Woking 925

Words by Will Holdaway, picture from t'internet.

We’re going up this season – probably through the play-offs, alas – and I’ll tell you full why.

We’re going up because James Norwood is the best player in this league and the one above. I didn’t say best striker (though he is that). I said best player. Most dangerous opponent, Satan’s No. 30. The shithouse’s shithouse. And he knows it.

We’re going up because Micky Mellon won us two away games this week comfortably. Neither game was ever in serious doubt.

We’re going up because, pre-Mellon, Hallam Hope would’ve charged down the wing when Norwood picked it up on the halfway line. Norwood would’ve got halfway between there and the edge of the box. On Wednesday, Norwood charged to the edge of the box and passed to the penalty spot. He did look, but even if he didn’t, he’d know that someone – Hope in this case – was trying to get there.

We’re going up because Mellon has drilled and coached attacking moves. All five goals last week came from the training ground.

We’re going up because Mellon has told the players about the value not just of hard work, but of working hard for one another. He came in and saw what we’d seen for a year under Unsworth: individuals who didn’t give a shit about their teammates. That’s what got Sutton sent off against Southend. No help, no support. The lads are starting to play for one another, learning to honour the work that they and their teammates put in all week. That alone will get us 20 goals before the season’s out, and it’ll save us many more. It probably saved us three on Wednesday night and one last Saturday.

We’re going up because Mellon has made our players, flawed though they are, industrious and hungry. He has done this in the time-honoured way that talented leaders do things. He’s made the players believe that they came up with the idea of being industrious and hungry.

We’re going up because the players want in on this bigtime. Harrison McGahey is much maligned, including by me. The thing is that he’s smart enough to go anywhere and do anything as fast as he can just to be on Micky Mellon’s promotion bus.

We’re going up because, when Wellens convinced Portsmouth that Eoin Doyle was injured when he wasn’t, he was in the molehills of mind games, and Micky Mellon is on top of the mountain. We kept the ball against Woking, dominated possession. Poor old Barnet (the idiots) thought we’d try the same ruse on Wednesday. (Most of us in the stand on Wednesday thought the same.) They thought we were gonna go toe to toe with passing and moving and pressing. They thought their on-paper superior XI would prevail by being better in possession and sharper in front of goal. They held on to this belief even when it was 1-4. Barnet on Wednesday reminded me of Anthony Joshua during his defeat to Andy Ruiz. Ruiz had crowned Joshua with a right hand to the top of the head (from which Joshua never recovered) in an earlier round. Between rounds five and six (or thereabouts), Joshua’s trainer was telling Joshua how good he was, how in control he was, to which Joshua replied: “So why am I feeling like this?” That was Barnet. They were in control and it was 1-4. They’d been better and it was 1-4. Their defeat was in the post long before a ball was kicked on Wednesday.

We’re going up because we have the best manager we’ve had since Joe Royle, who was the best manager we’d had since Jimmy Frizzell. Mellon will join the tiny society of managers who’ve got us promoted since the second world war.

We’re going up, so…if you can…get yourselves down to Boundary Park today to watch us make fools of these Channel Tunnel freight dot com pricks.

Don’t keep the mofo faith. Spread it.