Have you ever been to Reykjavik? I have – several times. Have you ever been to Hull? I have – several times. The two places are similar sizes. The people of Hull are socially clumsy and mostly ignorant of the ways of international finance and investment. They also smell of fish. However the people of Hull are Michael Douglas in Wall Street compared to the people of Reykjavik’s Tom Hanks in Forest Gump. The two peoples smell broadly the same.
It used to be the case that large scale investments coming from Reykjavik and Hull were broadly similar (i.e. close to non-existent). And then suddenly without explanation there seemed to be a lot of money in Iceland and they started buying rather large assets around Western Europe. I wonder how they got their money.
On an unrelated topic, in the early nineties communism collapsed in Russia. Some very ruthless people made a lot of money very quickly. However, partly because they got much of their money in “dubious” ways and partly because it was not officially allowed to export hard currency or use Roubles to buy foreign assets, they couldn’t be seen to buy Western European assets. However, go round the fashionable centres of Western Europe and you will come across many extremely wealthy Russians. I wonder how they got their money out.
And so we headed for Eggert Magnusson’s West Ham. I like West Ham and their supporters. They are the closest you get to us deep down here in the land where shandy is regarded as a man’s drink. Therefore I feel sorry that they have effectively become public enemy number one over the whole Tevez affair, the disgraceful behaviour of the Premier League and their escape from relegation. Not so sorry that I didn’t want to beat them mind.
After some welcome Guinness in our usual haunt round here, the Prince of Denmark, we joined a healthy turnout of SAFC supporters (tickets had sold out at the beginning of the week, which was pretty good for a Sunday 4 PM KO). While I had been annoyed after the Arsenal game I was encouraged that Keane was saying similar sorts of things to me about performances being no good – we needed points – and needing to cut out daft mistakes. While losing is never good, it is at least some comfort if you think your manager is taking the team in the right direction. It made a change in the last week from shouting at the TV screen “what planet are you on, you balding ginger twat? You should have stayed in smogland and choked” to give an anonymous example.
To nods of approval from me, we lined up 4-5-1 again. I do think that away from home and against stronger sides this is the best option for us. Some people will use the relative strength of our second half performance, when we went 4-4-2, to dispute this – but I think our strong second half performance was built on getting a grip of the game in the first half.
Etuhu was back in central midfield and Halford was in at right back for the suspended McShane. The only real surprise was O’Donovan over on the right. The combination of his inexperience and Halford’s nerves made one worry – as it turned out with some justification.
We started OK and had a decentish chance within the first 60 seconds. Unfortunately we didn’t then have to wait long for things to go wrong. Halford allowed George McCartney to get across a ball when he should never have been allowed to get any sort of cross. Whether the defence stood still or Gordon should have came it ended up with the ball coming off a West Ham player’s head for a soft goal and us once again being behind in a game. The good news (for me who thinks these things are important) is that the away support got behind Halford and chanted his name. I actually think you could see his game improve – although that might be because we attacked more and he looks better coming forward.
Fortunately we didn’t panic and we stuck to the game plan. This meant we managed quite comfortably to keep the score to 1-0 in the first half.
For the second half the fairly ineffective O’Donovan was replaced by Chopra (who went up to support Jones) while Wallace was replaced by Stokes. This worked much better. We now were attacking the end at which we were congregated so we enjoyed seeing Sunderland becoming more dominant. They just couldn’t cope with Jones and Chopra worked tirelessly. Both Leadbitter and Miller came up in support effectively but I was still disappointed with Stokes. OK, he doesn’t get much of a chance as a striker but we may be getting to the stage where we say “is this kid working out?”
A Leadbitter corner early on was met well by the superb Jones to get a well-deserved goal and a chance to come backflipping over to us. We then had balls pushed by finger tips onto the post and cleared off the line as we looked certain to score.
So what went wrong? Well, on more than one occasion we had passes in midfield (O’Donovan, Stokes and Etuhu being particular culprits) that went straight to their men and allowed them to break. Even if our defence was superb (which I don’t think it is) we’d struggle to contain a team if we keep doing that. On one occasion we allowed them to break, Nos didn’t deal with it well and Gordon got stunningly unlucky. But the actual incident can almost be put to one side. We have to learn that you defend from all over the pitch and you attack from all over the pitch. And above all remember Bill Shankly (paraphrased) “pass it to a man in a red and white shirt”. It really is that simple.
So the table is not looking good and the Fulham game takes on a massive importance. But I do believe Keane will drive out these lapses – and if he does we are showing that we have the talent on the pitch to start picking up points.
John aka Herts
