In the last 24 hours I've analysed our key stats, been to Stoke and trodden in dog shit. It's a measure of how the numbers looked that visiting the Potteries and experiencing that fateful sliding sensation as I placed my foot down on the pavement aren't the least depressing things to have happened to me in that time period.
The evidence of my eyes and the evidence of the numbers suggest we've got no chance. This lot have loads of big lads and are managed by no nonsense Paul Warne who plays the kind of big lad no nonsense football that we hate. I can't make a logical case for us dancing around them in a fleet footed and nimble manner because we've looked collectively leaden and unimaginative for a number of games now. And yet... This is us. We're always more likely when we're less likely.
Perhaps that's the kind of mental gymnastics that keeps people in toxic relationships or tied to jobs they hate - the thought that it will be better tomorrow, that rock bottom is at least a foundation to build from. Before the game, I joke with someone about it being darkest before the dawn and we settle on it also being dark in a black hole crushing the life and soul from every cell in your body, your very matter imploding and the absolute fabric of anything resembling yourself or anything you could describe as reality being torn apart - which, on reflection, is, a surprisingly good metaphor for watching us defend a set piece.
Ian 'faith, belief, feelings and focus' Evatt makes only one change. The Finn is in and that's probably helpful because he's quite a good footballer in League One and we're in League One and we've not really looked like a team chock full of players who are quite good at playing football in League One for a while.
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Here we go...
Fuck me. This is an awful game. MK Dons are shite. We're shite. It's not even entertainingly shite. It's just shite shite. It's tepid, turgid, terrible Tuesday night, two thirds empty ground, the away team aren't even a team and have 10 fans and no one gives a shit about them both sides playing nothingball football.
There's a kind of hum around the ground. It sounds more like a cricket match than a football match. There's an occasional groan as something goes wrong, but it's more like the game is happening in the background - we haven't had a league game for ever, so people are catching up and whatever is happening on the pitch doesn't really grab the attention.
I'll tell you what this first half is like. Have you ever been looking forward to your dinner and then, when returning to the kitchen, realise you've switched the oven on, but not actually turned the temperature on so that, yes, the light has come on and it's made some oven noises - but the food is still sat there cold on the tray and you're left with a feeling of general disappointment and annoyance at yourself for your general stupidity?
Perhaps the club might want to pop that on a flyer for the next game - "Only 29 quid for the likely chance that at least some of the match will leave you with a sense of general angst at your inability to make sensible life choices" - I'm available anytime for a marketing consultancy.
Honestly though, it's truly spectacularly nothingy. Time passes and things happen but nothing seems to reach the level of even vaguely noteworthy. Zac Ashworth exists. George Honeyman runs past the ball or fails to pass it to someone. I wonder how it was that when we first resigned Josh Bowler he had a bowlcut one week and then the next he had long hair again. A goal kick happens. I've kind of zoned out. It could be either of the goal keepers. It seems irrelavent.
Someone behind me says at some point 'fucking hell, it feels like this has been going on for 3 hours' and I quip wittily 'more like 30 years' because I'm such a funny man hahaha, fuck my life and me and all of this... but it does kind of feel like one minute I'm watching say, Paul Stoneman, Jamie Murphy and Steve Thornber scooping the ball away on a muddy pitch in the Endsleigh League against, I dunno, a shit Swansea team in 17th place who are doing exactly the same thing and its about 1993 and I've blinked and there's a flash of light and it's exactly the same thing now, only in the future and for all the talk of modern football and the seats and fancy toilets and flashy advertising boards, nothing is really any different. What happened to Endsleigh? I don't know. I don't know what it is to be honest. They could make bathroom fittings or sell legal advice or something else entirely. Don't get me started on Jersey Mike. Who the fuck and what the fuck is he? I'm not entirely sure football sponsorship works does it? Didn't have this confusion with the Milk Cup to fair. I reckon all sponsorship should be limited to explicable things as when I think about it, it makes me quite annoyed to have shit waved at me that I don't actually know what it is. Has anyone ever actually drunk any Carabao? I've digressed.
There's so many things I could have done with my time instead. Like take out Endsleigh Insurance (I looked it up) I mean, we all could. (I'm not getting paid by Endsleigh by the way, though if they want to sponsor me, I'm willing to talk - Jersey Mike can fuck off though...) This (the game, not the blog, though now I write it, it occurs to me, you could probably apply it to both) is the definition of pointless. We could just meet up in the ground and not bother with the football. Someone could put post it notes on the seats with stuff we could talk about and you could just wander about for 90 minutes and chat shit with people and we'd probably get more out of it than we're getting out of this. Give the lads a season off. Cancel football. It's rubbish anyway.
I like the Finn though. We look more balanced with him and one of the few moments of note is him getting on the end of a cross and firmly planting a header down that is quite well stopped. The other, Jerry fiddles it to Bloxham, who, in the manner of a farm worker handling a bull (in that it's all very rugged, but at the same time, deceptively skillfull) shuffles and staggers a yard of space and cracks a shot that is definitely well stopped. We follow that up by Honeyman shooting straight at the keeper, but such is the excitement at something vaguely resembling an attack, that we have 30 whole seconds of singing and acting like it's a football match and we're happy to be here. I look at the clock. 37 minutes have passed. Where did they go? Did they exist?
Nothing else happens.
It's half time.
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MK Dons seemed to be able to get into some dangerous positions relatively easily, but fortunately, their shooting has the precision of a mis-functioning medieval trebuchet operated by an illiterate drunk with 3 missing fingers and no sight in one eye, so it hasn't really mattered. We've had a couple of shots but mostly done absolutely nothing.
I am, therefore, pleased to see Leighton Clarkson warming up at half time because he's good at things like controlling the ball with his feet and passing it forwards, sometimes even to where other players are. He might not be that good at other stuff, but fuck me, I'm bored so I'd like to watch someone who can do the sort of things you hope to see try to do those things.
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The second half is a bit better. The Finn is a feisty fella, he's belted up and down the left, getting tangled up with their right back and we've even passed to him sometimes. He's put a couple of OK balls into the box, which, considering he's a right sided player on the left and we generally haven't bothered with the left side of the pitch, is a considerable achievement.
One through ball from Clarkson is to die for, slipping him in, weighted to perfection, a cleaver through bare flesh, their defence left split, blood on pitch. I love that football has that in it, that the smallest player on the pitch can cause damage with instinct and vision, leaving the big lads turning painfully and a gasp of appreciation echoing in the stands.
It's still though, not a classic. You can tells it's getting on the nerves of the crowd as Jerry, St Jerry, Jerry of Heavens Gate themed drinking cult death wish idol fame get groaned at as he tries to break, chopping from one foot to the other, but leaving the ball behind and leaving us exposed. No one ever groans at Jerry, but tonight they do, because for all the love in the world and all the credit in the bank, we're shite and that was, frankly (and it pains me to say this, because it's Jerry and I, as much as anyone else, love the man from the bottom of his boots, to the top of his head) was another shite thing in a long list of shite in recent games.
The optimism I felt from the restart is fading a bit. Lets be honest, it's fading quite a lot. Lets be truly honest, I'm feeling foolish for ever having felt optimistic in the first place. The second half has been slightly better - but it's been a bit like when you put something in the microwave and accidently use 'defrost' instead of 'full power' and thus it's at best, lukewarm.
I marvel at how, when gifted a free kick close to the edge of the box, MK choose to take it short, it's like they've never watched us (not) defend a set piece... They have a corner, they're putting a bit of pressure on. We know how this goes...
FUCK ME WE'VE SCORED A FUCKING GOAL WHERE THE FUCK DID THAT COME FROM?
Bowler, thinks about a run. He lays into the channel instead for Karoy, who chops back and...
...well, from where I am, not wholly switched on to the moment yet, because it doesn't immediately seem dangerous, appears to just slash the ball home from the weirdest of angles in a manner that defies all logic. It doesn't seem like a cross as he's leathered it, but it's also not registered at all with me, or anyone around me that you'd feasibly shoot from there and mean it - but he has it seems. Fuck me, I didn't expect that, but I'll take it - and I'll take Karoy being the player to score the goal, lucky, audacious, accidental or otherwise, because he's one player who has, if nothing else, almost always looked something approaching dynamic and deserves the moment as much, if not more than anyone.
It's a strange celebration, a crowd that was settling back into restlessness, jolted into totally unexpected joy. Who knew football could be fun?! We debate whether he saw the keeper out of place or just sliced it. We don't know. We don't really care either.
It's visible the impact the goal has. We actually play it about a bit. We move it that bit faster, we shift it between midfielder and we look across the pitch, using the width, we get at them a bit and we look like we want to do that.
The second is nicely worked, a short corner, some short passing to make an angle, a decent ball in, a loose ball and then substitute Taylor smashes it home, a finish that is emphatic and play that showed a strikers instinct and the body strength in the box to make the ball his own that we've really missed. That goal is celebrated properly, a moment of real delight, of relief and of celebration that we've done something as a team and one of the players who really need to find their groove, has slotted it home at the end. It's far from a remarkable goal, it's just a semi competent bit of attacking play involving a few players and in many ways, we need a lot more of that over the next few months, than we do Karoy's more unusual effort.
There's a save from BPF late on and some more, frankly criminal use of the ball when close to goal by MK Dons (it's like they're shooting wearing wellies) and 8 minutes of injury time from nowhere. We see the game out. The best thing that happens is Josh Bowler getting told to retake a free kick we'd taken to the corner first time and falling for the crowds 'shoooooooot' insistance but shooooooooting into top right hand corner of the North Stand to cheers. The worst thing that happens is Karoy limping off because I was just thinking that he, Morgan and Clarkson had had the most convincing collective midfield display in a while and how we might just have solved the immediate problem of 'why is our midfield shite, even though actually it shouldn't be' and of course, I should never think positive things.
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Was this a convincing win? No. Was it completely unconvincing? No, probably not. It was a poor game and we were maybe the slightly better side - we certainly were the second half when MK Dons were woeful - but we have to credit our team for not being brushed aside by their superior physicality and finding their way into (something loosely approaching) control of the game.
Ashworth, despite a mistake early on where he totally misjudged a ball and let them run through on goal, had a good game and I think is the only choice for the position he plays at the moment as being able to run is quite important. Casey was very good tonight, reading the game well and being dominant when he had to be. Up front, Taylor obviously scored, but had a few moments where he looked powerful and able to command a little time and space, to change direction and see what's around him - he feels like he has to play and probably with Bloxham because it feels like contrast matters in a forward line because it always has - I don't really mind with who to be honest, it just seems bizarre if we don't give the lad minutes, because he's our future in ways that Jerry and Dion aren't. Clarkson too brings *something* - there's a willingness to go forward, a vision, a technique, a little impetuousness, a bit of imagination and it feels like we need that. He'll miss a tackle here and there, he'll get caught wrong side of the ball at times - but we look less sluggish, less cautious with him on the pitch, less predictable - and I think him and Morgan have the collective intelligence to make us better in midfield when we have the ball and when we face teams who don't really want the ball, that's really important. We do have some footballers - so, for me, I'd try and as much football as we can, because trying to be a physical team requires physicality we don't actually have and we can't solve that in the immediate by pretending or hoping that we do.
The Finn though, deserves real praise - up to last night, we were (factually) the most lopsided side in the division with a staggering amount of play down one flank - that renders us predictable, it puts a burden on Bowler to create that becomes harder to fulfil because teams can immediately identify how we play and where we're trying to work the ball too. His desire to get forward was definitely a factor in keeping MK deeper and a reminder of the idea of attack and aggression being useful in a defensive sense - because having twin threats on either flank helps keep the opposing players aware they need to defend.
Have we turned a corner? Who knows?! Was it the answer to all critique? No. Was it a much needed, slightly scrappy three points? Yes. Was there some cause for optimism? Perhaps... I still think this squad lacks in certain things - but we utilised some of the things we have slightly better and I hope that some confidence and a positive outcome helps us go and do a little bit more football and a little bit less of the nothingness that has characterised us of late.
Onward
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