"A Salford life’s too near the bone to lose things through the fear of speaking out"
(“Hobson’s Choice” by Harold Brighouse)
We welcome “The Ammies” for our first-ever competitive meeting, in the hope that we can extend our WWW League 2 sequence while also extending their current LL…
Managed by Graham Alexander, Salford had a flying start to the season, getting the better of Stevenage 2-0, but it’s rather gone downhill from there, and currently they are in 18th place, 4 points behind ourselves. The “moneybags” tag was applied last season when, in the National League (Conference) the Accrington Stanley chairman stated that Salford City were buying their way into higher leagues by paying striker Adam Rooney £4,000 a week. There’s no immediate connection to Wayne Rooney although Adam’s elder brother Mark was also a professional footballer, but the appearance of Rooney and Rodney in the Salford squad suggests an “Only Fools and Horses” connection! Salford City’s current League 2 form:-
Aug 31 Leyton Orient (H) Drew 1-1
Sep 7 Morecambe (A) Drew 2-2
Sep 14 Cheltenham Town (H) Lost 0-2
Sep 17 Grimsby Town (H) Won 1-0
Sep 21 Crewe Alexandra (A) Lost 4-1
Sep 28 Forest Green Rovers (H) Lost 0-4
Darrell Clarke will have watched a weakened Walsall side’s 1-0 win against Southampton’s u-21 team, but apart from the encouraging sign that Kory Roberts is approaching full fitness it’s pointless to suggest what team changes he might be considering for this match. Injury concerns also surround Guthrie and Lavery … wait and see!
Prediction? This should be a 2-0 home win on current form, and the scorers’ identities are secondary, although it would be good to see “Flash” Gordon get on the scoresheet (even from a start on the bench), just for his own confidence.
Prediction? Walsall to win 8-0 and then get a 4 second mention while the rest of the time goes to mentioning the Class of 92 and that woman who worked in their kitchen.
I have to confess, Sid, that I have a very old book “60 Seasons of League Football”(R. C.Churchill) which supplies me with most of them - I only have to ferret out quotations for newly admitted League clubs like Salford City!
The quotation for Walsall in the book is certainly good enough for me:-
"‘Everybody said’ quoth he 'that ‘twas a famous victory’"(Southey) … a reference to the win over League Champions Arsenal in 1933. In a footnote it’s mentioned that back at the turn of the century when Walsall and Arsenal were both members of Division II we were winners on six occasions.
Don’t you feel better now you’ve confessed Welsh? A weight off your mind… nobody will ever think of you as the well educated elder statesman of UTS again,we thought you were just grabbing obscure quotes and poems out of thin air…
Surely a more famous quote about Walsall is the one from the Ripping Yarns episode Golden Gordon - “I didn’t come here on a free transfer from Walsall to stand and watch a bunch of morons arguing about shorts!”
(Entirely coincidental but the line “8-1. 8-bloody-1!” could apply to THAT game against Bolton).
I think the best thing we can do is get a lot of free kicks and corners,because the only way I can see us winning is a defender scoring from a set piece…2-0 Scarr and Clarke scoring the goals.
Got no problem with Salford. “They’ve brought their success”. Well, welcome to football!
Think this could be tough. They have such a demand on them that their current run of results will not be seen as good enough and hope they don’t turn it around against us. I’d probably take a draw with our current run.
nobody will ever think of you as the well educated elder statesman of UTS again,we thought you were just grabbing obscure quotes and poems out of thin air…