League Two Preview: Accrington Stanley v Latics

Latics must learn to love early kick-offs because there are going to be a lot more of them before the season is done.

The teams with the biggest followings tend to get picked for the early kick-offs that facilitate streaming on Sky+, which stands to reason. Latics are up there in League Two in terms of fanbase, home crowds and away followings. They took more than 20,000 to Wembley in June, which is as good as any benchmark for the size of the overall fanbase. Actual paying customers for home games hover around the 7,000 mark, and Latics away followings are up there with the strongest in the division. You can see why Latics away is a very good proposition for TV executives. There are a limited number of tickets in grounds such as the Wham Stadium, and everyone will want to watch if they can.

Alas, Latics haven’t as yet performed well in these lunchtime games. In their first one – at home to Swindon in mid-August – they played possibly their worst half an hour of football of the season. It was excruciating. They shipped two goals in 20 minutes, before rallying to raise hopes of a point that they ultimately did not get.

Latics struggled in the first half against Barnet and missed three one-on-ones in the second. It’s great that they had those opportunities, and telling that they did not take any of them. They did not do enough to beat Barrow. Three early starts, all at home, and only two points to show for them.

Another theme emerging from this season for Latics is that every game is a learning experience. There is so much to take in for the players, the team, the management, the suits and everyone associated with the club. This is true whether they play opposition they are expected to beat such as Newport County last week and Stanley today, or teams that they are expected to lose against, such as Crewe Alexandra a fortnight ago and Swindon back in August. The results are mixed, but the improvement curve is a gentle but noticeable incline. Whether it will be enough to amount to a play-off challenge is open to question, and every game gives us part of the answer. We’ll find out tomorrow what Latics have learned from their below-par performances in their previous early kick-offs.

Micky Mellon was perfectly candid at the fans forum yesterday when asked about club communications on the subject of injuries. The fact is that he hates telling anyone anything about his team, his squad and his treatment room. Fans might want to know and feel entitled to know, but they’re not – not really. When Alan Jones, the club’s Head of Media, asks about personnel, you get the feeling that Micky has told him in advance that he is prepared to make a tiny morsel of information public.

The big selection question is whether Kane Drummond and Mike Fondop did enough against Newport as second-half substitutes to warrant a spot in the first XI tomorrow. In

his pre-match club propaganda interview, Mellon said that Drummond and Fondop had been able to see from the bench where they could make an impact before coming on – the unsaid part was that those on the field didn’t have that luxury. That points to another 45 minutes at least on the bench for the both of them, but we’ll see at 2pm tomorrow or shortly before.