By Cowshed Fred
So, after weeks without any meaningful football, the league season is upon us and I’m going to try and keep a watchful eye over proceedings and see who the movers and the shakers are in League 1 throughout the season. This week throws up plenty of early goals and a few late sending offs, plus one shock result.
The result of the day has to go to Accrington Stanley who surprised everyone by putting highly rated Posh to the sword 2-0 with a couple of great goals thrown in for good measure, and this despite Posh dominating the possession and having more than double the efforts on goal than Stanley did, and knowing how much we like the London Road lot you can’t help but have a sly smile to yourself, but it’s just occurred to me that Peterborough are no strangers to a sloppy start to the season.
We of course ended honours even with Doncaster and Martin Atherton covered that in his superb match report Saturday night, if you haven’t seen it yet, check it out.
Former Don Alex Gilbey provided his first assist of the season against newly promoted Crewe, as Charlton won 2-0 on the road.
Another team touted for a big season are Portsmouth but they played out a dull 0-0 display against Shrewsbury, the Shrews ending up with ten men at the final whistle after Aaron Pierre was given his marching orders for a second yellow card offence.
Newly promoted Swindon Town got off to a good start beating relegation favourites Rochdale 3-1, but it’s hard to read too much into this, nobody knows at this stage how good Swindon and equally how bad Rochdale are, Dale could easily be this season’s whipping boys.
Our opponents next weekend the neatly labelled the “New Look” Lincoln City got off to a sound start beating last season’s playoff finalists Oxford United 2-0, which won’t please our former boss Robbo, who must have been further angered having Robert Atkinson shown a straight red in the 94th minute.
Another one of the promoted teams Plymouth Argyle also got off on the right foot with a 1-0 home win against Blackpool, Luke Jephcott scoring after just 3 minutes for the hosts.
Another team hitting the back of the net after just 3 minutes were Hull City who join us from the Championship on what they believe to be a season long loan. They wrapped up victory on the road against Gillingham 2-0 with John Magennis securing all three points.
One of the fancied teams Sunderland partly saved their blushes for a disastrous home defeat on the opening day against Bristol Rovers with it ending up 1-1. Another 3rd minute goal got Rovers off to a great start, this time from the spot courtesy of Luke Leahy, and it took Sunderland until the 82nd minute to restore parity, Chris Maguire scoring, and yet another late red card offence with George Dobson getting his marching orders for Sunderland.
AFC Wimbledon and Northampton Town fought out an exciting 2-2 draw, which in honesty tells us nothing about these two teams. AFC scored after just 20 seconds, Ethan Chislett finding the back of the net, but Warburton levelled in the 19th minute. Guinness-Walker again put AFC in front, but parity was restored shortly after with a goal for Korboa, the talented Joe Pigott with two assists for AFC.
Fleetwood Town also got off to a good start in their League 1 campaign after a solid last season with a 2-1 over Burton Albion, and I’m sure the most pleasing aspect for Dons fans about this game is that the popular former Cobblers player John-Joe O’Toole received his marching orders in the 96th minute for what the BBC described as a reckless challenge, well that’s a surprise.
Two likely candidates for League 1 greatness, Ipswich Town and Wigan Athletic battled it out in the only game on Sunday, in a close affair Ipswich ran out the winners 2-0 to pile on more doom and gloom on Wigan who can’t catch a break right now.
See you next week.
