GW 9 – Ones to Watch

Matt: Something of a return to form for plenty of players last weekend, with Club 100 doing decent business and lots of you managing to score right through your matrix – a welcome sight after GW 7’s debacle!! An excellent return for me in this section too, with Grimsby Town annihilating poor old Dover Athletic and Falkirk doing exactly what was predicted and finding the net a couple of times against East Fife. If only it was that easy to call every round! We have our second ‘International Week’ of the season taking place in GW 9, with a relatively low amount of fixtures too as League One in England has also been decimated by call-ups now! It could be a really tricky one to navigate, these gameweeks are rarely straightforward. Let’s see what we can dig out…..

• Farsley Celtic v Curzon Ashton.  I’m dipping straight into the National League North being as we don’t often get the chance to do so…..which is probably no bad thing, as this league is as unpredictable as they come! Looking purely at the current form guide, this match should produce no shortage of goalmouth action and visitors Curzon might be licking their lips at the prospect of facing a side who have been heavily defeated for four games in succession. The Nash, by stark contrast, are in excellent form themselves, winning six on the bounce in all competitions, scoring 17 goals in the process. They’ve scored in every game this season too, which is always a good sign…..so let’s hope that run doesn’t end here! They’ve saved their best goalscoring antics for the FA Cup, disposing of both Cleethorpes and Stockton 4-0, but Curzon are solid in the league too, with three wins in their last four on the road helping them into third place in the standings. Farsley on the other hand are having a bad time of it, sliding down the table weekly as a result of not being victorious since the opening day. The Celt Army have conceded a shuddering 16 times in their four recent defeats and that could get a lot worse here! The most embarrassing of those reversals came in the FA Cup, when they were hammered 3-0 by part-timers City of Liverpool, and the Green & Whites followed that up with another loss by exactly the same scoreline at home to Alfreton Town last weekend. A third straight 3-0 loss would not be a shock here, but whatever happens I’m expecting Curzon Ashton to find the net without too much hassle, in their bid to go top of the table.
• Hemel Hempstead Town v Oxford City. Moving from the National League North into the South, but continuing with the away team theme, I’m anticipating another goalfest at Vauxhall Road on Saturday afternoon. Although the home side finally arrested their woeful run of results by winning against bottom side Billericay a fortnight ago, Hemel’s first win of the campaign, they still conceded twice to continue the worrying trend of having not kept a clean sheet in any competition since February!! That is just the sort of stat we aim to capitalise on in TUG! The Tudors have already shipped 21 goals in the NLS this season, including home thrashings by Braintree and Dulwich Hamlet – the latter an outrageous 6-0 beating!! Oxford City will certainly fancy their chances of adding to Hemel’s woe, for The Hoops are the division’s joint-second top scorers on 18. A regulation 3-0 victory over Welling last Saturday saw them move up into fourth place in the table, nicely poised to mount a challenge on the teams above them. City are also another side who have scored in every match this season, plus we had a 5-3 scoreline in Oxford’s favour in the corresponding fixture last season, so all things considered I can’t imagine we’ll see anything like a drab affair here! I’m backing goals for the away team. Good luck to you all!