Bah humbug! I went into this game in a thoroughly miserable mood with SAFC. The “festive” period had seen us attempt a toothless granny gummy mauling of Palace with a return of 0 points. OK we’d beaten Leeds, which in any circumstances is a good thing, but Leeds had been so atrociously bad that if it were possible to feel sorry for the dirty bastids (which obviously it isn’t) you’d think “god, how could a club get a team that awful?” On the Saturday we’d been justifiably beaten for a second time by Preston. This is a Preston that was weakened(!) by not having Dichio playing and had Tommy Miller in midfield. All they had was two things – organisation and speed up front. Damn cheats eh? How were our static warriors meant to cope with that? My scrooge-like mood had not been helped by Keane saying we “deserved” something out of the game. Is it too much to ask Tony Blair as his swan song to resist following the Texan madman into Iran and instead bring in a perfectly reasonable law to apply 30,000 volts to the testicles of any football manager who utters the word “deserve”? If that is going too far, I’d be content for the law to be restricted to SAFC managers. You deserve the number of points you get given by how many goals you score relative to the other team. That’s it marra. It really is that simple. On Saturday the scoreboard at the end had said we’d had 20 shots. 20! Bugger off. I can remember their goaly working really hard once. It was just like Palace: “attack, attack, attack … err hold on, pass, pass, small dribble, pass, damn – lost the ball”. Get into the six yard box and start swinging your legs around for crying out loud! The thought that my next trip was back up to Lancashire for another drubbing off that lot (this time in the cup) hardly added to my cheer.
Anyhow – such were my thoughts as we pulled into Leicester rather early. Leicester is remarkably close for me, although I never think of it that way. Our game with Leeds is regarded as a match between two geographically close clubs. However, the Sunderland-Leeds game is the same in distance as Watford-Leicester. It is a long shot but there might possibly be someone other than me who finds that just a tad above mind-numbingly useless and boring.
My mood was improved by getting parked up next to the Counting House pub, which we seem to have settled on as the Leicester pub of choice on the grounds of: (a) proximity to stadium; and (b) it will let us in. Two very important criteria. For some reason the lot I was meeting were all sitting down. I am leading a campaign against sitting down in pre-match pubs. My campaign scored a mini victory with most succumbing and standing up as the pub got fuller. A lot of the talk was over who we’d play (anyone fit was the consensus) and who we might get in the transfer window: some exciting and some surprising names being mentioned – including some who were both exciting and surprising.
As it turned out the team was shuffled again but the defence was the last four players left standing that everyone expected – with Nyatanga at last being given a game at centre back (he was better there – although the defence was hardly tested). Bloody Chris Brown was up front. The video “controversy” (if it still is a controversy up home – surprisingly the London Evening Standard is not giving it front page coverage) of our pellet shooting plonker shouldn’t even need to be considered. He should be got shot of for the simple reason that he is crap at football.
The surprises were on the bench. Young Hartley, who NE based lads who see the reserves said was canny (he got a late run out which was nice for him). And Andy Welsh! Well that was surprising – but hardly exciting.
We started defending the end we were closest to (the away section is in a corner at the Walkers crisp bowl). The travelling SAFC support of an impressive 2,500 went a bit quiet until some lads decided they were going to sing “red and white army” pretty much for the rest of the half and everyone rather splendidly joined in. Some arses tried to get some anti-mag chants going but thankfully the pro-SAFC songs drowned them out. I am somewhat ambivalent on capital punishment generally but I can see that for some offences it is justified, e.g. genocidal maniacs and starting anti-mag chants when we are playing anyone other than the mags.
We pretty much battered them the whole half. However unlike against Palace and Preston we actually were making the goaly work. As luck would have it however the goaly was playing a blinder and we just couldn’t get past him. We had switched to 4-4-2 (Connolly and pornboy up front – poor Elliott still out on the wing) and it was playing dividends. This was probably due to Yorke suddenly deciding to play excellently (apparently he had been “poorly” on Saturday when he stunk). Thing is with York if you give him time on the ball he still has the vision and ability to play some superb balls. What he is not going to be is a box to box tackling machine. Leicester foolishly decided to give him a load of time and so he exploited it. Connolly as well was playing way above what he has been – liberated from what must be a frustrating role for him of having to be the whole attack, waiting for midfield support.
However, we got to half-time and it was still 0-0. My “glass half empty” mood kicked in again and I was depressed, believing we couldn’t possibly pound them as much in the second half – and Leicester surely would up their game. Early on second half it looked like I was wrong as the pattern continued. Unfortunately one aspect of that pattern was that we were still not scoring. After about an hour Keane decided to change the personnel but not the formation or game plan with Murphy replacing Brown and Leadbitter replacing Yorke (who was really cheesed off – something I always like to see when a player is taken off – shows the right attitude I reckon). Unfortunately, to me we then seemed to have our poorest patch. It might have been fatigue on the part of our players at still not being able to score or fatigue on my part at watching us still not scoring. However, with the ten minutes remaining mark coming up all that changed. Murphy hit the bar and Hysen was there to knock in a fairly easy rebound. Boy, were we relieved. Just a few minutes later and Murphy was one on one with the goalkeeper. He blasted it straight at the goaly, which was silly. But at least he hit it with enough power that the goaly couldn’t hold it and it rebounded out to a grateful Connolly who capped an excellent performance slotting into the net to end the match as a competition.
By now the travelling support were in seventh heaven. The Connolly song which we’d been trying to get going since way back in early September at Elland Road was now being sung at maximum volume. Boy do we need a hero. I’m not sure Connolly really is that man. But in the absence of any other likely candidates it looks like the role is going to have to fall to him – so, so be it.
I’m still not relishing the trip up to Preston in the cup. But at least we go there with a slightly better league position than I feared going into this game. We are still 3 points off a play off position and we have the hope that (a) we do get some exciting additions in the transfer window; and (b) our season kicks on and we start to close the gap on the promotion hopefuls.
John aka Herts