Altrincham FC manager Lee Sinnott will be giving us the inside track on the Robins’ return to the Conference. Here’s his latest column for Altrincham Today.
With over three months of the season gone, we have picked up more points against top-half teams than bottom-half teams and that tells a story.
If you asked any logical person which is the harder gap to bridge – trying to find a way of improving your results against top sides or lower-placed ones – there would surely be only one answer.
If you are getting turned over by teams in the top half of the league, it has to be more difficult remedying that than doing something about points that have slipped away against lower teams.
Don’t get me wrong, we will address those results that have proved so frustrating, but the point I’m making is that when you look at where we are, it’s a glass half-full scenario, in my view, rather than half-empty.
It’s bricks on top of each other, and another was planted on Saturday when we drew 1-1 with Grimsby Town, who are second in the league and a very good team. We have stuck to our task and our game and deservedly drawn with them in the two league games between the two sides in the last seven weeks.
We have played a full part in both games and deservedly come away with something each time. I don’t think anyone can argue with that.
We have just come into this league and are acquitting ourselves to the challenge. I know we need to take points off teams around us, and we will endeavour to do that.
Watch Scott Leather’s last-minute equaliser below
It is a brick-by-brick process, building as we go along, so let’s see where the team is and the club is in two years’ time. Just look at the last three league games, Lincoln, Telford and Grimsby. We could easily be looking at three wins, and we’ve played some decent football along the way in each game.
Of course, there are improvements to be made, but if people expect this club to win promotion, then walk into the Conference and suddenly be hovering just outside the play-off places, I would ask them please to review their thought process.
We are already approaching the halfway mark in terms of games played and I believe that we are generally shaping up well. Players will make mistakes, as we did for Grimsby’s goal on Saturday, but it’s the toughness and character we have as a unit that is important.
I know one thing, we are a better team now than we were on August 9th, when we headed down to Aldershot for our opening fixture. The experience we have been through since has made us better, and if we hadn’t had that, we wouldn’t have come back the way we did against Grimsby and taken a point off them with Scott Leather’s late equaliser.
It has been a huge step-up this season, but we have learned and improved along the way. In the Conference North last season, there were games where you would have maybe 10-12 scoring opportunities. Does anyone seriously think we are going to have that many against a team like Grimsby, second in the league and a really tough nut to crack? Of course not.
So to keep going like we did, to keep hammering on the door and finally find a way through was top quality. I thought the system we used worked well. We looked secure, and it was panning out as a game of few clear-cut chances, which you are going to get against a well-organised team like Grimsby.
We are up against better players than last season, and we have to be on our mettle every time. We certainly had to be on Saturday, and we were.
