Hereford FC make the long trip
to Blackwell Meadows, Darlington, on Saturday, aiming to concede fewer than
three goals first and foremost, second and secondmost to maybe come away with a
draw, and third and thirdmost to somehow actually win an away match in this battle of the spent-ages-being-perennially-rubbish-in-Division 4-then-went-bust veterans.
Russell Slade is, if his
pronouncements to the media are any yardstick, as fed up as the rest of us
about the ease with which a relatively expensively assembled squad can
capitulate quite so easily, comprehensively and repeatedly to more parochially and
cost-effectively assembled opposition. So, with the Alfreton home game
predictably called off after the county was hit by a century’s worth of rain in
a few hours, Slade has used the enforced break to bring some new players in.
With two being strikers, he seems to be adopting that old and possibly apocryphal
West Ham approach in addressing the leakiness at the back, namely “If they
score four, we score five”. Personally I’m all for this, home and away, although
the likelihood currently is that the opposition will meet their side of the
bargain but the Bulls will come about five goals short of theirs.
The recent glut of signings
bloats the squad to Premier League levels - it’s unknown whether the club has recently
found favour with a sugar daddy from the Gulf since the Eliot Richards
budgetary situation or whether its accountant is spinning in his abacus, but
whatever the explanation there will presumably be a cull of some sort soon. This
division is a graveyard for clubs who consider themselves bigger than it, clubs
who chuck a load of money at players, and then add more players when the first
lot of players weren’t robust enough. Stockport were Stuckport for ages doing
that until they realised that they simply needed to replicate the togetherness,
the teamwork, of the smaller clubs beating them, and OK adding a bit of quality
to that using their deeper pockets. It’s alchemy getting it right though, of
course. Hopefully Slade is a card-carrying alchemist. He’s certainly shown
himself to be a card-carrying mentalist in celebrating that lucky win against
Gateshead in front of the Meadow End a while ago, and I’m all for that.
Any road up, as they might say
in Darlington, unless that’s just Yorkshire or somewhere else in the north, the
Quakers are, irritatingly, on a good run. They’ve won their last three league
matches and sit just a point below Hereford, in a middle-of-the-table scrum
which sees sixth to sixteenth separated by just five points. I’ve said it
before, but this is a division almost entirely made up of also-rans with little
quality, and if Slade can somehow find an eleven from that bloated squad that
can gel it’s the perfect time to slam that business model, or whatever other corporate
hideousness the board refers to it as, into overdrive and to get promoted.
Darlo beat Kidderminster in the
week, but as Bulls News has reported it sounded like a mugging. Previously they
took maximum points from their matches against Alfreton and Leamington away and
Boston at home. They also found time during that run to make short work of dumping
Tamworth out of the Cup, that self-same Tamworth who Hereford made very
laborious work of losing to.
For the Bulls, a fully rested Jordan
Nicholson will presumably be salivating at the prospect of putting in a
performance against his former employers, and debuts could be given all over
the place given the flurry of new signings. A formation disregarding defenders
entirely can’t be dismissed, and on recent performances, Kieran Thomas excepted,
neither should it be.
Put your money on 3-0, your
soul on 0-3, your brain on hold and your heart in your mouth, as the HFC-away
emotional rollercoaster creaks once more into motion (rollercoaster suggesting
of course that there are ups and downs – this one generally just does the downs).
However, it can’t last for ever…
COYW
