now in November, the last defeat we had was our only one under me and that came against a National League South side in a friendly way back in August. I really didn’t think we would perform so well and am excited to see where our season goes from here.
The table is also pretty reading, 4 points clear of Christchurch after beating them and 1 clear of Fleet but with 2 games in hand over them. I’d like to build up a bigger gap between us and 6th, just to ensure our playoff spot as early as possible to concentrate on fighting for the title and the automatic promotion spot that comes with it.
That’s it for today, more games to come in 2 weeks time, thanks.
Kick it in the Goal 