This week Critch was hopping mad. He was irritably over tightening the lid on the skimmed milk before putting it quite forcibly back in the fridge angry. He was grinding his jaw a bit too much when eating his plain ham sandwiches (on best of both bread) at lunchtime cross. He was uncharacteristically not enjoying the usual post drive car hoovering furious. He was pursing his lips and staring into the middle distance and needing to apologise for being distracted as Janine suggested a drive out to the garden centre for a soothing walk on the gravel paths and a scone seething.
This is the best Critch. No doubt. A diminutive rebel. He's as mad as hell and he's not going to take it anymore. Muttering darkly in the corner. Mike having to bring him a cold towel. Ian Brunskill considering whether a shaman (he knows several from his time hiding in South American jungles) needs to be brought in to cleanse Critch of bad vibes
Just when all seems lost, he rises from the stool he's been hunched on all day and says 'fuck em all. I'll just have to give a masterclass won't I?'
My week has been dark and dreary. Just give me football. Now. I need it.
The wind swirls. The rain is blown up and over the stands, looking in the lights like that weird film deluge that is overlaid in front of action. The pitch looks as good as it ever has in December.
It's clearly not an easy prospect, playing in this weather. Long balls are tossed forward and they hold up and swirl, defenders beneath them panicking as the predictable becomes devilish. Sonny almost threads the needle a couple of times. We have corners. Lots of corners. Carlisle resort very quickly to fouling players they can't catch. Some away teams come for a draw. From the outset, it looks like Carlisle have come for a 0-2 defeat. They're so deep. At times, it genuinely looks like they're playing 7-2-1, their two holding midfielders, not so much holding as folding into the back line. The most notable thing about them is they have a keeper who looks like he's out of scale with the rest of the players. He skews my sense of perspective completely. He's too big to be that far away...
For all our pressure, we don't create too many thrills. Pennington's eyes widen as one falls to him but his shot is a defender's effort, kind of rolling down his shin and snaking away, wide of the post. It's in danger of becoming frustrating, but none the less, there's a sort of calmness in ground. We're sheltered from the winds blowing from the sea by the curvature of the stand walls and we're safe from Carlisle attacks because their starting position is generally somewhere around their own penalty box and we're able to snuff out anything they do attempt at source.
Beesley chases a diagonal. He deserve much credit for making nothing into something and forcing a throw. From the throw, the ball ends up with Kenny Dougall. He lofts a hopeful ball into the box and the keeper is distracted by someone in the box and flaps. Lyons is there, alert, bustling in, lifting it at an odd but effective angle up and into the net, past the completely wrong footed giant.
We carry on controlling the game. Carlisle react to going behind by doing absolutely nothing any differently. Dembele moves between the rain drops, spinning and turning like the players around him are just cones laid out for a drill. His cross is almost turned home by Beesley. Carey's raking ball is misjudged by CJ. Rhodes puts one just wide. We're in total control but we haven't turned the screw, so as the whistle goes, there's a sense that it was fine, but no more.
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At half time they do that running round the centre circle with a giant ball thing. I don't normally watch it, but because I never really have paid much attention to it, I do. I notice how seriously they take it, making one of the lads rerun it because he didn't follow the rules. As entertainment goes, I don't think it's inline for a prime slot on ITV to be honest. My attention wanders to Carlisle warming up. For a minute, I'm convinced Carlisle are using tiny tennis ball sized footballs. I'm sure this is some sort of hitherto unseen ploy to increase touch and skill. I am disabused of this notion by my neighbour. The balls are perfectly normal, size 5 footballs. It appears my head has been fucked by first the giant keeper and then the giant footballs and I can't trust reality any more.
Carlisle still fail to respond in any meaningful way. We're again completely dominant without really setting the world on fire. The best bits are a really neat bit of control and a turn from Beesley, who then lays in Lyons who draws a good save and a piece of sheer magic from Dembele who turns his man like an illusionist, feinting one way then, whilst the defender is setting himself, going the other, leaving the poor Carlisle lad flummoxed and CJ with a direct run on goal, but the resultant shot is clipped just the wrong side of the post.
Carlisle finally respond by having a shot. Poor old Grimmy looks freezing and bedraggled, but he's equal to what they throw at him. He stops one from distance easily. He goes down bravely at the feet of one their players, to smother the ball after stopping another shot. He judges well as one of their lads stretches at the far post. He watches one go over the top that they really should have buried. That little flurry is all they muster and a good lot of their fans don't see it, having left after the second went in.
Jimmy trundles forward and smashes one. I wish that went in. Dembele is so watchable because he'll pick up the ball anywhere and just attack with it and he snaffles the ball on the edge of his own box and runs the length of the pitch. The move ends with a poor pass, but after such intent it's kind of churlish to complain about that.
The third goal is the most satisfying. I'm just thinking that the game has lacked the kind of goal you can really enjoy, when Lyons wins it and picks a beautiful pass, 40 yards into the path of CJ who looks like he's going to race free before being sent sprawling. Joseph (on for Beesley) picks it up and looks like he's going to score but the keeper gets a long arm on to it and it looks like we've wasted the moment, but there is is Jordan Rhodes on the rebound. He doesn't waste an inch, controlling, seeming to go backwards and sideways in a fluid few steps to make the angle and then smashing it home, timing his effort to perfection, his thought always two steps in front of the the keeper and the ball two yards beyond his defeated flop towards it, what starts as a dive, ending as a kind of defeated collapse, with the ball smashing into the net as he completes his fall. It's a terrific finish, making something that was actually reasonably hard, look so natural and easy.
That is that.
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Critchley is fizzing. He's hopping with delight. He's running towards the Kop and spotting a ball on the six yard line and he's smashing it home like he's a fun dad at a kids party. Yes... yes... yes!!! He's literally jumping with each swing of the fist and now he's trotting away, skipping away, clapping and bouncing towards the tunnel. I've rarely seen him so giddy. I'm sure I can hear him shouting 'fuck you Graham Kelly' as he goes...
It's been a long, bleak week. I needed that. I think he did too.
It was a weird game. By that, I kind of perversely mean, it wasn't weird at all. WE were a lot better than them, we had a lot more shots (at least up until the point we were well clear,) we scored more than enough goals and I never really felt worried. Carlisle were really unambitious but we looked a division better than them, which, when you consider that a couple of years back at this time of the season, we were starting to have mad ideas about a play off push in the Championship and they were looking anxiously towards non-league football is perhaps not a surprise. It's every credit to Simmo for getting them up from where they were and really quite a shame we fell apart as we did. That's the beauty of the game though - it can turn on you, and the enigma that is the Tangerine Wizards is such that we often fail against the teams we're palpably better than so today was an odd experience in that it went totally with the form book and logic.
A routine, professional, solid and worthy win. Loads of hard work and sprinkling of class on top. Doing the expected is actually quite un-Blackpool. More of this sort of thing.
Onward!
(You can also buy a book of this shite if you haven't already, and I'll give the money that is left over from what Jeff Bezos takes for printing it to the same fund - I can't promise you'll enjoy the book, but it's pretty cheap and I managed to spot and correct most of the mistakes)
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