I'm finding it hard to feel excited about today. This season is so formulaic. Win at home, fuck up away, repeat, stay eighth, move to 3 points of playffs, drift out to seven, repeat, atmosphere fitful and subdued.
I want to have that match day buzz. I want that metallic tang of anticipation, that stomach tweaking jab of nerves. That fizzing, fidgety nervousness that precedes a battle of blood, sweat, noise and fire. To be honest, I'd settle for seeing a Rob Apter cameo or something. It's not to be. Last time out, my car broke down before I set off. This time, the engine fires up fine and we're away into the grey.
The team. Quelle surprise, it's 5-3-2 and you'll never guess who the right wing back is. No, really, he's only gone and picked CJ there. Who could have guessed? I don't know if I'm being unfairly grumpy about it all or not. I decide not to think on it too much. Lets see what the game brings.
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Exeter aren't very good. This is apparent from the off. I think they've got loads of injuries and like many teams that aren't us, their squad isn't so deep. For most of the first half they sit off us and do very little, save for one flurry of attacking that ends up with a save and a hack away after a ball across the box. This kind of football (i.e. a team that don't look very good) can cause us problems though and we're looking like a footballing machine lacking a bit of oil.
Everything is a bit stiff. Jordan Rhodes scores goals, but today, he mostly mis-controls the ball. He's not very fast, but that doesn't normally matter. Today, he seems stuck in the mud, mind willing, but body not responding. Morgan though is fizzing. We've got loads of possession and Exeter aren't really rushing us. We're fairly happy to play at a sluggish pace, but Morgan is determined to up the tempo, drilling first time passes into space, carving raking balls out for the wide players to hare after. He's doing in one pass what we're otherwise doing in 4 or 5.
It's all a bit frustrating though. We're a lot better than the opposition but we're not really creating a lot. I can only really remember Joseph with a low shot tipped wide, Dembele with a disappointing free kick and some nice direct moments from new boy Coulsen with his slicked back hair and beard, who to me, looks a bit like a fella who has decided to live in a ghost town in a shack and make a vlog of his lifestyle. Perhaps that says more about what I watch on youtube than him though.
Then, Joseph keeps a ball alive wide. He threads to Dembele. Rhodes now, and then the most blatantly earned penalty of all time, pushing it wide, knowing the keeper has to go through him and then falling on cue. It's a spot kick for sure, but it felt to me cynical in the way it was earned. A more naive player would have tried to shoot. Rhodes just calculated the options and the spreadsheet said 'penalty'
Here he comes... Oh, for fucks sake. He's really not got his boots on the right feet today. A tepid kick, almost like the kind of shot you'd hit if you wanted a mascot to save the ball in an inflatable goal on a family fun day. Still 0-0. I can't be arsed with a 0-0. I'd rather lose.
We settle into 15 minutes or so of mildly grumbling flatness. Exeter is miles and miles away and they've never really done owt ever, but their fans make a decent noise for a while. They've brought a few more than I imagined they would as well. It's an edgy period. We're just not very convincing. Callum Connolly keeps hacking it wildly. Dembele looks as he sometimes does, like he's not really big enough, which isn't really the case, but prevailing subconscious football truisms kick in whenever he's not quite at genius level... CJ tries a drag back, but as he's not going very quickly and he does it quite slowly, their defender just takes it off him, with an air of 'is that all you've got?' about his challenge.
We probe. We win some corners. Jimmy puts in a wonderful cross after doing one of those weird darting runs he does every now and again as if to say 'bet you didn't expect the centre half to do that did you?' We flirt with the idea of having a go at goal but don't really go in for the kiss, even though the Exeter goal seems fairly open to the idea of a bit of fling with us.
Then... a throw, Joseph, neat and precise, Dembele, a dart forward and a lay off and oh... my... fucking...life... Albie fucking Morgan ghosts in and absolutely leathers the life out of the ball, smashing it, but also caressing it at the same time, sending it up and down, swerving into the corner of the goal and as someone almost once sang, he hit it, but it felt like a kiss of pure fucking brilliance. It's an absolute pearl. That felt great.
CJ and Callum confer quickly. CJ runs away. Callum throws the ball really hard to him. CJ somehow manages to not only fail to control it, but to completely miss the ball entirely, giving the impression it's gone right through him. CJ is the least likely ghost I can think of. He's just got no malevolence about him at all. He's too cheerful to be a ghost. I think I might have enjoyed that moment as much as the goal.
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It's been a very 'this season' half of football. We've not been very good to be honest. Actually, that's kind of unfair. We've dominated and we've had the ball in the right place a lot without doing much. We've lacked the nous or the urgency or the confidence or the whatever it is that is the difference between a team having possession but it all feeling a bit flat and a team having possession and it feeling like wave after wave of dangerous attacks. Then Morgan did that and everything felt a lot better.
---
A corner. Deep. Jimmy goes up and wins it. He wins a disproportionate amount of headers for someone who isn't actually that big. It's either in the timing or body strength or some sort of skullduggery or all of the above. I'm wondering how he does it when the ball drops deep on the edge of the box and it's Albie flippin Morgan again, trundling in looking, as he does, like a little dapper model for trendy but low market suit company, with his slightly 1960s hair and squareish build and he's rifling a low shot home, this one fired as if from a cross bow, sweet, straight and true, clean into the bottom corner. We sing his name again. A chant that about 8 minutes ago we didn't know we had, now ringing round the ground.
There's a sense that that is probably that. It largely is. There's a nice bit of noise for a good while. It's a nice sunset. Allez, Allez, Allez. That Kyle Joseph chant that sounds great. Hey, Hey baby ooh... ah! The Shayne Lavery song...
Grimmy makes a decent save. Morgan has a free kick that goes high over the bar. Dembele starts to enjoy the space that comes from Exeter committing more forward and has one of those runs he does. Grimmy makes another save and then another, but they're not shots you'd expect to beat him. Morgan comes off. Virtue is on and Gabriel too. That's a ridiculously good pair of players to bring on when you're 2-0 up against a League 1 side who aren't playing very well.
Gabriel has a nice cameo. He has a decent headed chance. He puts a couple of serious tackles in. He waves his arms about in an intense way. He's better than this league. CJ on the left has a little flurry of action. We threaten for a few minutes to look pretty good but we can't really summon up the desire to smash this lot good and proper.
Exeter blow their best chance. A moment when everyone seemed to stand off and the ball fell to them in the box, but their lad scuffed the first time shot and Grimmy is down almost too early anticipating a better connection but manages to pounce on the ball as it bounces off him, like a cat scrambling onto a toy that it accidentally batted away.
We take off the strikers. Lavs and Dale go up front and it doesn't really work because we need a direct out ball and they need precision, but it doesn't really matter either cos we're never losing this from here, at least in part because Exeter aren't ever getting back into this game. It's just not their day. I spend the remainder of the game enjoying the face that one of Exeter's lads is decidedly big boned. He's got the build of someone whose won the chance to play in a preseason friendly in a club charity fundraiser. Another for the footballers that look like real people XI. Collecting more of them is the best thing about relegation to be honest.
The ref doesn't seem to want to blow the whistle. I'm cold. The game was over 35 minutes ago. We're still going. There it is. Thank fuck...
---
We did fine. It wasn't especially exciting, but it was fine. We normally do that at home. Full time is weird though. There's little more than a few seconds of applause before most people shuffle off. I think it's a bit sad really. Celebration isn't really about what happened, it's about the collective moment where the thing we all wanted came true and we appreciate that en masse. It's about being in the moment and all that. This moment is fleeting.
Morgan was really good today. I've written before about him seeming like he might be good, or being 'almost good' and he was the player he seemed to toy with being, but not quite believe he was. In what is increasingly likely to be a post Kenny world, we need a new dynamo to set some tempo and if Kenny Dougall isn't going to be around to do Kenny Dougall things, then someone needs to do things and Morgan definitely did things today.
The new lad looked sharp and hungry. I liked that he didn't make anything too complicated and one moment aside where his defending against a rare Exeter run into the box consisted of him running backwards looking worried and nothing else, I thought he had a really good game. I thought Casey was good and Jimbo, one horrible scuffed pass aside, had a good game. Those who decry his distribution have selective vision, ignoring some of the lovely work he does. No one can get every pass right and he prompts us as much as any central defender prompts any team. The attacking players didn't really catch fire. CJ fell over his feet a bit, though, to be fair, he worked back really well today. Dembele wasn't as viscerally thrilling as he can be, Norburn looked a bit laboured and Rhodes played as poorly as he ever has in tangerine. Joseph reminded me of Jerry in a goal drought - his general work was good, his running willing, but the boy needs a goal.
Another home win though. If we pretend there's no away games, this must be what supporting Man City is like. Teams come, we sweep them aside in a stadium that often seems a bit subdued as it's come to expect such things. Unfortunately, we do have to play away games and that's more than a bit of a problem... Today was fine. We're able to win quite comfortably without particularly seeming anywhere near our collective best. Away though... We have to find a way. We should be finding a way. A team that can basically yawn and swat most of the division aside at home, shouldn't be so fucking shite so often, just because there's no Terry's Carpets* sign at the ground they are playing at.
Perhaps we should take a Terry's Carpets sign on the road with us. Banksy can wave it when we're doing badly in between fiddling in his blue folder. It'll give them all a lift.
Onward!
*Actually, when I think about it, I don't actually recall seeing the Terry's Carpets sign this season at home either...
Gabriel has a nice cameo. He has a decent headed chance. He puts a couple of serious tackles in. He waves his arms about in an intense way. He's better than this league. CJ on the left has a little flurry of action. We threaten for a few minutes to look pretty good but we can't really summon up the desire to smash this lot good and proper.
Exeter blow their best chance. A moment when everyone seemed to stand off and the ball fell to them in the box, but their lad scuffed the first time shot and Grimmy is down almost too early anticipating a better connection but manages to pounce on the ball as it bounces off him, like a cat scrambling onto a toy that it accidentally batted away.
We take off the strikers. Lavs and Dale go up front and it doesn't really work because we need a direct out ball and they need precision, but it doesn't really matter either cos we're never losing this from here, at least in part because Exeter aren't ever getting back into this game. It's just not their day. I spend the remainder of the game enjoying the face that one of Exeter's lads is decidedly big boned. He's got the build of someone whose won the chance to play in a preseason friendly in a club charity fundraiser. Another for the footballers that look like real people XI. Collecting more of them is the best thing about relegation to be honest.
The ref doesn't seem to want to blow the whistle. I'm cold. The game was over 35 minutes ago. We're still going. There it is. Thank fuck...
---
We did fine. It wasn't especially exciting, but it was fine. We normally do that at home. Full time is weird though. There's little more than a few seconds of applause before most people shuffle off. I think it's a bit sad really. Celebration isn't really about what happened, it's about the collective moment where the thing we all wanted came true and we appreciate that en masse. It's about being in the moment and all that. This moment is fleeting.
Morgan was really good today. I've written before about him seeming like he might be good, or being 'almost good' and he was the player he seemed to toy with being, but not quite believe he was. In what is increasingly likely to be a post Kenny world, we need a new dynamo to set some tempo and if Kenny Dougall isn't going to be around to do Kenny Dougall things, then someone needs to do things and Morgan definitely did things today.
The new lad looked sharp and hungry. I liked that he didn't make anything too complicated and one moment aside where his defending against a rare Exeter run into the box consisted of him running backwards looking worried and nothing else, I thought he had a really good game. I thought Casey was good and Jimbo, one horrible scuffed pass aside, had a good game. Those who decry his distribution have selective vision, ignoring some of the lovely work he does. No one can get every pass right and he prompts us as much as any central defender prompts any team. The attacking players didn't really catch fire. CJ fell over his feet a bit, though, to be fair, he worked back really well today. Dembele wasn't as viscerally thrilling as he can be, Norburn looked a bit laboured and Rhodes played as poorly as he ever has in tangerine. Joseph reminded me of Jerry in a goal drought - his general work was good, his running willing, but the boy needs a goal.
Perhaps we should take a Terry's Carpets sign on the road with us. Banksy can wave it when we're doing badly in between fiddling in his blue folder. It'll give them all a lift.
Onward!
*Actually, when I think about it, I don't actually recall seeing the Terry's Carpets sign this season at home either...
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