Seasonal greetings

All the very best at this time of year to all readers of this blog.

I hope that you all have some time to spend with your families and remind them (and yourself) that football is the only thing that matters.

Of course only two days to the big one at Earlsmead, so if all the family and turkey gets too much tomorrow, not long to go!

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Deano update

As a follow up to my last post Dean Papali has now gone to Burnham on a month’s loan.  Burnham are currently just outside the play off zone in the Southern League, Div 1 South and West with games in hand so hopefully Deano will go there at a good time and be successful.

Also Luke Muldowney has gone to Chertsey, who currently reside in the Combined Counties League, on loan.  Luke needs regular games at the moment so this move also makes sense.

The balancing act for us is getting these players games and keeping the wage bill under control while still having enough quality cover in the squad.  Don’t be surprised if we don’t have five substitutes tomorrow.

Deano’s a wanted man

Most supporters will know by now that we reluctantly agreed to make Dean Papali available for loan or transfer.

The news is a number of clubs from all sorts of places have enquired about him, clubs ranging from the conference south to Ryman or Southern Division 1.  Two or three are being followed up and Dean may be away on loan even by this weekend.

Let’s make one thing clear we don’t want Deano to go.  Having said that we recognise how frustrated he must be.  As top scorer and hero last season, Deano would have been expecting to ‘kick on’ this season.  However a bad hamstring injury blighted the first couple of months of this season and things have never really got going for him when he has been fit.  This has been compounded by the form of the three other strikers we have.

It is hard enough for the Premier League clubs to keep four strikers happy – at least they get paid plenty.  Deano is 22 and wants to play football and who can blame him.

The perfect solution is to go on loan for a while, play regularly, score lots of goals and come back firing on all cylinders.  Let’s hope Deano still has a long term future with us and good luck to him wherever he goes in the short term.

Grand Slam Sunday?

Forgive this little rant.

There is a lot of talk about all that is wrong with English football at present.

But wait, it’s all right, today is one of the truly great days, ‘Grand Slam Sunday’… yet doesn’t this show just how bad everything is?

Open up the sports pages, big full two page adverts show images of these great heroes, these modern day warriors on the battlefield ready to fight.  Let’s face it , isn’t it passion and work rate that makes our game great?

As a football lover watching Arsenal usually provides the antidote to the clench fisted bluster we all love.  But when their 16 players were listed at the beginning of the game did I miss an Englishman was listed among them?  What chance does
Mr Capello have?

And for the best (or should that read the richest) four clubs in the country, the quality of the 1 1/2 games so far is nothing to write home about.

Hendon score 11

Are you sure?  It puts our 1-0 win at Leyton in perspective.

I wonder what the story was.  But they are top now.

All credit to Gary McCann and Hendon, they are keeping going and seemingly getting stronger.  I’m pleased we don’t have to play them again until the last game of the season.

Bad habits

Losing to Hampton in the 88th minute was bad enough, but losing to Weymouth tonight in the 93rd minute was perhaps even worse.  Look at the games we have lost recently, against Hampton, Tonbridge, Hampton again and then tonight – in all four games we have conceded in the last minute.

That said I was proud of the boys today.  Remember Weymouth are a full-time outfit two division above us.  The truth is we could have won, Peter Dean, Ben and Ryan all had chances in the second half.  We outfought them in midfield, the defence were superb.  I thought some of the tackling was fierce – but fair – and particular praise for two players who don’t get the plaudits that often, Andre Delisser and Keita Karamoko who both played ever so well.

There has been plenty of interest in the match and of course it is a real shame not to go further and keep the run going.  I got called by the FA and spoke to the people who do their website after the game so you can see their report currently on the home page (Capello who?) or in full here.

Back to league action next week – we could be in the bottom four after tomorrow’s games.

How frustrating!

In common with many others I’ve wasted the last couple of hours going to, and returning from Northwood.

The facts are these, knowing the likely conditions and the weather forecast we organised an early morning pitch inspection from a local ref.  He passed the Northwood pitch fit at that stage.

Unfortunately the heavy rain continued throughout the morning so when the match referee turned up he decided that conditions had deteriorated to the extent that the game was called off (about 1.30), despite Maidstone’s players and fans having made the journey.

What is most frustrating is that as the home club we have to pay for Maidstone’s coach, the officials’ expenses (including for the morning inspection, we have a box of unused programmes and will expect a lower crowd when the fixture is rearranged.  Total cost to Wealdstone roughly £1,000 – and nothing much anyone can do about it.

Let’s hope that Tuesday’s Middlesex Cup game is on.

Going global

We have had a couple of meetings in recent weeks with our friends from the Japanese organisation who are keen to bring some players over to get experience of playing in the UK.

We already have Shinja & Tadashi who are enjoying training with our reserves and Gordon and I have had discussions with Hide from The Japanese School in Finchley to see how we can grow this relationship in the coming months.

The basic deal is that there are two companies in Japan who offer packages for young Japanese footballers (anything from 16-25) to come to Europe, continue their education, learn English and play football.  We get paid to help the Japanese players with their football.  It is an interesting development.

If you want to find out more about how this works check out this website – the only problem is you will need to understand Japanese.  Nice to see so much about the Club being communicated internationally.  With Matteo in Italy and now Japan the Wealdstone message is going global.

More coverage on Sunday

Just had a long chat with Sam from Non League Today newspaper.

Having met and had a drink with David Watters, the editor, after the radio show on Monday they are going to run a feature in Non League Today on the blog this coming Sunday!

More good coverage for the Club – keep it coming!

So don’t forget to buy the new Non League Today this coming Sunday (is that a good enough ad David?)

Sexiest chairman in non League football?

Forgive me for a moment but what a laugh.

Just back from my 15 minutes of fame on the Non League Show tonight on BBC Radio London.  Click here if you want to hear it.

First thing to say is boy did that hour go quick.  They were packing in as much as they could and certainly could have filled up another hour.

I did enjoy it, hopefully got across many of the messages I wanted to and if we get half the number of people coming to the Weymouth game as are promising we will have a big crowd.  Interestingly Willy Wordsworth who is a regular on the show and is chief scout at Cambridge United was only talking to Gordon earlier today as Cambridge beat Weymouth in the FA Cup on Saturday.

I was impressed with Caroline Barker, whose enthusiasm and professionalism kept the show moving apace despite her love of Chelmsford City and it was great to hear Matteo and Jez (and my mystery admirers or more likely piss takers) text in and Craig call in from Leeds.  Also great to meet Dave Watters editor of the Non League Today newspaper who promises me we will be heavily featured this coming Sunday.

Let’s hope this will not be the last time Wealdstone get this type of coverage.