I don't expect you to care about my memories, but the weather is striking a chord - This is the precisely same weather as a day from my past. It's about 1983, I'm staying with my grandparents and we go for a walk on the prom at Cleveleys. There is blue sky but the wind is doing its windy business and the promise of warmth is a deception. My grandad wears his sports jacket, complimenting his shirt, grey leather slip ons and nylon slacks, combover alive in the wind. Combovers are normal, ties and jackets are out in force, Ladies with tight perms and sensible dresses, meat and two veg is the staple of the cafes we pass, tea in small white cups, coffee is just coffee and comes from a jar. The English seaside is already long in decline but I'm unaware of any of that. Just the chill of the wind broken by a wall and the momentary warmth of a patch of sunny shelter, salt on my lips and the bristle on the matting of the tiny helter skelter in the tiny fairground that's no longer there.
Nostalgia is dangerous. Everything changes. It always will do. Let's come back to now. Bloomfield is a magical place. The clouds part as kick off approaches. Changes have happened here too. The pitch, tended with such skill by the departing Paul Flynn looks to shimmer with a chlorophyll glow in the sunshine. I once fell painfully in love with a girl I saw on Manchester Piccadilly train station for a few seconds as I looked out of the train window. I was in love for a long time with her. Falling in love with someone you've never actually met is a bit like the start of the season, nothing can taint the imagined possibilities, nothing can sully the image you've seen - I fall in love again, this time watching the warm up from a distance as Emil Hansson swerves a shot inside the post with languid ease. I hope to stay in love. It's better to feel something than nothing after all. I marvel at the sheer amount of tangerine gloss paint that's been applied to good effect. I don't like the set up of the team with its echo of seasons past and 3 centre backs at home but needs must and in Bruce we must trust.
I wait. Anticipation grows. The teams come out.... We're here, again. Let the game take us where it will. Lets let go of all that we are and become the crowd, the noise, the throng on the hillside gazing down at the battle below. All of that flowery shit. Pick your own image to suit, the game is starting.... I've missed this.
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Peacock Farrell makes a good early low save. I think to myself 'that bodes well - what do the Birmingham fans know anyway?' Jordan Brown shanks one wide after a good move and there's the first roll of applause from the reasonably busy stands.
Then, earlier than seems reasonable to hope for, we're reminded of the reason we do this. Honeyman, already looking bright even after a few minutes is stretching for a Coulson flick, it's out of his reach, he goes to ground, he springs up, he steals the balls and he fairly smashes it home, no messing, no second thoughts, just an absolute rocket from close range that essentially burns a hole in the keeper as it goes right through him at the near post and crashes into the net. YESSS!
Everything is exactly as you'd want it. Blue sky, bowling green pitch, Blackpool on top of things and sweeping aside a club that ,frankly, if we're honest, we shouldn't even be entertaining playing because we have Ballon d'or winners, FA Cup winners, World Cup winners and they're just a ring road and some industrial estates and where even is Stevenage anyway?
This feeling lasts a little while as Pool look in charge of the game. I should know better than this. We're incredibly good at punishing hubris. As around me, people purr with pre season optimism and I'm wondering whether it will be four or five this afternoon, nothing turns quickly and horribly into something. Horsfall takes a pass, turns and plays it inexplicably across his own goal, where some nippy little forward from Stevenage pounces and makes it look like we have no keeper, such is the ease and accuracy of his finish.
Fucks sake Pool. That was a goal that had no reason to be but was anyway. We're supposed to be the all-new, mean, lean and defensively solid Blackpool FC - not the same old shambles that it seems we always are.
We rouse ourselves a little. Ennis looks happy to be here and is, by some distance, our liveliest player over the 90 minutes. He battles hard at the end of a crisp move and puts it over the top. It's worth a round of applause even if it was never going in. Ash Fletcher sums himself up in 3 seconds. He charges through, shows a simply dazzling sleight of foot to the defender who might as well have just vanished, such is Fletcher's brilliance. He's got the easiest pass on earth to set the unmarked Andy Lyons in on goal, all he has to do is roll it forward a few yards and the lad is away - and yet, after such brilliant footwork, he manages to pass the ball with the touch of a building site labourer in his steel toe cap boots trying to kick off a particularly heavy clay soil that has built up around his feet. In short - he knocks it out of play, when pretty much anyone in the ground might have made the pass.
It's not really a classic but Honeyman is a pleasure to watch. He's sort of like if (the good versions of) Sonny Carey was also (the best version of) Jay Spearing and I'm baffled as to way he's playing for us. He looks far too good. Why is he not in a higher division. He's got lovely technique he's decisive, he's intelligent and as I hear in front of me "he makes Jerry yates look lazy" such is his workrate. He's silky and he's able to rat the ball out at the same time. Never mind that shit goal we conceded - this lad is the league title in flesh! Stevenage aren't stupid though. He's getting kicked, he's getting tripped and then, after (I think) a corner, he's down in a heap. For fucks sake. Can we not have nice things?
It seems we can't. We can't have nice refs either. This week's twat dressed in a cheap Matalan cycling outfit is mainly obsessed with the precise location of free kicks and throw-ins and less concerned with actually managing the game. His linesman friend, whose belly is stretching his blue top looks Sunday League and makes some Sunday League calls. Stevenage are perfectly able to disrupt the game at will and likely to get a free kick for their troubles.
Hang on... He's given a penalty. For what? Eh?
The ball floated across, we seemed to defend it. No one claimed for anything but then the ref pointed to the spot. I'm baffled. My phone tells me variously that Ihiekwe just scooped it with his hand for no reason and that Ihiekwe was pushed into the ball. I have no idea. (I watch it back later and I'm not sure why he's handled it...) The Kop does its level best, a sea of waving arms and a pounding heartbeat of a drum. Peacock Farrell does his best to, guessing right and for a split second there's the ecstatic relief of a save but then the grim realisation hits that he's been beaten and that they're 2-1 ahead.
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Can we go back to kick off? I liked it when I'd forgotten what it was like to support this football club.
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Bruce isn't mucking about. It's 442 with Emil Hansson on the left and Coulson out on the right wing. I love the idea of this lad. From the little I've seen of him he's quite obviously a footballer of some talent. Zac Ashworth is on too and Casey at right back. It takes a moment to notice Lyons and Honeyman are gone. That's our best player and our only right back off. Hmmm.
'Hmmm' becomes 'fuck me, this is a fucking life sentence this shit, why the fuck do I actually bother with it because frankly, my life as a whole was better in the last few months when I wasn't trekking to watch sheer incompetence mixed with fucking cursed luck on my Saturdays and doing something more constructive and rewarding' as Peacock Farrell gives all Birmingham fans something to revel in, slipping an inexplicably poor pass straight to a Stevenage player, one pass, a second pass and Dan Kemp belts into the roof of the net. I have no words. Horsfall was under a bit of pressure, Ihiekwe was jumping with another player but that... I don't do this to lay into players - but he owes us a double save at point blank range for certain.
There follows a half hour of turgid misery punctuated by bursts of skill from Hansson who looks like a player who, in a fully functioning side, could do some proper damage. He's got the confidence of a player who knows he can beat people and will back himself. He hugs the touchline and wants the ball. Simmo anyone? Ennis runs hard and spins, fights and darts to little reward. Jordan Brown chugs around but we look toothless. Fletcher is having one of those days. Lee Evans is doing an excellent impression of a bloke out for a stroll lobbing balls with one of those dog thrower toys whilst browsing on his phone, not really paying all that much attention to the direction or trajectory of the tennis ball.
We are, frankly, a bit shit. More than a bit shit. We're rubbish. There's nothing else to say. It's a shit spectacle cos we've got a left back on the right wing who gets blown over by a stiff breeze, a centre forward who can't win a long ball and a midfielder whose radar is not so much misaligned but seemingly reporting things that aren't actually there. Add to this a referee who allows them to literally clothesline our players and it's all a bit grim
Then hope. Brown, who has done little wrong, has been shuffled to right back. He's played there before and he looks ok in the role. He loops a ball into the channel, the ever willing Ennis makes a burst and his man leaves him, he's in, he's got the kind of finish that is worrying because it looks lie he should score - but he takes it sublimely, faking his intent then putting it in the corner, the keeper totally flat footed as the ground roars into life. He deserved that. He's played hard today and he's kept going.
Hope is a cruel mistress though. The onslaught never really comes. We loop a few forward, we have a few corners, Stevenage play for time in the corner, on the ground, physio on and all of that. Of course they do. Lee Evans smacks one and for a few milliseconds it seems a magical end, but it's blocked and the game ends with us not making much out of a corner that we didn't throw the keeper up for because why? I don't know.
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There's a lot of reasons we can give as to why we didn't play well. Injuries, formation, new squad. There's doubtless merit to those reasons. The manager has been quite open in telling us we're not ready. We palpably weren't today. Maybe that was in the player's minds. I don't know.
There's no point going through who was poor again. It's evident from what I've already written that some players had subpar performances and that too many of them looked uncomfortable, even in moments where there wasn't any obvious reason to. That speaks to the degree of familiarity they have with each other. I joke about Evans passing to people who weren't there - but then in reality, there literally were people who weren't there and runs not being made that might have previously been. The defence and keeper looked like strangers to each other at times - outside of the goals there were moments of hesitancy, disagreements, surprise at receiving the ball from each other. There was little leadership, no one shouting, clapping, exhorting each other. This is a new team - but also a patched up makeshift side, some of whom are doing jobs they're not suited too (Three right footed players in a back three was horrible) and all of whom played quite a lot of the game in a formation they've not been recruited for or trained for and it showed.
I found it odd we didn't throw Kouassi into the last 10 minutes. Like him or not, he's got the presence to disrupt and personally, I'd have thrown Knight on and told him 'there's nothing to lose' as Coulson barely made any headway down the flank and seemed to be treated like a fly who could just be swatted away by his fullback - but these are minor details. This is a new side, it's not finished (it needs to be soon!) - it needs to gel and perhaps such a poor, disjointed display will shake out any complacency or habits that need dropping and show Bruce what needs to be worked upon and who makes the cut when they're all fit (it's not some of these if that game shows their best work...)
We lost today to an absolute classic League 1 side. Organised, making the most of their attributes, working their arses off and winning physical duels. This is this league. We have signings coming in and we're addressing the lack of adventure and competition in attacking roles - but we cannot lose battles and give away shit goals like that, because we could sign fucking Messi twice and still lose to sides who come, all sharp elbows and canny trips and time wasting and who outplay us at the basics by concentrating better than we do and winning their duels.
It's one game. We'll be reet.
Onward
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