Sutton take the first public steps towards the 2019-20 Vanarama National League season with a friendly at Slough Town on Saturday, kick off 3pm (travel and admission details here). After a private training game at Millwall on Tuesday, which the Lions won 2-0, this will be supporters’ first chance to see U’s under new manager Matt Gray and summer signings David Ajiboye, Omar Bugiel, Ben Goodliffe and Aaron Jarvis. It’s the first of four games against sides from the National League South, with Tonbridge, Havant and Dulwich all providing opposition within the next ten days.
Slough finished 11th in their debut season at National League South level last season and knocked U’s out f the FA Cup, a goalless draw at the KCS followed by a 1-1 draw at Arbour Park in the replay, and a penalty shoot out of rare quality in which Slough prevailed 8-7. James Dobson’s performance for Slough in those games, inclusing the superb free kick that cancelled out Harry Beautyman’s strike in the replay, saw him move to Sutton little more than a month later, but he will not feature tomorrow having been one of the ten players allowed to leave by Matt Gray during the summer and joining Dagenham & Redbridge. Apart from that Slough’s squad has changed little since those November meetings, with one summer signing being Ryan Bird, Dover’s leading scorer two seasons ago who spent last season with Maidenhead, from where Slough have also signed Max Worsfold.
You can see Matt previewing the game and talking about this week’s signings here, and of course he, along with chairman Bruce Elliott, will be answering questions on Monday evening at the meet the manager evening, which begins at 7.30pm.
We hope to provide commentary on this first friendly of the season on our usual Mixlr site.
