I'm not coming with high expectations. I just want to avoid the game ending with all our players in a heap of twisted bodies.
The great thing about preseason is you get to dream about what's to come. The great thing about the season is sometimes those dreams come true. Come on, who didn't say to themselves in a giddy moment 'when Big Ben says 'the budget is available' never mind all those shiny players - I just hope he means we can eventually re-sign a visibly leggy Grant Ward and play him out of position!'
Tonight our dream is real.
---
It's a horrible night but then it's not. The skies clear and it's one of those lovely still autumnal evenings, the promise of winter mixed with the lingering memory of temperate days gone by. Both sets of fans make a great noise. It's warm! I take my coat off!
We start by giving the ball away but then luckily it bouncing back to us about five times. Luck?! Us?! We manage a few minutes decent passing and harrying. We win a corner. It's a short corner. Theo is Theo. Nothing comes of it. I sometimes think he keeps his brain somewhere else other than his head and forgets to bring it to games.
Super Jimmy Husband gets a yellow. The potential calamity rating is raised to amber.
Patino's scooped pass doesn't quite fall. Carey drops a pass short. Our window of opportunity is closed. Boro wake up.
Three dangerous balls, one down either flank and a corner then a fourth, floated from the left. They have the freedom of Lancashire to nod back across and finish. Loose and all over the place, no one putting their name on it, the keeper waving it home. It's very 'us'.
Carey spins but goes nowhere. Carey stabs a little through ball that's stopped on stretch. We manage something that if you squint, resembles a move, Madine winning a long ball, Corbeaneu picking up the pieces and then setting off on the most complex, pointless self indulgent run imaginable, falling over and shooting into a defender. I think maybe he has put his brain in after all, but backwards.
Yates control and with a lovely turn. lays to the Mountie. This time, he takes it nice and easy, he horse trots to the touchline, pulls back and Carey seems slightly taken aback to receive the pass, shooting into a defender when a half yard of intuition would have seen the goal at his mercy.
A moment with the ball. No one runs. Carey races a line. No one passes to him. I look up and. Jerry is at right back. Ward is in midfield. Why? A long ball, from Boro, curling into the corner. It's high, it's falling, still falling. Ward is right back again. It's sliced away like he didn't really enjoy doing that. It's almost as if he's not a right back. Patino strolls about playing genius passes to players who don't exist. Gary Madine is a club shop cardboard cutout version of himself.
Theo has a rubbish shot. We cheer.
Dougall with a crunching tackle. Jerry, a sublime flick, Carey lays a diagonal. Ye gods, a cross! Madine leans in and can't get there but it's *something* We even win *another corner!*
Muted grumbling and a few boos. That little flurry at the end probably saved a louder reaction. It gets better by the week ..
---
Disjointed is the word. It's probably a fairly mild descriptor but we live in hope.
---
Marvin. Oh, Marvin! Where has the Rolls Royce gone? Who swapped him for an old ford Mondeo with dicey steering and a bent wheel? He's dropped it short. He's going to slide and get sent off. Nope... Maxwell's out... Great challenge with his feet. Thank fuck. WHAT THE FUCK???... PENALTY??? LINESMAN!! YOU SAW IT. LINESMAN?!!! LINESMAN!!!! FUCK ME. FUCK OFF. FUCK OFF FUCK OFF.
They score. Obviously.
Theo takes his absurdist art masterclass to a new level by chucking a big tantrum and diving into one of their players after another run to, well, I'd say nowhere, but he seems to be trying to find an undiscovered place somewhere in between the layers of reality with these dribbles, so nowhere is a bit too mundane. A yellow card. They say you can't simulate true randomness, but I reckon if you tracked Theo and turned it into numbers, it would be as close as you could get. This is ridiculously shit. It can't get much worse.
Ward who (whisper it) may not be a right back is also now looking shattered but he gets in a block. The ball pops up. Yates who is so deep I wonder if he might take the gloves at some point hooks it away. Good ol' Jerry. The only issue is, he doesn't actually, instead he slices it at almost miraculously impossible angle towards his own goal where Thompson has a break from giving his winger loads of space to run into by hooking out from under his own bar. That would have been an impossibly mental own goal. I'm almost sad it didn't happen.
Husband goes off injured. Obviously. Maybe one of our players will implode or lose a limb or develop a rare tropical disease before the night is over. We get the bonus ball action of Rhys 'everyone's feel good signing of the summer' Williams.
Patino gives it away on a run to nowhere. Theo is rubbing off on him. Boro take it and don't so much maraud as just, well, move forward. Everyone does an impression of defending, everyone points to each other and then they score. I haven't got the energy to sum up how easy that goal seemed.
Someone carries the cardboard cut out of Gaz off and wakes Charlie from his ongoing fever dream to tell him his night is over. Lavery and CJ come on.
Thommo tackles. He shimmies free. He knock it forward. Dougall digs out a lovely ball. Yates is in... He cuts inside. He falls over. We managed about 8 seconds of competency so that's a thing.
The north looks emptier every time I look. Why am I still here? Sonny Carey. Go on Sonny. He's at least (along with Yates) had the decency to look like he's trying. He pulls out a lovely pass, curling perfectly, sinking beautifully for Jerry. He stays on his feet. C'mon!... Imagine if.... He hits the corner flag.
There's time for a bit of hapless Williams action, for Jerry to angrily shoot wide again and run around like when your mum got furious that no one had tidied up because no one else in this house actually cares!!!! and ran about throwing washing about, banging things and stamping and then, thank fuck, the game is over.
I do my best to be balanced. I often write things about the players that are perhaps a little hyperbolic but I don't care about that because they're my players and it's my team and this whole stupid business doesn't work if your not a bit one eyed and don't get carried away a bit with the good stuff. I don't like slating them. I can't be arsed with pricks that treat footballers as disposable rags to soak their own rage they're incapable of facing up to... but...
There was nothing good to say. I've said Yates and Carey were the least worst and I'm going to stop myself from saying anymore as neither of them were anywhere near it. Sonny at least had some energy and looked forwards and moved and Jerry was just Jerry.
There was otherwise no movement, no guile, no fucking running half the time. We got it. We hadn't a clue, we gave it away. The penalty was a joke, but that's a moot point. At no point did we look even slightly like scoring a goal.
Boro weren't even that good. I don't really remember one of their players looking unusually skilful or dangerous. They just passed the ball about competently (usually fairly simply) looked for space and then fell back into shape and harried us. We just fell to bits and didn't even have the decency to look especially shell shocked.
It was a mute, tepid puddle of cold dishwater with a film of scum on the top of a performance.
I'm going to Wigan. I need hope.
I am out of ideas. We've managed about 90 seconds of decent football in 270 minutes (those mad flurries against Luton.) We've got a squad thinner than a blue rizla. Get a crate of Stella and big duty free pack of L+B and tell Gaz he can have them all on the coach afterwards if he can creak his way round the pitch. Try a fixing remote control on Theo with David Kerslake on the controls. He can balance them on his paunch. Give Patino some fucking red bull. Don't bother defending cos there's literally no point. Tell them they've got a month off and if they don't fucking run about and as the song goes 'get into 'em!' and 'fuck 'em up' like they mean it, you'll get Jerry to force them to drink themselves literally to death because a player who works that hard deserves a fucking team to play alongside him.
PLAY GRIMMY. PLAY GRIMMY. PLAY GRIMMY.
Whatever you do, don't release a telling off to the fan base about right backs.
Deep breath. It's a game. It's FUN!!!
Fuck's sake Pool. Fuck off football.
Onward
Tonight our dream is real.
---
It's a horrible night but then it's not. The skies clear and it's one of those lovely still autumnal evenings, the promise of winter mixed with the lingering memory of temperate days gone by. Both sets of fans make a great noise. It's warm! I take my coat off!
We start by giving the ball away but then luckily it bouncing back to us about five times. Luck?! Us?! We manage a few minutes decent passing and harrying. We win a corner. It's a short corner. Theo is Theo. Nothing comes of it. I sometimes think he keeps his brain somewhere else other than his head and forgets to bring it to games.
Super Jimmy Husband gets a yellow. The potential calamity rating is raised to amber.
Patino's scooped pass doesn't quite fall. Carey drops a pass short. Our window of opportunity is closed. Boro wake up.
Three dangerous balls, one down either flank and a corner then a fourth, floated from the left. They have the freedom of Lancashire to nod back across and finish. Loose and all over the place, no one putting their name on it, the keeper waving it home. It's very 'us'.
Carey spins but goes nowhere. Carey stabs a little through ball that's stopped on stretch. We manage something that if you squint, resembles a move, Madine winning a long ball, Corbeaneu picking up the pieces and then setting off on the most complex, pointless self indulgent run imaginable, falling over and shooting into a defender. I think maybe he has put his brain in after all, but backwards.
Yates control and with a lovely turn. lays to the Mountie. This time, he takes it nice and easy, he horse trots to the touchline, pulls back and Carey seems slightly taken aback to receive the pass, shooting into a defender when a half yard of intuition would have seen the goal at his mercy.
A moment with the ball. No one runs. Carey races a line. No one passes to him. I look up and. Jerry is at right back. Ward is in midfield. Why? A long ball, from Boro, curling into the corner. It's high, it's falling, still falling. Ward is right back again. It's sliced away like he didn't really enjoy doing that. It's almost as if he's not a right back. Patino strolls about playing genius passes to players who don't exist. Gary Madine is a club shop cardboard cutout version of himself.
Theo has a rubbish shot. We cheer.
Dougall with a crunching tackle. Jerry, a sublime flick, Carey lays a diagonal. Ye gods, a cross! Madine leans in and can't get there but it's *something* We even win *another corner!*
Muted grumbling and a few boos. That little flurry at the end probably saved a louder reaction. It gets better by the week ..
---
Disjointed is the word. It's probably a fairly mild descriptor but we live in hope.
---
Marvin. Oh, Marvin! Where has the Rolls Royce gone? Who swapped him for an old ford Mondeo with dicey steering and a bent wheel? He's dropped it short. He's going to slide and get sent off. Nope... Maxwell's out... Great challenge with his feet. Thank fuck. WHAT THE FUCK???... PENALTY??? LINESMAN!! YOU SAW IT. LINESMAN?!!! LINESMAN!!!! FUCK ME. FUCK OFF. FUCK OFF FUCK OFF.
They score. Obviously.
Theo takes his absurdist art masterclass to a new level by chucking a big tantrum and diving into one of their players after another run to, well, I'd say nowhere, but he seems to be trying to find an undiscovered place somewhere in between the layers of reality with these dribbles, so nowhere is a bit too mundane. A yellow card. They say you can't simulate true randomness, but I reckon if you tracked Theo and turned it into numbers, it would be as close as you could get. This is ridiculously shit. It can't get much worse.
Ward who (whisper it) may not be a right back is also now looking shattered but he gets in a block. The ball pops up. Yates who is so deep I wonder if he might take the gloves at some point hooks it away. Good ol' Jerry. The only issue is, he doesn't actually, instead he slices it at almost miraculously impossible angle towards his own goal where Thompson has a break from giving his winger loads of space to run into by hooking out from under his own bar. That would have been an impossibly mental own goal. I'm almost sad it didn't happen.
Husband goes off injured. Obviously. Maybe one of our players will implode or lose a limb or develop a rare tropical disease before the night is over. We get the bonus ball action of Rhys 'everyone's feel good signing of the summer' Williams.
Patino gives it away on a run to nowhere. Theo is rubbing off on him. Boro take it and don't so much maraud as just, well, move forward. Everyone does an impression of defending, everyone points to each other and then they score. I haven't got the energy to sum up how easy that goal seemed.
Someone carries the cardboard cut out of Gaz off and wakes Charlie from his ongoing fever dream to tell him his night is over. Lavery and CJ come on.
Thommo tackles. He shimmies free. He knock it forward. Dougall digs out a lovely ball. Yates is in... He cuts inside. He falls over. We managed about 8 seconds of competency so that's a thing.
The north looks emptier every time I look. Why am I still here? Sonny Carey. Go on Sonny. He's at least (along with Yates) had the decency to look like he's trying. He pulls out a lovely pass, curling perfectly, sinking beautifully for Jerry. He stays on his feet. C'mon!... Imagine if.... He hits the corner flag.
There's time for a bit of hapless Williams action, for Jerry to angrily shoot wide again and run around like when your mum got furious that no one had tidied up because no one else in this house actually cares!!!! and ran about throwing washing about, banging things and stamping and then, thank fuck, the game is over.
---
There was nothing good to say. I've said Yates and Carey were the least worst and I'm going to stop myself from saying anymore as neither of them were anywhere near it. Sonny at least had some energy and looked forwards and moved and Jerry was just Jerry.
There was otherwise no movement, no guile, no fucking running half the time. We got it. We hadn't a clue, we gave it away. The penalty was a joke, but that's a moot point. At no point did we look even slightly like scoring a goal.
Boro weren't even that good. I don't really remember one of their players looking unusually skilful or dangerous. They just passed the ball about competently (usually fairly simply) looked for space and then fell back into shape and harried us. We just fell to bits and didn't even have the decency to look especially shell shocked.
It was a mute, tepid puddle of cold dishwater with a film of scum on the top of a performance.
I'm going to Wigan. I need hope.
I am out of ideas. We've managed about 90 seconds of decent football in 270 minutes (those mad flurries against Luton.) We've got a squad thinner than a blue rizla. Get a crate of Stella and big duty free pack of L+B and tell Gaz he can have them all on the coach afterwards if he can creak his way round the pitch. Try a fixing remote control on Theo with David Kerslake on the controls. He can balance them on his paunch. Give Patino some fucking red bull. Don't bother defending cos there's literally no point. Tell them they've got a month off and if they don't fucking run about and as the song goes 'get into 'em!' and 'fuck 'em up' like they mean it, you'll get Jerry to force them to drink themselves literally to death because a player who works that hard deserves a fucking team to play alongside him.
PLAY GRIMMY. PLAY GRIMMY. PLAY GRIMMY.
Whatever you do, don't release a telling off to the fan base about right backs.
Deep breath. It's a game. It's FUN!!!
Fuck's sake Pool. Fuck off football.
Onward
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