Chesham-3 out of 3?

So erm, is anyone going? Can see a lot of people doing 1 or the other and rightly or wrongly I've opted for Monday. So updates on here would be appreciated! Would be great to make it 3 out of 3 but we'll have to play an awful lot better!

It's not exactly far so no excuse for anyone not doing both. (Unless they've other commitments obviously)

3/3 is certainly possible - Chesham have had a stuttering start to the season so this may be an ideal time to be playing them. As Jack says though we will need to up our game to maintain our start.

i'm not going. Its a personal choice. Not going to a home game at a 'neutral' venue, especially when we are back there on Monday. If we werent back on Monday i probably would of gone to both. Its a shit ground, souless and parking isnt great either

I'd have thought if you were only doing one or the other then today's the one to do - the admission money today goes into our coffers whereas on Monday it goes into Redditch's.

The fact we're playing a home game away from our own ground is through no fault of ours and we're having to make the best of the situation. For that reason, and the fact that we're playing one of the favourites for the league, the club needs all the support it can get.

Anyway, the venue's irrelevant. My team's playing, I've no other commitments so I'll be there today and Monday.

And you don't have to use the car park - plenty of street parking around and the station's only a 10 minute walk away.

My only worry is that rain was forecast for last night and today, and knowing what their pitch is like I just hope I don't have a wasted train journey.

I will start by predicting 2-1 to Stour, but I don't think it will be an easy game, crowd about 222

It's got the feel of a 1-1 draw and a sub 200 crowd.

In regards to the parking, in general the parking is shit, both street parking and the car park. I very rarely use public transport to go to games, as if i take the train i will end up drinking and spending daft £. Something i dont want to do either of. Most home games i leave 10 minutes before kick off and get home 10 minutes after. Thus meaning only 2 hours out of my day. I don't want to be travelling 30mile round trip and an extra hour round trip to watch a home game. No fault of the clubs admittedly, its just a personal choice. I dont mind having to travel for away games as that is expected and the norm.
Throughout the course of the season, the £10 i don't spend on entrance to todays game the club will more then likely make that back off me.

Attendance prediction 188

Half time 1-3

Full time 2-3

Dreadful first half performance topped off by a cretin of a ref and linesman.

Better in the second half but still not that good to be honest.

Very hesitant at the back and got killed for pace every time there big centre forward ran at us.

Chesham looked a very neat outfit in the first half but not so special once we got stuck into them in the second period,i would expect them to finish in the play offs at least.

Stour need to get the ball down and start to play,too much "hoof ball" especially from Briscoe today.

On the plus side it will surely be many a month before i witness such a dreadful performance by match official's,the word "inept" doesn't do them justice,their performance bordered on a criminal act!

A disappointing afternoon all round.

The ref was one of the worst I have ever seen, absolutely incompetent and lost control after 5 minutes when he absolutely inexplicably awarded them a penalty. The Chesham United official Twitter even had the cheek to declare it a definite pen.

We lost our heads after their first goal leading to Benbow being lucky to stay on the pitch after pushing someone, but he ended up being probably our best player. They then scored two more after awful defending. There then followed two more extremely dodgy penalties for us either side of half time that Geddes dispatched with aplomb. Both of them were after Billingham 'took a tumble' (as the official match report will probably have to describe them as) although they were both more of a penalty than theirs.

The lino's were terrible too; with one absolute joke of a goal kick award when their player sliced it out of play with no-one within ten yards and yet a goal kick was given.

Bennett was fighting a battle all day with their huge centre forward but actually did well in the end. Briscoe, Coleman and Drake had games to forget to be honest, and Fitzpatrick was largely anonymous.

As DA says we can't possibly have a worse ref all season, and in the car on the way back I was cheered by looking in the centre pages of the programme and realising that with that performance and that ref we only lost by a goal to one of the playoff probables, and we have 43 games to go, it doesn't look so bad in the long term.

The one thing the management have GOT to do is to address the problems ASAP; I'm sure they will but it's vital not to paper over the cracks.

As expected, a sub-200 crowd and I bet there are more Stour fans there Monday than today, although I can't make it Monday. Second worst crowd in the league today.

Very disappointing performance, we seemed unable to put more than 3 passes together for most of the game. We are a much better team when we play to feet, today for some reason we kept putting the ball in the air and as a result could not get the flowing moves going which serve us so well. Lets hope for a much better performance on Monday, I hope Jamie comes in at 3 to let Wurzel operate as a winger.

MotM was Luke Benbow with 8 votes, closely followed by Sean Geddes with 7, Nathan Bennett & Paul Lloyd received 3 each with Will Richards & Ben Billingham receiving 1 vote. The winner of the wine was Eric Timmins.

The ref was atrocious today but I hope that's not used as an excuse because we were shockingly bad and but for a couple of iffy penalty decisions we wouldn't have been still in the game. (Their penalty decision was iffy as well!)

Some of Chesham's spoiling tactics in the second half were somewhat frustrating but in their situation I don't think you could blame them, albeit some of the time-wasting was taking the proverbial at times.

Ultimately, I don't think we deserved anything from the game although grabbing a last minute point would have been satisfying in view of the way Chesham played!

Wurzel's convinced me that he's not a left back and hopefully Jamie will be in that position on Monday so we can get Wurzel onto the wing.

Can only echo what others have said; dodgy ref, poor performance, shocking spoiling tactics by Chesham in the second half so altogether a game to forget.

About the only plus point was the effort and work rate of Luke Benbow. Lucky to stay on the pitch in the first half but played like a demon in the second, running the front line - we just need midfield to get up and support the forwards more then they're doing at the moment.

With any luck today's performance will be a bit of a wake-up call and they'll all play a lot better on tomorrow.

Another sub-standard performance, resulting in a well-deserved defeat. In fact, the scoreline flatters us. We were that bad in the first half and, no, we can't blame the officials, poor as they were.

We were completely overrun in midfield, particularly in the first half. Not sure that playing 2 up front is working with Luke and Ryan being too similar. In fact, even though we were indebted to Luke for last season's goals, I feel his short fuse is a potential liability. Perhaps we should play Luke/Ryan and Will or, as soon as he is match fit, Ryan as the lone striker with 5 in midfield.

Difficult to find any positives, although Nathan stuck manfully trying to control Effiong, Chesham's tall, gangly but very effective no 9. Wurzel needs more match practice at a lower level, perhaps. Jamie's return will strengthen our defence and provide much-needed fighting spirit. Another plus sign is that we did manage to make more of a game of it in the second half but that was by the long ball upfield. What's happened to playing football ?

Sounds like I missed a cracker! I'll be very annoyed if Rowey gets played up top by himself, as quite frankly he's done nothing to warrant being selected ahead of Luke. Moreover, say Brackley come in for Rowey in January, and Kiddy sell him, then we will be reliant on Luke, now if you're Luke are you likely to stop around at a club if you've worked hard to get into the position he has and then dropped for someone coming with a reputation? Rowey is potentially our best player, but until he starts showing that, I would always pick Luke ahead of him. And please please please never mention 4-5-1 again. Simply dreadful. The best football we played was playing 4-4-2!

Photos...

http://www.smugmug.com/gallery/n-sLDZ9/

Just had a look through them and there are one or two right unsavoury looking characters in there!