TT PREVIEW

Zak talks about the Saints

ABOUT ME

I am Zak Hill, 18 years old and have followed The Saints for 11 years, my first season following St Albans was the 13/14 season when we won the Southern League playoffs and ever since then, me and my Dad have been going to most home and away games each season. Also I am the guy behind the X page NLS Hub (@TheFootyScout2).

POOR START TO 24/25

There are two key reasons for our poor start of the season in my opinion. Firstly we’re simply not taking our chances. We create plenty of chances but we rarely put them away and the longer we go in a game without scoring we just look like we’re even heading towards a draw or going to lose late on. This is also shown by the fact when we lose it’s always in the 2nd half we end up going behind. The 2nd reason is the amount of injuries we have had. This season we have a small squad of 18 players but for the first few weeks we were plagued by injuries and when we played Dorking we had an academy lad starting and 4 academy players on the bench. Yet we were unlucky not to get a result as we went 1-0 up, but a mistake by a youth kid and a corner, which was never a corner, saw us lose 2-1. Luckily the injury crisis is now coming to an end.

FINDING FORM?

Yes, the last two games have been brilliant signs. Firstly a 0-0 draw against Weston who are a fantastic side, yet we dominated them for 90 minutes and if we were that bit more clinical we would’ve probably won that game. Then in the FA Cup we beat fellow step 2 side Needham Market 3-0 in a perfect display and to be honest we could’ve won 5 or 6. If we play like we did against Needham I think we can go on a winning run…

KEY PLAYERS

David Longe-King has been my player of the season so far. A towering centre-back who has League Two and National League experience. He has a proper physical presence and can bully players off the ball. Ken Charles has been a breath of fresh air up top as he is rapid and makes so many runs behind and has shown he can be clinical in front of goals but there are question marks on his availability on Saturday as he’s still nursing himself back from injury Then Jeffers is obviously Jeffers.

MANAGER/TACTICS

So David Noble played for us from 2016-2022 then he took over as manager and took us to a playoff final in his first season. Last season we were doing alright and were 4 points off 3rd when he left to take a step up to Wealdstone but he didn’t do too well there and he returned to us this summer. His footballing philosophy is about keeping possession whilst moving the ball from defence to attack as quickly as possible even if it means going long. He tended to set up with a 3-4-2-1/ 3-4-1-2 but in the last two we have set up with a 4-2-3-1.

POSSIBLE LINE-UP

Michael Johnson (GK) Jack James (RB) Joe Partington (CB) David Longe-King (CB) Phill Chinedu (LB) Alfie Payne (CM) Sam Deadfield (CM) Zane Banton/ Tafari Moore (LW) Gio Rasulo (CAM) Josh Castiglione (RW) Ken Charles/Shaun Jeffers (CF).

AWAY FOLLOWING

Torquay’s one of the favourite away days for the hardcore, so I’ll be expecting 65+ fans to make the trip

BEST OPPOSITION

I have to say the best side was surprisingly Maidstone. I know they haven’t had the best of starts but we played them first game and they looked so defensively solid and were difficult to breakdown. Then they were clinical and won the game in the last minute.