MATCH THREAD: Dover Athletic vs Farnborough

CJ on for Kasimu 86 mins

5 added mins

Final score Dover 1 Farnborough 1

I'll take the positives from today - we're becoming a decent team at this level, with the potential to do pretty well.

So let's get the negatives out of the way:-

1. Not killing off the game when we were in total control.
2. A very arguable refereeing decision that led to their equaliser from the penalty spot.
3. We don't do converting penalties - 3 in a row. Aargh!
4. We still struggle to stay focused for the full 90.

The big positive I'll take is the massive improvement in coaching, making us far more formidable than even a few weeks ago. Clearly our lads have talent and for plenty of stretches we played Dover off the park, both in and out of possession. Out of possession, we swarmed the oppo to get the ball back at the earliest opportunity; in possession we often played patient passes, biding our time to deliver a telling ball that opened them up. I do not underestimate how fit our players must be to play this way, so a tip of the hat to them and the back-room team.

The trouble is, we couldn't keep it up consistently when in possession, resulting in too many yeah whatever balls into channels where Hish was always going to be second best.

To summarise Dover's attacking performance, they played more than a few long diagonals (a bit like some of us saw Yate do last season at their place), but they never succeeded in playing through us. And we dealt with the diagonals very well. That's a win as far as I'm concerned.

That we didn't kill off the game pretty early was down to one thing - a top quality finisher. Yep, I know every football club in the universe would love to have one. Actually, I think we do have one (I won't name him), just some more coaching is required to train him to hunt for that pocket of space and then deliver with no hesitation. So a work in progress. For older viewers, if Readie had played today he'd have scored a sackful.

My MotM is Reggie. Not only did he score our goal and win a penalty, he also terrorised their defence whenever he got the ball and did a decent shift in winning the ball back too. Keep it up.

The same comments seem to be appearing again and again.

Once we won the Playoff final it was clear that we needed to strengthen if we were to remain competitive in the VNLS this season. And we have bolstered the squad with some good quality players to prove ourselves at this level.

We saw almost immediately that we were challenging the big boys in this league with games at the start of the season against Hemel, Dulwich, Havant, Bath and Ebbsfleet, but didn't get the rub of the green in any of the games. Some, particularly Dulwich Hamlet, were due to questionable refereeing decisions, while other times we were unfortunate to concede despite working our nuts off all game. I think because of our (rather unjustifiable) position in the table, opposing teams seem to be taking us for granted as seeing us as an opportunity for an easy three points, which is far from the truth. That was especially evident with Dover and with Worthing recently. On the other hand, I do understand the perspective. If a team like Dover, sitting mid-table, look at our position and our recent results, they get the impression that we have been struggling, where in reality, the majority of the games have been very close (there hasn't been a league game where we have won or lost convincingly so far this season, in my opinion). The same goes for Weymouth on Tuesday. A game against bottom of the table is normally a given, but you've got to put your full trust in the management and players to do their pre-game research and dig in to the true reality of how the team is performing, because as we have proved, league position can be deceiving.

I'm not going to pretend that we're perfect by any means. Yes, we have good quality players at our disposal, whose performances do not reflect our league position, but there are still faults with the side. Yesterday's penalty miss showed that. We need someone Andrew Sealey-Harris-esque to be taking penalties, because every time we get awarded a penalty now it seems as if we pick a name out of a hat to decide who is taking it! And furthermore with regards to sticking the ball in the net, well, it doesn't seem to happen as much as it should! I like Ferdy and Hish, but they are hit and miss. Some games they are untouchable, while in other games they can't hit a cow's arse with a banjo. We exploit the wings well, and so we should with a player like Reggie on the wing who terrorises defences week in, week out! We have a solid defence, Kevin Lokko is phenomenal and I can't think of too much to say against him, apart from when I watched him against Bath, where he was rushing into challenges and got himself booked in the first half for putting in a challenge that sent one of the opposing players flying into Aldershot. And Jack Turner, I don't think I can praise him enough. 

So, in essence, 20th place is survival, but we are better than that. The players play better than that too, and providing they can keep up the performances all season, eventually we will get the reward of steering away from relegation and building up on the squad more and more. I firmly believe that.

YEEEELLLOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWSSSSSS!!!!