I decide to walk down the prom from the station. I haven't done this route to a game for years. It's easy to forget when you don't go to the front very often that Blackpool is mad as fuck on a world class level and this has to be one of the planet's greatest walks to a stadium. Walking to the Dave Whelen Broken Leg Superstore Stadium is a grim trek through muddy carparks, derelict mills and a particularly dystopian Asda. We deserve the points just for that really.
I have no idea how this will go. This season is up and down. Down and up, side to side, back and forth. I'm doing everything to avoid saying 'rollercoaster' here. We're rubbish. We're great. We're rubbish again. We're on our 4th manager this season and perhaps it's showing a bit. It is what it is.
I resent the very existence of Wigan Athletic on a fundamental (deeply childish, personal and bitter) level.. It's a rugby town. They're a non league team. Dave Whalen once nearly killed me (true). All their fans actually support Liverpool or someone like that. Their 'fairytale success' was bankrolled. That's the gist of it. I've outlined my antipathy in greater depth in previous blogs. They've turned up tonight in a ninja kit with a yellow bib on the front like they fancy themselves a bit.
Before the game, I'm thinking - the problem now is the same problem as the problem previously. We have 'a way' of playing that suits some players and not others. When the right players aren't fit then trying to make that way work come what may doesn't seem to be the definition of tactical genius. That said, in this weird Bruceless limbo,, it's all a bit churlish to be raging at the fate of a football team but then again, that's what we do and that's what the entire football industry is built upon. If it weren't for the one eyed emotionally immature football supporter like me, there wouldn't be a professional game because we'd all find something better to do of an afternoon/evening and therefore I'm hoping genial Uncle Steve has got a master class for us tonight.
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It appears he hasn't. It's 442 and no matter the shape of the pegs we're going to hammer them into those classic 90s football holes. To be fair to Stand-in Steve, we're a bit short however you throw the cards in the air but I swear we could fashion something slightly more creative and perhaps convincing than what we put out.
The first 20 or so minutes are attritional stuff. When I say attritional, I mean, really quite shit. I can't really remember anything good that we did and mostly I entertained myself by correctly guessing that Ash Fletcher would mistime his jump when it came close to him. If you want to play along in future, you get one point for a poorly timed jump and a 3 point jackpot for when he jumps in the wrong place as well. (minus 1 point for 'not jumping at all')
Wigan weren't especially good either but they had a canny tactic of lobbing it up the the touchline for a fast player to run after. They did switch the play once too which in this game was advanced level stuff I passed a bit more time wondering about people who pay shitloads for Sky Sports and whether any of them are still watching what looks a bit like two works B teams battle it out.
Then Wigan score. It's a smash it up the wing into that channel ball and then from what I can see from miles away, one of our defenders isolated and they get a ball in quite easily, that gets touched on with no real challenge and subsequently swept home by a late runner unseen by our defence. I'm not raging yet, but I can't help observing that t's quite easy to score against us
We wake up a bit. Fletcher has a run and a semi respectable shot that is deflected wide. The Rapter puts a few lovely balls in (one is a sensational cross considering he's got no space to work in at all) but we conspire to either head them wide (Joseph) or not head them at all (Embo ) Joseph's perennial harrying pays off as he's through on Sam Tickle, he sees the chance for a lovely chipped finish and executes the idea but the Wigan keeper reads it perfectly and Joseph looks a bit sheepish because what really should have been filed as 'audacious and cheeky' ends up under the heading 'looked a bit shit I'm afraid.' Kyle can do what he likes though. He's beyond reproach for me. The Rapter pings one from distance that has fizz and swerve but is just over.
Then Wigan score again. This time I'm raging properly. Evans moves deep to collect a pass. He's eyeing up a raking ball, wandering about visualising his next clever pass for far too long and Wigan just nip it from him, runs through the middle, whilst our defenders run away and score. I'm not furious at Evans per se, because he's also earned a mistake or two this season but just the universe and everything in it can fuck off. Fucks sake Pool.
We attack a bit more and from a move that threatens to have broken down, Evans whips a ball into the box, Joseph is quite near it, but it's a Wigan man who deflects it in. A good time to score, but it would have been better on balance not to be 2-0 down before scoring...
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I don't know. We've made some chances but we don't look joined up at all. Wigan haven't been great but they have looked a bit more cohesive. It's all a bit scruffy. Our tempo is off. Some players seem to want to be patient, others hurried. It's like the musicians aren't in time with each other.
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The second half actually hurts to watch at times. Agnew has quite clearly told them to cut out any fancy business and get it launched quickly and as often as possible. It's both 'sort of more effective' and also 'whisper it quietly but this is a tiny bit TC and Mick'
I'm not a football purist. I actually really like watching a well drilled direct team doing their thing but we're not that side. It doesn't help that Gary Goalie isn't the best kicker, nor does it help that none of Evans, Apter, Carey and Embleton are what you'd imagine a long ball midfield to be and Ashley Fletcher, despite being every inch an athletic looking mobile and physical presence on the outside iis about as effective as a target man as one of those wavy arm hot air things you get outside of car garages for no other reason than that seems to be a thing you put outside of car showrooms.
Wigan carve us open several times. There's some really last ditch blocks, one particularly of note from Penno and a wild shirt pull from Casey that is all he can do to stop a break. Gary Goalie makes a very good low stop to keep us alive. They head one over the top when they should really score.
We can't keep the ball. We're literally just twatting it hopefully forward at any chance we get.
Then Fletcher has a semi respectable overhead kick effort and I wonder if the answer is to make him shoot every time facing away from goal or to play him in a blindfold. He then is slipped by a neat bit of play from Sonny and Embleton and seemingly clipped in the box. It's not happening with this ref all night and you have to fear it might never happen for Fletcher. If ever a player needed a random and unexpectedly spectacular goal, it's him.
Wigan do a weird thing - they take off the nippy wing backs that tortured us. I don't really understand that move.
Wigan do a weird thing - they take off the nippy wing backs that tortured us. I don't really understand that move.
Amenable Uncle Steve sends very polite nephew Jordan 'always sends a very neatly written Christmas card' Rhodes on. Carey whips a good ball in. Rhodes is on it and it's inches wide. Kyle Joseph gets outside and cuts it back and Rhodes hurls himself at it in what from a mile a way looked like a classic Keith Houchem style and it's deflected what feels like millimetres wide. Rhodes looks livelier than he has done for a while.
We go 433 with Onomah and Ballard entering the fray. We carry on twatting it, which really doesn't seem to be the best use of the small and pacy substitute and the quite technically able but not hugely hard working midfielder but what do I know? It's not quite Mad Mick using Ian Poveda as a target man but it's annoying me because it seems to be just reverting to a set ideology and we've had enough of that with the Cheshire Oaks oatmeal soft furnishing fabreeze scented one.
Wigan are annoying me too singing that stupid Bob Marley song. Should sing some George Formby instead or fuck off and eat some mintballs and chase some eggs down a mine. Everything is annoying me to be honest.
The ref has been gash. We've been pretty poor. I don't understand our tactics or substitutes and and this is a really poor defeat that I honestly can't imagine Critchley's boredomball succumbing too and that's a really depressing thought. Where's the inventiveness that Uncle Richard's carefree chaos unlocked? There's none of it. It's like watching a VHS uploaded on youtube of a match from the days of muddy pitches and half empty terraces and I'm half expecting Andy Gouck to be the next sub.
We're hacking away in injury time. The ball is bouncing around but we can't get it down to shoot. It's guiding out to Robbie Apter. He's got to make this count. A little drop of the shoulder, and a dart, the little bit of space he needs. He's drilled it to the near post.... It's in!!!
Yesssssss! I have no idea who scored (it turns out it's one of those boycott era players for us who is just a name to me) but suddenly my fury at the world has gone. As poorly as I think we've played for periods we've deserved that and it's fucking brilliant to let Wigan know that every little thing isn't going to be alright after all. There's that bitterness again. Pour me a pint of it. I want to down it in one. Beautiful.
Then we're going again. It's one of those moves, one touch, a scream for a penalty that I've no idea on but that we're never going to get because Wigan could behead one of our players in the box with a machete, film it, send the video to the ref with a full confession and he'd wave play on, another touch, a lay off and Josh Onomah steaming in. In fact, I can see the run from almost before he makes, it, a vision of his arrival onto the ball, the goal gaping, his powerful frame perfectly balanced over the ball to strike it cleanly and crisply into the net.
In reality (where sadly football is played instead of my mind,) he leans back and hits row P of the Kop.
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I don't know how to feel about this game.
For all that it wasn't pretty (it really wasn't) we did create chances and you'd have to say, we probably gave Wigan one and a half of their two goals by not defending very well and whilst they even more literally gave us two out of two of ours, I think we deserved that luck marginally more than them. There wasn't a lack of effort but there was a lack of quality and a sense of it being all a bit patched up and stuck together with bits of tatty masking tape, which, I suppose it was.
It all felt very 'lower midtable' if I'm honest and leaves us still pining for those absent or injured. For me, we need to start showing a bit more tactical flexibility when we're lacking key players because 442 or bust isn't yielding the results and ultimately, we didn't play with the kind of verve and belief we'd shown earlier in the year, nor the solidity that Bruce's arrival had added to that attacking imagination. That said, we came back from two down and we didn't give in and ultimately, we could have won it so maybe I'm just being aesthetically snobbish. I don't know. I just hope that '14th' isn't what '8th' was last season because it's felt a bit like that of late.
A late goal is always good though and Gary Goalie gets full marks for the celebration.
Onward!
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A late goal is always good though and Gary Goalie gets full marks for the celebration.
Onward!
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