2016/17 Prediction League; Game 35 v Exter City (away)

Div3North · 08-03-2017, 20:02

Exeter City

V

Accrington Stanley

2016/17 Prediction League; Game 35 v Exeter City (away)

Exeter – and they aren’t alone in this – appear to be having a season of two halves; they’re probably also taking every game as it comes, over the moon when they win, and sick as a parrot when they don’t ……..after 17 games – marked by a 3-2 defeat at Carlisle on 19th November – they were 24th out of 24 in League Two, with 16 points to their name ………. They’d played 8 games at home, scored in just three of them and had had one draw (a zero-Desmond against the Mariners) and seven defeats …… they’d crashed out in the 2nd Round of the EFL Cup (1-3 at home to Hull after beating Brentford 1-0), and the 1st Rounds of the FA Cup (1-3 at home to Luton) and the EFLTroffy (beating Chelsea u21s 3-2, but losing 4-2 to Swindon on pens after a 1-1 draw, and 4-2 at Oxford). Life was not perfect, then …………

Then, for no explicable reason (ie they didn’t sack the Manager), it started to come good …………. Of their last 8 home games they’ve won 5 and drawn three (including the last two, 1-1 against Stevenage and a ProperDesmond against Blackpool – and what were the Tangerines doing winning 3-0 at Home Park on Tuesday?) …….that said, their last seven overall have resulted in two wins (2-1 at Crawley and 4-0 v Crewe), three draws (the above two, plus 2-2 at Notts Co), and two defeats (0-3 at Pompey and 1-3 last time out at Hartlepool), giving them a fairly meagre nine points ………….. our last seven, by comparison, show 3 wins, 3 draws and one defeat, giving us 12 points and Bottom Half Of The Table Bragging Rights, since the next best to us over their last 7 games are Cheltenham and Notts Co with 11 points, Crewe with 10, Crawley and Hartlepool with 8, Leyton Orient with 7, Yeovil with 5 (5 draws and two losses) and Newport with 4 (is it one win in 20, did I hear?) ……….. Good to know that that nice Mr Westley has “tried everything” and that “none of it’s worked”, which at least makes it clear to us mere Earthlings that None Of It Is His Fault

Overall, Exeter’s record for the season is currently P35 W16 D6 L13 GF56 GA41 for 54 points and 7th place ……… Donnie are the leading scorers with 66, Stevenage have 59, and Carlisle and the Grecians both have 56 …….. We have 37, but that’s no longer (Hurrah!) the worst in League Two …….it’s second-worst (shared with Crewe and Newport), but we now have 4 goals more in our Inbox than ……………… Yeovil! Exeter, additionally, have managed to score four goals on four occasions (4-1 League wins at Newport and Barnet, and 4-0 home wins over Crewe and Leyton Buzzard); they’ve managed 3 goals at home to Colchester (3-0), away at Grimsby and Morecambe (3-0) and at Cheltenham (3-1) and Colchester – who’ve probably had enough of them for this season – by 3-2 ……………they’ve conceded 3 on four occasions, too – at home to Donnie (1-3), and away at Plymouth (0-3), Hartlepool (1-3) and Carlisle (2-3 = see “bottom of the League” above) ……… for the fact-starved, they’ve kept 12 clean sheets in all competitions (including four consecutive games in January, when they won 5/5 in the League) and failed to trouble the scorers eleven times ……….

They released nine of their squad in the summer, including Arron Davies (to us), Clinton Morrison to Redditch (I used to have a friend from Redditch – never understood a bloody word he said!), Alex Nicholls to Barnet and Christian Ribena to Oxford ………. They brought five in then, best known of those being Troy-Archibald Henville (CB) from Carlisle and striker Robbie Simpson from Cambridge (sadly he’s suffered a broken ankle, so is out for the season as – apparently – is Kurtis at Colchester) ……….. apart from some guy from non-League, their only subsequent signing is ex Plymouth (four times, including loans), Rotherham, West Brom, Oldham and Yeovil goal machine Reuben James Reid (28)

In 41 games they’ve managed 65 goals, mainly through the nuts and boots of former Lewes and Staines Town striker David Wheeler (26) who has 15, ex Academy player Ollie Watkins (21) with 14, and the aforementioned Reuben James Reid, who has 8 …….ten other players have between one and five goals each

We went down to the Devon Splits for game four, back in August; they’d played three and had nul points …………. Ryan Harley broke the deadlock on 66 with a Rocket (I thought that was George Stephenson, but what do I know?), we quickly equalised through Arron Davies coming back to haunt them (see “released nine of their squad in the summer”), and we succumbed 2-1 after Jake Davies poked in the winner …………. Three goals in six minutes ………..but not enough of them to us! Poohstix!

Deadline for entries is, as always, scheduled kick-off time, which is 3.00pm on Saturday 11th March …………. Newport look dead in the water, you’d think, and Orient have troubles of their own …………let’s just hope they’re around to play us next Tuesday!

Good luck to everyone! ……… Keep the Faith! ………… Best of luck to Leyton Orient! ……….And thanks for playing!