Terrible Preview: the Mighty vs Port Vale

Goals!

And we're off. Football is back in all its awful bipolar glory and we're all swinging like a mentalist pendulum between ecstasy and angry frustration on Saturday/Tuesday/Saturday again timetable.

The Pool have started well. It's been 'quite good' - some are concerned it's not been 'really good' but that's the Neil Critchley way - if you're 'quite good' most of the time then you'll be reet. Some of us might prefer more visceral thrills but Neil Critchley is employed to win football matches and he's sure as hell going to make sure he can win by trying not to lose and who am I to argue with him?

The proof is in the pudding. I'd like to imagine that were he were on Bake Off, Critchley would produce the same kind of very carefully measured and neat looking cake every week. He'd do well in the technical challenges but the show stopper would lack a certain flair. He'd get to the later rounds. You could rely on him not to let himself down but if you're looking for that moment of high drama when chocolate fingers, raspberry mouse and sambuca are sculpted into a fully functional recreation patisserie of the explosion of Pompei, then you're maybe going to need to look elsewhere.

I googled 'terrible cakes' and this came up. It has nothing to do with the article. There are no hidden scrotal metaphors or owt and I can't imagine Critch inflicting or recieving such an injury, nor, even if he did, being the recipient or creator of an apology cake but it made me laugh so there we are. 

Of course, the reason we love (actually, I don't, Bake off is a weird, twee load of shit, but (bread) roll with it cos I'm not going back and rewriting it) the showstopper is the balance between risk and reward. There's a good chance that the cake volcano is a disaster, the liquor lava bubbles for a bit but the whole thing collapses in on itself and actually, Neil Critchley's meticulously crafted lemon drizzle loaf is the one that has the judges purring in an innuendo filled way. 'Oooh, very impish... cackle' 'Is that a twinkle in your eye Neil, or are you just happy with your baking? fnah...' 'Oooh, greasy paper Neil, very naughty!' 

FFS, this is a low point. 

There isn't a 'right' way to win football games or promotions is what this horrific and needlessly divergent metaphor is saying. I'm not sure how Critch would respond to the flirty overtones mind. Probably with an 'erm...' and then a speech about the group and baking being a process. 

I also think it's almost inevitable that three weeks after this article, the BFC media team will have Jake Beesley and Jimmy Husband in a kitchen knocking up some rice crispy cakes for Gaz Madine and Matthew Pennington to sample and judge and I won't get any fucking credit for it. Bastards. 

THEFT! 

All this (except the bit immediately above which is indulgent shite) is really a way of bringing an essentially existential footballing debate to mind - what is football for? Is it actually just about 'winning' and nowt else?

It's essentially a spectator sport. People pay money to watch it. That's the sole reason it's a professional thing. Most people who watch games have some kind of affiliation with a team so have an interest in the outcome - even watching a game as a neutral, usually you can find some reason to want the came to go one way or another.

The game at Exeter was exactly what I expected from Critchley - it was competent in a slightly boring way. I don't mean that critically. I mean that last year we were a clown car, fuelled by the diesel of disaster, that had run over a landmine of calamity and now we're solid. now we're drilled, now we have shape. That's not to be sniffed at. It was also quite dull.

Lets take it to the ridiculous extreme for a moment.

If we don't concede any goals but manage to score about 35 spread out over a few games, we'll walk the league by miles. Being boring wins stuff. As a kid, I always found Liverpool boring. They seemed like a machine. I find Man City, for all their technical ability and occasionally breathtaking interplay, quite boring because they stifle games, they make them one sided. Critchley is magnificent at killing a game if he thinks he needs to. At times his work is as 'anti exciting football' as any rugged long ball merchant you can think of. Pressing and ball retention works to dull the sharp edges of a game as well as hoofball and reducers on creative players. We venerate the technical, but technicality without flair is robotic.

Fans always say 'I only care about winning' and 'I'd take 1-0 before kick of every week' - it's a macho badge of honour to an extent but if you take that to the extreme, I'm not sure that winning 1-0 when you only had one shot, every week forever would remain a particularly satisfying experience. It would be like having the same meal everyday. That's kind of the ultimate goal of the modern manager. Control a game from kick off and don't concede possession. A goal is in a way a concession of possession and thus the ideal game is hold the ball for 90 mins and score just before the end so the other team don't get to kick off. 

Lads, have a kickabout. I'm off to the golf course and for a bev after. See you Saturday. 442 etc. Barnesy, don't bring your fucking clown shoes. 

Some of my favourite teams weren't actually very good at winning stuff. My favourite ever Blackpool side is the Steve McMahon team. His coaching was, to say the least 'light touch' and the players had freedom. When they used it, it was truly breathtaking. Often, that freedom backfired and you never really knew what you were going to get - would this week be an utter shambles where some shite team would run through you, or would you play the kind of football that honestly, genuinely, no word of a lie, would likely beat almost anyone. Sometimes the same dichotomy could be compressed into one 45 minute period. You'd go 2-0 up (or down) then score or concede 3. It's probably unfair to say Macca didn't win stuff. He actually did, I think he's technically the most trophied manager in our history but we couldn't ever make a serious impression at the top of league 1 and yes, that was down to the tightfisted budget control of Karl to a large degree, but also, you always felt that we were somehow not quite practising the boring things enough.

I remember really wanting Kevin Keegan to make England work. I loved how genuinely excited he was about football. Pep and co, I dunno, it bores me a bit. It's all so studious and technical and serious. Keegan was Macmahon plus. He just got a load of lads and said 'righto, enjoy yourselves' and they did.

They didn't actually win anything. He ended up imploding into 'I'd love it' near tears but Keegan lives on in the memory for sure. Again, you always felt as if Newcastle might be served a little bit better practising boring things even if the sense that training was mostly 5 a side and headers and volleys made you like them because actually, football should be fun.

If you want to be remembered, you need to win trophies???

Compare Keegan with say... Howard Wilkinson. He won stuff. Leeds actually won the league with him just a few years before Keegan's Newcastle prime - but Wilkinson with his functional and highly pragmatic style isn't really revered. George Graham won a bucket load, but arguably names like Malcom Allison and Terry Venables who really didn't get all that much done (but did both possess personal flair and put out teams that played with it too) seem to come up more in retrospect than Gorgeous George. Yes, he had some dodgy shit going on, but Clough hasn't been written out of history in the way Graham seems to be.

Even individual players have that quality. You can combine the medals of George Best, Stanley Matthews and Alan Shearer and get not very many. Shearer played with a magnificent power. He was a raw thrill. Best and Matthews were very different versions of the unplayable dribbling maverick. You can name any number of functional figures whose individual medals outstrip that legendary trio - lets say, Steve Nicol, Phil Neville and Nigel Winterburn.

I don't really know what I'm saying here beyond the obvious weakness in my point above, in that wingers and strikers are more exciting than full backs... . I think I'm saying that actually, in some ways it's not always about winning. That we yearn for shots and scrambles and feints, dribbles, crosses and tight seesawing games. 

It's natural for us to want that. Yes, we have a strange and in many ways unexplainable desire to see our teams win games, but we're there to be entertained as well. We're there for the precarious and the unpredictable. It's natural for managers to eschew that in favour of the things that actually win you stuff. They're not us. I think I'm trying to square Critchball (which evolves, but remains essentially about the same things) with my natural love of the idiosyncratic. I revered Josh Bowler, I passively accepted Ollie Turton. I loved the gawky Gandulliet, I found the hard running Chris Long a bit boring. 

I think that's my problem. I've a short attention span. I want new things now and stuff takes time. Critchley has foundations to build and he's building them. The most beautiful architecture in the world looks quite plain and functional whilst it's still at the level of concrete footings and steel frames. That, relatively speaking is where we're at. Critchley's patience is one his best assets. He'll take his time. Players need that. I just hope we can see a bit more of the elegance and aesthetics as the season goes on. Lets have more of the Derby 50 pass moves but this time, Sonny belts it home. Ideally in the last minute in Horwich to win the game 7-6. Lets have the first half against Burton again and go and get 5. I don't really care if we concede 2 in the bargain. 

Football fans are inherently unreasonable aren't they? I want us to do all the sensible things and yet also be a brakes off, carefree, playful and joy filled football feast. You could say, I want to have my cake and to eat it. I'd be an absolutely horrific football manager. Trust Critch, not me... 

Anyway...

On the topic of Dutch things, that 70s Holland side are another one that won nowt but everyone remembers... 

Port Vale. In my formative years, they seemed quite 'big' - they'd turn up with millions of fans, beat us and sing loads. Both the team and the fans seemed massive physically. Yet, they're not. I suppose it's how kids now don't find it odd that Burnley are a bit of a top flight fixture or that Bournemouth (Bournemouth!) are similar. You assume things are the way they are when you come to it - it's only later you realise it's all in flux. It's kind of weird though, how the mid 90s Port Vale team is very possibly their best ever - they had a similar period in the 20s of doing ok in Div 2 but that's it. I know compared to many our history isn't littered with trophies but we've done alright, we've had our highs for sure. It's not how much you win or how often, it's the sheer quality of those wins that matter really isn't it? 

It'll be nice for Mike to see his lad... 

It's kind of strange that they've never done better than Robin Vanderlaan etc. That feels kind of weird, cos they're not a tiny club either, they're not, I dunno, Stevenage or something. Recent years have been a shit show and they're on a more even keel now - but given almost everyone who've been around for a bit has at some point or other has had a season in the sun or won something, it's odd that they've never really even looked particularly close to doing so. I can't even remember any particular giant killing. They're just 'there' and in an area where all of the teams seem to have a kind of functional, industrial dowdiness, they outshine even the likes of West Brom, Stoke, Birmingham etc in that respect. I quite like them for that. You can't fail to respect a side that still turn out in numbers after more than a century of doing very little. 

It's that dogged and ridiculous commitment that makes football what it is, every bit as much as triumphs and trophy lifts. Being a City or Utd fan is a piece of piss. Vale have been through the wringer. 

I also liked this on John Rudge who managed them for a million years... 

"Though he got his teams to play good football he was meticulous and rather cautious. He thoroughly researched opposition players and informed his players on weaknesses to exploit and strengths to watch out for. He was reluctant to use substitutions unless a player was injured as he believed in the first XI he had selected could get the job done over the ninety minutes. He tended not to lose his temper after a bad performance, and instead Robbie Earle said that he had the "ability to make you feel guilty about playing badly"

I know Critch has become a bit more substituty of late - but doesn't that all sound a bit 'Critch?' - I can imagine him giving it the whole 'I'm not angry, I'm just disappointed' business in the changing room. Shit fell apart for Vale when Rudge left... 

Still not sure what I'm saying but anyway, you don't not pay me for coherent, useful, knowledge filled previews of upcoming matches do you? C'mon the Pool! Fire, flair, fight. Attack. Attack. Attack!!! 

Blackpool 27 - 0 Port Vale (Carey 27)

(But offer me 1-0 before kick off and I'll take it... obvs) 

Onwards! 

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