Our latest AFC Wimbledon writer Charlie James starts his weekly column asking a very pertinent question...

We're about a third of the way into the season, and it's becoming clear that some familiar demons are yet to be exorcised.

Our frustrating habit of failing to beat struggling sides is worse than ever, with Saturday's loss at Northampton meaning we've taken just three points from six games this season against teams in the bottom half of the table.

It's not easy to work out the cause of this bizarre record: excellent performances against high-flyers like Shrewsbury, Burton and Bury suggest that we're not a fundamentally poor side.

One theory is that we're simply incapable of breaking down a team that has set themselves out to defend. 

It's certainly seemed to be the case that we're more comfortable against those that take the game to us, playing passing football.

But that explanation doesn't account for performances like the one on Saturday - a scarier sight for Dons fans than anything Halloween had to offer the day before.

Northampton dictated the pace of the game and dominated from start to finish, despite their awful form.

They outmuscled us in the middle and outpaced us out wide - we looked bereft of ideas, a totally different side to the one that have given such a good account of themselves at times this season.

So is the problem psychological? We've got a team full of players who are used to success, perhaps we're guilty of underestimating the ability of lower-placed sides.

It could be even simpler than that: maybe our record against the strugglers is now so dire that the players go into such fixtures expecting defeat.

You'd like to think that many of our players are too experienced to be unnerved by mental gremlins, but there seems to be no other explanation for our baffling inconsistency.

Ultimately, there's no obvious quick-fix to remedy our troubles against the division's bottom-dwellers.

The onus is on Neal Ardley and his coaching team to find a way to bring about a change of fortunes - we need to trust them to do their job, and they need to repay our faith.

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