Match Preview: Staines Town v Basingstoke Town Sat 20th Oct 2018

Match Preview: Staines Town v Basingstoke Town Saturday 20th October 2018

Wheatsheaf Park, Staines. TW18 2PD

Following last Saturday’s eight-goal thriller at the Metropolitan Police, Basingstoke are back on the road as we travel back into London to take on relegation placed Staines Town.

Following last night’s mid-week games in our league, we slipped to 11th place. These games included our opponents who went down to their fourth consecutive defeat losing 3 – 1 at Walton Casuals.

Staines Town who joined our league as part of the reformation for geographical reasons, finished 8th in the Bostick Premier Division last season, and they have clearly found life in this league a lot tougher this season. Like us they are also going through new ownership when their Owner announced he was selling the club at the end of last season.

Last month Manager Christian Colas and two members of his staff were sacked and Colas was replaced by first team coach Adam Wickes, who is currently interim coach as I speak.

With just 2 wins and 9 losses from 11 games, thus 6pts, they currently sit 21st out of 22 teams, with just Chesham Utd below them. Staines 2 wins were a 3-1 home win against bottom-placed Chesham Utd, who got thumped again last night 7-0 at Beaconsfield, and a surprising 0-2 win at Poole Town, back in September. The Poole Town result was the only time they have a kept a clean sheet this season and if it was not for the 7-0 thrashing of Chesham, Staines would have leaked the most goal in the league,

However, with 32 goals conceded and a -15 goal difference, they are ripe for the picking, if we can form some sort of defence this Saturday. More importantly they have conceded goals like Christmas presents at Wheatsheaf park (their home ground) recently, with Weymouth putting 4 past them and prior to that 5 from Hartley.

They have been scoring goals recently, and these have mainly been spread amongst a wide range of players with ex-Swindon Town forward George Barker leading the way with 4 goals, followed by Harry Stow (any relation?) and midfielder Ruudi Clarke with 2 each. To be honest Harry Stow does not appear in their list of playing squad, so he may have moved on as I write this.

As for Basingstoke, we will need to provide some better defence this week, as shipping another four goals is simply not good enough. The loss of striker Callum Bunting and midfielder Dan Collier through injury didn’t help Jason Bristow’s plans, but with the return of Charlie Kennedy last Saturday, here’s hoping he and Dan Collier can deal with Staines and more importantly stop the ease of teams being able to pump the ball into our 6-yard area.

Goal-machine Jack McKnight again hit the back of the net and it was good to see striker Sam Argent get on the scoresheet along with Ben Wright and yet another successful penalty for Dean Stow.

Should we be running a competition to guess how many penalties we will get given this year?

I thought Smart picked up his game, when he came on and it will be interesting to see what shape and line-up Jason decides to go with at Staines.

Let’s hope the weather picks up for this Saturday and for those fans travelling to Staines, have something to celebrate after the game

On paper we should come away with 3pts, but we play on grass and not paper, so who knows?

Match Preview by Martin French