I suffered a lot of abuse as a child. For no apparent reason I’d be taken out of the warmth of my home and dragged off to support SAFC. People claim that the dangers of supporting SAFC weren’t as well understood in the sixties but that is disingenuous – the club knew fine well what the life-long harmful effects were but kept them hidden. Nowadays of course we know that even passive supporting, such as living with a supporter or serving in a bar where there are a lot of supporters can have the same disastrous consequences, bringing on depression and the lack of a will to live any longer.
There has been one beneficial side effect of my early abuse. I can cope with times like this. I go off to a special place in my mind. A place where there are pixies and gingerbread men and it is always just gone half past three on Saturday the 5th of May 1973. You can tell when I’ve gone off to this place because in its later, most dangerous phase I start saying “We must support the lads. It is all we can do.” You might see my body at the matches coming up but you can be certain, mentally I have left this earth for somewhere much more pleasant.
In my pre-season tour reports didn’t I tell you what an impression Davis would make? For crying out loud he was great. In previous Prem games I’d started to worry about his positioning. This time I didn’t get the chance to have such a worry because a couple of seconds (literally) in an innocent punt comes his way but Breen is in the way. He should be screaming at Breen that he’s got it, so loud that the stands reverberate. But he seemed to do nowt. Later on in the half he did a similar thing with Stubbs. I’d moved seats (for complicated and boring reasons) by then and was just behind the goal. I was screaming “Goaly ball” louder than Davis! So you can’t blame Breen for deciding to head it – if you don’t get the shout, you have to act. Anyone who has ever played in a park knows that. But you can blame Breen for doing a soft header going nowhere. And so a hopeless punt was now a dangerous move. But not so dangerous that Breen couldn’t make it more dangerous. He had a clear chance to shepherd the player away and towards the touchline but instead he went for the lunge. Those of you who have seen it on TV might have a view as to whether he got the ball or not. I haven’t seen any replays but thought he didn’t. Either way, if you do a lunge, a penalty is likely to be the outcome. And so, having talked in the pub about having to “cut out conceding early goals” we had achieved more than any of our worst nightmares.
Surely Caldwell has to come in for Breen? We need some mobility back there. We also need Ringo back (is he nacked again) to give the back four some more sensible shape. There seems to be the growing anti-Nyron movement but fk knows what for – he is one of the few playing football. He’s not great (it is no mistake that he was playing for Gillingham last season) but he’s nowhere near our biggest problem at the moment – frankly he’d struggle to make the top 5 in that league.
Yet again we didn’t play with a holding central midfielder. Why the hell not? How can we go from Robinson and Whitley in the Championship to three roving central midfielders in the Prem? It defies logic. I only hope that Basilla can do the business because, if we’re to drop Robinson (limited player as he is, he at least plays the role) we need someone doing that. The closest we got on satda was Miller – FFS we bought him as a goalscoring midfielder.
We need Elliott up front. By a country mile he is our best striker but he is crap out right. We need to shoot Stead. Please. For the sake of my tiny bit of sanity left. He’s not even Tore Andre Flo. He’s down at Laslandes levels of fooling the impressionable that he is a “footballing” footballer, without actually contributing anything. He might turn good but I don’t think I’ll last long enough. He missed the couple of chances we had but my gripe is really with his lack of influence on the game. He does however manage to make Gray look good, so I won’t criticise Gray until Stead is shot.
Nee Lawrence (even on the bench) or Piper. Great- what is up with them? Woods ended up on the left and would have been superb if the pitch had been ten yards longer – his balls would have then ended up in dangerous positions instead of out for goal-kicks.
The bizarre thing is that even after four games and no points, I still do believe (as Mick has told us to). I still do believe Davis is a cracking goaly. I still believe we can sort out the midfield. I still believe we will see Elliott up front and we’ll start scoring goals. I really don’t think we are that far from getting an OK Prem side pulled together. Whether that is a faith borne from what I’ve witnessed over these four games or my teetering grip on sanity slipping further I don’t know. After all, we must support the lads. It is all we can do