This game is overshadowed by human tragedy. It's not my place to comment on the nature or details of it because it's private. If you've been on this earth for more than 5 minutes you'll know something of the hollow, numb shock of your own grief. It's like being immersed in ice, like being drowned or smothered. It eats away at you, it paralyses. It chokes. It's like suddenly falling from a great height. It's like waking up and finding you are buried alive. It's a weight you carry, it's an aching that can't be soothed. Loss is personal but it's also universal. It faces us all. Circumstances differ wildly and widely but it's one of the elements of being human that binds us all together.
There's nothing that really defines existence more. Life is what it is and it has one outcome. The circumstances of today only remind us that no one can take it for granted. That we are fragile. For all the stories we tell ourselves and all the monuments we build to our own folly, we are finite as is everything and everyone we love. We all carry memories, tragedy and suffering and the longer we survive, the wider the wake they leave behind us.
Perhaps I've come over all 'vicar' here. I don't know. Fuck the vicar act anyway. I have no more knowledge than anyone else. You, me, everyone. We all wrestle with the same questions. This is a football blog but sometimes football is meaningless. So many times I've reflected on the ludicrous pedestal we put it upon. How many hours we spend analysing and debating it, how many emotions are spent bemoaning, celebrating and the full spectrum in between the poles of victory and defeat and yet it means nothing to any rational thinking. A promotion, a relegation. It's just fiction really. The rules can be redrawn any time we want. I think of my Grandma, all hairnet and knitting needles, saying something like 'all those grown men getting so wound up about a silly playground game.' I miss her. I miss other people too.
Yet, this stupid game does matter to me, to you too very probably, in a very real way. The point and the purpose of it all is simply... Some people... Together... In one place. Football's actual meaning is as a shared experience. To be alive, to suffer, to love, to grieve. They are shared experiences too. I don't know what life is for. I don't know why it can be so unbelievably cruel sometimes. I don't know why what happens happens and I don't know what or who you might be thinking of as you read this and you don't know what or who I am thinking of whilst I write this.
What we both know is that in the heart of the crowd, in the moment of the goal, in the frustration of the defeat or the tension of the dying seconds protecting a slender lead we're taken elsewhere. Football is, as Michael Parkinson once said so eloquently, not 'war or death or famine' - it is 'something else'. It is something that 'reminds us of life outside of those things' and it's incredible power is that people being in the same place turns something of no real importance into a place and event of deep and powerful meaning.
Long live 'something else' that will be there, meaning both nothing and yet everything all at once because Saturday at 3pm is when we leave it all behind.
One love.
Tangerine.
Steve Bruce's Tangerine Army.
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We're barely started and we're stopped. Applause rings out from every soul in the ground. The referee is almost the first one applauding. I wasn't sure if clapping was the right thing to do but it doesn't seem wrong. It's just a gesture and whatever the right or wrong symbol would have been, there is no doubting the feeling and sentiment behind the moment. Well done the ref. Perhaps they are actually people. He's been brilliant in recognising that it's just a stupid game and the rule book can be suspended for 60 seconds.
The game when it resumes resembles how I imagine a league one game would look if played at the bottom of a (full) swimming pool. It's just not very fast. The player's limbs move a bit slower than they need to. You can see that they've *thought* the right thing but when they go and *do* it's as if their bodies aren't quite willing to carry out the instructions from their brains.
Everything is just a little bit wrong. Touches are heavy, the weighting on passes are just a bit off. The run is a bit too late. Joseph is doing his usual shift but when it matters he knocks it too far ahead of himself. Ballard looks a little bit like he's running on loose sand, he's just not quite got the elastic energy he usually has. The Rapter is as ever a pleasure to watch but even his magic act isn't as polished as it can be and he runs into trouble as often as he glides through it.
Lets talk Embleton. The major talking point was that he starts ahead of a presumably crocked CJ. I'm surprised at how disappointed I was not to see the 22 shirt in the line up. His pace and ability to cover a lot of ground has suited Bruceball down to the ground. Embleton is playing a very different role. He's not so much on the left wing as drifting into a central role, a sort of 11-1 = kind of a 10, an inside forwardish role and initially he is quite effective, taking the ball on the turn well and setting us a away a few times. As the game goes on, one poor touch leads to several really quite poor moments and there's a nagging feeling that he's leaving gaps and not really working back as he might. Coulson (who also isn't looking as energetic as he can) is left 2 on 1 more than once and I can't help feeling that CJ might be sprinting back to cover where as Embleton is ineffectively wafting about vaguely in a way that makes Sonny's defensive cover look like prime Gary Brabin. I think he really, really, really, needs something to go his way. It's tempting to say 'the man doesn't give a shit' - but it's also very probable that 'the man has had a horrific experience with multiple career threatening injuries and deeply needs the injection of self belief that some success would bring' could be a plausible take as well because confidence is everything in a game of instinct.
We do have chances. Ballard puts one he runs onto one low to the keeper's right. The keeper is equal to it. The Rapter's best moment is a stuttering and jinking run where he smashes it into the side netting. There's an Albie Morgan volley from a corner that is literally another half a yard of dip from being a world class moment, as it curls, fizzes, spins and swerves but just doesn't drop quite quick enough.
For all those chances, we don't convince. Barnsley create few direct chances but nonetheless, seem more in control of the game. They are physically stronger and more precise in their play. Their goal is well worked and leaves me wondering why they were able to get from one end of the pitch to the other with no real effort to tackle them and then finisher allowed to run inside and get a shot off with no great obstruction in his way.
The Tykes control a lot of the play after the goal, so much so that I'm glad to get to half time without being further undone.
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It's been odd. We've created more clear cut efforts, but it's also felt like they were clearly the better side. It feels as if the 442 isn't matching their set up. It also feels as if Embleton playing inside as he is means we we don't have the width we need to stretch play horizontally and then create gaps as a result.
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It takes changes in the second half to get us going. Gabriel has been uncharacteristically poor and his withdrawal pushes Offiah to the right. That ignites us a bit. Out of possession he's a full back but in possession he is very advanced. It's a wonderful run from him that is the highlight of the day, bursting from deep and somehow evading successive challenges before finding himself in the box and putting his effort just beyond the post.
When we do score, it's a far post ball from Evans that gets a touch and deflects home. I think it's an own goal but Casey runs away claiming the credit and the PA gives it to him. The relief is tangible.
Onomah, Pennington and Rhodes are also on. I like the first look at the new lad. He's got more physicality than Morgan, Carey and Finnegan combined and he has several really nice bursts through and links really well with his new team mates, touching one off for Apter to have a go, pulling one back for Rhodes to draw a good save and keeping one alive to earn a corner. We start switching it. We get some nice overlaps. Joseph runs down a defender and steals possession, Joseph has a snap shot. The Rapter control a great long range pass from Evans. The crowd responds. C'mon Pool!
Rhodes climbs and wins a header in the box, he rises like the classic centre forward, it's a leap from the 1950s and a downward header that for a moment I think is heading in but the keeper gets accross to and it isn't to be. We've had a great spell of 10 to 15 minutes but we've not been able to make it count quite enough. We get a free kick. Evans is a dead ball magician but the rabbit is stuck in the hat and the ball way over the bar.
We send on Ash Fletcher. No one is too excited at this because a forward that doesn't score isn't a very exciting prospect. "Perhaps it will bounce off him and go in?" is heard from behind me. The entire row laughs. This is where we are with this lad. "Maybe he should aim for the corner flag and it might go in by accident?" offers another voice. Sadly, he doesn't have a vintage cameo, his efforts limited to not jumping when he needs to jump and jumping when he's not actually in the right place to jump. I can't remember him touching it otherwise. That said, I do completely approve of the intent to win the game by switching to a 3 up front. It just doesn't work - I'd rather see that than some pathetic attempt to sit on a point at home though.
Talking of pathetic...
Barnsley corner. Injury time. It's a floaty one to the far post. A wave of players seem to roll in at the far post. One of them connects. The ball loops oddly gently back towards from where it came and weirdly over everyone else and the side netting is bulging. The Tykes are going mental and almost as soon as the ball crosses the line, 'Pool fans are streaming out. It's at the other end so it's difficult to be sure who should have done what but it does feel as if the header was way too easy, both in that it was seemingly unopposed and also that it kind of 'plopped' into the goal - it wasn't exactly a deadly bullet.
Fuck's sake Pool.
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We didn't deserve to lose but we also didn't deserve to win. After the game, I look at the stats and we're better than Barnsley in almost every metric. It didn't feel like that though. I was always, aside from the spell in the second half when we could have scored several times, on edge. We never felt properly in control of the game beyond that 15-20 minute purple patch.
It's been great watching some simple and confident 442 football lately- but today was an example of the limits of both that system and the squad. Barnsley had us outnumbered in the middle and we lacked the central aggression to really compete and the wide pace to trouble them on both flanks. For most of the first half and a bit of the second, we were a bit lost, we couldn't connect defence with attack and drove too many aimless balls. Joseph is great, but he's not all things to all men and whilst he's decent in the air, he's not an out and out target man by any means and he was well marshalled. Several players didn't seem to be fully fit and as a result we didn't have that overall 'snap' about us that disrupts oppositions.
Onamah looked like a really good player who will need another month of games to be genuinely and consistently impactful. I liked that he knew exactly what he wanted to do and how he read situations. I liked less that after he'd been on for about 15 minutes, the game seemed to be going too fast for him and he chucked in some really quite wild tackles as a result. I think if he's got the hunger to really show what he can do, he could be as good as anything we've seen in a while. It's all about his mind I think.
Offiah was magnificent. He's got this way of sprinting to cover and close down danger where he runs twice as fast as man he's chasing but he doesn't seem to be even trying that hard. He really appeared to be at both ends of the pitch at the same time in the second half and did as much to drive us forward as anyone else. He's got a career ahead of him for sure.
To lose another late goal and to generally not really get a proper grasp off the game again was frustrating but football is only football and I can't write the opening and then bang on about some mistakes, like kicking a football about is the be all and end all of everything. Everyone wanted us to 'do it for Steve' and it's a shame we couldn't, but us pretending that winning a football match would make things all ok for him is bullshit. It won't. For us, yeah, it would have been great and I'm sure the players and staff wanted very much to show they cared, but lets not kid ourselves that football changes anything in the real world or that his loss is our loss. It doesn't and it isn't. We've got plenty of experience and knowledge at the club. The manager and his family need space and time and football, footballers and demanding football crowds and their never ending needs can wait as long as they need to.
I, as much as anyone (perhaps more so than some) am guilty of talking about defeat and victory as if they're the biggest things in the world. They're not. Blackpool was beautiful today in the sunlight. The evening fell and the dusk light weaved the sky and earth together in a soft and magical way.
We'll be ok. The squad needs reshaping for what we're doing. We'll try and do that. It's a perpetual journey anyway. You never actually arrive and none of it really matters except for the moments it creates and that it takes us elsewhere.
Onward.
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