September is just around the corner, the first month of autumn and trees turn into a mix of red, yellow and orange colours, the air cold and crisp and normally the football season has been running for a month, but 2020 is not a normal year. The first competitive game is less than two weeks away and the first league match in three weeks. Walsall comes up against Sheffield Wednesday on Saturday 5 September in the first round of the Carabao Cup. This cup match will also be shown live on Sky Sports. A few days later we play our first EFL Trophy match against Bristol Rovers and just a few days after on September 12 we play our first league match home against Grimsby Town.
What do I expect from the team in the Carabao Cup and the EFL Trophy? Not much, I have no great hopes we will advance through to the second round and the EFL Trophy is a cup I won’t care much about. I won’t be upset or disappointed if we are not advancing from the group. The only positive we can get from going far in the cups is the money it will bring to the club but on the other hand, it will put more stress on a thin squad, and there is a bigger risk of injuries.
Walsall will have to add a few more players to the squad and I think Clarke will be able to get a few new faces in but maybe not in time for the cup match but maybe before their season opener at Grimsby on September 12.
The transfer window closes on 5 October and we can see additions being made well after the season has kicked off. Five league games will be played before the transfer window closes. I imagine Darrell Clarke is in no panic to add players to the squad since he has six weeks to get the squad complete. The downside to adding players to the squad late is that they will miss valuable time in pre-season, especially the sessions that count as teamwork and team bonding activities. You don’t know how a player has been training during the pre-season either. We all know how hard it is to put your self to a hard pre-season on your own. You need your teammates to compete against and to push you that extra yard in pre-season. That is why I think it is important to get the squad complete well before the season kicks off just to get the team together and build a hard-working unit that will run through a brick wall to win a match.
I saw improvements in the players’ performance last season when the cohesion and teamwork fell in place after Christmas and up until the season was postponed. Many players took a step forward and started to produce more which made us start climbing the table. I really hope this will continue into the upcoming season since we have been able to keep the core of the team from last season. With the players knowing each other much better now and know pretty much the way they play it should mean they get a better fluidity.
This will also make it easier to Clarke to implement other playing styles to have a Plan B and C in case his Plan A isn’t working.
New additions to strengthen positions in the team where we lack depth is very important but what is more important is that we can keep the players free from injuries. An injury on the wrong player could be the difference between playoff or midtable mediocrity.
Especially this season where there could be less resting between matches, even more so if we go far in one or two of the cups. Since this is a special year I thought they would scrap the EFL Trophy just to get rid of those matches in the scheduling.
From my perspective the priority this season is the league, we have to fight for one of the positions to go up automatically and if that doesn’t go through we will have a playoff position in our hand. The playoffs are a lottery though but another playoff final at Wembley would be high on many fans wishlist, but only if we win off course. The FA Cup should be second next priority because this is where the money is if fans are let into the stadiums that are.
The dream would be that we reach the third round of the FA Cup and get a big team away. That should add a few Pounds to our finances. The EFL Trophy I feel is a chance to rest some of our players and rotated the squad. We have many young players that need playing time in order to develop. I do not like when we bring our own players through from the youth setup and then only have them on the bench. We have to let them play, and every minute they play they will learn, get experience and their confidence will grow. As supporters of this lovely club, we should be delighted to see our own players in the first team. We should be supportive and cheer them on and not as some fans do, waiting for them to make a mistake so they can get on their back and shout abuse at them.
As I wrote at the beginning of this post the Carabao Cup is the first competitive match of the season and I feel we won’t have our team up and ready for this match and therefore we will probably crash out in the first round. That is why I don’t feel the Carabao Cup is high on my list of priorities this season.
Photo by Lesly Juarez on Unsplash