New Year is here, festivities are over. Real life beckons us with a bony finger, cackling "you've had your fun with your indoor trees and your flashy little lights.... Now here is my wicked revenge. Behold the horrifying emptiness of January and February... Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha" - these grim months wouldn't half be cheered up by us going on a mad winning spree because there ain't much else about them to look forward to.
Shrewsbury, blue and yellow kit, never actually any good but seems to beat us a lot. The kind of team you'd imagine the fans either carry a cheeseboard in a little Tupperware container and a broadsheet newspaper or some local cider in a square plastic container. Everyone in Shrewsbury is either a farmhand, an antique dealer or a vicar in my head. When I actually see them outside the ground though, they look quite normal and no one is carrying a bail of hay, wearing a cravat or sporting a dog collar but then, I guess, it would be wrong to pigeonhole those professions, so for all I know, the bunch of lads in Stone Island might be direct from the seminary.
Us, latent potential, tangerine wizardry, legendary force in the game, Ballon D'or, greatest game in English history and so on. We're merely biding time before launching an all out assault on the Champions League etc. I've said it all before. The window is open, it looks as if a few need to be pushed out and a few others welcomed in. Pace, width etc. You know the drill.
Today, super Sonny Carey in for the hipster wingback is the one change. Coulson is a decent wide player, but he's not a pure winger. Sonny hasn't really been a winger either as far as anyone knew but who knows, maybe the extra player drifting in and having a shot might unlock what will doubtless be a resolute Shrewsbury side. He is the league one Phil Foden after all.
Time for some red hot soccer action.
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When I say 'red hot' I would struggle to actually describe it as 'tepid' - I've rarely found myself more at a loss for words than I am at the task of writing up this first half. What happened? Almost nothing. Ash Fletcher comedically side footed one a mile over. Albie Morgan had a dig from miles out that went miles wide and Sonny 'not actually Andrei Kanchelskis after all' Carey hit a deflected effort late in the half that bounces about a bit. Shrewsbury had a massive keeper who also seemed a little rotund but we've no idea if he's any good or not because we didn't have any shots at him. I can't remember getting anywhere approaching excited about anything beyond Tyrer making a good stop from a Shrewsbury break. I spent most of the half trying to decide if I liked the colour of Shrewsbury's kit - a weird blue green that seemed more like the colour you'd get on expensive but slightly poorly chosen pair of curtains in a badly renovated manor house or in a wall painted with poisonous lead based paint in a derelict farm.
What else. I honestly don't know. I could read the live text back to see if anything happened I'd forgotten about but that would really defeat the point of the blog because you could just do that too and make up your own metaphors to suit. It wasn't that we didn't control the game, it was more that we got up to a certain point and ran out of ideas. The players did move about but they just seemed to swap positions, rendering the overall shape the same even though the individuals popped up in different places. We had a few nice one twos, the odd give and go where we made a bit of space but largely we a) shuffled it side to side or b) hit a hopeful and not very accurate ball at Joseph or Fletcher, neither of particularly troubled their man today.
People say games like this are 'devoid of quality' - that's one of those phrases that isn't strictly true - the players mostly controlled the ball competently and passed it neatly enough. What we were is completely devoid of anything exceptional or outstanding. We were just individually very average and therefore collectively uninspiring. Shrewsbury were compact and organised. At times they dropped into a 6-4-0 formation but when they broke, they did so quickly and directly and did enough to keep us honest. Whilst hardly a team full of world class talent, it was noticeable they carried the ball with pace and passed it fast when going forward so whilst they had a lot less control than us, they carried just enough of a threat to prevent us totally overloading them. I think what probably sums it up is that an excellent recovery tackle from Casey in a half where Shrewsbury had very few forays into our half was my personal highlight - and that should tell you how little real threat we posed.
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Fuck me. That was dull.
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The second half starts out in the same vein. Maybe I should start bringing a book to read. I could take up knitting or something. It's flat as fuck as well. The ground doesn't so much resemble a cauldron of atmosphere but the chatter of some bored people, the noise roughly akin to what you'd be left with if you removed the piped muzak in a moderately busy shopping centre. Maybe they should play some lift music whilst we're playing to fill the time. I'm sure this used to be a fun place to be where it all felt a bit edgy and sometimes it boiled over but it's really not been that for a while. When they announced the injury time in the first half it felt a bit like being sat in an exam hall told there was 1 minute to go before putting your pens down. That's not the vibe I really want if I'm honest. If you offered me the chance to swap my season ticket to 'away games only' I'd bite your hand off at the moment.
Finally we get going. Evans is set away, he tees up Apter and the wee man pings a deep cross, Jimmy scrambles in at the far post and the ball goes wide. It's something resembling a chance and that's something. Encouraged, we pass it around well and create a shooting chance from some intricate work that leaves Carey to have a dig from the edge of the box. It's straight down the keeper's throat but it is, at least, on target.
Bruce smells blood. There's a quadruple substitution (Joseph amongst those withdrawn, he's looked leggy today and nothing has stuck to him at all) and the return of CJ 'Ole!' Hamilton to the fray. Finally, some pace. So far we've not really looked able to run away from Shrewsbury - we could definitely have moved more, but to be fair, whatever movement we make, they just follow us and if you're not faster than them or bigger than them, then that's going to yield a stalemate. CJ might just change that.
Change it he does. A ball up towards Ballard actually finds CJ, he does the trademark 'pull it back past everyone' thing he does, but there's Apter, coming from deep to pick it up, completely unmarked and he absolutely leathers it into the top corner, one of those where it's hit so hard, the net seems to stretch and envelope the ball. Yes! That's exactly what we needed and the substitution has yielded almost immediate reward.
We nearly get another as great work from Offiah in the far corner keeps the ball alive and possession in our hands, he draws all the nearby defenders then just lays of for Evans to cross - Rhodes climbs and puts it just over the top. Surely we're going to roll this lot over now. We're on top, we're clearly better than them and they can't just leave 5 in a line with 4 in another line in front of that any more. CJ Hamilton has changed the game with his pace and if they come onto us, he'll be able to run riot in behind them...
... that's not quite how it pans out. I don't know if anyone has noticed, but CJ has a yin to his yang. For all he's lightning quick and gives us an option than no one else in the squad (in fact no one for years) has given us, he's also not the greatest all round technical footballer on earth and sometimes (this will surprise you I'm sure!) that can be a problem.
First he gives it away after we pass it round just about everyone and the move breaks down when it didn't need to. Then he gets caught in possession and sort of half falls over, half stabs the ball to no one and we're all out of position because I'm not sure anyone expected him to do that and Shrewsbury just pick it up, run into the box and score. It's such a simple goal. We've spent most of the game trying to fashion chances from clever angles and stringing passes together and they just walk into the box after having the ball handed to them on a plate and it's 1-1.
For fucks sake Pool! Just before the ball was turned over, we were going forward and turned around, choosing to go right back and play some possession football but that kind of falls down when you don't keep possession. It was a like a goal from the worst moments of Critchley 2.0 - an opportunity to attack turned down, the ball shuttled around the back and lost and then lots of shouting at each other whilst the other lot celebrate wildly because Blackpool is the place to come if you want a plucky draw to boost your survival hopes and everyone fucking seems to do this to us.
I'd like to describe a barrage of attacks, wave after wave of tangerine pressure, oohs, aahs, head in hands moments, kicking the back of the seat in frustration, screaming at the ref, invoking phrases like 'the Alamo, only with more kitchen sinks being thrown' but again, I have to be honest, we were more than a bit shit once they'd scored and I mostly sat resting my elbows on the empty seat (people must have chosen the Sealife Centre this week) in front and glumly held my chin in my hands because we were never scoring. I think we won a corner but wasted it. They looked more likely and they didn't look particularly like scoring either, so that shows how little I thought we were going to score.
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That stung.
Shrewsbury were great at what they did, but they didn't do a lot. We played poorly, we failed to test them often enough. It was like having a defence in the way was enough because whilst they were resolutely well organised and hard working, there weren't many last ditch headers or flying blocks, their keeper wasn't pulling off double saves (or really, any saves) and they didn't particularly have to go beyond a standard level of shithousery (a few clips on Apter, a bit of time wasting) to frustrate us.
One thing I noticed was that whilst the delivery to the strikers wasn't especially good, we really didn't compete for the ball in the box. It was if we'd decided that, rather than risk going all in and possibly conceding a foul, we'd watch the ball into the keepers' hands. I can't face writing the same paragraph about what we lack, I just hope we can go and get that injection of what we need (variety!) and start to match some of the away performances against decent teams with home performances against sides who we have to start beating if we want to achieve anything.
Players will make mistakes. CJ probably feels like pure shit and he's one of the few who gives us variety - the wider point is that we're struggling like hell to break down anyone at home and when you don't look like scoring very often in games like this, a single mistake will be amplified. You'll never stop mistakes, but we have to address the fundamental issues that saw us start yet again with only one actual winger on the pitch and reliant on a 35 year old who hasn't scored since forever as the change when (as has been inevitable for a while) Joseph looked like running himself into the ground had caught up on him.
CJ's mistake doesn't explain why we rarely win the ball in the air going forward, why we don't have many ball carriers and why we rarely seem to win an attacking footrace. The fact the squad was conceived for a different form of football does, and the manager needs to be backed to properly start to shape the squad to play the form he favours. There's little point in having appointed him otherwise because the overall issues here aren't simply about attitude or mindset - they're about the attributes and positional expertise of the available players. Mindset is formed by habits, it's not an absolute, it's not fixed - but being tall or quick or being a winger or a target man is.
Onward
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