Fancy a lengthy Poppies career?

 If so, don't strike this pose!

Intelligent Life Discovered at Latimer Park

Did anyone else catch Will Mellors-Blair on Radio Northampton's Non League show this week?  If not, click the link below.  It really is worth a listen.

Mellors-Blair Interview

Will comes across incredibly well and succinctly puts his finger on the difference in philosophies of our previous and current Managers.  Without ever bad-mouthing Leese overtly it was pretty clear the players felt constrained and unhappy under him.  

More interestingly, Will then goes on to talk about his vast number of professional qualifications and work helping other footballers with their mental issues after having suffered previously himself.  It was a timely reminder that those young people on the pitch running around for our entertainment are all normal, flawed human beings and not simply one-dimensional puppets defined only by which colour shirt they wear and whether they can trap a ball.

It shouldn't need repeating, but probably does, that everyone on the pitch huffing and puffing for our gratification is doing something they love for the watching, paying public.  Whether this is a goalie who drops a ball, a striker who blazes over or a linesman who may have missed an offside.  All human.  All flesh and blood people.  All of them feel and think and react the same way as the rest of us to praise or criticism.  Perhaps something to consider before we next bellow our outrage at someone barely in their 20's for failing once to do something we lardy f*ckers could never do while we have holes in our arses.

And Will is as human as they come.  He has experienced a lot in a short life.  He speaks with a great deal of sense and obvious intelligence.

And yet....and then.....

Will goes and spoils everything by claiming that we are the best team in the division and should be looking at the play-offs as a minimum.  Mmmm.... It's difficult to know whether we need to reassess everything else he has said in light of these patently wishful-thinking statements!

However, we will be happy for Will to point back at this article come April when our second-half of the season surge up the table propels us into the end of season shoot out. 

Makes Sense I Suppose

I guess we now know why Leon Clarke put in a bit of surprising effort when we played Mickleover recently.  There's nothing like a job interview for making someone who hadn't so much as shed a single drop of sweat in several games start chasing around the park as if he actually wanted to earn his wages for a change.

Let's hope Mickleover get better value for money than we did out of this lazy has-been.  God knows how they can afford him on their threadbare gates, but who knows, maybe another club are lining up a bid for him as we speak to pay him even more.  As long as he doesn't have to rely on goal bonuses....

It was good to see Leese's glamour signing manage to watch his new team lose again on his debut, this time in their kit rather than ours.  

Leon Clarke - End of an Era

Leon Clarke's sudden departure has come at a most inopportune time.  There was every indication that at some time in the next 2 or 3 months he was likely to notch an actual goal for the Poppies.  Those first 4-5 games where he didn't have a single effort of note seem a distant memory.  Great days where he barely moved above walking pace, and generously never caused defenders any problems whatsoever.  For the next few games Leon crept closer and closer to, if not actually scoring a goal, at least making the goalkeeper aware he was on the pitch.  The locals at Berkhamsted and Leiston will talk in whispered, reverential tones for many years to come of the day THE Leon Clarke played at their stadiums and almost had an effort on target.

And then.  It happened.  Mark the date - Tuesday 21st November 2023.  Leon lumbered into the air like a disinterested salmon and headed the ball towards the Mickleover goal.  An actual attempt on goal where, if the keeper had not made a regulation save, it would have been an honest-to-goodness goal.  We were THAT CLOSE to seeing an actual, live Leon Clarke goal.  For the Poppies.  In the flesh.

In the end it wasn't to be.  Leon has left us, heading to his 300th club and they will be the next team willing to take on the eternal quest of trying to tease a goal from him before he gets his bus pass.  We wish them all the best.

As interested as Leon 
ever looked in a Poppies shirt.

Don't Panic Chaps!

It's all change as club stalwart Paul Cooke steps down and retires from his numerous roles at Latimer Park.  This means some other mug will have to become club statistician, assemble too good a matchday programme for our level and bully the boss into admitting where it all went wrong in post match interviews.

Needed - a new Cooke

But, for the love of God DON'T PANIC!  Don't listen to the doom-mongers.  Ignore the naysayers.  We can 100% confirm that Patgod IS NOT GOING TO RETIRE.  Honestly, we're in it for the long haul and won't let you down.  No more than we do presently anyway.

When you need poorly punctuated sarcasm, unresearched statistics and baldy spelt cynicism masquerading as wit, we will be there for you.  Chairmen leave.  Players flit in and out.  Managers get the chop.  Club worthies quit to join us proles on the terraces.  But Patgod will endure.  You have our promise and our commiserations.

Poppies Re-Leese-d

We all know one swallow doesn't make a Summer.  Equally we know that one good performance doesn't mean we are out of the relegation woods.  But, bloody hell, how refreshing was last night's effort against Mickelover?  Players that previously shrugged their way through sleepwalking defeats to all and sundry suddenly looked hungry, determined, communicative and active.  It shows how anaesthetised the players and supporters had been by Leese with his dismal outlook and tactics that simply putting in a 100% performance was so bloody entertaining.  Just seeing us looking to go toe-to-toe with another team rather than stand off them and watch them carve us like a Sunday roast, brought tears to eyes, smiles to faces and swelling in loins all around Latimer Park.

Langmead was solid.  Toseland expansive.  Sharpe dangerous.  Scott useful.  Miller excellent.  Even Clarke was spotted sprinting on at least two occasions.

As for the players, we'll tell you what.  Why don't we draw a line under the season so far?  We won't bang on about the lack of endeavour, the poor results and poorer performances.  Let's say the season started yesterday and we'll put Leese's wretched tenure firmly behind us.

How does that sound?  OK?  See you at Alvechurch.

Turning the corner at last?

Bye Bye Andy Part 1: Barely Managing

It took a final humbling capitulation away to Coalville for the club to bring down the curtain on Andy's unhappy reign at Kettering.  In truth he couldn't have argued had the club chosen to terminate his contract earlier.  Chastening defeats interspersed with the odd flukey win had not won Andy to the hearts of the supporters.  Throw in his post match analysis which rarely deviated from, "it is all the fault of the players for not listening to me", and we have ended up where we are.  Over a third of the way through the season, looking over our shoulders at relegation and seeking a new manager.

And yet, his appointment back in the Summer was greeted with universal acclaim.  Finally, a Manager with experience, longevity and suspiciously dark hair for a man older than even the writers of Patgod.  He was personable and said all the things we'd been wanting to hear.  The only, even slight issue was that the majority of his managerial experience came in more southerly leagues.  But a good Manager is a good Manager.  Most of us weren't even bothered when the, "we're a few weeks behind in pre-season" line was trotted out again.  We had our man and our man was Andy.

By the end of September Andy's reputation was in tatters.  I heard fellow supporters who had stoically accepted a lot of ropey football over the years calling, vociferously for the gaffer's unusually brown-haired head.  Our record over August and September makes harrowing reading and made even more harrowing watching.  We won just one of our first 10 league games.  And some of those defeats were substantial.  Not always in the score.  Yes, sometimes in the score, but more to do with the gulf between us and often quite moderate opposition.  In the first three games both Stourbridge and Barwell completely and utterly played us off the park.  They were both in entirely different gears to our lumbering team.  Had both won by several more goals we couldn't have argued.  Hitchin's 4-0 win at Latimer Park, equally could easily have been by a larger margin.  

"But, what of our FA Cup run" fans of Andy would argue if he had any.  It does seem, looking back, that any luck Leese enjoyed came in this competition.  Completely uninspiring wins against Hullbridge, Sporting Khalsa, and a Rourke's Drift win at Hitchin got us far enough to be easily rolled over by a Chesterfield team rarely out of first gear.  It really didn't matter if the opposition came from two divisions above or below - we sportingly strove to make them look better than us.

Belatedly, Andy started picking up a few league wins.  But, incredibly lucky triumphs over Berkhamstead and Royston where our opponents are probably still shaking their heads over their defeats, did not even come close to papering over the cracks.  It was soon business as usual as we slithered to further Leese-shoulder-shrugging defeats against Leamington and Coalville.

If nothing else, we've had a salutary lesson this season that there are truly no guarantees in football.  An established manager.  A reasonable budget.  An incredible amount of supporter goodwill.  Even the Latimer Park surface is behaving well.  And still, we are struggling like f*ck not to be relegation fodder.  

The club simply HAD to act now to give any replacement a fair chance of pulling us out of our current nose-drive.  Disappointingly, it was clear Andy wasn't going to accept his limitations and volunteer to step down.  He would have ground this season down to dust and considered it a job well done had we finished fifth from bottom playing in front of 200 bored supporters.  Sorry Andy - not good enough.