Slowly but surely it crept up on us. Football has returned, and just my luck it happens during an extended period where I’m suffering from of lack of internet. Therefore this Match Preview will be a truncated effort compared to last years efforts… although as it’s only a friendly it would have been anyway. I only kick in to ‘proper’ mode from the Luton game onwards. Plus I have to knock this one out in my lunch hour, so excuse any spelling/grammatical errors, and a complete lack of research.
To be fair though I did have a stumble around a few Wycombe websites and it seems they are just as excited about tomorrows game as we are… in other words I could find no mention of the game apart from a couple of cut-and-paste efforts from their official site. It’s not surprising, it’s effectively an open training game, but it provides us, the supporters, with a chance to get back into the swing of things.
So what can we look forward to? Well, we have a few new signings to recognise… and, uhm, that’s it. Don’t expect to see players flying around the park, I remember thinking during the Brentford game last year a few of our players were looking a bit too committed, and that was our third/fourth game. I’m sure I’ll spend most of the afternoon in a state of panic whenever one of our players breaks into something like a sprint, or attempts a sharp turn.
Added to this its going to chuck it down, meaning a slick pitch, the possibility of slips and strains. We don’t want to wait until our penultimate away game to see a player make his debut this time around. Although hopefully we will be seeing Luke Garrard back in a Dons shirt, which will be like having a new player (on top of all the actual new players we have).
With no real news or any desire to write about the game tomorrow I’ll switch my attention to recent news, mainly that Terry Brown is looking to extend the current year long contracts of both Hatton and Hussey. I like that Terry rates them so highly, and some Football League sides share this admiration, but it’s a key season for both of them. I said Hatton was still a season away from being a brilliant Blue Square South midfielder last year, so this term will be a real key one for him, particularly with the competition he has for his position. And after a promising start last year Chris Hussey started making a few errors towards the end of the year.
Hussey has the advantage of not having much in the way of competition for his place, meaning he can get his head down and show why the manager has so much faith in him. Don’t get me wrong here, I’m a huge fan of both players, but while I recognise the technical abilities of them, there’s still something missing. It seems to happen to players their age, that out of nowhere they turn up one summer, and in their head something has clicked. They seem to magically transform into a dominant player. Whether it’s a confidence thing, I don’t know, but think of the players we have had who leave us young then blossom into the player we thought they would – Robin Shroot being a classic example.
And with that I’m out of time! Darn internet connection at home… enjoy the game tomorrow, and look out for some kind of match report on Sunday as I spring a surprise visit on family then spend most of the time their using their computer…
****UPDATE****
Perhaps I should point you to this preview on the O/S.
So we won’t be seeing Luke after all, bah!
But we will be seeing some of this guy…
The Anonymous Don 