Getting Wimbledon fit for the Football League

Here's an article by me for the ever-excellent Two Unfortunates, a website devoted exclusively to the Football League.

After Wimbledon's final day survival act in League Two, this piece assesses the mess that Neal Ardley inherited when taking on the job in late 2012, while also looking forwards and wondering whether Wimbledon can avoid another struggle in 2013/14.

http://thetwounfortunates.com/getting-afc-wimbledon-fit-for-the-football-league/

Everything in its right place.

Are most teams currently in the 'right' division? And is that healthy? 

Over the course of this season I've increasingly been struck by the idea that almost every team in English football's top four divisions is currently competing in its rightful division.

What do I mean by 'rightful'? I guess I mean a blend of club stature, history and resources, while taking into account mistakes in its recent past that may have led to a downturn in fortunes. For instance, most people would argue that Leeds United are a Premier League team in terms of stature, but few would say they are currently playing in the wrong division thanks to the mismanagement of the club in the past decade or so. The Championship is almost certainly the 'right' division for them at the moment.

In seasons gone by you'd look down the table and think "Cripes! Sheffield Wednesday/Manchester City/Southampton - what are they doing in League One?" There'd perhaps be a few in every division that you'd think this about. Take the Premier League in 1999/00, for instance.

This season, which teams are not in their rightful division? Here's the meagre list I came up with, and their 'right' division in brackets:

• Reading (playing in Premier League, 'right' division would be Championship)
• Sheffield United (playing in League One, 'right' division would be Championship)
• Crawley Town (playing in League One, 'right' division would be League Two)
• Bradford City (playing in League Two, 'right' division would be League One)
• Dagenham (playing in League Two, 'right' division would be Conference)
• Accrington Stanley (playing in League Two, 'right' division would be Conference)

Of course, this is all incredibly subjective and there's no need to write to me in an indignant huff. I realise I've probably just offended about three-quarters of supporters reading this blog who think their team belong a division higher, and perhaps flattered the other quarter who can't believe their luck that they're even clinging on at their current level. This is just my opinion - I'm not stating it as fact. If you like, make your own list and see how many teams you think are in the 'wrong' division. I doubt it will be significantly longer than mine. The only one that narrowly missed my list were Rotherham who, with their new stadium, bigger crowds and resources are arguably a League One team in stature now.

So what's my point here? I guess I'm intrigued by this levelling out that we've seen in recent seasons. Perhaps it's to do with traditionally bigger clubs attracting investment in recent seasons, enabling them to realise their potential and haul themselves out of stagnation? Perhaps the increasing importance of fitness, diet and tactics in the game means that the teams that can afford the best training facilities, sports scientists, scouting networks, etc are increasingly showing up their more old-school, disorganised counterparts on the pitch?

But is this a good thing or a bad thing? At the start of the season I worried it would definitely be a bad thing. I even wrote a piece honing in on League One, stating that it looked to be the worst League One on paper in recent memory and that it would just be a bunch of ordinary teams scrapping it out for the right to be relegation certainties a level higher the following season.

But it's turned out to be the two divisions either side of League One that are astonishingly even across the board.

In the Championship, everybody from 24th to 8th (EIGHTH!) still needs to worry to differing degrees about relegation. Derby, Bolton and Middlesbrough are all on 54 points in 8th, 9th and 10th. They are seven points clear of relegation with all teams having between six and eight games left to play (so 18-24 points available for all). Obviously it's unlikely any of those three would go down, they just can't rule it out yet. Plenty to play for still.

While in League Two, even in seasons without a couple of administration-riddled basketcases adrift at the bottom, 50 points is usually ample for survival. Bottom club Aldershot are already on 44 points with another 15 to play for. And they're only four points off Dagenham in 17th. It's incredibly competitive at the bottom. Two from eight will go down and not one of those sides is completely rotten.

Has such a level playing field made for an exciting, nerve-jangling season for Football League supporters? Most would probably say it has. There's a cluster of around five teams safely ensconced in the middle of Leagues One and League Two with not much left to play for, but everyone else is still fighting for something. And everybody in the Championship still has plenty of reasons to see their next three points as potentially season-defining.

So while a small number of teams might put this season down as quite a boring one (Notts County, Oxford, Chesterfield) most will feel they've given fans plenty to be excited/petrified about. As a fan of two teams (Bournemouth and Wimbledon) I've had plenty to keep me on my toes at opposite ends of the divisions they play in. Come the end of the season I could yet be celebrating a promotion for one while still distraught at the relegation of the other. Or it could be another season of both in the same divisions next year. And I won't know either way for a while yet.

Next season could see a few more teams in the 'wrong' division. Sunderland perhaps? Yeovil? But it won't be many. And hopefully that continues to be as good/bad for excitement/utter terror as it has been this term. The football may not always be beautiful but the bigger picture is rarely dull.

A new lease of life for Kevin Sainte-Luce

As AFC Wimbledon gamble on another so-called 'bad boy', will it pay off better than the last time they took a punt on a potentially troublesome player?

Kevin Sainte-Luce in action for Wimbledon at Kingsmeadow

Wimbledon boss Neal Ardley brought in Cardiff City's Kevin Sainte-Luce in the January transfer window, the winger leaving the Bluebirds (or whatever they're calling themselves these days) under a cloud after a judge spared him a prison sentence for assaulting two women in a nightclub.

Ardley knows 19-year-old Sainte-Luce well from his time as Cardiff's academy manager and, while acknowledging that the nightclub incident was "really bad", believed it to be wholly out of character for his former young charge and felt he deserved a second chance. “I do not condone what he did, but he is genuinely remorseful over what happened," said Ardley.

How glad Ardley must be today that he did offer such a lifeline after Sainte-Luce scored the only goal of the game as Wimbledon picked up a precious three points at Dagenham & Redbridge this weekend, hauling themselves off the bottom of the table and - for now at least - out of the League Two relegation places. With the game drifting towards a nervy 0-0 draw, a ball was cleared to the edge of the box where Sainte-Luce caught it sweetly, sending the ball swerving past a number of bodies, flush into the back of the net. The winger's spectacular cartwheeling celebration a sign of the relief both he and the Dons' large travelling support were feeling. Not to mention Ardley. Wimbledon clung on to grab a desperately needed win and Ardley admitted that he'd fancied his team to win as he'd seen the belief in their eyes before the game.

“It was a fantastic strike," said Ardley of the goal, "and Kevin has been brilliant since he came in – he deserved that. I have told people that he will frustrate the life out of you, but he has unbelievable ability."

Born in Guadeloupe but raised in Paris, Sainte-Luce arrived in South Wales as a teenager and worked his way through Cardiff's youth system under Ardley. Though he never appeared for Cardiff's first team, fans were sad to lose a player with such raw potential, although they sympathised with and fully endorsed the club's decision to firmly show him the door.

The incident which led to his release took place at Cardiff's Glam nightclub, and involved Sainte-Luce punching one girl and assaulting her friend. Judge Bodfan Jenkins spared Sainte-Luce a jail term of up to six months, instead telling him: “Because your promising career could be compromised by prison time, I want to avoid taking such action." Instead he ordered the player to pay £1,250 compensation to the two girls, gave him a 180-hour community service order and a ten-week 8pm-6am curfew.

Just as well for Wimbledon's survival chances that the judge took a lenient view; Sainte-Luce's weekend winner earned the Dons just their second win in eight games and a huge boost in their battle to earn a third season in the Football League.

Hopefully Sainte-Luce will continue to repay the considerable faith shown in him by Ardley - not just in his ability but also his character. With tricky winger Toby Ajala recently departed back to parent club Bristol City, there is a vacancy for some pace and trickery on Wimbledon's flanks and Sainte-Luce looks like he might be one player to offer those traits. 

Searingly quick and with a deceptively long stride for a small man, he's capable of giving weary full-backs all sorts of nightmares when brought on late in games; though if he's able to do for ninety minutes too, that would be a bonus. If Wimbledon stay up by a point or two, then perhaps history will remember Ardley's gamble on bringing the player to the club as one that paid off big time. 

But Wimbledon haven't always been rewarded for their altruistic tendencies when it comes to giving apparently difficult characters a chance to show they've changed their ways. Long-time readers of this site may recall a piece I wrote about wonderfully gifted but hugely frustrating left-back Andre Blackman. Blackman looked like a world-beater in his sole pre-season with the Dons during summer 2010, but a terrible attitude put paid to his chances of making it at the club. Somehow, Blackman ended up at Celtic, where he was loaned out, sent back and, subsequently, quietly let go by the Glasgow club. We weren't the only club that thought we could tame him, but none have managed it thus far.

Released for assorted negative reasons at a string of clubs, the fear is that Blackman may never learn and will only look back on his career with regret.

Thankfully, in the case of Kevin Sainte-Luce, the early signs are that he is focused on rebuilding his career and that the nightclub incident was out of character; a momentary teenage lapse. Let us hope that he continues to make headlines for all the right reasons at Wimbledon.

Neal Ardley hopes Kevin Sainte-Luce will repay the faith shown in him after
giving the winger a second chance to prove himself in the Football League

When the others score

It happens at nearly every game we go to, yet it's barely ever spoken of.

An attempt to sum up that anomalous feeling when your team lets one in



The pesky away team nick one. Fans try their utmost not to look.

The balls nestles into the back of the net with an audible swish of synthetic leather on polyethylene. There are thousands of people here and yet, daft as it seems, you actually hear it.

Not ten seconds earlier this throng of people around you were making a terrific din, willing their lot – your lot – to score a goal of their own. Instead, possession given away cheaply (is it ever not?), in a flash there's a counter-attack. Quick pass, even quicker pass, shimmy, shot, goal.

Silence. A brief moment of almost total quiet, which despite lasting less than three seconds is somehow sufficient time for you to assess all the myriad ways in which your life is a steaming pile of horse excrement before the centre forward is even midway through his clichéd knee-slide-and-fist-pump combo. This momentary lull feels almost perverse.

Sure, a few people instantly swear, but you're often suspicious of them. The people who swear or shout immediately when a goal goes in always have an air of "I've paid £30 for this and I'm not even going to see a win" about them. There's always one and their squawks are annoying, yet irrelevant. The ones hurting most of all are keeping schtum. They know the drill. Suck it up, exchange a glance with your mate, get home, sulk, have another go in a fortnight or so.

Somehow you don't really get to appreciate this oddity in all its dismal glory on the telly. Those chaps who set up their furry boom mics at pitchside know what they're doing. When an away team scores on TV, unless their support amounts to less than fifty souls, you'd think the din of their celebrating was reverberating around the whole stadium, deafening home fans with its maddening blare. Actually it tends to be more of an annoying hum in the distance. Just don't look directly at them – the bastards – with their happy flailing limbs and their hope. Don't look, don't look – oh, too late – you looked. That could've been you.

The aforementioned skill of the TV sound guys means it's not as easy as you'd think to find truly delicious examples of the phenomenon online. Here's one from France though, Ajaccio scoring at Nice. Listen out for token sweary man in the crowd, but aside from him just take a moment to enjoy the almost total silence before a few whistles start. That's the sound of thousands of people indulging in a bout of self-loathing right there.

A couple more. You'll rarely hear the Bernabéu as quiet as when Galastaray take the lead here. Ditto Ibrox, back in 1992, as Gary McAllister scores in the first minute to immediately muzzle 43,000 Glaswegians baying for English blood. Rangers went on to win the tie, but it's the moment in isolation we're interested in here.

As the uncomfortable silence slips away, blame is usually apportioned in the direction of whichever talentless so-called midfield dynamo gave the ball away. But it's that awful instant as ball hits net that remains one of the eeriest moments you can experience at football.

 

If you've got any more macabre clips of goals that silence the home fans – and the TV footage actually does it justice – you're very welcome to leave them below the line

A glorious weekend of German football

I had my first taste of live German football this weekend, with three games in three days including fixtures at Cologne, Bielefeld and Hannover. To say it was a fun trip would be a huge understatement.

I've blogged about it in detail over at Bundesliga Lounge, a cracking site that's well worth bookmarking.

You can read the piece here. Enjoy!

Below are a few photos that there wasn't room for on the blog.

FC Koln's magnificent RheinEnergieStadion
at dusk, just as the famous towers light up

Arminia Bielefeld's hardcore support on the terrace at Schüco Arena

Robert Enke's old Hannover 96 jersey
in the supporters' bar near AWD-Arena

Tasty, delicious wurst. Mmmm...

What a matchday experience a trip to the AWD-Arena offers

Hannover's Jan Schlaudraff (No13) pictured alongside
talented Gladbach playmaker Patrick Herrmann (No7)

Also, many thanks to everyone who's given the blog a mention on Twitter. Seems to have been quite well received, which is nice. Perhaps I'll have another bash at a travelogue style piece in future.

Revealed: How Ipswich Town pick a manager

 

Excuse my rudimentary Photoshop skills. Ipswich will probably appoint a really leftfield Eastern European manager now I've wasted 15 minutes doing this. 

An instant gut reaction to Harry Redknapp's return to Bournemouth

Redknapp during his time as AFC Bournemouth
manager, many moons ago

Oh my. The most successful manager in Bournemouth's history is back at the club, in a voluntary, "advisory" role. According to the board he will assist the current managerial team and offer advice on any footballing matters.

The news has instantly gone global, with "Bournemouth" currently trending on Twitter. And, unsurprisingly, most of the people I follow on Twitter are assuming that this spells bad news for Bournemouth in the long term.

Are AFC Bournemouth - a club suddenly apparently blessed with a chunk of money for the first time in their unremarkable history - about to "do a Portsmouth"? By which I mean a brief and giddy period of unprecedented success and rampant spending swiftly followed by abject doom, poverty and quite possibly liquidation. Jumping the gun a bit? Quite possibly. But that's the instant worry I get in my gut - I obviously hope it proves to be an overreaction.

Or maybe everyone is jumping to conclusions? Redknapp lives at Sandbanks, which is only a few miles from Bournemouth. He likes a simple life away from football, choosing one or two favourite restaurants or a walk on the beach with his dogs over the normal trappings that someone of his status and wealth might enjoy. It might be that he's a bit bored kicking around the house and just wants to help a club that he has had an association with for several decades.

Alas, it probably won't turn out that way. Results have not been good so far this season and manager Paul Groves is already under pressure. Redknapp has worked with Groves previously and rates him - which helps - but if Bournemouth's iffy form continues and Groves gets sacked... it's a fairly obvious script from that point forward.

And if that happens - if Harry becomes manager of Bournemouth again - fans will have a quandary on their hands. There will, in all likelihood, be success and attractive football under Redknapp. We'd probably get promoted. But then what?

It's incredibly early for speculation such as this, but these are the sort of daydreams (or nightmares, depending on the individual) that will be going on in fans' heads this evening, so let's not kid ourselves any different.

As a Bournemouth fan, I want to enjoy any success the club has with intense pleasure. When we win a match, a league or whatever, I want that feeling to be glorious. I've not tasted that feeling very often in my 24 years as a Bournemouth supporter, and I don't want any glory to be tempered by a more-than-reasonable worry of what might be around the corner.

If Bournemouth are about to enter a successful period in their history (that's assuming this doesn't all go wrong sooner rather than later) then it is down to the club to convincingly persuade supporters that the long-term future of the club is assured. A wealthy benefactor is not going to bankroll us for ever, and will surely want to see a return on their investment. The club really needs to urge Maxim Demin to talk about his interest in the club and what he wants to get out of it.

Until we know more about him, why he chose to invest in us and what his long-term aims are, any enjoyment we take from milestone moments such as Redknapp's return will be considerably affected by the nagging fear that this will not end well.

We hope it will end well - we've almost lost this club on more occasions than we'd care to recall - but that worry will always be there while there are so many legitimate question marks about the way the club is run/owned.

One thing that is worth noting, though, is that, while Harry always seemed to be in it for himself at Portsmouth (and at Southampton and Tottenham, for that matter), there are two clubs that he has a genuine passion for and would presumably not want blood on his hands were anything bad to happen to them - Bournemouth and West Ham.

Speaking of which, this blog is going to look pretty silly in a month or two when Redknapp is West Ham manager and is hanging out of a car window talking about how much he can't wait to get into the Olympic Stadium isn't it...

Money plays havoc with a football fan's mojo. We want to win and enjoy winning, but even more importantly we want our children and grandchildren to have the opportunity to watch our club win when we're long gone.

I was hoping that writing this blog might crystallise what I'm feeling this evening. But I'm not sure it has. Redknapp coming back to Bournemouth ought to provoke a thousand happy memories of my childhood, watching his excellent Cherries side from Dean Court's F Block with my dad. Instead, while a glimmer of excitement is certainly there, the worries are significant. For now at least.

Phew, time for a pint...