John Akinde
I’ve been cruel haven’t I? You’ve been wanting to see how I handle John Akinde, how I spin an apparent lack of goals from open play positively, There’s some of you out there who are dying to read this just to argue your own points. Before you do, read this again.
Now have a watch of our highlights from the weekend, the instinctive finish under pressure after sniffing out a chance. Done that? Now find the Exeter highlights. Now tell me he’s no good. You can’t.
What I will confess is we’ve not seen the best of him on a consistent basis and that will keep me out of the higher marks. There’s a period of settling down to be done and there’s a need for him to get on method, but John Akinde has always put the maximum effort in. Those wanting to see gut-busting runs in behind will be disappointed with John, because he’ll only do it when it isn’t a lost cause, like he did against Forest Green.
John Akinde has six goals in 19 outings up until November 5th, last season’s leading scorer Matt Green had three in the same period. The point is we don’t always need one player to be bagging the goals, we’ve had 15 different scorers in the league this season. MK Dons have had eight. Just because all our goals are not going through one man does not mean he isn’t doing what he should be doing.
John Akinde is one of our best players, his summer fee was justified and we stand a better chance of being promoted with him playing than we do with him out of the side.
Best Moment
It has to be Exeter away, he was sensational and I suspect part of the negativity is fans hoped to see him run the game like that every week.
Special mention for this weekend though, purely for that ovation. I was delighted for him and as a confidence player it must have been a massive boost. Let’s hope we see more of the same in the coming weeks.
8/10
Bossy’s thou shalt not pass performance on Saturday was as good a defensive back to the wall individual display I’ve seen for a long long time. Sometimes think you put the rose tinted glasses on Gary but generally I don’t think you are too far out with this quartet apart from Andrade. Potentially a 10 going forward but you are talking performance so far. So on that I say a strong 8.
Andrade’s defensive/dirty work v FGR means I agree with the high rating, he’s shown all season he’s got the skill and a huge helping of arrogance to go with it though his decision making is still a work in progress. But his performance for the cause on Saturday showed he’s much more than a show pony.