Great Start to The Season

Two games into the season and a more than reasonable start to the campaign. MG gas told the press he is happy with the team and is aiming to finish in the top half and maybe even achieve out highest Conference South finish. 

The 2-0 win at Hayes & Yeading was a solid display, while the 4-0 win over Whitehawk on Tuesday showed some real quality and defensive resolve.  

He has publicly called Bradley Goldberg and Jay May as his preferred strike partnership and backed them to score goals. How long or whether Shamir Mullings or Warren McBean will be happy as understudies remains to be seen. In midfield Steve Smith and Elliott Buchanan have staked a claim to the central spots which leaves two other quality players in Ashley Nicholls and Danny Waldren also on the fringes. Tough decisions for the manager, but you can’t argue with results so far. The wing play of Brendan Kiernan has been a joy to watch and we’ll have our work cut out to keep hold of him. On current form, I’d tip him to be the next Raven making the step back into professional football.     

With a busy Bank Holiday schedule of Tonbridge Angels at home and Bishops Stortford away coming up the squad may need to be rotated to keep everyone fresh before the visit of newly promoted Gosport Borough to Hayes Lane finishes the month. Let’s hope by then we are still looking good. 

The New Season Awaits

Here we go again then, after the longest, most drawn out and inconclusive pre-season I can remember, the Conference South season finally kicks off on 17 August. It’s been a strange month or so building up to the real thing, we’ve had quite a large number of prospective players come and go and even now it’s unclear what Mark Goldberg’s starting line up will be against Hayes & Yeading at Woking FC. We appear to have a good number of decent midfield options, Kiernan, Smith & Nicholls look great signings, while the back line although pretty solid has nothing in reserve past the four players who have started almost every friendly, Pooley, Swaine, Holland and Anderson. Up front MG has yet to unearth a real goal scorer. May & Mullings compete for the target man spot, while Bradley Godlberg and Warren McBean vie for the poachers role. The smart money is on May & Bradley to start the first game with last season’s top scorer Pierre Joseph Dubois not featuring in the last game against Cray Wands. With Joe Welch injured and George Howard singed by Gillingham we’ll start our league campaign without a settled keeper just as we did two years ago. Ben McNamara had been brought in on-loan from Nuneaton after Reserve Keeper Max Huxter had a game to forget against Dulwich Hamlet, fingers crossed Welch won’t be too far away from fitness after missing his second pre-season in a row through injury.  

It looks like it will take some time for things to settle down and the team to take shape still, there has been a good buzz about the squad and hopefully the positive vibes will continue whatever the result next Saturday and beyond.