City 2 ( Smith 32m, Richards 77m) v St.Albans 1 Att 1023 full time

Bare bones today. Only 3 on bench.
Early pen miss from Richards but Tom Smith fires City into lead

The team was terrific today and should have been out of sight before St Albans scored. Semenyo was brilliant and deserved a goal which he would have got if he had not unselfishly passed to Watto who for some reason missed from a yard.
Smith had his best game since Christmas and Morton was sublime too. These three will be sorely missed as will Southwood who quite rightly drew all the accolades at the end of season awards. What a penalty save that was to deny St Albans the equaliser.
I think this showed we are a very good team indeed and our league position belies that. But for all those 0-0s when Jerry first arrived and the missed penalties we would have rightly been in the mix. The football today was a joy to behold and we were deserved winners.

Well done to all involved.

Well said Ben. Striker had a nice game which already excites me for next season!

Is there any news post game on any of the squad signing on for next season along with the first 4 announced in the week?

Is there any news post game on any of the squad signing on for next season along with the first 4 announced in the week?

Jerry just said he will sit with each member of the squad at some point. Separately I presume. Picturing an X Factor type reaction from all.

Wholeheartedly concur with BenE .. a damn fine game ... and one of the best I've seen at Twerton this season. Accolades across the park for a team I thought may lack a little due to injuries ... but how wrong I was. Exciting, exhilarating, and a great advert for National League South football. I'm sure those in the bumper crowd making a casual visit off the back of Family Day etc. will definitely be returning after witnessing this fine performance. Well done City boys!

It would be great to get Antoine back, he terrorised that defence today.

I think yesterday’s attendance shows just how good a job those who market the club have done this season. For comparison, the final game of last season against Welling drew a crowd of 710. I know St Albans had a good following yesterday but not 300.

I think if I heard correctly, it was announced that our attendances were up 12% on last year - that's against a league-wide trend of shrinking attendances I believe

Don’t forget the total attendance has been helped by having the Chippenham game. What with them staying up and Torquay next seasons figures should be higher again.

To be fair the Chippenham game was only 100 odd higher than the Eastbourne game last season. Two 1000+ attendances last season, two this season with not much between them.

Was a fantastic attendance yesterday. Well done to all those that got the gate up. Would have been more probably if the sun was out. Was incredibly fresh.

More than glad to be wrong on this one. It appeared a decent number were returnees from the family day so excellent the match was so good

A significant number yesterday were children from 4 local schools and their families. Well done and many thanks to both Jerry Gill and Bladud for attending their assemblies in the past fortnight and publicising the match.

BenE wrote:I think this showed we are a very good team indeed and our league position belies that.

Sorry to be pedantic but this wrong. It is a season of 42 games and our excellent results towards the end couldn't get us into an undeserved play-off place. The Eastbourne, WSM and Whitehawk home games saw to that. Nothing against the team or Jerry, it was an excellent season in the end and the last three home games have been really positive and a cause for optimism especially with a full season ahead for Jerry.

comrade powell wrote:A significant number yesterday were children from 4 local schools and their families. Well done and many thanks to both Jerry Gill and Bladud for attending their assemblies in the past fortnight and publicising the match.

...and the same to you, Martin. I know from experience that you have worked very hard on the assemblies and you are almost as famous as Jerry in our school.

Agree with Marc. We have too many mistakes in our team and rely on the luck of who we can get on loan. The strongest teams are also bigger. Having said that we have also played very well at times. Yesterday was excellent.

Basically agree with last 2 posts, some people are getting a bit carried away here. Saturday was good but there have been several games when we have been lacking. Havent have won the league, they were not a good footballing side but they had clearly worked out what was needed to do well in this league.
Jerry has a lot of work to do and it will be interesting to see who he brings in to fill the numerous gaps. For a start without Southwood our points total would have been less and it is going to be a very big ask to find someone as good as him. I imagine there may be the possibility of Antoine coming back if no one at a higher level shows interest, it would be good if he did as he gives a physical edge and you need this.

the demon headmaster wrote:Agree with Marc. We have too many mistakes in our team and rely on the luck of who we can get on loan. The strongest teams are also bigger. Having said that we have also played very well at times. Yesterday was excellent.

While I have been very critical of the loan system we have followed in the past, with us being lumbered with off casts who were clearly unfit and needed most of their short time with us before making any impact, I don't agree that what we are doing at present is down to luck. We clearly have a good relationship with certain league clubs who see the value of sending us their upcoming players. I thought the interview with Axel in Saturday's programme spoke volumes and I'm sure Southwood's time with us was very much set up on the success of last season's loan.

I fully agree with the rest of your post though!

Whilst Southwood deserved the clean sweep of awards, and has been a huge influence on our decent defensive record (bar the first couple of games), the defence has gradually got better as the season went on. If Welch-Hayes, Batten, Ball and Straker stay fit, a reliable enough keeper behind them should mean we'll be resilient enough. Be interesting if Amankwaah is kept on. Easily good enough to play in defence but has had four different spells out injured. Welch-Hayes, Batten and Ball have been available basically all season, bar when Miles was loaned out.

Once we had a more settled side, i.e. post January, our performances improved. I would say since the Weston away game, the only performance you could label as being poor was Eastbourne home. We need to find a way to win when playing badly, which will happen in cases next season, not losing games like Wealdstone when we should have been out of sight by the hour. I didn't think Havant were great at our place but they won, even after conceding late. That's what you need, picking up wins at places like Whitehawk when below par, not dropping two points.

But as I said on the radio, Jerry's pre-season was basically October-November. This time he won't be interrupted by important league games to find a formula and, unless an exodus of players want to depart, a few tweaks should see us take another step forward. Unlike last year when we were never really in contention for the play-offs, this time we were at least in with a shout until late on.

Oh, and sort the penalties, particularly if Richards moves on (wouldn't blame him, plenty of clubs on his doorstep would take him on). Chelmsford missed their first of the season in the league on Saturday, at the fifteenth attempt. They still scored the rebound. We scored 9 out of 14. Considering only 25 were missed in the entire division, this is unimpressive.

stillmanjunior wrote: Considering only 25 were missed in the entire division, this is unimpressive.

I'm staggered to read that. How many penalties were awarded?

Marc Monitor wrote:

BenE wrote:I think this showed we are a very good team indeed and our league position belies that.

Sorry to be pedantic but this wrong.

Sorry to be pedantic but it is not wrong. It is my opinion and that is yours.

My opinion is that it is a good team without the necessary grit to grind out results, lost too many points because of missed penalties, did not have an adequate striker for most of the season, and changed style of play completely mid season.

But it will be a different team next season anyway because of the loanee situation.

comrade powell wrote:

stillmanjunior wrote: Considering only 25 were missed in the entire division, this is unimpressive.

I'm staggered to read that. How many penalties were awarded?

141.

Plus 99 red cards. Chippenham had the most with 11. They also had the last, Jon Beeden, on Saturday.

BenE wrote:

Marc Monitor wrote:

BenE wrote:I think this showed we are a very good team indeed and our league position belies that.

Sorry to be pedantic but this wrong.

Sorry to be pedantic but it is not wrong. It is my opinion and that is yours.

Well, technically, it is a fact that our league position can bely nothing - it is our league position and that is that.

I agree that we ended up a very good team but my opinion is that it is still a good team that probably didn't deserve the play-offs for all the reasons that you provide. I also think - as has been mentioned and I was going to add this in my original post but ran out of time - that, while we rely upon loanees, we will only ever be in the position of possibly sneaking into the play-offs if there are 15 worse teams than us. This isn't a pop at Jerry (or the managers before him), the players or anyone at the club. Jerry has a target for each season and, as he did this season, he needs to be pragmatic and achieve that by whatever means possible. Presently, that means bringing in loan players. However, the constant chopping and changing on loanees and not being able to rely upon them from week to week on occasion let alone month to month means that we will probably struggle to maintain the settled side to really look at comfortably getting into the play-offs or automatic promotion. Not Jerry's fault, he can only do what he can with what is available to him.

Personally, I have said on many occasions that I think that we need to look at having greater throughput of our homegrown younger players. They should be coached in the way the seniors are playing, be constantly available to us and, to be blunt, be cheaper. There is also the opportunity to sell on these players that we develop through the club (in the same manner that Chippenham did with Tyrone Mings). Many clubs moan about being selling clubs. Presently, I think we would kill to be a selling club if we have developed the players.

The other option is to make more playing budget available to Jerry so that he can attract high quality experienced players to the club. I think we all know how much of an issue that is. Personally, I am also not a fan of paying high wages for a lot of ex-pros at the end of the career. It often doesn't produce value for money or the required results and leads to a similar player turnover (albeit with a longer time at the club) as loanees.

I am not a manager so I expect the best situation is a mix of all three approaches.