What a beautiful unhappy home

It’s the people who bought the half season tickets I feel sorry for. Imagine being swept up in the optimism after the win at Tranmere and out-playing League One Leyton Orient at their place for 90 minutes and winning 4-0 at home TWICE, and it looking like we were going to be contenders to win the league, and getting on board and buying a half season ticket, and then we don’t win a single fucking home game in the first two calendar months of 2025.

Our mate Billy (who you may remember from him hitting the bar for the fans’ team in the game at Avro) travelled over from Galway for the Sutton match with his family. Him and his kids got kitted out in new shirts. It was his wife’s first ever football match. And we rewarded them with that insipid, impotent display of mediocrity. It was a great advert for going and watching the hurling instead.

Am I being harsh? We created some chances; Pett played well again, Caprice made some good runs down the right but looked a bit more hesitant than he has been, I wondered if he was still carrying a knock after that foul in the Altrincham game. No shots on target and no corners tells its own story, though.

New boy Tom Donaghy looked a lot more assured in goal, and I do feel for Jake Dennis because he did get thrown in the deep end v Altrincham with no real first team experience at this level. It looks like Donaghy might be keeping his place for the rest of the season, with Mellon confirming after the game that Hudson’s had surgery to fix his broken finger.

We just couldn’t seem to get shot on target all game – Fondop shot wide early on after Pett fed him a decent ball down the middle, and Waters spooned his shot over the bar from Caprice’s shot. It didn’t get any better second half, with Fondop and Norwood both blazing over.

It wasn’t great refereeing again – Fondop was repeatedly fouled with nothing given, and the officials seemed to take an instant (maybe understandable) dislike to Norwood when he came on. Sandat went down like he’d been snipered when Norwood tried to get past him and won a free kick. Norwood predictably (and rightly) went ballistic; the referee, even more predictably, booked him for dissent.

Everyone’s first touch seemed a bit off – either too heavy, or getting the ball tangled under their feet. Is that tiredness? Was it the pitch? It looked a bit bobbly, but it’s probably still better than most pitches in this league. It’s certainly better than Rochdale’s, and we managed OK on that.

A pretty disappointing and disheartening day, really. What I don’t get is people slating Will Sutton. OK, he’s not as good as Ogle, but piling on one of your centre halves after a 0-0 draw in which we didn’t manage a single shot on target seems a bit odd. He didn’t do that badly, and he kept a clean sheet.

What was also odd was Mellon describing the game as being like a “dead February afternoon”. It was between two teams fighting for promotion. It shouldn’t have been like a dead rubber.

Prior to the Saturday before we played them (when they drew 0-0 at Hartlepool), Maidenhead had lost their previous 6 away games and were 20th in the league. Surely to fuck we’d get our first home win of 2025 against them? Sadly, no.

The starting line-up was something of an eyebrow-raiser. Playing a clearly tired Fondop up front on his own was a gamble, to say the least. Playing Kay and Pritchard behind him was… interesting. If we were going to switch to 3-4-2-1, I think it would have been worth giving Khan a go behind Fondop, I think it might finally have been a position that suited him. Sneer if you want, I don’t see how we could have played any worse with him in the team.

Normally, when I’m writing the blog, I’ll play at being a proper writer and watch the highlights and the post-match interviews and make notes. You’ll have to forgive me for not wanting to relive that fucking horror show on Tuesday night.

As I remember, we had nearly all the possession in the first half without doing anything with it. We conceded a “where the FUCK did that come from?” goal in the second half, and, rather than giving us a kick up the arse, it made it retreat into ourselves and look terrified. Of fucking Maidenhead. We looked more dangerous up front after Lundstram and Norwood came on, but it felt like we could have played all week and not scored.

Probably the most entertaining moment of the match was Mellon getting sent off for holding onto the ball and not letting them take a throw in that he thought should have gone our way. I see you, Michael. You clocked how shit the game was and you deliberately got a red card so you could go and watch Bayern Munich v Celtic instead. I wish I’d done similar, I should have called a steward a wanker and got thrown out.

As it was, me and Andy saw that Celtic were 1-0 (bringing the tie level), and figured it was worth leaving in stoppage time before the full-time whistle because we were unlikely to miss anything except booing. We legged it home, and got in just in time to see Bayern Munich scoring a 94th minute equaliser to win on aggregate. Football in cruel and life is pain.

How and why are we so much worse at home than away? Are they intimidated? Because it’s meant to be the away team who are intimidated. I don’t believe it’s the crowd getting on the players’ backs, because I don’t think we have the last few games.

This is, horribly, starting to feel more like a slump than a blip, and it’s painfully reminiscent of last season. Surely we’re not going to collapse like that again? Surely?

Whatever’s gone wrong the last few games, it needs putting right. I can probably write off that bet I had on us winning the league (hahahahaha what a dickhead), but we’re still 4th, and if we don’t make the play offs this season we should consider folding the club and handing Boundary Park over to the Roughyeds. They’ve earned it.

Safe journey if you’re off to Dagenham and Redbridge today. If we’re gonna be Typical Latics and never win at home, we should keep the other end of the bargain and win all our away games at least. Enjoy it, and we can worry about our atrocious home form next week. KTMFF.

Written by Arlene Finnigan. Photos © Phill Smith.