One of those nights where evening creeps in like an ever darkening blue blanket. It catches the residents of Bloomfield Road unaware. Windows shine with voyeuristic snapshots, picture frames glowing in the gathering gloom, curtains undrawn. Someone watches the wrestling. Someone flicks listlessly through YouTube. An empty dining table. A floral wallpaper in colours more vibrant than nature would ever allow. Headphones on. Weaving through the building crowd. Mark E Smith's words in my ears... 'the reflected mirror of delirium'
God bless his soul.
Critch has done what I wanted in pitching the silk of Dembele against the steel of Nelson. There's also a welcome chance for Sonny. I am happy about both things. That paradoxically makes me a bit nervous because, well, it does. When the manager does what you'd do, it exposes you to the possibility that you aren't actually a football genius.
We'll see...
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Nothing happens. For ages. It's cagier than a cage that's been locked in another cage that's owned by Nicholas Cage and then written about in a song by John Cage. It's very clear that Derby are not here to get at us.
A few things happen. A Dembele turn and run puts CJ away. There's a few corners. Hubby with yet another beautiful clipped ball. At what point he became the world's best footballer, I'm not exactly sure, but he definitely is. A chance! A flash across goal, Rhodes bears down, Curtis Nelson with last ditch touch.
Derby aren't here to get at us, but they don't mind a break. Hubby tidies up when we're all at sea and Grimmy is nowhere. We then contrive to present Derby with an open goal. Dale is the nearest thing to a goalkeeper. His fling does just enough to put their lad off. He hits the goal net support.
Dembele drops his shoulder and crosses. It's a gorgeous ball that we can't do anything with. Rhodes runs on to a long ball and gets a touch before getting all tangled up in limbs and defenders. CJ almost kills a diagonal dead, but it just gets away from him and gives them the chance to get a toe in.
A drone glides over the ground. We're in the future here. The game resembles some kind of stalemate chess that two AI models have been playing. The petrol station you can see through the Northeast Corner is lit up then not lit up. Maybe the oil has run out. It's truly a dystopian world after all. To cheer things up, I spot Gary Madine sat in the south west balcony with someone who looks like a footballer but I can't tell who he is. Then, I think it could be Liam Feeney. It might not be.
This is the level of entertainment on offer, wondering if a fella I can barely make out is someone who used to play for us a while back or not. I end the half none the wiser.
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Yawn. I don't know what I'd do. I think I'd just give Dembele license to go where ever. Him ploughing a striker's birth isn't really bringing him into the game and no one else, bar a bit of pace from CJ is looking remotely threatening to Derby.
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Critch makes no subs. We start quite well. There's an effort that goes one way then the other, then someone (I think CJ) lashes it towards goal. There's a nice run. There's Jimmy making it look easy by just going in a straight line, quite quickly with the ball and putting in a lovely cross. I think it's going quite well.
We get a free kick. We take about 25 minutes to take it. There's a conference, then players walk away, then they come back, then some of them walk away again. Dale and Connolly stand over it. The autumn wind catches the fabric of their shirts. They look like a pair of yachts at anchor on a green grass sea. Then, finally, we are ready. This is going to be something special. A Squire's Gate routine so cunning in execution that it will probably go down in football folklore. A viral clip to be shared on social media. A moment to be envied by all the teams in this land and beyond.
The whistle blows. Connolly steps up... ...and sort of toe pokes it into the one man wall. That didn't go to plan. I'm not sure there was a plan. Perhaps the plan was to pretend there was a plan. A cunning double bluff.
I'm still digesting the free kick when Derby are suddenly on the attack on the left. It's one of those horrible slow motion moments where you can see the goal way before it happens. They've shown almost no intent, but now, they've sprung us on the break and there's an endless stream of Derby players marauding into the box and it's like we've got two players to mark about seven of them. The ball in... smack.. the net billows.
Fuck's sake Pool.
I'm not really sure what to say about the next bit. We huff and puff and Norburn claps at us a lot and we generally knock the ball about quite a lot without really creating much damage at all. Sonny has a shot. That's something. The referee isn't doing us any favours.
Then Derby score again. I can't actually remember the goal except that it was a bit like the first one and Husband ended up punching the turf really quite hard and I thought, 'that's that then' in a way that feels really a bit too familiar
It feels very much like we've wandered into Derby's trap and have, in flailing about trying to free ourselves only instead got ourselves more entangled.
Then, fuck me, we only go and score. Dembele wriggles about and slips it to Kenny who has quite a lot to do but does it and smack, he's recreated Wembley. I'm too far away to see if it's a beautiful finish, or whether it's sneaked through a load of legs and done the keeper, but whatever, it's mad how if you shoot, you sometimes score.
Critch responds to Dembele setting up the goal by taking off Dembele. Classic Critch.
I'd like now to write about how we turned it around with a ferocious display of attacking football, but we didn't. We almost did when Carey hit the bar with a snap header, but the boy's luck is out at the moment and almost as soon as that had happened Derby were slaloming up the pitch, Grimmy was running backwards with a look on his face like he'd realised the brakes on his BMX were broken, Casey was the only player anywhere near looking like a police ford transit van trying to pull over a fleet of runaway Porsches without any backup. As soon as we got anywhere near one of them, Derby just switched it and repeated that until the ball was once again hitting the back of the net with a resounding 'thwump' and Derby's fans were bouncing, dancing, lads on the wall with the camera phone and chanting under that low east stand roof whilst we were shoulders slumping, for fucks saking, walking out into the night air.
That, pretty much was that. We got well and truly done by them. I look over to once again muse on whether it's Feeney or not. Instead, there's just a dejected looking Jake Beesley where Gaz and his mate were. I glance across again and even Bees has given up and gone.
That feels like an apt image to end on.
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This was a masterclass. By Paul Warne.
We had no answer to solidity and pace on the break. My wise neighbour said in the first half 'they'll do nothing till about an hour' - they scored on 57 minutes. I'm not sure that playing Kouassi would have made a massive difference. I think Nelson and company would have probably marshalled him quite well. I think what would have made a difference was a player deeper who scared them by running at them. This was the sort of game that Bowler could turn and that having a player like him, made us more patient. We passed it sideways and back, across and around, but we didn't seem to know how to find a way through. It felt as if we played exactly as Derby hoped and as we put more bodies in more aggressive positions, they just sprung the trap. Warne knows what he's doing.
Derby didn't play a lot of beautiful football, but the clinical nature of their second half display spoke of a rare quality at this level. We kind of probed and hoped for a mistake and didn't really find any. I think we need to be braver with Dembele. I'm not sure why we didn't try flipping him and Sonny or letting him roam. He strikes me as the kind of player who will, given the right role, pull teams out of shape.
Hey ho. We go again. We're not the finished article.
Onward.
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