Is this the least Christmassy Christmas since the one before the original manger/Herod/gift and wisdom bearing lads in bunches of 3 scenario? Is it just me, or is there something missing? I can't put my finger on it, but I've never felt less festive.
Christmas this year is drizzle, more drizzle, some drizzle and anticlimactic shopping trips where you get to town and realise it's still drizzling and then remember the last decent shop closed 3 years ago, therefore unless you want a charity shop or some vape liquid, you'll have to go home and order Christmas off the internet.
Christmas football has a potential to be anticlimactic too. I hope it isn't. I'd like an early gift of a Kenny Dougall present and correct on the team sheet playing the role of a gnarly and sturdy trunk of an attacking Christmas tree style front 7. I guess that makes Jake Beesley the star of Bethlehem on the top. Why not. Lad works hard. Might as well be.
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King Kenny is absent. Hmmm. It's tempting to catastrophise about him leaving, but I suppose we also should consider it might be possible that things are not ok in Kenny's world. Either way, I don't like it. The prison guard is in for him. He never shoots you know...
We start pretty well. The little genius is at the heart of everything good. First, he's wriggling free in the centre circle then he's darting and bobbing forward, he's shaping to shoot, and now he's just flowing like mercury past the defenders block instead, now he's actually shooting and the ball is skipping off the turf into the keeper's gloves. We're on our feet, pounding our hands together in appreciation of his intent. If the shot was a bit tame, the run was wild...
Now, he's taking a pass from Beesley and he's cutting inside, if he held on to it above, he's letting fly early this time and a viscous effort is tipped wide by the keeper and again, the ground is up as one for this most singular of players.
He's scooping a pass, it's up, it's over, it's dropping and it put Rhodes free, the angle is acute, but the keeper is drawn and if Rhodes is anything, he's made to exploit a moment like this and he does, driving it firmly towards the far corner. It's hacked away but we win it back and then, it's 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 passes to work it back round to a shooting position again but for fucks sake Pool, we give it away and it looks like the moment is gone, until, that is, Norburn wins it back, the ball breaks nicely for him and as the crowd takes a breath in, to implore him to shoot and I'm visualising him just turning and laying it sideways cos that's what he always does... Norburn is shooting and the ball is rocketing into the absolute top corner, swirling away from the keeper and thumping into the net with a beautiful resolution.
YESSS! It's a glorious hit. Superb goal. You won't see a better, more cleanly hit, satisfying shot for the rest of this year. We deserve it. Norburn probably needs it and everything is good with everyone. His celebration is vaguely threatening. Good lad Ollie.
Right. Lets go again. We've dominated, so lets get a few more...
A corner for Bristol Rovers. It's about the first thing they've done all game. In it comes. What is going on? Grimmy is diving like a man who's suddenly realised his left his handbrake off on a hill desperately trying to get back into a car that's already rolling away at speed. Now they're running away celebrating. I think they've actually scored. In fact, it appears they definitely have. What the fuck happened there? Fucking hell 'Pool. This is us in a nutshell. We've just played about 30 mins of really good football, made multiple chances, are obviously better than them and it's 1-1 cos of a shitty goal we just gave them for free.
C'mon Pool. C'mon. A lovely ball from Carey puts Hamilton in. He slams it the wrong side of the post. A free kick. The wee lad is over it with Sonny. Carey stutters and steps away, Dembele crafts a beautiful lifting, dipping, curling effort that hits the top of the bar with the keeper nowhere near it. Heads in hands.
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This has been the season in a nutshell. We should have more than we do but we don't.
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We're off immediately, putting pressure on them. It looks as if our first attack has broken down when their keeper clears weakly, Dembele controls beautifully (can we just mention how good his control is? - it's got to the point now, where I've stopped noticing how well he takes the ball in as his first touch is so consistently magnetic) and then quickly kind of deliberately scuffs a filthy low chip to Beesley, whose control isn't quite what Karamoko's is, but who nonetheless takes it down nicely, then, pivoting like a large crane on a building site turning with a heavy load, bounces the ball into the corner of the goal. YES!
I didn't expect that to come so quickly.
Beesley has impressed me of late. He's run hard, he's closed down, he's won headers and he's generally played really well for the team. He's getting closer to his centre back and making things more difficult for them. Today he had an absolute unit to play against and he did it intelligently. He's not going to win 'most aesthetically pleasing footballer of the year' but he's such an honest grafter that you can't not be pleased for him when he scores.
Rovers have a spell of play. Perhaps it's more fair to say, that for the first time in the game, we're not dominant, so that lets them go forward. There's some nice work at the back in the air from Husband and Connolly, one Jimmy header, so firm it almost reaches the halfway line. There's an excellent diving block from Pennington at the near post. The linesman is our friend as Rovers score but an early flag means we can celebrate instead of them. For a while, we look a bit scruffy and a bit jaded, but we stick at it.
There's one fucking ridiculous run from Dembele, picking it up in a crowd somewhere inside his own half and then going, beating one, his shoulder drop sending their man grasping at air, then another, repeating the same move, with the same result, then a third, faking to do the same thing, then knowing their lad has cottoned on to what happened to his team mates, turning it into a double bluff and just running past him directly, their lad spinning in his boots, not knowing what hit him. He goes on. Stumbling, bouncing up, he's just unstoppable... It comes to nothing in the end, but I don't care. What a player. Defending against him is like trying to have a judo match with a ghost. He's just of a different realm.
Then his final act is to lift a gorgeous pass from the centre spot into the path of Joseph. The substitute runs hard but then, showing great awareness, squares the ball to Rhodes who pulls out his old slowing down time trick, steadying himself, waiting till the exact moment the angle is perfect and then, rolls the ball into the corner of the goal with an acuity that it frankly ridiculous. It's such a calm finish. It makes 'zen' look positively frantic. The man must have a resting pulse rate of about 5 bpm. I don't think I've ever seen a better finisher in tangerine.
There's time for a superb save from Grimmy from a point blank header late on and then there's the whistle.
'Pool haven't fucked up Christmas for once! It's a miracle.
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We played quite well. The first half, we played good football and made plenty but one error of judgement meant we were level. I was worried that the game might turn after half time cos Bristol weren't so bad, but ironically, we made a lot less but were more clinical.
After the game I look at the table. We're still 8th. We seem stuck there. I notice Man Utd have lost again. They seem to lose every week but remain 8th in their league. I know we're not exactly consistent, but it feels like we're not as shite as Man Utd yet, here we are in 8th. I suspect a fix.
I enjoyed today. We deserved the win and we had to battle a bit to get it. It was a bit of a break from the pattern of 'win very convincingly/don't really turn up in next game' as Bristol Rovers had enough to make it seem as if there was a game in the second half. It was good to see that after things going awry in conceding such a quick and poorly defended equaliser, we didn't fall to bits this week. There's no doubting our potential and ability, but we have struggled when stuff has gone against us, so whilst 'not imploding when anything goes wrong in a football match' is a fairly low bar, it's good we got over that today.
It was also nice to feel the crowd behind us. We didn't do everything perfectly, but we had the intent and the crowd responded. Like the team, the noise isn't quite what it could be, but it was better today. It's halfway and we're lurking in the pack. We're not quite where we want to be, but there's a long way to go yet.
Onward!
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