Thoughts on the forthcoming season..

[bomber]

I'm predicting a real struggle.

[Deleted]

AH believes the team can reach the PO's, the club owners are confident about being around 10th position. I would be very confident of this except for the goalkeepers we have, we've never given a young goalkeeper 22-25 age group a chance, that's why they keep moving on when you've got old timers past their best getting the jersey every time.

Find a good goalie, I'm in the AH group, I believe a PO spot is achievable.

Continue with Stack, with constant mistakes, bad positioning, not coming for crosses, it may well be a season of struggle. If strikers win you games, goalies lose them.

[michaelefc]

I think management and owners think we can be in the play offs, that's certainly the aim. No reason why we shouldn't be there or thereabouts. I tend to be quite cautious in my predictions and I've gone for 9th. Given that we can have a cup run or two, continue to build the fan base, ensure the finances are all in order, then you'll get no complaints from me. Pretty obvious where the weakness lie last season, in defence. If we are to be a top half team we need a significant improvement there. No point just blaming the goalkeeper its the whole defence which needs to be pacy, mobile and cohesive. Hopefully we have trained well this summer.

[taylov]

I'd be VERY happy with 9th in the league and a decent Cup run. Maybe it'll be our turn for a trip to Wembley in the Trophy.

[martfergie]

SOE, we did give a young keeper a chance a couple of seasons ago, can’t remember his name but the guy from Arsenal. That didn’t end too well!!

[tenacres]

Ryan Huddart. Still just 21, he has just joined Boreham Wood where he will be presumably be 1st or 2nd choice.

Seem to remember he had a poor game and made a couple of errors in his first home game with us (Eastleigh 2 Dover 4) which I think was Chris Todds last game. Don't think Ronnie Moore fancied him and IIRC we played a lot of different keepers that season (as we did for most other positions too!)

Its a tricky one being a young keeper.

[tenacres]

I think we'll be OK this season, I think top half. Wouldn't like to say too much more than that. A lot will depend on injuries, we have a reasonably thin squad, hopefully some decent youngsters and loanees can be added to it as the season matures.

In our 4 seasons in the national we've won just 1 game in the Trophy (1-0 at Aldershot). Of course the season before that we reached the quarter finals which is our best ever trophy run.

We lost to Cambridge United, which was probably a significant result in us winning the title. Had we got through we'd have had an extra 2 Trophy games (at least). From a league perspective we certainly didn't need that as we were quite a way beyond Bromley in points & games in hand, which of course we eventually overturned.

[unknownquantity]

I think in recent seasons as we;; as Ryan Huddart, relative youngsters to play in goal for Eastleigh have been Billy Lumley, Steve Arnold. Mike Green, Freddie Toomer, Michael Poke, Lewis Noice and David Wilkinson, but I am mot sure whether any of them stood out. We have also had other goalkeepers whilst in either the National League or National such as Paul Musselwhite, Scott Tarr, Jamie Pullen, Wayne Shaw, Gareth Howells, Jason Matthews, Ryan Clarke and Gareth Barfoot all of whom had their limitations.

I personally think that the best goalkeeping performance by an Eastleigh goalkeeper was the run of nine games Ross Flitney had at the end of the 2015/16 season when he conceded only 3 goals, at the age of almost 32. All I will say further about Graham Stack is that I could see why Martin Allen signed him as only 18 months earlier he had won the Conference title under Martin's management and had been selected in the Conference team of the year.

[Deleted]

Jul 30, 2018 19:55:56 GMT martfergie said:

SOE, we did give a young keeper a chance a couple of seasons ago, can’t remember his name but the guy from Arsenal. That didn’t end too well!!

That lad was still a teenager at the time, and as mentioned he's gone to Boreham Wood for this season aged 22 from Arsenal. If he's still at Arsenal at that age then they must rate him for the future. My point is there are plenty of good goalkeepers in the 22-25 age bracket and we ought to have found one by now who could be here 10 years. Goalkeeper is a vital position in the team, ANY team for that matter and as mentioned by others, Stack was at fault for goals against Gillingham, the warning signs are there already and the season has not started yet.

There is a lot of rubbish talked about the fact goalies don't reach their peak years until aged 29-32. How old was Peter Shilton when he took the jersey off the great Gordon Banks at Leicester? He was 18, while Banks was only 28 and had just won the World Cup. An exception to the rule I agree, I saw Shilton score his only goal in football in 1967.

This club for some reason didn't back Mark Childs so he's gone to Gosport, and if he performs well there, then a bigger club than us will snap him up. I'd have paid Stack up, got him out, and gone with Childs for the season. Another kid is Josh Helm (Sholing) a local Eastleigh born lad who wasn't treated very well by RH when he gave up a job earning £300 a week after tax, to step in and be number two when Lewis Noice was badly injured for a season, for £100 a week. That's how much he wanted to play for his local home team, he still has the dream to return and prove himself and I hope the club keeps an eye on him too this season.

[westendspitfire]

Think who the goalkeeper is is probably irrelevant, but the position does highlight the issues we could face this season.
We have a large number of players who are earning more then we can afford, in the final year of their contracts. If those players are of the view that they need to put themselves in the shop window by having a bloody good season then we may get a top half finish and have a pretty good season.
However, the club has made it pretty clear that this season is one of consolidation and that the high earners will be leaving at the end of April, therefore if anyone has a good start to the season and another club makes an offer to take them off our payroll early on surely we will take it.
Alternatively if we are having a bad run of form, can we rely on players who know they will be gone in May, to dig deep and get us out of trouble.
Personally I think we will probably struggle and it will take a massive performance from the management team to get this squad into the top 10. A relegation battle is almost certain but think AH may just have the ability to get us safe.
There is nothing to fall back on anymore and it will require a whole lot of unity to make this season a positive one, unfortunately we seemed to lose that unity when we did have the money so will be interesting to see how the fan base reacts if we do struggle.

[bomber]

Stoke and Everton have stuck with their young 'keepers, albeit higher up the chain, but too many managers aren't prepared to give young goalies enough time between the sticks to acclimatise themselves. AH has dropped a bollock in my view by letting Childs go. Anyway, I'm more concerned where the goals are going to come from.

[michaelefc]

Certainly going on last season, the problem is at the back, though I do think we are focussing over much on the goalkeeper. In general you will rarely find a top goalkeeper behind a shaky back line, and last year we were shaky with a capital S. Sort the back 4 or 5 out and I think you will find the keeper behind them looks a whole lot better. I think our front guys thrive on crosses (who doesn't!). If we get the right deliveries in, I think you'll find our goals for, won't be the problem.

[unknownquantity]

Like many people on here I think that getting the back four sorted is a main priority I would like to make a couple of comments regarding goalkeepers.

1) Although the potential of Shilton was undoubtedly a major reason in Leicester selling Gordon Banks to Stoke I think that Shilton reached his peak much later in his career and nearly 100 of his 125 England caps were won after his 30th birthday.

2) It is true that Everton and Stoke placed their faith in younger goalkeepers, but I think the experience that these keepers got at Sunderland and Birmingham respectively was a\ major reason for this.

[thelake]

Stacks ok, he won’t let us down. Got good hopes for this season, hessenthaler is a wily old campaigner, think we can make the playoffs

[boyatthood]

Jul 30, 2018 11:16:36 GMT bomber said:

I'm predicting a real struggle.

I would tend to agree and if we are in the bottom four for a while I am not confident this new board would know what to do. Panic and relegation would be on the cards. However, although I think it might be a struggle a similar mid table/bottom half finish is the most likely outcome. Don't think we'll trouble the top half never mind the play offs.