The Mighty vs Stoke City - A shit preview

It's becoming a bit harder to write a rabble rousing piece prior to a game.

Magic Mick is mundane Mick.

There's been little to grab on to that convinces you that we're actually in a false position and everything is going to be ok. We're pinning our hopes on a couple of loan players that don't get picked and hoping they change everything. Even if they do get picked and change things, you know that one (or both) of them will inevitably get a hamstring injury and we'll be back to square one. 

This season is a reflection of the wider year. It's depressing, the solutions mooted by the people in charge don't seem to fit the situation. It's raining outside and everything is grey. 

*Sigh* 

For fuck's sake. C'mon.

C'mon. What are we doing here? 

For a start, this is football. This shit happens. If it didn't then football would be rubbish. Imagine a world insulated from the possibility of this pain? It would be awful. Last year we finished 16th and skated through the season, more or less on a wave of ecstasy, simply because we weren't going down. That joy that we all experienced, the noise, the colour, the delight is predicated on precisely this. If it was easy it wouldn't feel like an achievement. Think about how good next season will feel having scrapped our way to survival by the skin of our teeth. We'll treasure that achievement. 

Secondly, it doesn't actually matter as much as we might make out. I desperately don't want to go down but lets be honest, there's plenty of things that are worse than being relegated. Go with me here. 

The thing is, I think this is the key to survival. There's two ways a team with less money (and thus, in general a smaller, less gifted pool of players) can survive - one is to try harder and the other is to find some kind of tactical innovation that lets them play in a way that unsettles other teams. I think we've tried the first one - I absolutely don't buy anyone claiming that we've not tried this season. I think the second one is our hope. We need to play fearless football and to use the unconventional players we have to the best of their ability. We've not got the players to play percentage football. We just make too many errors, we can't hold the ball up front, we're literally smaller than other teams. Trying to do so is like treating a dog like a cat and then wondering why it's not responding as we want. 

The fear of losing has permeated our play all season. Being scared of losing football games has ultimately led us to lose football games. The best we've played is against sides where either the expectations have been low or the circumstances of the game have led us to throw caution to the wind. You can see the players come alive when we're trying things, when they're playing as they want to play. 

We've got at least 5 players who I think can hurt the opposition and amazingly all of them are fit. Poveda has technical ability to die for. There was one little moment on Wednesday where he stunned a pass up the line for Yates that was perfection. He took the ball in, he span, he bought a bit of space, he glanced, he shimmied, he anticipated Yates' run and then, with his head down, his lofted an outside of the foot pass to the exact point Yates needed it. It was the only pass he could possibly have played and it felt impossible. That's the point of the lad. Yes, he'll lose the ball, but he'll also do that. 

Yates is an incredible footballer. His effort, his all round game, his awareness of situations. He's a genuinely special talent in that he's got the abilities of a striker but the brain of a footballer and the feet to follow through and make his thoughts into happenings on the pitch. You get the best out of Yates when he plays football with players around him who are giving options, getting into the box and so on. The goal on Wednesday is just one example of this, the goal we scored away at Stoke last year another. There are multiple examples from across his Pool career - he's led the charts in 'goal involvements' (goals + assists) every single season he's been here. 

Bowler - what can you actually say about him that hasn't been said. Even if he has a bad game, he's capable of one moment of magic. He's so direct, so simple in what he tries to do and so reliably (and brilliantly) one dimensional that in a strange way, he becomes vital to the way we can play. He just gets the ball and runs at goal. He's like a weird reverse target man. He just does what Josh Bowler does, time and time again and the opposition cannot ignore him because he's so good at it. Even if he's not influencing the game, he's drawing the opposition to him and making space for others. That the other has been CJ of late... well... 

CJ Hamilton is a better player than Morgan Rogers. See. Look. No one believes that. I've written it down and it seems ridiculous. I can kind of understand why McCarthy looked at CJ's attributes and decided to give him a go. He's fast, he's willing, in full flow he's impressive. I don't understand why, when we've got a literally better version of him, Mick isn't taken by that. Rogers has pace, he's got physical presence, he's got a trick or two and he's direct. CJ, god love him, has his moments, but Rogers just seems to be more decisive, has more faith in his own ability. He needs to play. 

I'm going to also throw in Sonny Carey and I don't care what you think of that. He's been played out of position repeatedly, he's put in a shift in trying circumstances. He's been partnered with a player even less experienced than himself and he's fighting. His numbers aren't bad at all - he has more shots per game than any other midfielder (bar Bowler), his passing is as accurate as anyone else in the squad, he outranks all the above players for key passes per game, he's one of only two players this season to play a successful through ball. I think he's pretty good at football. The first time pass for Yates in the box on Wednesday was remarkably clever, the curling ball that set Hamilton away to do nothing in the corner was high class. He scored, he hit the post, he ghosted into the box for another decent chance. He's extremely good at drifting and then timing a run into the box or picking up the pieces outside of it. He almost scored against Rotherham, which, in the context of that game is practically a hat trick for fuck's sake. As much as anyone, I think Carey is a victim of this season but someone to his credit, whose game has grown. He should never be our 'battling midfielder' - he should be linking play up with others making space for him to do so. Carey with confidence is a tremendous footballer, impudent and intelligent, capable of knitting things together, aware and technically able. We should appreciate the lad a little more, build him up. Get behind him. He deserves it. 

We're at a point now where there's nothing to lose. If we can't give Stoke a game, then really, what's the point? They're the archetype of what we're battling against to establish ourselves at a level we should be at. They're shit. They have been for ages. We can beat them. We don't need to fear them. 

In the time it took me to write this piece, the clouds outside my window have lifted and the sky is now blue. 

We go again. We back them. We back them 100% We give everything. Everything. 

We're fucking Blackpool and we're not going down. 

 

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