Chester out, Howard out, Grovesnor Estates in

As someone who has lived in rented accomodation for six years or so, I feel I've got a handle on what makes a good or bad landlord.

Good landlords communicate with you regularly, replace things when they get broken, and don't hike the rent up every five minutes. Bad landlords leave their property decorated in a 1980's fashion, don't reply to your phone messages, and disappear off the face of the earth when you've spent your whole 'effin Friday afternoon off sitting around waiting for them to show up, grrr.

But enough of my house-related woes. United will soon have new landlords following today's news that Grovesnor Estates, the property development vehicle of loaded toff the Duke of Westminster, are buying the Abbey Stadium from Evil Ginger Associates, or Bideawhile as they're more commonly known.

I've been thinking about this all afternoon, and come to the conclusion that this news can't make the situation any worse than it is already. Even if Grovesnor have some kind of big nasty plan to build Abbey Heights on the land at some stage, as long as United keep paying the rent there's not really much they can do about it. So no change there then. And it was fairly obvious that there was too much bad blood on both sides for CUFC and Bideawhile to ever work together constructively on a new stadium project. Now we have a landlord with a completely clean slate, and one who appears to have considerably more clout than a couple of two-bob estate agents from Suffolk. Perhaps a new stadium can be pursued after all.

Still, I think Paul Barry is being a bit premature when he describes Grovesnor as a "friendly landlord". Only time will tell whether that is the case.

In other news, Chester's expulsion was confirmed this morning, meaning I am now refusing to look at the league table for fear of having a heart attack. Massive game tomorrow, absolutely massive.

Read more...

D-Day for Chester

Take-over bids by dodgy-looking Danish consortiums not withstanding, we should know in the next few hours whether or not Chester are departing the Conference, taking with them six precious points earned by Lingy's amber army earlier in the season.

I'll be pretty annoyed if the Blues do get the booted out, mainly because it means the 90+ minutes spent at that awful, awful, match we won 1-0 in December will have been a complete waste of time. But putting that aside, Chester is a mess that won't get any better, and must be put out of its misery. That there is even any doubt as to whether the life-support machine is going to be switched off just goes to prove what a complete shambles the The Conference is.

Because as you probably know, the fate of the Blues has been left in the hands of the member clubs, who will meet at Rushden today to consider what to do. I like to imagine all the chairmen sitting in a row, Britain's Got Talent style, and delivering their verdict via a big illuminated red cross displayed above their head, but maybe that's just me. Certainly some chairmen I could name have about as much charm as Piers Morgan, and are almost as smug.

Mansfield have already confirmed they will be voting selfishly to keep Chester - and their points - and I would hope United will do the same, or at least abstain. After all, what else can we possibly do? It's not right, but it would be stupid for a Turkey to vote for Christmas. If Chester do survive, lets hope the Conference board grow a pair and change their own rules, because expecting members to vote objectively on the future of a competitor is patently ridiculous.

Meanwhile United will go in search of that elusive win against Tamworth tomorrow without the services of Robbie Willmott, who has apparently been ruled for the rest of the season with a knee problem. No great loss if you ask me, but it does leave United short in wide areas. According to the CN Lingy is considering whether to deploy Rory McAuley or Sam Ives on the right of midfield, but if it was me I think I'd be tempted to bring in Daryl Coakley and push Aiden Palmer up into midfield. Palmer is a tricky customer, and probably the best crosser we have, and would also give us a bit of pace which the team will lacks sans-Willmott.

Whatever the line up, a win is long overdue, and we're not likely to get a better chance than against a Tamworth side whose form is nearly as bad as our own. 'Mon United.

Read more...

20 word match report - FGR:1 U's:1

One 20-word match report this week, courtesy of haiku-maestro Ling's Awkward Smile

Crow the goal machine
We've forgotten how to win
Stop sitting so deep
- Ling's Awkward Smile

*If you'd like to submit a match report - of 20 words or less - about a future match, you can email me via cufcblog@googlemail.com, visit the U's Blog twitter page, or leave a comment under a recent post.

Read more...

FGR:1 U's:1 - all downhill from here?

I actually think I'd struggle to have less interest in the Winter Olympics, a competition surely designed purely for the benefit of those snowy countries (Switzerland, Norway, Austria etc) who have no chance of winning a medal at the real Olympics.

I mean, who really cares if Amy Williams has won a medal in extreme sliding, or professional sledging, or whatever that sport she does is? It's not that interesting, and while they may still be dancing on the streets of her home town Bath, I suspect the rest of us will have forgotten about Saturday's "historic moment" in a couple of weeks.

Of more concern to me is the speed at which United's season is heading downhill, like a skier who has lost his poles and is heading off-course towards a calamitous collision with some alpine trees, or a mountain goat, or (perhaps more aptly) a moose. Despite Danny Crow's goal, we were unable to hold onto our lead against lowly Forest Green, who equalised in the second half with the help of some fairly woeful defending, as you'll see below.



A point is better than nothing I suppose, but we should be able to see off teams like FGR, and the longer this winless run goes on the more and more fragile what little confidence the players have will become.

If we go on to beat Tamworth next Saturday then a return of five points from a possible nine doesn't look too bad, but any other result and amount of knives which are currently aimed at our manager is bound to increase, especially when you consider the following three matches are against Oxford (league leaders), Barrow (strong at home vs crap away) and Histon (sort-of derby match). Call me a pessimist, but if we can't get three points against bumbling-along-in-mid-table-with-nothing-much-to-play-for Tamworth, I don't fancy our chances of winning any of those next three either.

Read more...

Wicked wicked, the Forest Green match is massive

Old school joke for a Friday afternoon.

Q: Why did the monkey get lost?
A: Coz de jungle is massive

Indeed the jungle may, in the words of M Beat (feat General Levy), be massive, but our game against Forest Green tomorrow is, er, massiver, according to Lingy.

"Whether the Chester points go or not, this is no hiding from the fact that this is a massive game against a team in the bottom four," our leader told the official site, after describing it as "the biggest game of the season" so far. All well and good, but in the same interview he goes to great lengths to stress the importance of taking the pressure off the players during the run in, and I'm not really sure how these two things marry up. Surely describing a game as the biggest of the season is just putting more pressure on? Especially as we're not exactly at crisis point yet. Oh well, I'm sure he knows what he's doing, probably just wants to keep those lazy git players on their toes.

In unrelated news, Wrexham manager Dean Saunders has taken time out from his busy schedule of signing over the hill foreigners and Premier League loan players to appeal for more help in getting promoted.

He said: "As full-time clubs in the Conference we are the teams that everyone else wants to beat yet we sometimes even find ourselves at a disadvantage against part-time clubs.

"I tried to sign a player from one such club a couple of months ago who was earning £350 a week from his football, but was not interested in coming full-time with us because he was also earning £700 from his day job and I could not match that.

"It must surely be in the interests of the Football League that such clubs, hopefully back on an even keel and being run on sensible lines, are given every opportunity to strengthen and improve the quality of the competition in League Two and eventually even higher up in the pyramid."

It's an interesting point he makes, and one that, as a supporter of one of the bigger Conference clubs, I'm sure we can all feel some empathy with. After all, do Macclesfield, Accrington, et al bring more to the football league that Cambridge, Oxford, or Wrexham would? I'd say almost certainly not. But at the same time I don't know exactly what he expects anyone to do about it. Obviously it works both ways, and United or Wrexham are probably more likely to get the signature of a full-time player who might not want to go part-time due to the stigma attached.

And as much as it pains me to say it, the traditional football league clubs currently doing time in the Conference are there on merit, Luton being the only possible exception. And if the big teams are getting outshone by the small ones, they have a look at themselves rather than sit and bleat about what others can do about the situation.

Read more...

New players a-go-go; Kevin Roberts and Callum Willock sign in

With ten weeks or so of the season to go, Lingy's project to remodel the Abbey from a mock-Tudor scouse mansion into a cheaper but much classier east end flat continues apace.

*Bish* Into the skip goes that manky old Parky chest of drawers that's been repaired too many times for it to function properly.

*Bosh* And there goes the antique Hatswell sofa which used to be a favourite but is now getting worn around the edges and has seen better days.

*Clunk* and out the window flies the pointless Challinor hatstand which nobody will own up to buying because they're too embarrassed.

In their place have come a host of new items, mostly second hand, but many of which have so far proved to be much more functional (and in some cases better looking) than the furniture they replaced. Laurence Llewellyn-Bowen would be proud of the Linguist's work, and not a chunk of MDF in sight.

The latest new arrivals were delivered yesterday, in the form of Chester's highly rated utility man Kevin Roberts and Crawley's unwanted journeyman striker Callum Willock. I can't furnish you with too much information about Roberts, other than to say that a glance at the Deva Chat messageboard reveals he is one of the few players in their dwindling squad that they are sad to see the back off, with some posters speculating that he could eventually follow in the foot steps of Chris Holroyd and make the step up to League One.

Willock has never particularly impressed me when playing for other teams, and the fact that I can't find even one of his goals on youtube doesn't bode well. But hopefully he'll provide us with some physical presence in the final third, and as he's non-contract we can get rid if he turns out to be pants.

And with the arrival of two more players, one wonders whether more of the old fixtures and fittings will be forcibly removed in the coming days. Jim Harvey is back in football at Stalybridge Celtic in the Conference North, so perhaps he will take his love child Mark Beesley off our hands at least temporarily. And seeing as now have plenty of options in midfield you have to wonder whether Jai Reason would be available if the right offer came in. Certainly I would be willing to bet we haven't seen the last of the Lingy's squad renovations for this season.

Read more...

U's:2 AFC Wimbledon:2 - Green shoots of recovery?

I can't remember the last time I'm came away from a football match involving United in such a positive mood. If PM Gordon Brown had been present he would undoubtedly now be penning a speech about the worst being behind us, about the team being in the right hands, and about looking to a bright and glorious Amber future.

Whether United's upturn in fortunes is as short-lived as some of the economic "recoveries" we've experienced in the last couple of years remains to be seen, but a battling point against the Wombles is certainly a good starting point from which to ascend towards the heady heights of the top half.

For the first time Lingy was able to name a team containing a considerable number of his own players, and if the performance was indicative of what we can look forward to during the next couple of seasons of his "glorified three year plan" then I don't think anyone could complain too much. United hassled Wimbledon almost non-stop from beginning to end, even when down to ten men, and had Danny Crow or Simon Russell put away one of those late chances we would probably be basking in the glow of a hard-earned victory.

Russell looks a real find, and is making those critics (ok, that's just me then) who labelled him a useless utility player look a bit silly. He and Aiden Palmer form a very solid and dangerous combination on the left at the moment, and long may it continue. In midfield Rory McAuley gave us some much needed height, and if he can work on his passing I think he'll soon establish himself as a regular starter. Meanwhile the goals continue to flow for the Crow, and let's hope the equaliser will be making of big Phill, who seemed to gain a couple of extra gears after netting his first of the season. And I haven't even mentioned the new keeper/man mountain Simon Brown, who made a solid debut and should provide some much needed experience.

Not covering themselves in glory were Jai Reason, who sleep-walked through an anonymous 60-odd minutes after some good recent performances, and Antonio Murray, who had been quiet up until his silly sending off. From where I was sitting it looked a reckless challenge, so Antoniop can't have too many complaints about the ref's decision.

We didn't actually win the game, so I shouldn't get too carried away, but it goes to prove that we can compete with the teams at the top end of the table if we put our minds to it. A similar performance against Forest Green next Saturday will surely result in three points. Bounce bounce!

*Send me your 20-word match reports on the Wimbledon match. Email cufcblog@googlemail.com, tweet via http://twitter.com/Us_Blog, or leave a comment under this post.

Read more...