I don't get to many games as I'm a season ticket holder elsewhere, but I come as much as I can.
My observations from last night were:
Hastings played very well at times - Cruttwell on the ball has incredible vision and at times pace when chasing a ball. Lots of good passing, we have a lot of good ball players, and some real pace - just one major thing lacking - a striker, what happened to the bloke we had last season on loan from Leatherhead? I heard that they had released him? We would have scored a couple last night with a genuine goalscorer up top, I'm sure the manager will be addressing this as soon as.
All in all though a good performance, and providing we get that goalscorer in the outlook for the new season is good.
Lots of good passing, we have a lot of good ball players, and some real pace - just one major thing lacking - a striker, what happened to the bloke we had last season on loan from Leatherhead? I heard that they had released him?
I was a fan of Calum Davies, but I have to say that he wouldn't have added anything very much last night. He was quick, lively, made good runs and always looked to get in behind the defence...but Daniel Ajakaiye has all of those attributes too. Lewes didn't leave any space for him to run into, we didn't find the right pass on the rare occasions when he did get away, and he spent much of the game with his back to goal, which really isn't where his strengths lie.
There is potential for all of that to work better, if you can get Charlie Horlock or Sam Cruttwell picking him out on the break, for example, or you can get Ansu Janneh to pick the right pass to slide him in. And Lewes did defend extremely well. But at the point where the build-up is slower and everything's more crowded, the ball goes wide...and it comes back again because crossing is pointless if there's no physical presence in the box...and goes wide again...and comes back again...and so on. That's the bit which needs addressing, I think: as it stands, there's really not enough to frighten a team that's happy to sit deep and invite us to play in front of them.
These have both been really good competitive, hard-fought games, and there were plenty of positives, I thought: the defence looks strong and confident on the ball, the midfield is really aggressive. But there's a lot of football played for every goal at the moment, which is what happened for long periods last season too. Anyway, early days...
As Ian says above, we have just had two difficult games (credit to the management for arranging those) against very well organised defences. Yes, both are a league above us; but we can be quite certain that at least a couple of sides in our league are going to be as well organised and as quick to close us down. We have some good ball carrying quick forward players, but as John has said in another thread and as many contributors to this forum have been saying since well before the end of last season, to compete for automatic promotion we must have a goal scoring centre forward. With Rodari out the problem is even more acute. I really hope that Chris takes urgent action to find someone (of course it will be difficult and probably expensive). I hope the funds are available. If not then I feel some 'duplicate' players must be released to provide the money required. If we do nothing we might as well resign ourselves to another disappointing season which, given the very good group of players Chris has otherwise put together, will be frustrating indeed.
One other point. Has the pitch been narrowed (again)? Assuming it's not my imagination, I wonder at the intention. I can see Chris wants to play out from the back, but the games against Kingstonian and Lewes both showed long periods where the opposing defence was able to shut us down comfortably. I'm not sure they would have found it so easy had had our wide players had a yard or so more space.
