Tuesday was rank. It was like getting up the morning after the night before and putting your foot in a pool of your own vomit.
The question is - was it the result of a manager who has lost his way or the inevitable outcome of an injury and illness crisis that has stripped the team (and indeed the coaching staff) of energy, belief and (quite literally) health?
I don't know. I do know that anything resembling Tuesday is unacceptable and we have to play a braver and more aggressive game because we couldn't defend against a kitten with a ball of string, let alone an actual football team of big grown men who regularly practice kicking a ball towards a goal.
In short - let's just fucking attack instead. I like the chaotic, aggressive Appleton team. I don't like the baffled, clueless turgid one.
Wigan is litter and pigeons. Wigan is memories. Ghosts outlined in vape smoke silhouette. Wigan is changed. Wigan is a constant. Wigan is the smell of the market hall unaltered since studs clattered along narrow corridors at Springfield and Central Parks. Wigan are getting beaten, battered and bruised because today. We. Will. Turn. Up.
We will.
Wigan is litter and pigeons. Wigan is memories. Ghosts outlined in vape smoke silhouette. Wigan is changed. Wigan is a constant. Wigan is the smell of the market hall unaltered since studs clattered along narrow corridors at Springfield and Central Parks. Wigan are getting beaten, battered and bruised because today. We. Will. Turn. Up.
We will.
---
We're feisty, we're fighting. Lavery is on fire, their defence is pissing themselves. Allez, Allez, Allez. Super Gaz takes it in and smacks it just wide. He's a goal machine. We're here. We've turned up. I love this.
The first 20 minutes are good. It's scrappy but we're doing ok. It's intense. I enjoy it. My mind wanders for a moment and then... what the fuck???? MARVIN IS GETTING SENT OFF??? WHAT IS THIS SEASON WHERE IN REFS JUST HAVE IT IN FOR US. NO. HONESTLY. SERIOUSLY. THIS REF HAS LET EVERYTHING GO AND BEEN ALL 'HEY, THIS IS A PHYSICAL GAME, BY ALL MEANS PUT A CHALLENGE IN LADS' AND THEN NOW, HE'S SHOWING A STRAIGHT RED FOR A CLUMSY MOMENT THAT IS AT MOST A YELLOW IN EVERY SINGLE OTHER MOMENT EVER EXCEPT THIS ONE.
FUCK OFF. FUCK OFF. FUCK OFF. FUCK OFF. FUCK OFF.
I am not ok with this.
Come on the Pool! Lavery races down the middle. Shayne is really good when he's like this. We're fighting for everything. Charlie Patino. He knew the place to go. I can't decribe the game because the game is just turmoil and that's credit to us. We're making it thus.
Maxwell gets a knock. It's sad, but when Grimshaw warms up, there's a little surge of optimism. He continues.
A ball. Madine. Control. Beautiful. It's like he's magnetic when he's like this. Another ball. Madine. Control. Rolls his man. Absolutely leathers the shit out of it and nearly breaks the net. YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS.
We're feisty, we're fighting. Lavery is on fire, their defence is pissing themselves. Allez, Allez, Allez. Super Gaz takes it in and smacks it just wide. He's a goal machine. We're here. We've turned up. I love this.
The first 20 minutes are good. It's scrappy but we're doing ok. It's intense. I enjoy it. My mind wanders for a moment and then... what the fuck???? MARVIN IS GETTING SENT OFF??? WHAT IS THIS SEASON WHERE IN REFS JUST HAVE IT IN FOR US. NO. HONESTLY. SERIOUSLY. THIS REF HAS LET EVERYTHING GO AND BEEN ALL 'HEY, THIS IS A PHYSICAL GAME, BY ALL MEANS PUT A CHALLENGE IN LADS' AND THEN NOW, HE'S SHOWING A STRAIGHT RED FOR A CLUMSY MOMENT THAT IS AT MOST A YELLOW IN EVERY SINGLE OTHER MOMENT EVER EXCEPT THIS ONE.
FUCK OFF. FUCK OFF. FUCK OFF. FUCK OFF. FUCK OFF.
I am not ok with this.
Come on the Pool! Lavery races down the middle. Shayne is really good when he's like this. We're fighting for everything. Charlie Patino. He knew the place to go. I can't decribe the game because the game is just turmoil and that's credit to us. We're making it thus.
Maxwell gets a knock. It's sad, but when Grimshaw warms up, there's a little surge of optimism. He continues.
A ball. Madine. Control. Beautiful. It's like he's magnetic when he's like this. Another ball. Madine. Control. Rolls his man. Absolutely leathers the shit out of it and nearly breaks the net. YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS.
All goals are great goals, but Gary goals...You know the drill. My head is pounding. That was sensational. This is the opposite of Tuesday.
We keep it going. Super Gaz then tries to score an even more ridiculous goal. He should have put Lavery in, but in this mood, you feel he might actually score a stupid 35 yard chip, even if it ends up halfway up the stand.
---
That was decent. More. You'd not know we had ten men.
---
We keep it going. Super Gaz then tries to score an even more ridiculous goal. He should have put Lavery in, but in this mood, you feel he might actually score a stupid 35 yard chip, even if it ends up halfway up the stand.
---
That was decent. More. You'd not know we had ten men.
---
What we get is 45 minutes of defending. Madine was at his best first half but he's a distant stiff and tired island for the next 45. It's like he's seized up over half time. We shouldn't let him sit down in the dressing room. Kerslake should be spraying him with WD40. I can almost literally hear him creaking throughout the half. He's there, but not there and, as a result Wigan just come at us.
A corner that isn't a corner. Mclean. HOW IS THAT A GOAL? What is this season? What is it?
Every calamity that can happen seems to happen to us. 9 men. Players knocked out by the ball. Injured players getting reinjured. Subs replacing injured players getting injured, an endless domino trail of more and more ridiculously piss weak goals we concede and now we concede DIRECT FROM A FUCKING CORNER LIKE WE'RE UTTER SHITE.
I can't even shout at them. I don't know. What good will getting angry do? The ball just went in. I don't think there's any way to explain it better. It was fucking ridiculous. I feel as if I've got a slow puncture and all of the fizzing energy of the first half is just draining away. The chants don't stick. The noise isn't the same.
Wigan do more attacking. Tilt heads wide. They attack some more. We get a break eventually and then they attack a bit more. We look knackered. Madine is holding his side. He's running like he's 55. We can't take him off because we need to defend corners and now we're absolutely tiny as a team. This is horrible.
I start to think we're going to get away with it. We've done really well. We've got the most ridiculous side ever for a game like this, with two lightweight flair types in midfield, a striker who can't run, a lad at centre back who isn't a centre back and a keeper who randomly just lets things go in.
We've repelled them. The pressure seems to ease a bit. 'When you think about it, they've not actually got hardly anything on target have they?' says someone behind me. It's a fair point.
They sling a ball into the box. About 4 of their players seem to head it all at once. They score. It's Tilt. Of course it is. Everything collapses. I hit the seats in front of me in fury at the universe. The universe just springs back into place in a plasticy moulded way. It doesn't care. Actually, no, it does. It's got it in for us.
It's all turned very sour. CJ comes on. If CJ is the great hope then fuck me, I am going to live in a bunker for the rest of the year. We don't even look like getting out of the corner by our goal, let alone anywhere near theirs.
Things are not rosy.
The whistle goes.
---
I hated today because there was a lot to applaud about the application of the players but we got fuck all and we had a perfect chance to take points against a side who were clearly not very good that went up in smoke in the usual ridiculous manner that puts you in the kind of mood to break things.
We can talk about luck and stuff, but patterns are apparent and patterns are hard to break. Why are we not playing the better keeper? How are we still so reliant on Madine? I don't need to say that the boy walks on water as far as I'm concerned but the notion that he can play all week every week, come what may is ridiculous. He's a 32 year old striker who is carrying a career's worth of knocks with him. Why is he the key player? How is that even possible still? I genuinely think we left him on because he's good at defending crosses, which is an indictment of how bad the actual defence is at defending crosses.
How does a squad that possesses 11 senior players capable of playing central midfield (count them, it does) end up with two incredibly raw attacking footballers with about 20 league starts combined having to do a defensive shift for 75 minutes because no one else can play? They did really well at it, considering their preferred game is anything but that - I'm not slagging Carey or Patino in the slightest, it's just weird as fuck.
Why do we have players on the bench that the manager palpably doesn't trust enough to let them play football. Why are they fucking there then? How did they get there? Why don't we just put some random tramps on the bench and pay them a tenner to sit there and drink meths instead of paying some people thousands to not play? How does this happen, when apparently we have a big team of boffins in white coats with computers and videos getting on with 'recruiting' and yet, for free, I reckon, in five minutes, I could have looked at the squad and gone 'it's quite imbalanced' and 'there's not a lot of experience is there?' and 'should we try and sign some players who actually want to come?' and 'I'm not sure Gary can play all the time' and other such searing deep level data led insights. Honestly, I will do it for the love of it. Any of us would. That's why it fucking hurts.
A corner that isn't a corner. Mclean. HOW IS THAT A GOAL? What is this season? What is it?
Every calamity that can happen seems to happen to us. 9 men. Players knocked out by the ball. Injured players getting reinjured. Subs replacing injured players getting injured, an endless domino trail of more and more ridiculously piss weak goals we concede and now we concede DIRECT FROM A FUCKING CORNER LIKE WE'RE UTTER SHITE.
I can't even shout at them. I don't know. What good will getting angry do? The ball just went in. I don't think there's any way to explain it better. It was fucking ridiculous. I feel as if I've got a slow puncture and all of the fizzing energy of the first half is just draining away. The chants don't stick. The noise isn't the same.
Wigan do more attacking. Tilt heads wide. They attack some more. We get a break eventually and then they attack a bit more. We look knackered. Madine is holding his side. He's running like he's 55. We can't take him off because we need to defend corners and now we're absolutely tiny as a team. This is horrible.
I start to think we're going to get away with it. We've done really well. We've got the most ridiculous side ever for a game like this, with two lightweight flair types in midfield, a striker who can't run, a lad at centre back who isn't a centre back and a keeper who randomly just lets things go in.
We've repelled them. The pressure seems to ease a bit. 'When you think about it, they've not actually got hardly anything on target have they?' says someone behind me. It's a fair point.
They sling a ball into the box. About 4 of their players seem to head it all at once. They score. It's Tilt. Of course it is. Everything collapses. I hit the seats in front of me in fury at the universe. The universe just springs back into place in a plasticy moulded way. It doesn't care. Actually, no, it does. It's got it in for us.
It's all turned very sour. CJ comes on. If CJ is the great hope then fuck me, I am going to live in a bunker for the rest of the year. We don't even look like getting out of the corner by our goal, let alone anywhere near theirs.
Things are not rosy.
The whistle goes.
---
I hated today because there was a lot to applaud about the application of the players but we got fuck all and we had a perfect chance to take points against a side who were clearly not very good that went up in smoke in the usual ridiculous manner that puts you in the kind of mood to break things.
We can talk about luck and stuff, but patterns are apparent and patterns are hard to break. Why are we not playing the better keeper? How are we still so reliant on Madine? I don't need to say that the boy walks on water as far as I'm concerned but the notion that he can play all week every week, come what may is ridiculous. He's a 32 year old striker who is carrying a career's worth of knocks with him. Why is he the key player? How is that even possible still? I genuinely think we left him on because he's good at defending crosses, which is an indictment of how bad the actual defence is at defending crosses.
How does a squad that possesses 11 senior players capable of playing central midfield (count them, it does) end up with two incredibly raw attacking footballers with about 20 league starts combined having to do a defensive shift for 75 minutes because no one else can play? They did really well at it, considering their preferred game is anything but that - I'm not slagging Carey or Patino in the slightest, it's just weird as fuck.
Why do we have players on the bench that the manager palpably doesn't trust enough to let them play football. Why are they fucking there then? How did they get there? Why don't we just put some random tramps on the bench and pay them a tenner to sit there and drink meths instead of paying some people thousands to not play? How does this happen, when apparently we have a big team of boffins in white coats with computers and videos getting on with 'recruiting' and yet, for free, I reckon, in five minutes, I could have looked at the squad and gone 'it's quite imbalanced' and 'there's not a lot of experience is there?' and 'should we try and sign some players who actually want to come?' and 'I'm not sure Gary can play all the time' and other such searing deep level data led insights. Honestly, I will do it for the love of it. Any of us would. That's why it fucking hurts.
I don't know. I'm hungover. The players deserved better from that. I hate this season.
Onward.
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Onward.
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You can follow MCLF on facebook or Twitter or use Follow.it to get posts sent to your email If you appreciate the blog and judge it worth 1p or more, then a donation to one of the causes below which help kids and families in Blackpool would be grand.
Home-Start Blackpool Food Bank
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