The Football tourist

In a few days time I will be watching on at Plough Lane as League Two AFC Wimbledon play host to the mighty Ipswich Town, who lie 2nd in the Championship, in the FA Cup 3rd round.

The Dons will be staring that game as massive underdogs, so for now lets go back a month and a round to a match where the Don’s were huge favourites against their 8th tier visitors, Ramsgate Town.

Ramsgate hail from Kent, just 4 miles from rivals Margate, and ply their amateur trade in the Isthmian League South East Division alongside Cray Valley Paper Mills.

The Millers were destroyed by Charlton in a home replay in the 1st round, but they managed a creditable draw in the away tie. Could their league rivals do something similar away to the Dons? They had already beaten 6 opponents on their way to the 2nd round.

Half of their victims were higher league opposition, though none were members of the exclusive 92.

For the Don’s part they had to take on League One opposition to get here, in the shape of struggling Cheltenham Town, which they managed with aplomb scoring 5 on the way to a heartening 5-1 win.

With the allure of a home tie against Ipswich already on the table before kick-off neither team was likely to lack motivation and one team came charging out the traps.

The hosts were wombling into the lead just 8 minutes into the match, but it would have been 30 seconds earlier if Connor Lemonheigh-Evans hadn’t spurned a free-header from 4 yards out as he found space to meet a tantalising freekick swung straight too him.

Perhaps such a glaring miss had the visitors feeling sorry for their hosts as it was from the goal kick that the Rams handed the Dons their opening goal on a silver platter.

Passing it round at the back may work for some teams, but pumping it long may have been wiser against a team 4 divisions above you.

The defenders dithered on the ball, had their pockets picked and seconds later Jake Reeves, the Don’s captain, was stroking it to the left of the keeper to get the scoreboard moving. It was a cultured finish from Reeves, but he really shouldn’t have been handed such a glorious opportunity.

Despite the huge frustration this must have caused Ben Smith, Ramsgate’s manager, he could at least take a crumb of comfort from the fact that this disaster didn’t lead to an immediate deluge of goals for the hosts.

Tom Hadler, the Ram’s keeper, was probably very grateful it’s arrival was not imminent but more goals would come the host’s way soon enough.

Ramsgate continued to hold out against the swaggering hosts for a full 18 minutes after the opener before the Dons doubled their advantage. They even showed some attacking flair, with a lot of joy down the wings, but having failed to truly test Alex Bass, between the Don’s sticks, they were hit with the second punch.

Wimbledon’s second goal was no thing of beauty, but unlike their first it came from their own endeavours at least. Jack Currie carved out space for himself on the wing and then looped in a cross that swerved in the air and looked to be dipping under the bar.

Hadler did a great job of following it’s flight and clawed it out from under his own bar only to see it drop to the head of Ali Al-Hamadi 3 yards out, who needed no second invitation to nod it home.

The hosts now had their tails well and truly up and they peppered the away goal with shots, only Hadler’s excellent display kept them from being 3 or 4 up before half an hour had elapsed. Eventually though the pressure of their concerted attacks told and they were 3-0 up before half time.

The worst part about the host’s third for Ramsgate is that it came mere seconds after they wasted a glorious chance to get one back. Having survived the scare the Dons broke upfield at speed.

The ball was sprayed out to Al-Hamadi, who surged into the penalty area. He faced Hadler at the keeper’s near post but when the save was made the ball dropped to Josh Neufville, who slotted it home through a forest of legs from 8 yards out.

There were no changes to either team’s personnel at half time, so Don’s decided that they would just continue their utter domination of proceedings and it can’t have come as a shock to many within the ground when they were leading 5-0 less than 10 minutes after the restart.

It took less than 120 seconds of the half for Lemonheigh-Evans to atone for his first half miss by providing the Wombles with their 4th goal. A simple through ball reached him in the box, he turned his man and fired low across the keeper’s body. The shot lacked any true power on it but for once Hadler misjudged it’s path as it squirmed under his dive before nestling in the net behind him.

It took less than 5 minutes for the Don’s to reach 5 goals in the game, as Al-Hamadi completed his long-threatened brace. This one was the second that came from a defensive mistake from the visitors. This time an errant pass at the back landed at the feet of a player in blue. From there all it took was one pass to bypass the rest of the defence before Al-Hamadi could slide it home.

Having reached 5 goals against a team that were now clearly out for the count the Wombles were wombling so freely that they decided to spare their visitors any further scoresheet humiliation.

When Johnnie Jackson removed his brace man just after the hour mark it became abundantly clear that he wasn’t going to continue to risk his best player on the park any longer. He has a promotion push in the league to consider after all.

Despite seeing any hopes of their impressive cup run continuing and the tantalising prize of a home tie with Ipswich Town slipping speedily away the 1,400 travelling fans continued their raucous support all the way to the final whistle. They were even cheering all the way through an academic seven minutes of added time at the end of the 90.

Having been Rams to the slaughter in this one it is back to regular 8th-tier football for the part-timers from Kent, whilst the Wombles of Wimbledon Womble freely into the 3rd round.

In that 3rd round match, kicking off at lunchtime today, they will take on the Ramsgate role of massive underdogs.

As I travel on the tube Plough Lane all I’m hoping for is that I’m not heading to see some slaughtered Wombles.

I’ve been to every round of the FA Cup so far this season without witnessing an upset.

Today would be the perfect day to change that.

Any football fan can name hundreds or thousands of players who ply their trade in any of dozens leagues across countless nations and every FIFA confederation, but only the most avid fans can name more than a few from beyond their own era.

Players from before the internet age, where multi-million dollar stars are paid hundreds of thousands of pounds a week and hoover up brand and TV deals from every corner, had barely any chance of making their name known outside of the community of the boyhood club most spent their whole career with.

The exceptions to this rule are vanishingly few and far between inside the football-verse let alone seeping through the cracks into wider the wider public conciseness. There are perhaps 4 players who have achieved this incredible feat in England; Sir Stanley Matthews, Sir Geoff Hurst, Sir Bobby Moore and last, but by no means least, Sir Bobby Charlton.

Today I joined the crowd of mourners who applauded his funeral cortege as it passed in front of Old Trafford on the way to the ceremony to mark his passing at Manchester Cathedral. The crowd was 7 deep in most places as the procession made it’s way between the ground and the trinity statue, of which Charlton was an integral part during his on-field career.

Robert “Bobby” Charlton was born on 11th October 1937 in Ashington, Northumberland just 50 miles from the Scottish Border. The middle child of his father Robert “Bob” Charlton and mother Elizabeth Ellen “Cissie” Milburn, he dodged the miner’s life of his father when he was selected to join Manchester United in 1953.

Turning professional in 1954 he was finally handed his debut in October 1956, aged just 19. He bagged a brace under the Old Trafford lights to help his team secure a 4-2 victory over a Charlton Athletic team that would end up being relegated to the second division the following May. If Sir Bobby had any nerves about stepping into the senior team of the defending League Champions he hid it well that night and he would do even better in the return game with a hat-trick to celebrate at full-time.

With Charlton in their team the Busby babes would go on to retain the title, but fall to an agonising defeat 2-1 to Aston Villa in the FA Cup final having played 84 minutes with an outfield player in goal, after starting keeper Ray Wood left the pitch after 6 minutes having sustained a broken cheekbone sustained in a collision with Villa forward Peter McParland.

As the English representatives in the embryonic European Cup during that 1956-57 season Charlton’s United team would make it as far as the Semi-Finals, before succumbing to eventual winners Real Madrid 5-3 on aggregate.

The 1957-58 season was to be a tragic one for Charlton and United. On the way back from their European Cup second leg clash with Red Star Belgrade the team’s plane had to make a refuelling stop at Munich airport. By the time the plane was ready to get airborne once again the weather had turned truly abysmal. After two aborted take-offs and a full disembarkation whilst a technical fault was fixed the plane went to take off again. This is when disaster struck.

The plane veered off the runway and by the time it came to a stop it had been ripped in half. Only 8 of the 16 United players on board survived the crash and a further duo suffered such severe injuries that they never played again. Sir Bobby Charlton was one of the survivors.

How anyone could continue to function after losing half of their team-mates in such traumatic circumstances is a question for the ages and that makes Charlton’s accomplishments after the crash that much more incredible and inspiring.

He continued to play for Man U as they rebuilt in the aftermath of the tragedy and would go on to be an integral part of the club’s Holy Trinity of George Best, Denis Law and Charlton himself. Together with his fellow trinitarians he would help United to mark the 10th anniversary of the Munich Air Disaster in perfect fashion, by becoming the first English club to win the European Cup.

Under Wembley lights on 29th May 1968 92,225 people would watch as his brace would help fire United to a 4-1 victory over Benfica, but it was what he had accomplished at the same stadium 2 years before this victory that catapulted him into national folklore.

Winning the World Cup final 4-2 against West Germany on July 30th 1966, becoming part of the only England team to win it to this day is the first thing most people will recall when asked about Sir Bobby, but it was during the semi-final that he made his greatest personal contribution to this success.

Facing a Portugal team that boasted the mercurial Eusebio amongst it’s ranks Charlton won the game for the hosts with the brace that fired them to a 2-1 win and into the final that would see his team etch it’s name into the history books.

He ended his Untied career in 1973 with 758 appearances to his name, a record that would stand until 2008 when Ryan Giggs surpassed it, and tried his luck as Player-Manager at Preston-North End before returning to United as a key member of their Board of Directors in 1984. He was integral in the move to bring Sir Alex Ferguson to the club and we all know the success Fergie would bring to Sir Bobby’s beloved Red Devils.

He remained the club’s top goalscorer with 249 goals all the way up till 2017 when Wayne Rooney became the first player to score 250 for the club. It was also Rooney who became the first man to surpass Charlton’s 49 international goals for England, scoring his 50th in 2015 from the penalty spot at Wembley in a Euro 2016 qualifying win over Switzerland.

That he remains the 2nd highest goalscorer for his club and 3rd highest for England half a century after the end of his playing career is testament to his era-defining talent.

Sir Bobby’s passing, just 10 days after his 86th Birthday, leaves Sir Geoff Hurst as the last living member of that historic team, Denis Law as the last living member of the Trinity and the entire nation mourning the passing of a true legend.

REST IN PEACE SIR BOBBY CHARLTON

Sunday 5th November 2023: FA Cup First Round Proper 2023/24: The Valley: Charlton Athletic vs Cray Valley Paper Mills (CVPM)

This was a match that stood out to me as a must-see match as soon as the First Round draw was made. The simple reason for this was that a goal-romp as a top half League One team delivered a lesson to their eighth-tier neighbours from just 3.8 miles away in South London seemed too tantalising to pass up.

Charlton’s Under 18’s had beaten CVPM 3-2 in a pre-season friendly so the senior team had to hit them for 5 or 6 right?… Wrong, very wrong indeed!

CVPM had already beaten 5 opponents in qualifying to make it this far, including coming through 3 replays, so they ad a well of self-belief to dip into throughout the match and it served them well as they belied the 117 league place gap to their hosts.

However, Charlton lacked any belief at any level and it showed. Michael Appleton making the full set of 11 changes from the team that beat Wigan up at the DW probably didn’t help matters.

Sure the hosts took the lead in the 9th minute as Scott Fraser latched onto a simple ball through the centre of the CVPM defence, took it round Sam Freeman in goal and stroked the ball home into the empty net. That would be the highlight of the night for the hosts.

Keeping possession of the ball was no problem at all for The Addicks, but doing anything useful with it was far more of a problem. They lacked any cohesion in their playing style and seemed to revert to short, simple, backward passes at every opportunity and a frustrating amount of those failed to reach their intended target.

Their monopolisation of possession in the first half meant that this lack of ideas didn’t come back to bite them yet, with CVPM restricted to a couple of rapid breaks from deep that fizzled out before they could truly trouble Sam Walker in the Charlton goal. The hosts were further helped out by the Millers inability to beat the first man from corners.

Despite some questionable defensive play from their hosts it took 20 minutes for the visitors to carve out their first presentable chance, a cross from the right that was headed high over the bar by an unmarked Freddie Parker in the centre.

The only real positive for Appleton to cling onto at half-time, other than the 1-0 lead, was the excellent job James Abankwah had done of keeping CVPM’s star striker Kyrell Lisbie firmly in his back pocket.

Lisbie had scored 13 goals in 17 games in all competitions this season but failed to get a single sight of goal all half under Abankwah’s tight supervision. Though Abankwah was also guilty of playing keepie-uppies on the edge of the CVPM penalty area when he had the whole goal to aim at instead.

Steve McKimm’s half-time team talk for his 8th tier Millers would have been easier than his opposite numbers. Appleton had to try (and fail) to imbue a fighting spirit into his team, whilst all McKimm had to do was say ‘more of the same lads’ and ‘take the chance when it comes’.

Whatever the true content of the visitors team talk it worked a treat as they started the second half at 10,000mph and got the equaliser within 3 minutes of the restart. A simple ball down the left got Lisbie into space and when his cross was slid across the 6 yard box it was poked home. Cue rapturous celebrations from visiting fans behind the goal.

The only thing missing from the equaliser was clarity over who got the final touch on it. Originally the stadium’s screen credited the goal to Freeman, CVPM’s keeper, but as he was still in his own 6-yard box this seemed exceedingly unlikely.

In the end it turned out to be the most obvious scorer of all, a Charlton defender!

Lucas Ness was the unfortunate individual to turn the ball home as he waved a leg at the cross which diverted it past the statuesque Walker. Given the inept nature of some of Charlton’s play up till this point it was a truly fitting way for them to throw away their lead.

This latest screw up from the hosts was feeding into a growing tidal wave of frustration in the home stands and during the next 10 minutes this was all turned on just one man, Charlie Kirk.

Kirk had been plying his trade rather anonymously on the left flank up to this point of the match but two glaring misses with the goal at his mercy from point blank range suddenly made him stand out like a pacifist in the armed forces. The first of these chances came less than a minute after the equaliser as he headed over from 2 yards out at the back post, despite being completed unmarked.

He followed this up by blazing over the bar from a similar distance when latching on to a brilliant cross field ball that dropped invitingly into his stride. Having missed these two winners in waiting it was no surprise when the home fans booed him off as he was replaced by Alfie May on the hour mark.

That substitution was part of a triple roll of the dice by Appleton, but it seemed to make little difference to the pattern of play.

Sure Alfie added steel to a midfield that had been steadily losing its iron grip on possession, but without a proper target to aim his array of passing abilities towards Charlton remained infuriatingly ineffective in the final third.

As the game enter the final 10 minutes of normal time it was the visitors who looked far more likely to provide the winner.

Despite failing to get the winner their second half performance deserved the away fans exploded into a tsunami of joy at the final whistle, whilst the hosts were unanimously booed straight down the tunnel. In truth this was no-more than the hosts deserved for the sheer ineptitude of their play and if they play like that during the replay they will knocked out by their 8th tier neighbours.

Before the match Cray Valley would have ripped you hand off for a draw and a chance to finish the job back at their place, but I have a sneaking suspicion that many of the away fans will have left filled with disappointment that they didn’t get the job done in one sitting.

They will have a second chance back at the Badgers Sports Ground, whose capacity has been specially increased to 1,500 (up from a normal 1,000) for the occasion.

That match will kick-off at 19:45 on Wednesday 15th November and if Cray Valley can get Kyrell Lisbie back on form for it then Charlton have no chance of winning unless they up their play by 1,000 levels from where it was today. A trip to League 2 Gillingham awaits in the second round.

So if the Millers win the replay they have a tantalising opportunity to make it to the fabled Third Round and a potential trip to a huge Premier League team.

McKimm’s job is to keep his players calm and focused on just the next game, but the fans will already be dreaming of where this FA Cup fairy-tale could take them.

There is an old adage well known throughout life and football; Never Go Back. Every rule has it’s exceptions though and Neal Maupay going back to Brentford may well be the exception to this one.

His first spell at the club, 2017-2019, saw him become an integral part of the Bees irrepressible BMW front line that fired them to the brink of promotion to the Premier League. It was only their play-off hoo-doo that kept them from the top table during that spell.

That BMW front line disintegrated after his departure to Brighton after their 2019 promotion to the premier League, his strike team companions following him to Premier League teams the next summer. It is undeniable that his move away from west London has been the least successful of the trio.

Whilst Said Benrahma’s West Ham have made it to European competition and Ollie Watkin’s form in firing Villa to Europe has earned him a call-up into the England squad. On the other side of things, Maupay was considered surplus to requirements at a Brighton team also Europe-bound and spent last season struggling to get into an Everton team that seemed destined for relegation.

No wonder he wanted out of that situation and when a Brentford team in dire need of strikers, with Ivan Toney banned and Kevin Shade injured, he jumped at the chance to return to West London.

His debut came in their first home win of the season last weekend, a 3-0 victory over Burnley, and the fact that both of these events happened in the same game was no mere coincidence.

Back at the centre of a front 3 Maupay seemed at one with the beautiful game once more. From the first set play, where he had the ball in the net with a point-blank header only for it to be ruled out for an offside in the build-up, to his being substituted to rapturous applause in the 88th minute he ran Brentford’s attacking play.

Both his slick interplay with midfielders Mathias Jensen and Frank Onyeka and his telepathic chemistry with new strike partners Bryan Mbuemo and Yoane Wissa were integral to his masterclass in destroying the opposition.

He was at the heart of every move as Brentford overpowered their visitors from Lancashire, even providing the assist for Mbuemo’s screamer of a second for the hosts.

Finding the right pass to cleave open the Burnley defence when there seemed to be nothing on was his signature move on this second Bee’s debut. The only thing missing from his performance was a debut goal.

Chances for him to score this goal were multiple and varied, even carving out a 1-on-1 with James Trafford in the first half after a gut-busting run from midfield that saw him glide past 4 opponents as though they were mere apparitions.

The genius football wizardry that he showed at times was breath-taking to the point that I will never be able to express how impressed I was with just how well he has taken to his new task in West London; Firing Brentford up the table without the talismanic Toney.

He showed no sign of having been withered away by being left out of a team that struggled to score last season on their way to a final-day great escape as he set up every attacking play the Bees had and carved out many personal chances to score.

The only way he can improve on his opening performance, when Brentford visit Stamford Bridge on the 28th, is by scoring a goal or two to help the West Londoners to back-to-back wins for the first time this season.

Welcome back Neal Maupay and thank you for a scintillating second debut!!

As I made my way down to this match, between Brentford and Burnley, there was one thing I knew both teams had in common and that was some seriously poor form.

Neither team had more than a single win to their name this season coming into this match, with only the hosts having secured a clean sheet in the league

I travelled down to this match expecting a glut of goals and at least one team didn’t disappoint.

Brentford were on top from the first whistle as they set to the task of swarming all over their visitors. Barely allowing Burnley a kick it took the swaggering hosts just 2 minutes to get the ball in the net.

Bryan Mbuemo swung a free-kick up to the back post where Nathan Collins was waiting to swing a leg at it and send it looping across to the near post where Neil Maupay headed the ball over the onrushing James Trafford and in off the bar.

It would’ve been a lovely way for Maupay to mark his 2nd debut with the Londoners, but the spoilsport linesman had his flag up before the ball had crossed the line for an offside against Kristoffer Ajer in the build up. How Ajer could be counted as offside when he got nowhere near interfering with play is a question only the officials can answer.

Having had that opener unceremoniously ripped from under them it took the Bees a full 25 minutes of relentless pressure and a string of great chances to finally open their account.

Frank Onyeka pinched the ball in midfield and fed Maupay, who flicked the ball right to Mbuemo. Bryan ghosted past his marker before hitting a teasing ball across the 6 yard box to the back post where Yoane Wissa was steaming in to turn it home from point blank range.

How the hosts did not add to this opener before half-time only they know. They were all over Burnley for the rest of the half and created a glut of glorious opportunites to extend their lead.

The most glaring of these fell to the returning Maupay, whose gut busting run from midfield saw him burn past a could of opponents before carving through a gap in the backline to leave him with just Trafford to beat. He unleashed his effort low to the keepers’ left but the under-21 Euros winner was equal to the effort, blocking it with a huge left hand to deny Maupay his debut goal once again.

Despite being at the centre of everything good in an incredible opening half for the hosts Maupay would not get his goal and none of his teammates would add to the hosts tally before half-time either.

Brentford created so many chances in their masterclass first half that in truth they should have been 3 or 4-0 up and out of sight, but they weren’t and as the teams trudged down the tunnel at the break Burnley still harboured hopes of salvaging something from the match.

With those fires of hope still smouldering away, Burnley came out fighting at the start of the second half and it looked like the Bees would return to their early season fragility as they retreated deeper and deeper into their own defensive third.

Having seen the hosts surrender a league high 11 points from winning positions this season many of those in the home ends began to fear the worst but Mbuemo expunged these worries in spectacular fashion just after the hour mark.

Maupay set the ball up for him to run onto just inside the D, after a sweeping team move down the right, for him to run onto and curl a beautiful first time shot into the top left corner of the Burnley goal.

Having watched Mbuemo’s goal from the bench Samman Ghoddos decided he could do even better and proved his point after being brought on with 5 minutes of the 90 left to play.

The Iranian had been on the pitch barely 2 minutes when the ball dropped to him 25 yards out, he brought it under control with his chest then fired a thunderbolt past the stricken Trafford on the half volley. There is not a keeper in the world that would have saved it and as ways to break a 2 year goal drought go… not bad at all.

Conceding the third was enough to convince legions of the vociferous away support to head for the exits as any hopes of a comeback evaporated.

Things could have been so different for the visitors though if half-time substitute Luka Koleosho had converted a tap-in chance at the back post at 2-0. He had terrorised the makeshift Brentford defence since his introduction, but when presented with the easiest finish ever, unmarked 6-yards out at the back post, he fluffed his lines and submitted his application for the miss-of-the-season award.

That was the only presentable chance for the visitors in what was a far more even second half as Brentford secured their second 3-0 win of the season and their first at home. It also moves the Bees into double figures for the season and by holding onto a lead it may even signal the end of the hell times for home fans.

Three goals by three different scorers for Brentford, maybe the bad times are finally over. Chelsea away is next up for the buzzing Bees, where we won 4-1 in our first Premier League visit and 2-0 last season. Anyone fancy a hat-trick?