[Devongone]

Jalal was just part of one MA's mistakes. Alan Hansen half-killed youth development when he said you couldn't win anything with kids. MA clearly took that thesis to extremes when recruting. Jalal 35, Nelson 38, Fortune 37 and several 30 and over. Too many old men. Not enough fresh-faced enthusiasm, not enough optimism IMO. Anyon never had that much ability and he has been round every block and made every mistake. Deep inside he has to know what he is. In many walks of life self-knowledge is a good thing, but too much of it destroys a goalkeeper. You can't come out for a ball even half-believing you won't get it and succeed very often despite yourself. Your greatest fear always happens eventually.

Whilst I'm on about younger players I noticed Hendon wanted a friendly this week. The side they should have played in the FA Cup got kicked out after a no-game on saturday. Hendon couldn't get anyone to play them so they arranged Hendon v Hendon U-23 with seven subs each side. Hendon could do that for chrissakes, whilst when we get a promising 17 year old we have to send him out on loans because we don't know what to do with him. (Ricky only came on as second half sub by the way, but he did score!)

We are travelling Anyon, whilst Hendon had an U-23 keeper and a trialist keeper amongst their subs. I don't know if their first team also had a keeper on their bench. And some of our idiot fans think we are playing clubs who are miles worse than us ....... just because we can get a gate of four or five thousand.