League Two Preview: Crawley Town v Latics

Latics boss Micky Mellon likes to present each game as an opportunity to do something – anything from building on previous success to the righting wrongs.

Latics are very much on the righting wrongs end of Mellon’s spectrum of opportunity after two miserable defeats in the league and one miserable defeat in the FA Cup 2nd Round.

The reaction of Latics fans to the defeat against top-of-the-table Walsall was perhaps overblown (when is anything understated these days?). It was overblown because, in the end, Latics gave their high-flying opposition one unmissable chance via a backpass catastrophe, but otherwise held them. They even had a couple of opportunities of their own and were unlucky not to score.

But matches don’t occur in isolation, and the Walsall defeat comes off the back of a much worse defeat away to Accrington Stanley, who started that game well below Latics in the League Two standings.

Mellon’s team selection that day was eccentric, off-kilter and ineffective. The team showed very little intent to win the game after the first exchanges. There was no strategy, no discernible patterns of play designed to put pressure on the opposition. The less said about the 3-1 no-show in Milton Keynes, the better.

Latics fans are frustrated for two reasons: they reckon Mellon has not started with his best XI for the last three games, and they suspect that he is not sending his team out in a positive, win-the-game frame of mind.

There is recency bias in both complaints, and it comes from the benchmark set by Mellon and his players in getting a draw against a very good Crewe Alexandra side just a month ago, and their second-half performance to beat a poor Newport County side 3-0 a week later.

The transformation of the side against Newport when Kane Drummond and Mike Fondop were introduced as half-time substitutes was stark. The straight lines Latics had been playing in became more complex and ambitious. Fondop competed for and won long balls, setting up attacks. Newport had no answer to Drummond’s pace and quick feet.

Since then, Fondop and Drummond have spent only 30 of a possible 270 minutes on the field at the same time – the last knockings of Wednesday’s game against Walsall.

Mellon is fond of saying that he picks players whom he thinks will win him games of football. There’s no reason to doubt him – he’s guarded and a touch vague in public about his thinking, but never dishonest. He’s closer to the players than the fans are, but there’s a school of thought that it’s better to lose a game by piling men forward than it is to lose a game when you’re being risk averse. There’s an element of the support who see Fondop

and Drummond (and other players) as the solution, and who tear their hair out at Mellon’s disinclination to pick them.

Does Mellon need to get something from Crawley tomorrow? Not really. After last season’s promotion, Mellon has an almost unlosable amount of credit in the bank with supporters and – one presumes – the club hierarchy. The goal aside, Latics were not terrible against Walsall in the way that they absolutely were terrible against Accrington and Milton Keynes.

Nevertheless, supporter unrest, mild and isolated though it currently is, will increase if Latics don’t perform tomorrow, whether Mellon starts with the fans’ preferred XI or his own.