Still looking over our shoulder

After a very good 2-0 replay win in the FA Trophy at Boreham Wood, followed by a vital three points at Havant & Waterlooville winning 2-1 things seemed to be on the up for The Ravens, but it all went a bit sour on Tuesday night. Not only did we lose 3-1 at local rivals Welling, but we also lost Moses Swaibu to his second red card of the season and he will now miss a big chunk of December’s games as he had already reached five bookings. The one game Moses will be available for seems to be the FA Trophy Second Round game at home to Kidderminster Harriers which will certainly help again Conference Premier opposition.

League wise we are still far too close to the relegation zone and Saturday’s home game against Farnborough is an important one ahead of a trip to Woking to play Hayes & Yeading Utd and thenthe big Trophy game on 15th.

We really missed the influential Elliott Buchanan against Welling, he’d set up both goals for Joe Piggott in the previous game and was starting to look like the player he’d been billed as. Hopefully his injury won’t keep him out too long. Once Swaibu had gone off in the 11^th minute and Welling had scored the resulting penalty for handball it was always going to be an uphill struggle, quite literally in the second half at PVR. We did make a game of it, but were caught pushing forward late on and ended up empty handed.

Although Mark Goldberg has seen fit to bring in new strikers it hasn’t solved the fact that they are often left feeding off scraps with no creativity in midfield. Now without Swaibu for a spell to marshalthe defence it gives Rob Gillman a chance to establish himself in his third spell at the club. The former club captain and player of the season re-joined from Whitstable with Jerome Sobers going out to Kingstonian on dual registration. Whether we can get Jerome back for the next month remains to be seen, I guess it’s up to MG to sort out once he comes back from his holiday which has seen him miss the last three matches!