Friday 13 August 2010

A new football season...

Tomorrow is the first time I have been able to make a game this season, due to a wedding and our midweek small group.

That means I missed Shrewsbury come from 1-0 down to beat Bradford 3-1 and then come from 3-0 down to beat Charlton 4-3!

We're going up to Macclesfield in the hope that our run of form continues, as a decent result could see us topping the table by 5pm on Saturday.

I find it interesting how short a players stint at a given club is these days. The local paper recently did a table for the most appearances in the last 10 years and about 110, which would mean 3 seasons, got players onto the list.

Only 2 players from the last 5 years were on the list, as we seem to change almost everyone every summer now.

For the Bradford game our starting line up had 8 new signings in, hence the first team is barely recognisable from one season to the next.

If a player is poor, then fair enough they need to be shipped out, but it becomes difficult to have any kind of affinity with your players if you know how quickly it will change. Likewise you do wonder how a group of players can really gel with so many changes.

In the last 10 years we have had 6 managers: that makes it difficult to build for the future.

It is interesting how consistency and playing together reaps rewards beyond individual capability too: as Spain realised with so many Barcelona players who knew each other's game inside out.

Sometimes change can happen just too fast. Sometimes you have to stay to reach a higher level of performance that only comes through time. I remember reading a study that said the biggest growth in Churches came when they had been led by the same person for over 5 years. Maybe Churches and football clubs have a bit in common after all!

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