It was the Loan Watch Xmas party last night and a good time was had by all. I was on a promise, of a sort, with a girl from accounts and boy, did she deliver. She'd promised me that she was going to bring along a pack of 24 special edition Etien Velikonja tea towels that she'd picked up while she was in Belgium recently and she didn't let me down. She let me have them at cost price too, even though I was prepared to pay over the odds. They will make ideal gifts for Xmas, I can't wait to see the faces of my family and friends when they unwrap them.
I needed a bit of good news after surveying the wreckage of Saturday's pitiful performances from our loanees. No wins, no goals. What's the matter with them? They've even got Alex Revell on board now so morale should be high in the dressing room. It pains me to do so but let's run through the gory details.
AFC Wimbledon fans were in buoyant mood before yesterday's home game with Stevenage as Merton Council has given the club permission to build a new stadium at Plough Lane. It was going to take something pretty catastrophic to bring everyone back to earth but Ben Wilson was up to the task. Having embarrassed himself in front of Boris Becker at the last home game he made another costly mistake yesterday as he let a 70 yard free kick bounce in front of him, go through his hands and then into the net to give Stevenage a 2-1 win. The wind played a big part in it and the team performance was poor but it wasn't an isolated mistake from Ben, he had an erratic game.
Newport also found an interesting way to lose their game. After a stunning start, they were soon 2-0 up at Notts County. Tommy O'Sullivan played a full part in a brilliant attacking display that should have seen them further ahead. A couple of mistakes at the back led to a Notts County goal and the momentum shifted. Newport went 3-2 down, got it back to 3-3 and then went looking for the winner. It wasn't to be though, more mistakes led to a 96th minute winner for Notts County. Tommy O'Sullivan and an oddly out of sorts Jazzi Barnum-Bobb were both subbed in the second half.
Crewe managed to trump both AFC Wimbledon and Newport by losing their game at Doncaster having taken a 2-1 lead in injury time. Goals in the 93rd and 95th minute gave Doncaster the win. Semi Ajayi was impressive except for some clumsiness in his tackling, he gave away the free kick from which Doncaster equalised. Crewe had their Xmas party in Leeds straight after the game, I can't imagine how many Velikonja tea towels it must've taken to lift the mood there.
Elsewhere, Tom Adeyemi played 90 minutes for Leeds as they drew at Charlton, Adam le Fondre started ahead of Benik Afobe again as Wolves drew with Forest, Ben Turner picked up a yellow card as Coventry lost at Sheffield United, Deji Oshilaja's Gillingham lost at home to Burton, Alex Revell started on the bench for Wigan as they lost at home to Blackpool while Joe Lewis and Eoin Doyle (pictured) didn't make it off the bench in their games. A shame in Doyle's case as Preston beat Reading, he would've saved Loan Watch's weekend had he got on. Even the man himself couldn't get on the scoresheet this weekend but Lierse scored a late equaliser to draw 2-2 at Cercle Brugge.
Of our former players, Aaron Ramsey scored again for Arsenal as did Javi Guerra for Rayo Vallecano and Guido Burgstaller for Nurnberg in Germany. Guerra now has 9 goals in 13 games, Burgstaller 8 in 17.