DangerousSausage

Well, isn't this absolutely pathetic?

That really was pants, starting with Barnett shinning the ball out of play with our first touch of the match (and doing the same thing in stoppage time when we had a promising break on), all the way through to Reeves(?) messing about and finally passing it backwards in the LAST SECONDS OF STOPPAGE TIME when he should have been putting the ball into the box. Halifax were a typical NL team that came to press us and put us under pressure, and increasingly sat back as the game went on. They were bang average, yet we barely tested them. We never look good when trying to play 4-3-3 as the gaps between the players are just too big. But regardless of what we play, our midfield pairing is stifling us - they always play too deep, they slow the play down, they offer nothing in an attacking sense and now they've forgotten how to pass too. They're also two of too many players we've got who know they'll always play 90 minutes of every game, come what may. We know what this league is about now. We need to be positive, we need to get in the opposition's faces and take the fight to them. That is how we will control games. What we shouldn't be doing is attempting to tiki-taka the ball to the opposition's six-yard box in painful slow motion. It does not work. If we don't learn that lesson, we'll be lucky to finish in the top half, never mind the play-offs.

I prefer to focus on the positives. Slocombe caught the ball nicely a few times. The stream is smooth. My sofa is comfortable and the beer tastes good. That's it.

I don't think some of the more extreme doom and gloom is justified after 13 points in 6 games, but it is frustrating to work ourselves into an extremely promising position, only to slip back again. It's now very obvious that our lack of goals or attacking threat in general is a serious problem. Our only goal in the last 270 minutes of football was a long-range punt (albeit a very nice one). It's not just a lack of goals though - we just don't put the opposition under any pressure (when did we last win a penalty?) and instead rely on individual quality instead of creating chances from team moves. It's tempting to think that the return of Cal Roberts will help, but I fear our problems go a bit deeper than the personnel.

Well that was rather pleasant, wasn't it?! Leaving two up front and staying positive was definitely the right decision, but to be fair it was also the only decision - parking the bus for 70 plus minutes with an outfield player in goal would have just been an invitation for the visitors to pepper the area with crosses and shots. Great stuff from the whole team. Meadow Lane would have been bouncing. I hope we can take some momentum from this, and fingers crossed for Luke Pilling in goal over the next few games (those FA Trophy appearances should come in handy now). Unless Schmeichel Doyle wants another go? Looking at the table, we're now 11 points behind Torquay with 4 games in hand. In terms of points per game, we're potentially a win away from catching them. And PPG could matter this season.

And so the pitch was waterlogged and we move on to Havant & Waterlooville revisited instead. On the one hand, this will at least give us the chance to test out Barnett at left-back and Miller in a more advanced position when there are no league points at stake. On the other, I would really like to get on with our league programme...

You can't really complain about another win and another clean sheet - it's ultimately better than playing pretty football and then dropping points due to defensive frailties. Teams that win promotion tend to be the ones that pick up "lucky" wins by the odd goal on a regular basis. If you do it enough, it's not really luck... The plodding midfield bothers me, as does the fact that, for all our possession, we don't really do anything with it and rely on moments of individual quality (or, yesterday, a lucky cross-shot) to unlock the opposition instead. On the other hand, if you keep clean sheets - and our defensive record has been superb of late - a single chance could well be enough. Whether that's enough to compete for top spot remains to be seen.

Has anyone here had their jab yet? What was it like? I'm hoping to have mine sometime before the year 3000

Not a bad result, but not the result we needed. Torquay have got a clean sheet and a point away from home, and they've prevented a potential rival from closing the gap. They'll be pleased. Overall it was a very hard-working display against a good team. The first half had 0-0 written all over it - we didn't have any clear chances, partly because of our reluctance to commit men up front, and the same applied for Torquay. We occasionally had a sniff due to a couple of dodgy back passes, but that was it. Both teams grew braver as the second half wore on, both had some good chances and could have won it, so a draw was fair in the end. It's just a bit of a shame we're unwilling to pull the trigger at times.

Is these one of these "football matches" that we used to have back in the olden days? I remember them from when I was young, some of them were quite good. The team in black and white were usually rubbish, but they were my favourites anyway. Torquay are already 15 points ahead of us, albeit having played three games more. Theoretically we could whittle that down to 3 by beating them and winning our games in hand, but we won't. That would be almost insurmountable in the unlikely (ha!) event that the season isn't finished. We need a win to have any hope of top spot at the end of the season.

Can only agree with the above. After a positive start we increasingly struggled to cope with Hartlepool's high pressing in the first half, leaving Wootton isolated and the attacking midfielders too far apart. We looked a lot better in the second half, aided by Hartlepool sitting back and allowing us to control the game. Then we played some very nice football and battered them, but the finishing touch was missing. I didn't feel we'd strengthened up front in the summer and it seems I was right - while we've tightened at the back in recent weeks (yesterday's calamities notwithstanding), the goals have also dried up. Sam looks like a decent option, but is not a goalscorer and never has been. And some of our players lack that bit of hard-nosed thuggery you need to score a goal - a case in point being Enzio in the second half, when he had a sight of goal in a wide position. If he'd taken a good hard shot, he could've forced the keeper to parry it or won a corner. Instead he cut inside and suddenly had three or four yellow shirts in front of him. Knowles was never, ever offside, I didn't need the replay to see that. The lino was daydreaming and it's cost us a point (and handed two to a rival). Knowles seems to have the knack of being in the right place at the right time, but relying on him and Wootton to get the goals we need isn't enough. We need reinforcements, and we definitely need to look again at the loanees - the jury is still out on Walker, but having one impact sub and two bench warmers out of Knowles, Wolfe and Graham really isn't enough for us or for them.

PPG looks highly likely when you put it like that. If that happens, all the unnecessary points we've dropped so far will hurt us even more. The probability of a second wave doesn't seem to have been factored in at all when scheduling the leagues. I suppose it does at least give us a brief rest ahead of Hartlepool. Every cloud and all that.

Aaaand both matches against King's Lynn have been called off due to an outbreak of The Sickness in their camp. We'll end up finishing the season using points per game at this rate.

Here in Hesse, they aren't even opening the vaccination centres until the end of January as there won't be enough doses available until then. Most of the vaccine is being manufactured in Marburg, Hesse. According to the health minister, they're aiming to get around 6 million people vaccinated in the first quarter, so it could take a while to vaccinate the 60-odd million we need for herd immunity... The European (I'm including the UK in this) response to the pandemic has been a joke. Instead of learning from countries like South Korea and China, which have already dealt with numerous such outbreaks before, our governments have sat on their hands because they thought Western folk wouldn't want to surrender their freedom. And now we're absolutely riddled with it and have passed it on to the rest of the world too. Bravo.

The only thing I know about King's Lynn is that it's a phoenix club - King's Lynn FC withdrew from the Northern Premier League ten years ago and the new club, with added "Town", has obviously gone from strength to strength. They have one of the older grounds in football - King's Lynn FC/Town have played at the same ground since 1881. KL are near the bottom of the table and are one of those clubs whose main aim is to stay in this league. As our away form has been lacklustre so far (8 points in 6 games), I'd like us to take a more aggressive approach to this game and take control from an early stage. These matches often pose a problem as the condition and size of the pitch often means we can't play our normal game, but if we're to challenge for promotion we have to adapt to this. If that means we have to be a bit more direct on occasion, so be it.

I wasn't sure where else to put it, so I'll put it here. The worse The Situation becomes, the more I switch off from football. In theory it should do me good having football to watch as it gives me something else to think about, but the worse the pandemic gets, the more futile and pointless football feels (obviously this doesn't apply to the prediction league, which is the really serious business). Here in Germany, our politicians have spent the summer congratulating themselves how well they handled it, and when the second wave came the state premiers ignored the advice of the experts and kept everything apart from pubs and restaurants open. And now, more than a month later, with 30,000 daily cases (6,000 more than a week ago), hospitals filling up and the track and trace system completely overwhelmed, the shops are closing but schools will remain open for the last three days before the holidays. So they've failed to check the pandemic AND have torpedoed the economy at the same time. The worst of both worlds. I can't wait to vote the fools out of office.

If we're going to challenge, we need to make winning a habit even when we're not on it. We did that and got a third clean sheet in a row. On a personal note, I only listened on the radio yesterday and would prefer the team to put in their most exciting performances when I'm watching I'm encouraged that Enzio has hit form and that JOB has shown an improvement. As for Chicksen, I haven't been impressed so far but I wouldn't write him off yet, he might just need more time to get used to the team and division. It's good to be in the top three, even if it's close below us. Torquay have only dropped five points all season, which is incredible, but there's no way they can keep that up. We just have to keep on winning. All the same, there are seasons in this league when one team has an amazing season and you can end up getting 90+ points and still missing out. Let's hope this isn't one of them.

I'm delighted that we got out of jail and grabbed the points after what sounded like a very poor display. It could just prove a false dawn, with us carrying on in the same vein next week and getting beaten. But sometimes, a really jammy win like that can provide a welcome injection of confidence and prove a catalyst for the kind of run that would transform our season. I really hope it's the latter. In his interview, NA was also critical of the team despite us winning. Now he needs to take the lessons from yesterday, change a couple of things around (not least our ponderous midfield) and try to take some momentum into the next match.

Dropping two points at the death is galling, but it sounds like we had been inviting the equaliser for a long time before that. We've got multiple players who are out of form, yet there's no-one who can step into the breach. Now we need a reaction. In mitigation, it's been impossible to build up any kind of momentum this season and, if we'd seen this one out and held on to our lead against Maidenhead, we'd be looking at 5 wins out of 7 despite some underwhelming performances.

I listened on the radio. They often spoke about the players slipping over - Mark Stallard mentioned that the players would have been out on the pitch before kick-off and would have had the chance to get a feel for it. So why were they slipping about as if they were on an ice rink? Lack of preparation (born of complacency) perhaps? Not very professional at all. Being The Best Team In The Division won't help if you let your standards drop. @Chris despite all the adversity, last season we finished third and came within 90 minutes of going straight back up. Despite our much better circumstances, our summer transfer business seems to have actually weakened the squad. It's still early days and 9 points from 6 games isn't a disaster, but if we end up going backwards I can fully understand the frustration. We don't have a divine right to success, but we have good (and rich) owners, an established management team and a dressing room that fully buys into its ideas, and financially we can blow everyone in this division out of the water with the sole, possible, exception of Stockport. Everything is in place for success. The bar was always going to be set high, and justifiably so.

A week ago Germany had 10,000 daily infections for the first time. Now we've got 19,000 and are on course to overtake the UK next week thanks to our complacent politicians. During "lockdown" next month, schools will still be open and non-essential workers (myself included) will still be forced to take public transport to their offices every day. It's a joke.

That was just my reaction too @TheSkipper. Excellent result - let's carry it on on Saturday! It's not necessarily the teams that play the opposition to death that end up right at the top of the league. It's the ones that develop a winning habit and regularly grab jammy last-minute goals.

Happy with the win. Barnet didn't show up for the first half an hour nd we put them to the sword. Ultimately, that's why we won. Annoyed that we then relaxed let them back into the game, and we had an almighty wobble after their second, but we eventually started to dominate possession again and finished it off at the death. That puts us fifth. Time to put Sutton in their place.

Good piece of persistance from their centre forward to score for Barnet just before half time, but it's frustrating for us. For most of the match we've been so comfortable it's embarrasing - our front three have been able to do whatever they like, they couldn't live with us, and we've been able to turn it on with our passing game with very little pressure at all. But for the last ten minutes of the second half we relaxed and started coasting. Now they've got a little bit of hope. We need to focus again and finish the job.

Excellent, three points on the board and sounds like a job well done. Looking forward to seeing the highlights.