Just back

That was awful, same as last season, cannot break away teams down, on a positive note, the osmond is miles better than the sterile findus upper

It was loads better  than last season . We’ve signed some quality players who looked very good today .

Loads of positives, can’t remember the last time an opener was a classic. All the signings look excellent. Had their goalkeeper not had a great game and had we been given that penalty, it would have been very different.

Wonder what the Wrexham and Notts County forums look like tonight?

Just seen southend beat oldham 4-0, seems like everyone who was meant to walk their league got pumped

Thought I would take a bit of time to reflect on that .

Eastwood had a really good game , a lot more confidence in him after that , he shanked one kick after quite a poor backpass from Maher I think , but nothing came of it , a great penalty save .

We are obviously going for a more high risk approach at home this season which leaves us exposed on the counter and with a bit better quality The Wombles could have punished us .

The back 4 is quality though  , 4 players all comfortable in posession and improvement on last season . I think we will enjoy Malarkey it will be interesting to see who is the long term RW as that's maybe the one position I am not too sure about - Eisa looked very dangerous , very impressed and on another day the shot that hit the post creeps in . Vernam , although I am not his biggest fan reminded me of his strengths (mainly the fact he can go both on the outside or inside,so  alway leaves  the fullbacks guessing ) but also his final ball weakness .

Conteh is a rolls royce of a footballer and it will be fun to watch him develop as it seems so far he is very much playing within himself (or that's a tactic Hurst wants ) and not getting ahead of the play , which he did effectively at Gateshead in a different role .

Danny Rose was Danny Rose , but we need to get more bodies around him for him to be very effective .

We would probably have lost that last season and we have a point on the board .

Reasonably happy , but still question whether we have the killer instinct to go from an inconsistent  higher mid table team to consistent top 7 or 3 material . Time will tell , but great to be back .

UTM

Quoted from GrimRob

We've been so dangerous at set pieces the last couple of years. Today we didn't look as threatening. I hope this improves as the players get more match time together. Given we don't score that meant goals in open play though it is a concern. Can't complain at the effort shown though and we're still a work in progress.

Horses for courses

Waterfall was(is) our main threat from set pieces.
But Hurst has upgraded with a better cb in general .

I thought the set pieces were okay, looked relatively well rehearsed. Although halfway through the second half, Croft remarked that we are trying new corners as the opposition will have no idea what we do for them and can’t plan for them. Next corner, Wimbledon put a man on the edge of the area to stop the drilled ball and Hunt drills it directly to him! It was as if Hunt had decided they were the instructions he was given and he was going for it, despite the fact they’d sussed it out within 3 corners.

Always difficult to gauge opening day performances and results as there’s so little to benchmark against, but I’m reasonably happy with what felt like a fair point all round to me.

Yeah, it would have been great to have got our home duck out of the way early and smashed Wimbledon to smithereens today, but having kept an eye on the Dons’ business in the window and their pre-season form, I felt going into the game that they would be solid opposition and so it proved.

They’ve got some decent players, were very well organised at the back, constantly getting men behind the ball whenever we approached the final third and looked dangerous on the break. Of all the sides not generally fancied to do well, I think Wimbledon, along with us, are the most likely to trouble the leading pack.

On the whole, I thought we moved the ball better than last season and looked dangerous without ever truly looking like scoring, with the exception of a few longer range efforts which brought out some top draw saves from Bass in the Wimbledon goal. No surprise that the Wimbledon OS led with the headline “Brilliant Bass secures Dons draw”. A glaring opportunity for a fish pun missed, perhaps.

Eastwood too had a blinder between our sticks (and in front of our shiny new black, white and red stripey nets), and his penalty save shouldn’t overshadow his save in the first-half, at stretch and through a number of bodies. He was the pick of the debutants today for me, with Mullarkey and Rodgers not far behind.

To that end, I thought we looked good defensively if a little too last ditch at times, and we did seem to afford their number 9 Davison and Bugiel a little too much space at the back post at times. We were also too slow to react to the fresh pace of Al-Hamadi when he came on, despite an offside warning shot moments before his break through that led to the penalty. No doubt we’ll have been briefed on that; something to improve upon, but plenty of time to do it.

My final observation is that today’s attacking performance didn’t quite do enough to quell my unease that we lack a bit of height up top. Eastwood has one hell of a lofty kick on him, but despite Rose’s deceptive aerial ability it’s a big ask for him to win and make use of high balls against 6ft+ centre halves consistently for 90 minutes. Likewise, we put a number of dangerous looking balls into the Wimbledon box today without ever really doing anything with it. Rose got his head to one late in the first-half but just didn’t quite have the height to get on top of it and turn it into the net.

All-in-all, pretty entertaining as 0-0 draws go, and a score line that is a credit to the two goalkeepers above all else. It reminded me of last season’s draw at home with Bradford, which I rated as the most enjoyable home league game of that campaign. A low bar perhaps, but not a terrible platform to build on.

There will be plenty of more fancied teams than us feeling a lot more disappointed and frustrated tonight, that’s for sure.

Quoted from Northbank Mariner

Shhhhh...I'll correct you quietly...you meant Rogers Rodgers pal...

there you go ,I've corrected you quietly pal .

Enjoyed the game.
Much more forward momentum than most of the matches last season.

Rose definitely won a fair bit in the air but there was nobody to benefit.
I think he could be a top player but we need to get others closer to him.

Agree about the new defenders and conteh. Definite upgrades though we were pretty lucky not to concede, not including the penalty.

Seems like a disappointing result but we are clearly progressing on and off the pitch.

I think we will do well.