Probably too early to panic but I am a bit worried about how far behind we are with our fixtures. This is before we get to really rubbish weather in January/February. The strain on the squad playing every midweek is going to be a factor - it's OK if we keep winning, but injuries, suspensions and unavailability will be increasingly difficult challenges to overcome. IMO, we have a great squad of players and an excellent management team, and no doubt they will keep going week in, week out. It would be a real shame if our attempts to get out of this division were derailed by circumstances beyond our control - so my question is, what can we do keep the momentum during our catch-up over the next 3 months?
dont think it is out of our control. play 2 times a week is not unusual in non league and with budget we have and extra money from cups if management are up to it we should be able to get strong and deep enough squad without making excuses. if we have to play 3 times a week then that get difficult but we are nowhere near that
Got to agree with Overthehill here, losing a few league fixtures to our own cup games is a of course a byproduct of success but losing them like we have of recent due to other teams cup exploits and without being in a position to bring other games forward to fill in the gap means we really will be experiencing extra difficulties if only because other teams will have better match conditioning by the time we do end up facing them. We can only hope that we do t lose many games to winter weather as we may really struggle further down the line when compared to other games who have already played near to the 'correct' amount of games.
This will be a real test of the squads depth, ability and character.
-- Edited by Dan on Tuesday 1st of December 2015 08:49:46 AM
At the time of kickoff on saturday we will be 8 games behind Ramsgate.That will equate to being a months worth of football behind.Definitely could cause us problems
agree Chris like I said 3 games a week would be problem like it was when we had fa cup run as we also went far in senior and league cup i think that season and in end players could not do 3 games a week. Dan have to laugh about conditioning! sounds like you are watching to much premier pundits. if conditioning was such a big thing at our level i sure our players would not be out getting drunk on a saturday night and some like i hear a few week ago on a friday night before a game. if we train on a tuesday when there is no game i cant see much different. the way we play against sittingbourne in cup last week i think players probably work harder in training than game. when i use to play many year ago at a very low level me and players prefer games to training anyway i think that is true now
I take your point Peter about both the beers and training but all other teams have those issues as well so just think the backlog even as it stands will hurt us comparatively compared to many others ( even by small margins initially ) and winter weather could make the difference even more substantial.
To be fair, because of the fantastic quality of our pitch, we very often catch up over Xmas anyway. I remember last year, we had a couple of weekends where the Pilot Field was pretty much the only pitch fit for play in all the Ryman divisions, so we should be fine. Disagree though with the comment of possible promotion being denied by circumstances out of our control. It was our choice to play our strongest teams in both the league and Sussex cups, so no good us moaning now about the backlog. As I said in a previous thread, Burgess Hill had no such issues last year and they played 64 games!
John dont think there been many games off for weather this season and hastings probably 1 of few games off this season for ryman clubs when trophy game that abandon. there was no other games postponed that week so dont think you can just rely that all game will be on at home but think most games we are behind are away anyway. still dont think it a problem as we only have midweek game into january at mo and still 3 month after that. and yes Burgess hill coped well last season and got on with it and did not need any excuse
