This is the bit where I say something about the team. Fuck that. We're picking CJ ahead of players like Bowler. What do you think I'm going to say?
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We had two shit shots and they scored twice. The first was fucking Brad Potts because of course it fucking was. The second was a free kick that made Maxwell look like a school second team keeper. Both times their players celebrated with us instead of their own fans which was a classy touch. Lighters and bottles missed their targets. We gave up after the second. I normally try and see the positive, but it was fucking dire. We didn't do much other than hopelessly lump it forward in the hope that something might happen. I don't know what we were hoping for, but whatever it was, it didn't come to fruition. Kicking the ball to where no one is hasn't to date been a noted success in any era of football history and today was no exception.
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This is the bit where I normally give a pithy one liner about how I felt at half time. We were utter wank. They weren't even that good, but we look petrified of their cunning tactic of 'going forward sometimes' and really confused by their defensive strategy of 'tackling us sometimes' - By half an hour in, I started to think about how, last weekend, I went walking and had a really nice time and there was no sense of crushing despondency and powerless mute anger - just trees and birdsong and fresh air and peace and quiet. This season has been horrific.
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After half time we brought on some better players and lo and behold, with good players playing, we played a bit better, but they scored again. They caught us on a break and Husband ended up running away from their player for no particular reason before they slotted it home. At one point Mick went to pass the ball back to us for a throw and put it wide of whoever it was that was taking it from about two yards.
We weren't actually that shit second half to be honest, but the game had long gone and when Yates scored a goal we celebrated like someone in thousands of pounds worth of debt being told they'd got a 500 nectar point bonus. Yay!
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Here's where I do the summing up.
What can I say? We're done. Cooked. Fucked. Gone. Dead on our feet. It's sad. It's pathetic. It's fizzled out. It's like watching the walking dead shuffling round the pitch. Some of the players are like hollow shells of people you loved reduced to braindead husks.
I give up. We're down. It's for the best. It's like watching a pet limping round and wheezing and whining in pain. Put it out of its misery.
Goodbye to the past. Move on. Start again. We've got some ok players but we've tied ourselves up in a mess of misdirection and out of position players all season and we need to skip 75% of what we've got in order to build around the 25% that's worth it because those 5 or 6 half decent players are not getting anything out of this at all.
Anger is an energy, but I haven't got any left to give. I'm resigned to our fate. We could go through all the mistakes we've made this year, but I'd need to stay up till midnight and I just want to go to sleep.
At half time, I watched Bowler, Poveda and Patino warm up. It was the most skill I'd seen on the pitch in ages. In the second half, Patino gave us a bit of calm and vision. Bowler and Poveda some threat in their ability to beat a man. We passed it about. We got higher. We made a bit of pressure. It was something.
Lets be honest, Bowler still looked like the ghost of himself and ran the ball out of play for no reason at least twice and basically Patino and Poveda showed they could control a ball and pass to someone in the same colour shirt but nonetheless, they offered flickers of ability that was light years above what we saw in the first half. We should have scored at least one more when Husband briefly turned into a flying winger capable of crossing with heat seeking threat. We made 3 or 4 decent chances. Rogers ran his arse off and was involved in almost everything we did that wasn't shite. He didn't even play especially well, but he at least showed intent and won the ball and backed himself. I'm not going to even try and pretend the result was unfair though.
This season we've had no idea who or what we are. This game encapsulated that. First half we looked like we'd wandered out of a VHS called 'The best of midtable Div 3 football 1986-87' and then, in the second half, we looked like the players had just decided to try and play a bit and whilst, it wasn't as if we turned into vintage Barcelona, the way we played bore little resemblance to the random hit and hope rubbish we'd wasted 45 minutes on.
Why? How long does it take for us to realise that Jerry needs through balls and that we can't contain the opposition because trying to do that against anyone with any sort of ability at all always ends in disaster.
The thing that did my head in was the gulf between us (fucking terrible) and Preston (not particularly good) was huge in the first half - but it wasn't as if Preston were doing anything unexpected. They started by making quite a few mistakes but we didn't press and hurry them up. We let them hit their stride, we ceded the midfield, despite having left out our best midfielders to accommodate players who aren't our best midfielders and we were incapable of moving the ball between us. Preston moved it side to sideand switched play in a quite predictable way, but that baffled us. We just ran down the flanks and got tackled (because we'd left out the skillful wide players) or lumped it forward and watched it come back (because we OBVIOUSLY haven't got anyone big to enable us to play that way) and gradually got more and more panicked and got worse and worse.
I don't know why it takes 45 minutes of football to notice what is fucking obvious from kick off. I don't know why we keep swapping stuff about constantly game after game, week after week. I don't know why we played a half fit Keshi from the start in at 10 where he's literally never played well for us before when both Poveda and Carey had played that position well last time they played it.
I don't know why, when they're quite obviously bigger and faster than us, we matched them like for like cos that was just basically giving them carte blanche to do what they wanted for 45 minutes because in a straight up battle of physique, we've got fuck all chance.
Fuck Critchley. Fuck injuries. Fuck shit loan signings that were obviously going to leave us soulless. Fuck stupid pivots of direction that undermined any possible identity or progress. Fuck the waste of mercurial talents. Fuck Kenny Dougall corners. Fuck shuttlecock throw ins. Fuck leaving two players back for a corner when your losing 3-0. Fuck appointing managers just because they happen to be free that week and it 'might work out.' We're back to 'fuck Critchley' again in that respect. Fuck punts on players who are obviously crocked, fuck shuffling the deckchairs on the Titanic. Fuck the complete lack of vision and planning behind everything we've done this year.
Just fuck the lot of it.
This season is summed up by the spray of spit that hit the back of my head as someone shouted 'Fucks sake, useless fucking cunt' at one of our players. It was probably CJ but it could have been most of them.
Clean slate. Fresh start. Something new needed. We'll obviously beat Cardiff now and the hope will be ignited again. Hope is agony.
Onward!
Tweet 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
This season we've had no idea who or what we are. This game encapsulated that. First half we looked like we'd wandered out of a VHS called 'The best of midtable Div 3 football 1986-87' and then, in the second half, we looked like the players had just decided to try and play a bit and whilst, it wasn't as if we turned into vintage Barcelona, the way we played bore little resemblance to the random hit and hope rubbish we'd wasted 45 minutes on.
Why? How long does it take for us to realise that Jerry needs through balls and that we can't contain the opposition because trying to do that against anyone with any sort of ability at all always ends in disaster.
The thing that did my head in was the gulf between us (fucking terrible) and Preston (not particularly good) was huge in the first half - but it wasn't as if Preston were doing anything unexpected. They started by making quite a few mistakes but we didn't press and hurry them up. We let them hit their stride, we ceded the midfield, despite having left out our best midfielders to accommodate players who aren't our best midfielders and we were incapable of moving the ball between us. Preston moved it side to sideand switched play in a quite predictable way, but that baffled us. We just ran down the flanks and got tackled (because we'd left out the skillful wide players) or lumped it forward and watched it come back (because we OBVIOUSLY haven't got anyone big to enable us to play that way) and gradually got more and more panicked and got worse and worse.
I don't know why it takes 45 minutes of football to notice what is fucking obvious from kick off. I don't know why we keep swapping stuff about constantly game after game, week after week. I don't know why we played a half fit Keshi from the start in at 10 where he's literally never played well for us before when both Poveda and Carey had played that position well last time they played it.
I don't know why, when they're quite obviously bigger and faster than us, we matched them like for like cos that was just basically giving them carte blanche to do what they wanted for 45 minutes because in a straight up battle of physique, we've got fuck all chance.
Fuck Critchley. Fuck injuries. Fuck shit loan signings that were obviously going to leave us soulless. Fuck stupid pivots of direction that undermined any possible identity or progress. Fuck the waste of mercurial talents. Fuck Kenny Dougall corners. Fuck shuttlecock throw ins. Fuck leaving two players back for a corner when your losing 3-0. Fuck appointing managers just because they happen to be free that week and it 'might work out.' We're back to 'fuck Critchley' again in that respect. Fuck punts on players who are obviously crocked, fuck shuffling the deckchairs on the Titanic. Fuck the complete lack of vision and planning behind everything we've done this year.
Just fuck the lot of it.
This season is summed up by the spray of spit that hit the back of my head as someone shouted 'Fucks sake, useless fucking cunt' at one of our players. It was probably CJ but it could have been most of them.
Clean slate. Fresh start. Something new needed. We'll obviously beat Cardiff now and the hope will be ignited again. Hope is agony.
Tweet 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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