HerrLjunga
Vital 1st Team Regular
After undertaking the longest trip of the season last Tuesday night away at Barrow, we now make the shortest to take on AFC Wimbledon at Plough Lane, desperately hoping for a bit of positive consistency to keep the smouldering embers of our fairly unconvincing playoff push alive.
There are echoes of the two Hess-led seasons at this level in 2010-11 and 2011-12 where, despite having the nucleus of a good side, we ended up just missing out on the play-offs in eighth spot with a negative goal difference each season. This time around it's not a cavalier attitude to defending that will hamstring us, rather a total lack of creativity and goals. Yet again we remain the lowest scorers in the division for the third season running, a truly pathetic statistic. The January recruitment window could have provided us with the answers, but in hindsight has largely failed, the two most likely solutions to our problems being limited to three sub appearances between them due to injury and Walker offering nothing bar a solitary consolation goal away at MK Dons. It's testament to Clem's lack of belief in Walker that Nadesan continues to earn a starting place despite offering almost nothing when he does so.
Our form across the last ten games shows three wins, four draws and three defeats, with 11 scored and ten conceded, not a point total that will fire any side to anywhere other than a comfortable mid-table spot. Given that in the last ten years the absolute minimum required to achieve the final playoff spot is 70 points, we're fast running out of games to achieve even that total, requiring a further 15 points from our remaining nine fixtures that include tough games against Barrow, a trip to top of the table Mansfield, plus games against those with an eye on stealing our current 7th place, in the shape of Bradford, Morecambe and tonight's opponents.
Wimbledon sit a point behind us prior to kick-off, with one more win and one fewer draw across their last ten than us, their own inconsistency offset in the playoff race by having a +11 goal difference and having conceded the third lowest in the division, not a statistic that augers well for a Gills side that averages under a goal a game. On the plus side, they appear to have struggled to find the net since the January departure of top scorer Ali Al-Hamadi, scoring just six times in nine games. On that basis, 0-0 anyone?
Since our first fixture with AFC Wimbledon (coincidentally during the aforementioned 2011-12 season), we have won six of the 20 meetings, losing eight and drawing six. Our record at the new Plough Lane has seen us victorious just once in four visits, so that's your highlights, a 0-2 League Cup win in August 2022 with two very late Gills goals, including a cracker from Jordan Green at a point in time where he still wore boots and not Teflon slippers that caused him to fall over the moment he stepped on the pitch...
There are three options I can see for tonight in order of likelihood, those being a comfortable home win, a dour 0-0 or, and it seems exceedingly improbable (but would be incredibly Gills-y), a resounding away win that leads us to ask, yet again, why we can't play that way every week, or for more than 45 minutes at a time.
We've already sold well over 1100 for this, the Dons having brought 548 to us back in November where, in typical Gills fashion, we played out a tepid, stale opening 45 minutes before the floodlights thankfully packed in to wake everyone up. Our top scorer, Conor Masterson then won the game during the 17th minute of an incredible 29 minutes of stoppage time. Good job we've got him from a defensive and attacking perspective, without his presence I dread to think where we'd be, we'd certainly have fewer than 30 league goals scored.
So there you have it, a fairly lengthy and pessimistic assessment of a season that has reached the stage where we absolutely need to start doing the business on a consistent basis, or face the consequences of our lack of goals and the failure to adequately address it.
Enjoy the game and...
COYG!!!
There are echoes of the two Hess-led seasons at this level in 2010-11 and 2011-12 where, despite having the nucleus of a good side, we ended up just missing out on the play-offs in eighth spot with a negative goal difference each season. This time around it's not a cavalier attitude to defending that will hamstring us, rather a total lack of creativity and goals. Yet again we remain the lowest scorers in the division for the third season running, a truly pathetic statistic. The January recruitment window could have provided us with the answers, but in hindsight has largely failed, the two most likely solutions to our problems being limited to three sub appearances between them due to injury and Walker offering nothing bar a solitary consolation goal away at MK Dons. It's testament to Clem's lack of belief in Walker that Nadesan continues to earn a starting place despite offering almost nothing when he does so.
Our form across the last ten games shows three wins, four draws and three defeats, with 11 scored and ten conceded, not a point total that will fire any side to anywhere other than a comfortable mid-table spot. Given that in the last ten years the absolute minimum required to achieve the final playoff spot is 70 points, we're fast running out of games to achieve even that total, requiring a further 15 points from our remaining nine fixtures that include tough games against Barrow, a trip to top of the table Mansfield, plus games against those with an eye on stealing our current 7th place, in the shape of Bradford, Morecambe and tonight's opponents.
Wimbledon sit a point behind us prior to kick-off, with one more win and one fewer draw across their last ten than us, their own inconsistency offset in the playoff race by having a +11 goal difference and having conceded the third lowest in the division, not a statistic that augers well for a Gills side that averages under a goal a game. On the plus side, they appear to have struggled to find the net since the January departure of top scorer Ali Al-Hamadi, scoring just six times in nine games. On that basis, 0-0 anyone?
Since our first fixture with AFC Wimbledon (coincidentally during the aforementioned 2011-12 season), we have won six of the 20 meetings, losing eight and drawing six. Our record at the new Plough Lane has seen us victorious just once in four visits, so that's your highlights, a 0-2 League Cup win in August 2022 with two very late Gills goals, including a cracker from Jordan Green at a point in time where he still wore boots and not Teflon slippers that caused him to fall over the moment he stepped on the pitch...
There are three options I can see for tonight in order of likelihood, those being a comfortable home win, a dour 0-0 or, and it seems exceedingly improbable (but would be incredibly Gills-y), a resounding away win that leads us to ask, yet again, why we can't play that way every week, or for more than 45 minutes at a time.
We've already sold well over 1100 for this, the Dons having brought 548 to us back in November where, in typical Gills fashion, we played out a tepid, stale opening 45 minutes before the floodlights thankfully packed in to wake everyone up. Our top scorer, Conor Masterson then won the game during the 17th minute of an incredible 29 minutes of stoppage time. Good job we've got him from a defensive and attacking perspective, without his presence I dread to think where we'd be, we'd certainly have fewer than 30 league goals scored.
So there you have it, a fairly lengthy and pessimistic assessment of a season that has reached the stage where we absolutely need to start doing the business on a consistent basis, or face the consequences of our lack of goals and the failure to adequately address it.
Enjoy the game and...
COYG!!!
But given our normal form, I'm expecting Nadeson and Walker to start up front and us to end up as 4-0 winners 
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