Looking Over Our Shoulder Again

After two league defeats and a Kent Cup exit we now find ourselves reassessing the season once again. A disappointing home defeat to Weston followed by a courageous, but fruitless performance at Salisbury sees us ten points off the play offs and only three off relegation. With third bottom Basingstoke visiting on Saturday it’s important that MG can get his side motivated for a home league match, something which often seems to be lacking given we have only won four Conference South games at home this season so far. Surely a key factor in the crowds at Hayes Lane dropping to under 350, which is the real hardcore support, in January.     

The Kent Cup exit, 5-1 after extra time at Tonbridge, is probably best forgotten about, but new signing Max Noble will now face a ban after a straight red just before the end of normal time. Hopefully MG will see fit to put a full strength team out for the London Senior Cup Quarter Final game at home to Tooting in March as this looks to be the only chance we have of finishing the season on a high note.

Before that we must try and get some league points on the board, especially at home if we want to bring the fans back in numbers.   

          

Once The Snow Clears

After two impressive midweek wins on the road at Dorchester & Bath either sides of giving a good account of ourselves a Dartford we now have just as much chance of making the play offs as we do relegation. Following two postponements due to snow the club are confident we will be able to get back to league action at home to Weston Super Mare on Saturday and hopefully carry on turning round the poor home form which has blighted the last couple of years. With Louie Theophanous and Elliott Buchanan now inform along with a reinvigorated PJD hopefully we can maintain the attacking prowess of the last few weeks and eradicate the defensive slips that cost us the Trophy game at Dartford.
We face a very busy second half of the season with at least two games a week for most of it and keeping an injury and suspension free squad will be key if we are to make an unlikely bid for those lower P/O places.          

Breathing Space.

Two wins in the space of four days has given the club a massive shot in the arm and seen us move up to the dizzy heights of eleventh. A 3-1 home win over Eastleigh and 4-0 win at Dorchester not only saw Louie Theophanous break his duck for the club, but also the squad looking much more unified and determined following some recent departures.

With the reaper’s scythe a little further away from our shoulders we can focus on this weekend’s final sixteen FA Trophy game at Dartford. Our hosts are currently doing very well in their first season back in the Conference Premier Division and will provide tough opposition, but if we can deal with their direct style and set pieces, I still feel we have half a chance of doing something special as we did in the FA Cup last season.

It’s great to have a much more positive outlook on all things Bromley FC, the pressure is off on Saturday, and if the league form continues to improve then we might spend the second half of the season looking up rather than down.        

New Year, Same as The Old One?

Happy New Year to all of you! The Christmas period was a mixed bag for Bromley with two games falling foul of the wet weather and then a fine victory at Tonbridge was followed by an abject defeat to Sutton at Hayes Lane on 1^st January. The results leave us third from bottom and facing a very tough task if we are to avoid relegation at the end of the season.

Mark Goldberg’s inability to get the team to play well on a regular basis leaves many fans baffled when there are flashes of what could be in games like Kidderminster & Tonbridge. With the huge wage bill we have at BFC to be in the relegation places is nothing short of criminal and one feels for the owner Jerry Dolke who has to continually fund this under achievement now the take over of the club is rumoured to be dead in the water.

Should the worse happen and we do go down the potential financial fall out could put Bromley FC back into jeopardy, which given the hard work of those who run the club behind the scenes is very cruel, but football is a results based business and ours are poor.

The FA Trophy, Kent & London Senior Cups seem like sheer folly at the moment given the league position, I hope we put as much into the league games at home to Eastleigh and away to Bath & Dorchester as we do into the Trophy game at Dartford over the next few weeks.

I’m finding it very hard to keep the faith right now.      

Awesome Win, Now it's Time to Kick On!

With a fantastic FA Trophy victory over Kidderminster lifting the spirits it’s time to focus back on the relegation fight for the next few weeks starting with a very tough home game against Chelmsford City on Saturday. The Christmas fixtures could go a long way to shaping the second half of the season for Bromley with a double header against Sutton either side of a visit to Tonbridge.

If the squad and management show the same drive and commitment they did in last Saturday’s game in the league fixtures we could pull out of the bottom three going into 2013 and if rumours are true of just how far the budget is being stretched at the moment then they really do need to start justifying the faith Jerry Dolke has shown in them all.

By the time we travel to Dartford for the last sixteen of the FA Trophy on 12^th January let’s hope the pressure is off slightly and we can fully enjoy a local derby with a place in the quarter finals at stake. This is the first time in 40years that we have made it this far in the competition, which is a fine achievement. If we can go any further then the lure of a game at Wembley will be back in the offing for the first time since the FA Amateur Cup Final win of 1949, but it will mean very little if we lose Conference South status in the same season and the financial meltdown that will come with it.  

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

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!                    

Groundhog Season at Bromley FC

After a frustrating 1-0 defeat to Billericay in the league which saw us slip to fourth from bottom Mark Goldberg was quick to act to rectify our profligacy in front of goal. First the league’s second highest scorer Louie Theophanous came in from Staines and then another forward Joe Piggott joined on-loan from Charlton. MG has stated at least one player will be leaving to balance the books and it doesn’t take a genius to know it will be a striker!

We had one strike on goal against Billericay and unfortunately that fell to left back Marlon Patterson. Once again we failed to compete against a route one physical side who let us pass all day in front of the back line, but never through it. Tactical naivety also had played it’s part a long with the poor form of the strikers and that needs to be sorted out as well if we are to do enough to stay up. 4-3-3 is leaving us far too exposed and not playing to the strengths of the current squad which could comfortably accommodate 3-5-2 or 4-4-2.  

Away from the league we progressed through to the Quarter Finals of the Kent Senior Cup on Tuesday beating a young Gillingham side 3-1 and now on Saturday we are back in FA Trophy First Round action as we entertain Boreham Wood at Hayes Lane. Whether these successes in the knock out competitions proves to be a distraction from staying up or a boost to a poor season remains to be seen.