Gillingham away is an absolute slog to get to. It very much wasn’t one of the fixtures I looked out for when they were released. If you made the journey to Priestfield last Saturday, you very much earned and deserved the performance you were treated to. You don’t change a winning team, but I don’t think there’ll have been too many complaints about Woods coming in for Payne. We’ve been wanting the team to be more attacking and start games on the front foot, and while it would

Well that was better than getting battered 3-0, wasn’t it? Yes. Four points from two games is definitely better than getting battered 3-0 twice. There was only one change to the starting line-up for the Fleetwood game, with Garner coming in for Fondop (which I was pleased about, because I could see Garner working well with Kavanagh, like he did with Mellon jnr). Which meant we were sticking with 3-5-2/5-3-2, which didn’t work at Swindon, and I’m not sure why we thought it wou

Ugh. We really are shite at lunchtime kick-offs, aren’t we? We had, to be fair, been shite in the match that kicked off at 3pm the previous week, and Mellon made four changes to the starting line-up. New boy Calum Kavanagh went straight into the first XI in place of the injured Garner, and Fondop. Simeu and Taylor came in for Drummond, Taylor and Stevens, with the formation switching to – in theory – 3-5-2. Well, it was worth a go, wasn’t it. Alas, we were under pressure pret

ARRRRRRRGH WHAT IN THE NAME OF FUCK WAS THAT? It’s hard to remember, or to believe it, now, but I swear, we were honestly the better team in the first half v Cambridge Utd. We’re the only team to have won at their ground in the League this season, and we looked like we were going to have a good go at doing the double over them. Both teams had chances without really looking like scoring, but I thought we had the better of it. Payne had a shot go wide after good work down the r

Ugh. Lunchtime kick offs are shit. I guess they’re even shitter if you got up in the middle of the night in order to be in north London for midday. Thoughts and prayers with you poor bastards. And it all started so well at the Hive, didn’t it? We started on the front foot, as we’ve been wanting the players to do all season, and had a decent chance in the first minute, when Pett played a good ball into the box and Garner went down, but the referee was having none of it. Bizarr

January 24th today, and we’re still unbeaten in 2026. January 2026 kicks January 2025’s arse! Come on, let’s take our wins where we can. Before last Saturday’s game, the club paid tribute to former colleague, Dale Harris, who tragically passed away on January 12th. Dale served the club as a matchday volunteer, a coach and education officer with the Community Trust, and as Head of Commercial during our promotion season, before moving on to become the commercial manager at Chad

After a hectic festive period, welcome to the bleak midwinter. “Thought we had a million-pound pitch? We shouldn’t be having matches postponed for a bit of frost! Fucking tinpot!”. It’s been -8C overnight this week, it’s barely been above freezing, and people were being told not to travel because of Storm Goretti on Thursday. Sometimes you have to do the sensible thing rather than the mad bastard just-soldier-on-my-mum-didn’t-fight-at-D-Day-for-this thing. We can’t say we did

Happy new year, everyone! 2026 has a hell of an act to follow. And we finished 2025 in some style. I could barely be arsed to watch the highlights of the Grimsby match. If you trekked to Cleethorpes on Boxing Day, you deserve a medal. Hammond was back in for the injured Stevens, and Simeu was in for Daniels. Not sure what Sutton has to do to get another shot at the starting line-up, he was superb in September. As Ryan Williams said on Twitter, we started the game like the pl

Happy Christmas, everyone! It certainly has been so far. Firstly, I’m gonna say it again: people from Tranmere are not scousers. Birkenhead and Liverpool are very different places, and God put the river there for a reason. Secondly, that ‘feed the scousers’ chant is cringe as fuck. Feel free to say “it’s not that deep/it’s just banter, love” or some other convincing well-considered counter argument. Poverty chanting is shite. You can donate to Oldham Foodbank here . It was a

Welcome to my Christmas blog. I’d like to thank you for the year. And what a year it’s been. It didn’t start too well. It had all looked so promising before last Christmas. Stones and Norwood looked like they’d been playing up front together forever, we’d had three fantastic performances in the FA Cup and I was so convinced that we’d win the league that I stuck £50 on it (well, £25 each way, but still). And then the York game on Boxing Day – which we were all fully confident

Thanks to Will for writing last week’s blog. Hope you and the rest of OASIS had a great time at Crawley, Will, and I feel obliged to point out that I’m simply taking back the blog reins this week and you absolutely didn’t disgrace yourself at a curry house in Crawley and get so incapacitated that you were incapable of reporting back for us. As Will correctly pointed out, I did not miss the Walsall game because I was watching Real Madrid v Man City, I missed it because I was a

Arlene refuses to go to Milton Keynes, as do I henceforth after last Saturday’s absolute horror show. It’s not the football or the fact that we lost…again. It’s not the town, which is one of the more interesting socio-geographical experiments of the postwar period. The problem is the utter soullessness of a massive football ground – a cathedral! – with no one in it. Gimme Braintree or Aldershot or any of the other National League grounds with trees in them. Anywhere but Stadi

In her brilliant memoir, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?, Jeanette Winterson isn’t terribly complimentary about her hometown: “Accrington is not famous for much. It has the world’s worst football team – Accrington Stanley – and a large collection of Tiffany glass donated by Joseph Briggs.” By 2.30pm last Saturday, we had made Accrington Stanley look far from the world’s worst football team, and I wished I’d gone to look at the Tiffany glass instead. As an away day, it

“Hoping for a goalfest after last Saturday.” Ask, and it will given you; seek, and ye shall find. (Matthew 7:7) Yes, three goals count as a goalfest. Don’t be greedy. Finally managed to get my OASF Road to the EFL sticker album last Saturday. Don’t worry if you missed out, they're now available online . To my utter delight, I got a Fondop shiny. The day was already made. There was one change to the starting line-up, with Woods coming back in for Payne. I like Payne, he’s ener

Oh good, another 0-0 draw to attempt to write about. My favourite thing. We were in the hospitality for the Crewe game for our mate Matt’s 80th birthday. The food and service were brilliant, Braddy got Matt up for everyone to sing Happy Birthday to him, and Frank came looking for him after the game asking, “where’s this old codger?” and shook his hand and had photos taken with him. It was lovely. Hope you had a fantastic afternoon, Matt. 📸 Peter Headen. Two absolute legends.

Long term, our strategy of being crap for a month, then really good for a month, isn’t sustainable. We can worry about that come December, though. For now, let’s enjoy how well November is going. Being, as we are, dead posh, me and Andy snubbed Salford away and instead saved our money (and let’s face it, we needed it) to make a weekend of it in Harrogate. We stayed in a very nice hotel the other side of the Stray (even the parks get quirky names in North Yorkshire) from the g

Well, that was more like it, wasn’t it? Amazing how taking your chances and starting on the front foot makes for a totally different game. Mellon snr spoke about how important the FA Cup is to him, and he did indeed treat it with the respect it deserves, naming an unchanged line-up. No tinkering, no messing about. It was great to meet up with Tom and Ed from Terrace Edition before the game. Tom’s a Northampton fan, Ed’s a Latics fan, and Tom got some cracking photos around Bo

Well October was a pile of shite, wasn’t it? Two points from a possible twelve, no wins, Conlon crocked for the season. Thank fuck it’s over, bring on November. The weather was pretty beautiful last Saturday, if nothing else. One of those glorious autumn afternoons when you need two pairs of socks at Boundary Park, but you also need sunglasses. Given where Shrewsbury are in the league, it wasn’t unreasonable to expect to beat them at home, and it started promisingly. In the o

August was meh, September was really good, October’s turning out a bit crap. Consistent in our inconsistency, you could say. It really didn’t start that badly at Salford last Saturday. Pett had a decent shot from outside the box early on that Young tipped over the bar, and Mellon jnr headed wide from the resulting corner. Woods had a low shot from the edge of the D saved. It couldn’t last though, could it. It was too easy for Nmai to run into our box, and Monthe, having been

Ugh. Writing about 0-0 draws is fucking shit. I don’t blame you if you want to sack off reading this and doomscroll Twitter instead. The starting line-up v Barrow made a bit more sense than the one at Notts County. Pett was back in, albeit playing wide, and was captain as expected. Apparently, he didn’t start at Meadow Lane because he’s carrying an ankle injury, which made playing him in the Vertu trophy all the more inexplicable. We were on top from the start and had a good