This goes back to what I said about the Jersey game - the scheduling of it in relation to this game wasn't great.

Thought we were pretty good first half and the likes of Lewis and McShane looked really sharp. Still think we lack goals in the side though, and it just shows that if Alfie is injured, we are going to struggle without the likes of Casey, Prior, McCallum, Carter to pick up the slack.

Real shame to hear that Muitt will miss 6 weeks as well. I wonder if we will look at a winger loan to start the season.

I saw Jimmy sat up on the new gantry but didn’t know he was injured- 6 weeks blimey. Very frustrating. Noticed Dan G and Alfie with him- how long is Dan out for as he hasn’t featured as yet pre season ?

Posted by: @gary-munnery

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I saw Jimmy sat up on the new gantry but didn’t know he was injured- 6 weeks blimey. Very frustrating. Noticed Dan G and Alfie with him- how long is Dan out for as he hasn’t featured as yet pre season ?

 

Was very surprised that Dan G was given the captaincy. Doesn’t feature enough for me. Pybus would have been the ideal choice imho. When fit will start every game, and from what I’ve seen he’s looking back to his best

Well worth the trip to Lewes yesterday. What a great set up there and the seats in the main stand were not only very padded but had pint holders as well - top class! 

A decent run out against a useful side I thought.  Two top quality goals - will need to rely on some more routine chance creation in the season. New lad Forster looked very sharp and busy when he came on; Sullivan assured at the back. And Trialist B - Todd - impressed as well, especially the goal. Any chance he might be signed up? 

And always a treat to watch Barrett play. A class above. 

Those seats were the posh seats from Club Wembley - the FA offered them to non league clubs. They would really make the Stonegate Stand (or whatever it is called now) really fancy!

Definitely the best performance of pre season so far - good passing and felt much more like a Wanderers performance of old.

It's a shame Dennon can only do little bits at the moment, could be a while before he has 90's in him.

How was it last night? Marc didn’t sound too impressed in the post match interview, citing  lots of work to do, some poor performances from some and lack of match fitness/injuires 

Posted by: @gary-munnery

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How was it last night? Marc didn’t sound too impressed in the post match interview, citing  lots of work to do, some poor performances from some and lack of match fitness/injuires 

Yes, concerning that 6 friendlies in,  and a week to go, Marc feels behind schedule in squad fitness and may take a few games to get up to speed. Perhaps we have scheduled too many friendlies in pre-season (8 in 4 weeks is a lot) and perhaps we should have spent more time on training and building up fitness other ways?

Very average first half, second half quickly became an exercise in taking the senior players off and playing the kids which I am not too interested in tbh - apart from Frank Vincent it was pretty poor in the late stages, the team shape went all over the place and an energetic Dulwich team, who start their season on Saturday ran riot for much of the late stages.

Loads of blazing shots just off target. Barrett appeared to have a tight hamstring when he was taken off.

Marc is being so, so careful not to get any more injuries, I get the feeling that if anything we are holding it back a fair bit ahead of when it starts for real against Dagenham. If not then it could be a slow start to the season.

I am no physio or fitness coach but it feels concerning that there are vaious players getting injections to START a season - fair enough if it is March/April and you are just trying to get key players over the line with such injections, but to need those in July just to get to the start line doesn't feel right to me.

As you say a lot of players have injuries from last season still troubling them: Muitt, Annersley, Lewis, Gallagher, Rutherford and Taylor to name at least 6 all probably first team starters.

Posted by: @crawleysth

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As you say a lot of players have injuries from last season still troubling them: Muitt, Annersley, Lewis, Gallagher, Rutherford and Taylor to name at least 6 all probably first team starters.

Exactly this. And there is also the absence of Pinchard, the loss of Carter and Norville-Williams too. It has been a poor pre season, and it could be a slow start to the season based on the signs so far. We only looked really good against Lewes tbh.

My first visit to Dulwich Hamlet and it is a very nice set up there - more to enjoy than the actual match probably. Some decent passing in first half but not much by way of actual goal threat, which is a concern even in pre-season friendlies.  Dulwich were more dynamic and deserved more than the one goal win. 

I am no physio either David, and maybe it’s just a case of starting the season without injuries and going from there. Well, almost without injuries.  Second half proved how much of a step up it is from the Academy. 

The big problem this pre-season is the amount of injuries we had coming in. We started pre-season with only 11 fit senior players (Camp, Philpot, Sayers, Francomb, Vincent, Pybus, Barrett, McShane, Wood, Nikaj, Rutherford) and most of those are either new players, fringe players or players returning from long term injuries (McShane, Pybus, Rutherford). We've then lost further players from that list as well with Alfie and McShane both missing matches.

We couldn't afford to overload those 11 players so we've had to really manage minutes and split with academy players more than you would like.

I think we can put a lot of a lack of chance creation down to only have one fit winger for the bulk of pre-season as well. Not really having a fit first choice central midfield player isn't helping either.

The question I do have is how Marc would have allowed us to get to 2 weeks before the start of the season with barely a fit winger and no fit midfielders. Why wasn't Forster or another winger around from the start? Why not look at loan midfielders when we knew Taylor, Pinchard and Gallagher were all likely to miss the start of the season? I still think we're a striker short as well as there is a big drop off from Nikaj/Alfie to Lawrence.

Exactly Tom. The scarcity of first team players explains a lot, and also why Marc is being so careful with their usage.

Marc said in the post match that the Bracknell game is going to be more important than originally expected for getting players up to speed. Not ideal.

We should make efforts to bring back Pat Casey, he scored in every single game he played in for us. Hopefully our pitch doesn't put him off if we did make an approach. By all accounts he has been released by Charlton. 

Does anyone know if  Forster has definitely been signed now? What about the other triallist from the Dulwich game?