18-01-2024, 14:44
Matt I agree totally about re-scheduling the FA Trophy. It isn't, or shouldn't be, a tin pot trophy. It is the major trophy available in non-league football, which accounts for most of the football played in this country. The excrescence is the 92 clubs of the Football League. Non-league down to junior football is the heartbeat of the game. The Premier League and EFL labour under the misapprehension that they are the game itself and a supine old-man-driven FA confirms their myopia. That's why we develop laws of the game that are completely impractical to interpret without (and often with) television replays. The laws of the game should be laws ordinary Saturday and Sunday league players and referees can function under, not laws designed to mollify cry-baby pros blubbing it just isn't fair.
We were by quite a distance the best team still in the FA trophy. What we did was the equivalent of Pep Guardiola fielding his youth team when drawn away to a Championship side in the FA Cup.
We fielded a side with zero experience in order that it would lose and that is why it was against everything sport should be about.
Had we for instance fielded six youth players and the five who were likely to be substitutes against Alty I wouldn't have argued. That game would have helped both the experienced and inexperienced parts of the team. It would have provided a close game that we might have won, with the chance of a trophy or a final appearance hoving into view. That would have been sport and would have had zero impact on our performance on Tuesday. And the blame for our not fielding our strongest team would clearly have lodged with the fixture list.
After Tuesday we are 12 points clear at the top with a game in hand. If we continue to accumulate points at our current rate we are looking at a record 115 points for the season. If Bromley and Barnet continue at their current rate they will get 92, which in itself is excellent. To fail to win our league we would need to lose at least 8 of the 19 games we have still to play, having only lost 3 out 27 so far. Even then, if we won 9 drew 2 and lost 8, we'd still be on 97 points, a potential cushion between us and our rivals.
If extreme caution is indeed our policy in order to return to the EFL at all costs, how do you explain our policy of not fielding a substitute goalkeeper in any of our games (even though we certainly have the best substitute goalkeeper in our league and possibly EFL 2)? Why doesn't safety first kick in there? What if Tyrer breaks a couple of fingers in the first minute? We'd be almost bound to lose, which wouldn't be the case if we'd just picked up a couple of knocks in a Saturday Trophy game.
We were by quite a distance the best team still in the FA trophy. What we did was the equivalent of Pep Guardiola fielding his youth team when drawn away to a Championship side in the FA Cup.
We fielded a side with zero experience in order that it would lose and that is why it was against everything sport should be about.
Had we for instance fielded six youth players and the five who were likely to be substitutes against Alty I wouldn't have argued. That game would have helped both the experienced and inexperienced parts of the team. It would have provided a close game that we might have won, with the chance of a trophy or a final appearance hoving into view. That would have been sport and would have had zero impact on our performance on Tuesday. And the blame for our not fielding our strongest team would clearly have lodged with the fixture list.
After Tuesday we are 12 points clear at the top with a game in hand. If we continue to accumulate points at our current rate we are looking at a record 115 points for the season. If Bromley and Barnet continue at their current rate they will get 92, which in itself is excellent. To fail to win our league we would need to lose at least 8 of the 19 games we have still to play, having only lost 3 out 27 so far. Even then, if we won 9 drew 2 and lost 8, we'd still be on 97 points, a potential cushion between us and our rivals.
If extreme caution is indeed our policy in order to return to the EFL at all costs, how do you explain our policy of not fielding a substitute goalkeeper in any of our games (even though we certainly have the best substitute goalkeeper in our league and possibly EFL 2)? Why doesn't safety first kick in there? What if Tyrer breaks a couple of fingers in the first minute? We'd be almost bound to lose, which wouldn't be the case if we'd just picked up a couple of knocks in a Saturday Trophy game.