Wigan 0-1 AFC Wimbledon

We are staying up

We told you not to worry.

We were quietly worried.

Then Antwoine Hackford arrived at the back post, did the thing substitutes are paid to do, and the worry was over. WE ARE STAYING UP.

The last few weeks have been a slow, grinding test of nerves.

Form: bad.

Injuries: many.

Mood: anxious.

Every match a referendum on whether this Wimbledon side could find a result when it mattered, and every match for a while now ending with a slightly more strained group chat than the one before.

Then we went to Wigan. We were average. We were poor. We had a red card (sort of) and then for one clean, unimaginable second in stoppage time, we were perfect.

Job done. Safety secured. Bayzo’s candle, lit, and re-lit for the run in, has finally been heard.

The Team

The shape was familiar. Whether it looked like the graphic, as ever, was a matter of interpretation.

The bench was where the day would be decided. Sasu, Nelson, Hackford.

The Match

Wigan started better. Of course they did.

We were the away team needing a result, which under age old football rules means you give possession away, look anxious, and hope.

Stewart had the chance. Through, one-on-one, the kind of moment that decides games. Tickle was off his line in a flash. Save. Arms all of the place. Of course they were.

Then the half’s main incident. The ball ran out of play near the Wimbledon technical area. Terry Skiverton, the man whose job description has historically included the phrase “sort it out,” looked at the ball, and sorted it out.

He punched it. Towards goal. From the technical area.

A straight red card. Of course it was.

Half-time. 0-0. Down a coach.

The second half mirrored the first. The clock ticked. The away end started doing maths it didn’t want to do.

Sasu on. Nelson on. Hackford on. Asiimwe on. The bench emptied like a man working through every kitchen drawer in turn looking for the one specific thing that will fix everything.

Stoppage time. Nelson on the left, low cross. Hackford at the near post. Connected. Bottom corner.

The away end behaved accordingly. Of course they did.

Full-time. We are staying up. And that was that.

What the Manager Says

JJ, beaming, said this:

“For me, this feels up there with anything in football that I’ve done. It feels like it did last year when we won promotion. It’s the same feeling because everyone wrote us off.”

Comparing a 1-0 stoppage-time survival win at Wigan to lifting the play-off trophy at Wembley sounds, on paper, mad. It is, in fact, not mad at all.

You only get those days when the alternative was something properly bad. Promotion at Wembley felt like that because we’d spent ages not promoting. Survival at Wigan feels like that because for about three weeks we were genuinely, daily, going down. The relief is the same currency.

JJ knew what he meant. He’s right.

Womble of the Week: Johnnie Jackson.

A break from format. The Womble of the Week is rarely the manager. The Womble of the Week is even more rarely a man who didn’t kick a ball. But this week, the case is open and shut.

The last six weeks have been the kind of stretch that, in another club’s hands, becomes a sacking. That’s not the Wimbledon way, we do not do that. And JJ has not given anyone a reason to wonder if we should. Calm in interviews. Honest in losses. Unflustered in selection. Uncomplaining about absences.

He has, in the most literal sense, kept us up. The players didn’t crack today because the manager didn’t crack at any point in the last month. That is the whole job, and he did it.

Closing Thoughts

We are staying up. League One again next year. With everything that means: bigger budgets, bigger crowds, harder fixtures, the chance to settle and build and not have to do this again.

This was not a vintage season. It will not be remembered for its football. The injuries were bad, the form dips were hard work to watch, the stretches where we looked nothing like a League One side were real.

But surviving the season after promotion, with a budget like ours, with the squad we ended up fielding by April, is not without merit. It is, in fact, significant.

Plenty of clubs come up and go straight back down. We didn’t.

JJ and his staff get the summer to plan. Cope gets the summer to recruit. We get the summer to breathe.

On to next season. Slightly bigger, if not enormous, plans.

WombleWorld

Robin Bedford has put the away kit on at 30 degrees. The week, he reasoned, has been hard enough on everything already.