[Div3North]

Cheltenham Town

v

Accrington Stanley

2013/14 Prediction League – Game 27 v Cheltenham (away)

Frightening how detailed some Club’s scouting reports on the opposition are ; this from Mark Yates - Manager of the Month for December, having won 3, drawn 1 and lost 1 – (10 points from 15 is obviously enough - perhaps it was the three clean sheets) - on the Stanley;

• "Accrington have improved leaps and bounds by all accounts from the few DVDs we have watched and reports we have had. They have some experienced players there, like the full-backs and the strikers, Kayode Odejayi and Danny Webber

Well that’s that, then …………not much point us going, really ………..

They have, do Cheltenham, what we had a few years ago ………they keep drawing instead of winning . If they’d won the home games that they’ve actually drawn, they’d be joint top of League Two with Scunthorpe . In fact they’ve got a reet bizarre home record ……..P13 W3 D7 L3 F18 A17 ………they’ve beaten the Wombles and Exeter, both 1-0, and Morecambe (3-0), lost to Plymouth 3-1, Rochdale and Mansfield (both 2-1), and drawn against Brizzle Rovers and Newport (0-0), and Hartlepool, York, Oxford, Pompey and Burton, all 2-2 . They’ve kept 5 clean sheets at home, but conceded 2 goals seven times and three goals once ; every team that’s scored at Whaddon Road has hit 2 or more, and every team that’s scored there has come away with at least one point ………..The Robins don’t outscore many people ………………

For those of you who haven’t been keeping up, Mark Yates followed Paul Cook, Keith Hill, Colin Cooper and Phil Brown to the MotM award; it may have been influenced, unwittingly, by the 11 match unbeaten run that they went on once they started to turn the early season form around ……….but – whisper it – they’ve lost their last two (2-1 at Burton and 2-1 at home to Mansfield) and – with all the soggy pitches and postponed games - they’ve actually only played one game in the last three weeks ; every little helps – especially if your scouting’s crap ………..

They’ve made few changes since the August SignUp; 21 year old Wolves MF Michael Ihiekle has come in on loan, as have Baggies’ striker Kemar Roofe (there’s got to be a joke there somewhere – Chimer? ) and Rotherham MF David Noble (31), who’s likely to be out injured; they also loaned Connor Goldson, a 21 year-old defender from Shrewsbury, but 2 days after the loan contract extension was signed, the Shrews called him back to NotGayAnyLonger Meadow (or whatever the hell their ground’s called now ) …..they also helped our cause (maybe) by selling two of their regulars – on consecutive days – to York City, in the persons of Keith Lowe (def, 25), and Russell Penn (MF, 28), whom they’d signed in May 11 from Burton

The Cup Runs are over; the Capital One saw them beat Crawley 4-3 at home (you have to feel sorry for the very nice Mr Westley in Stevenage’s current plight, don’t you ; don’t you? Okay then ………….) but then went out 2-1 at West Ham; they exited the PaintTrayCup 5-4 on pens to Plymouth after a home 3-3 draw; and they were far more embarrassed then we were to depart the FA Cup in Round One, since we lost to a late goal against Tranmere, but they flopped out 1-0 at Tamworth ………. Ooooops!

Their overall record is P25 W8 D9 L8 F32 A35 for 33 points and 12th place, 6 points off the Playoff places; so tight is the League, though, that it’s worth pointing out that if we’d kept Newport’s third goal out and got the three points we’d now be 18th, not 22nd ……………………They’ve managed 40 goals in 29 games …..1.37931 goals per game …………or, if you prefer, a goal every 66 minutes …………Leading scorers are striker Byron Harrison – 26, 6’ 3”, with loads of non-League clubs plus Stevenage and the Wombles - with 9; Matt Richards (MF, 29, Ipswich, Walsall and Shrewsbury) with 6; Jamie Zimmerframe-Cureton – who’s played at one time or another for every Football League Club (more or less) with 5; and Terry Gornell (Tranmere, Stanley, Shrewsbury and Rochdale, who – at 24 – has 40 career goals from 206 career matches ) and Jermaine McGlashan – MF, 25, who once played for The Moatsiders (Merstham) in Div One South of the Isthmian League before signing on at Aldershot in 2010, both with 4………..

They just shade the head-to-head; P9 W3 D2 L4 F15 A14 is our record, courtesy – if that’s the right word – of their 1-0 win at our place in game 4 of the season; our highlights were beating them 4-0 at home in 2009/10 , and doing them 2-1 at their place the season after (Gornell and Richardson with the goals, Leam’s coming on 89 mins); last season we managed to win at their place for the second time in four visits , this time by 3-0 – Podge, Miller, and Boco (getting lots of bench-time still) getting the goals, before holding them to a 2-all draw, with both our goals coming from one James Beattie (In Whom We Trust!)

Deadline for entries is kick-off time, which is 3.00pm this Saturday, 18th January ………… A win would do us a power of good ……. So come on, lads, how about it? Goalfest? (Wynonie?) Scrappy 1-0 would do it for me, frankly; Man City can play the pretty-pretty stuff; I still like to see full backs tipping their man over the surrounding wall, thanks all the same ...............

Good luck to everyone …….. Remember, passion overcomes logic ……….. Keep the Faith! ………… and thanks for playing!