Apparently, Mick McCarthy is “bemused” by this result. I flaming hope he is not, because I’m not and I’d like to think he is a better manager than I would be. If you don’t play with a striker then you don’t get goals. That’s it. It really is that simple. In theory we played with two front men, Stewart and Smith but in all honesty both of them seemed to be playing a deepish role behind the front two strikers – except we didn’t have two strikers. I know lonely kids are meant to have imaginary friends but our so-called forwards now have imaginary strike partners. It wouldn’t be so bad if they had the same imaginary strike partners that they are playing behind but they seem to have two each. Gordon Bennet, Everybody these days wants to be Teddy Sheringham when what we need is Pop Robson or Stan Cummins. Good old Pop – a striker who knew where to play football – he used to hyperventilate if he could see the penalty spot between him and the goal – the dimensions of a football pitch for him consisted of the six yard box. Guess what? The little bugger used to have balls bounce off him all the time – and a lot of times they’d go straight into the net. Pop actually was a canny footballer ‘n ‘all but he knew his job. Marcus Stewart is a canny footballer but he seems to want to be a midfield creator – for who, yer eejit? Next game I’d either drop him or tell him if he leaves the six yard box I’m going to run on and chop his flipping legs off. The only reason he should be anywhere other than heavy petting with the goalie is the offside trap – so you trot out with the back four and then trot back in with them – under no circumstances do you go looking for the ball – if the ball doesn’t come into the six yard box, it is nothing to do with you, just leave it.
Oops sorry this is meant to be a report, isn’t it. Well you know what happened. Kyle was injured so we played with Smith and Stewart “up front”. We absolutely tonked them for the first half. Wright was at Right Back and I thought had a good game (although there were still those who thought the way to encourage him was to shout at him how shite he was). Arca was a little quiet by his standards but still created enough trouble for the Crewe right side. Quinn was over on the right wing and had a decent first half. Downing was on the left and I’ll come to him shortly. Healy and Whitely were in central midfield (being pushed back by our two strikers!). Whitley I thought had a very good game. He is to the first division what Alex Rae was to the premier for us. A decent player who may only just be at this level but easily makes up for it by his hard work and commitment. I just can’t not like a player who manages to give the impression that he is as committed on the pitch as we are in the stands and Whitley sure shows commitment. Healy I think is disappointing. You can see that he has the ability but he is just not adapting his game to playing alongside Whitley. As the better technical player he should be able to do that.
Even as the second half started, I still thought “we are going to murder this lot”. It was making the Gillingham game look as if it had been really difficult. But then we gave a display of how many different ways we could concede goals. Breen was out and it has to be said that McCartney is only half the player when he doesn’t have Breen around to hold the defence together (exactly why is McCartney captain when Trigger and Thirwell are out, rather than Breen?). Jockie is a canny lad but his legs have gone. Their first goal was very sneaky – they pumped the ball into the box and their big striker jumped up and headed it in. I ask you – how unsporting can you get? I’m not convinced we had a defence because no-one went up with him – maybe they thought one of Smith’s or Stewart’s imaginary strike partners had dropped deep and he would challenge for the high ball. So we had the high ball into the box – then we had the quick through ball. To cap it off we showed the failing to clear a ball in your own box from a set piece. Diabolical. Then lots of people went home and we sat sullenly. Michael Proctor came on for 20 minutes to shout “look at me, I have no more idea about scoring than those two”.
Quick word about Downing. I know he was excellent against WBA and Gillingham but he was awful against Coventry. Against Crewe, he had the misfortune to play right in front of us in the second half by which time everyone’s head had dropped. Nevertheless he gave the sort of performance that gives shite a bad name. He was clueless, spineless and passionless. Frankly he was also just no good at football. If that is an indication of how he is going to play, we should get Bally to nack him on the training pitch and then make him walk back down the A19. Good riddance to him.
Actually, things are not all doom and gloom. Let’s get back to the first half. We did tonk them and with a striker playing as a striker, we could have been out of sight. Neither Stewart nor Smith are necessarily bad players – Mick Mac needs to tell one of them to hug the six yard box and the other that his job is to get into the 18 yard box whenever possible. We probably need to bring Thirwell back in. Bizarrely for me, given my earlier views on Whitely, I’d be tempted to drop Healy. We desperately need Breen back. Our three most creative players, Oster, Thornton and Piper were all out but two of them will be back soon. To me we still look a much, much better side than I thought we’d be at the start of the season. If we can sort out this putting it in the back of the net stuff then we should still make the play-offs and have as good a chance as most of getting an automatic spot.
As we were coming out, I bumped into Roger, the supreme galactic overlord of “Ready To Go”. I’ll finish with a quote from him: “You can see why Kyle gets his place”.