TALKING POINTS

Alan Wills

@alanjwills

HOPES AND EXPECTATIONS

Reflecting on the season so far after the defeat at Aveley, following four straight wins, I thought back to my hopes and expectations about the team before the current campaign started.

My expectations were:

Keep within touching distance of the top throughout the season, ready for the customary end of season good run of results
Get promoted either by winning the Championship or via the playoffs

My hopes were:

The team would play dynamic attacking football, which was exciting to watch
The strikers would score plenty of goals
We would be solid at the back, not conceding many goals

My expectations are on track, as after seven games, we are only three points off the top, going into two home matches.

It took us ten games the last time we were in the NLS to get this many points (13), so I think we’ve had a pretty good start.

It is also a marked improvement to our starts in the past two seasons. Last season and the season before we had only seven points after seven games, so we’ve almost doubled that, and had twice the number of wins.

My hopes, however, are definitely not met. The football is sluggish. We have only shown our dynamic attacking play in spells. Too many players are out of form, or low on confidence. We are giving away too many sloppy goals.

Brad Ash is starting to hit some goal-scoring form with three goals in recent games, but five goals in seven from the two strikers is not what I would have hoped from them at this stage.

DAVID VS GOLIATH?

Walking into Aveley’s Parkside stadium on Saturday, it felt like an FA Cup tie. Aveley had achieved a meteoric rise with back to back promotions, and were on a great run at their home stadium with three wins out of four, scoring ten goals in the process. They were playing an ex-Football League club, in Torquay, and were likely to raise their game further to claim a notable scalp. It was a huge banana skin for sure.

I am not one of those that subscribe to the view that Team A should be beating Team B because of their history, or the size of the club, or the fact they are full time. Football is a great leveller, and when 22 players are on the pitch, these things are largely irrelevant.

We have seen so many examples in football of a so-called David beating Goliath, but in reality, the “David” team always raise their performance to match the “Goliath”, so it becomes a level playing field.

When you are in the same league, the difference between teams is a lot less than that in cup competitions, so “David” teams don’t need to raise their game quite as much to frustrate the “Goliath” team, and often come out on top, especially if they are in front of a home crowd.

This is what happened at Parkside on Saturday. It was Aveley’s opportunity to prove that they are worthy of playing the bigger clubs at this level, and they were well up for it. I won’t be at all surprised for them to take other notable scalps throughout the season.

FORWARD WE GO

As for Torquay, my feeling is that we’ll get better as the season goes on, keep picking up points, and eventually the great performances will come as the team builds confidence and gets into their stride.

This time next Sunday, we could well be sitting here having achieved six wins in the last seven games.

I for one would be quite happy with that.