I'm sat in the car whilst the rain flows down the windscreen, so thickly coated it's more like melting wax. How many times I've done this. A triumph of hope over sanity. This can't be a good game. This can't be a good way to spend a stormy Saturday, watching us being buffeted by wind and rain and the small matter of Mansfield Town - a side hewn from the memory of coalfields and brawn, surely more suited to such conditions than us.
But stop this negativity. It's past 2pm and there's sport on the familiar and comforting smeary, blurry sound of a medium wave radio station. If ever there's a time for belief, it's now. The presenter and guests go in and out of focus as the signal oscillates as medium wave will do, as if the storm is blowing them around, closer and then further away.
My mind prepares itself for what is to come. Yes, we're lightweight and there's the very real potential for some of our players to get blown away like the opening of the Wizard of Oz - but before kick off what happened last week or the week before that doesn't, shouldn't, mustn't matter. We have footballers and this is football. Maybe Leighton Clarkson can dance between the rain drops, maybe Josh Bowler can tack on the wind and curl the ball home, bending it on the breeze, maybe in the swirling chaos, Dale Taylor can be the stillness at the heart of the storm and stab it home.
A pensioner's shopping trolley is hung on on the fence of one of the houses I'm parked by. The lid opens and closes in the wind. I imagine it is laughing at my optimism, big gales of canvas laughter following me down the road.
Time will tell.
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I'm watching us pressure Mansfield. They're letting us play, we're able to build, to find the midfield who are able to advance and then to spread play wide. It seems I was right to banish the negative thoughts and take the game afresh because this is as good as we've looked all season, Albie enjoying the technical foil of Clarkson, the two of the fiddling passes to each other, Karoy buzzing about and driving forward, the Finn flying forward, Bowler being slippy and tricky and actually, this is quite nice on the eye and seemingly has Mansfield a bit dizzy.
Albie stuns a free kick just past the near post, the Finn draws a great save from the keeper, then has another effort that the keeper fumbles into Dion who can't quite react in time. Albie smacks one from distance and a similar thing happens for Taylor. We're looking confident and we're back to hunting the ball down, pressing Mansfield and the attack is doing the defending. I wasn't at all convinced by Tuesday night, but maybe there's been a corner turned after all?
Oh, but of course, I'm stood there now, looking up at the roof of the stand. To my right Mansfield fans do that galloping run down the steps to the front of the stand, arms flailing in delight, to leap about on the open spaces of the concourse, something that would look ridiculous in any other circumstance, but the aim of any away day is to get lost in that rush of joy. A rush of joy is, of course, not what I feel. More of a deflation, a sinking familiar feeling. It's like I'm stuck reading the same page of a book I don't like, over and over again. A cross into the box, an opposition *just scoring a goal that doesn't seem like it's been that hard to create* and then lots of silent teapots and a trudge back to the halfway line. Just of quarter of an hour of optimism, gone in an instant.
It can always get worse - and it does, a penalty, a slipped pass, a coming together, initially it seems we've cleared the danger, but then it's apparent the ref only let them play on in case they scored and he's pointing not for whatever dead ball we hope it is, but at the spot and we're utterly fucked. This is a disaster.
Yet, there is Bailey Peacock Farrell, plunging, throwing his arms up and blocking up and over the bar, despite Smith putting all of his considerable frame behind his effort. It's a moment of reprieve and one we take full advantage of, defending the resulting corner, then another corner and finally, launching away from our own box, where Clarkson, the deftest of flicks, Taylor turning it forward and Dion, away, shoulder shoulder, looking like he might lose the race, but not willing to concede, forcing himself into space where he can shoot, and then, driving the ball under the onrushing keeper, into the corner of the goal and everything has turned round in an instant.
We're back. We're pressing like animals again, we're playing it across them, round them and through them. Bowler on the end of the best move, cracks it hard, it skips off the turf and is clawed away. We come again, defenders up inside their half, collapsing their attack into the midfield, their midfield into the defence. We just can't find the way through - but it's us who end the half well on top and us who had the better of the game overall.
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I don't know if I'm just glad to see us go forward with some intent but I'm willing to overlook the frailty going the other way - the Finn has been flung high and struggled to get back - the goal came from their left, but they've had real joy down their right, exposing the back three to their pace which is risky. That said, we've had the majority of chances, the better possession and given we've not played well for what seems like forever, I'm not unhappy with the first half. The ref has been shite, but then, all refs are.
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Within a matter of minutes, it's clear this is a different game. Where there was space, there's now a Mansfield player snapping at us. They've changed shape, they seem to have pushed up and that's posed a real problem now for our shape, the wing backs thrown up the pitch have been countered and the Stags have a complete new energy about them.
It's all Mansfield until we break and Taylor is wrestled to the ground. The free kick is a waste but maybe it'll be us that burst on them, a reversal of the first half. That hope lasts for a few minutes until Williams plays a hapless pass, our defenders pinned by their pressing and rushing thing, Mansfield don't need asking twice if they'd like a shot at goal and a quick dash is followed by a decisive shot into the roof of our net.
No one goes over to Williams. There's only Karoy who seems to respond, some gestures aimed at geeing up his team mates are met with slumped shoulders and body language that seems to suggest that every man is an island.
We're rushing now, the invention of the first half is replaced by hurried passes and the game is crying out for some kind of change to our structure, some sort of new question for Mansfield. The best we muster is a cross from Bowler that Dion puts well wide, never really a chance. It's really hammering it down, the rain seems to pour from the lights, the gloom is encroaching.
Now I'm just in disbelief. We've conceded the third, the game is over and we've just let them walk through us and not, once but twice attempted to score for them. A simple pass, A runner not followed, a ball across the box, Clarkson toe pokes blindly, Peacock Farrell rescues him, the ball is whipped back in and the Finn diving in, turns it home. I wouldn't mind so much if it came out of the blue, but it comes merely moments after Ashworth is beaten to the ball when he started the race in front of the man chasing him and Albie just stepped aside to let them run through - 'that would have been an awful goal to concede' I said of that, not knowing that was merely the warm up act, a trifling prelude for the symphony of despicable calamity that would follow.
Ian 'tactics are fluid, it all depends on the game situation' Evatt makes a series of inspired changes. Rather than risk anything changing (why would you? Take the goals out of the game and we're not 3-1 down) he swaps the left wing back for a left wing back, the striker for a striker. We absolutely stink the place out. We've not been good at all in the second half, but after the third goes in, Mansfield could easily have scored another three. We look punch drunk, we look bedraggled, we look like we want to be anywhere but here. The one moment we make something, Clarkson snatches at the header and it's saved. There's nothing else. Bloxham and Yates add nothing. Monroe neither.
The fourth pisses me off because it's the kind of goal we can't score because we're far too smart to bother with a physical forward. Who'd need one of those in this division? It's painfully simple - a ball into their forward who just holds off the defender and turns it on, a simple but effective bit of football and their wide man is in on goal, Albie trailing in his wake like an untucked shirt, us, undone yet again, sliced open by a single pass.
Mansfield knock it round for fun, we can barely get a touch on the ball. This, remember, is Mansfield Town - a well drilled side, yes, but hardly a preseason promotion favourite or a set of mega spenders. This is just another example of what happens when a side designed to nothing in particular comes up against a side designed to play effective league one football. I'm getting increasingly bored of casting admiring glances at the squads of teams with less budget than us and wondering things like 'wow, you've got more than one centre back, how did you do that?' and 'I see you practice crossing the ball to that tall fellow in the middle. How novel! Where did that idea come from?' and 'You've only gone and changed formations? You must have two pages in your folder of tactical ideas!'
I have no idea why I stay to the end.
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What can I say? The manner in which we fell to bits was appalling. Nigel Clough made some changes at half time and they absolutely ripped us to shreds. Shreds is kind. They ground us into dust and then trod the dust into the sodden turf. We looked like a plucky non-league side who'd had a surprisingly good first half against a top tier side - but when faced with reinforcements from the bench, couldn't maintain the level. We were abysmal - and the terrifying thing is, all it took was a bit of a tactical shift and a bit more 'in yer face' attitude from Mansfield and we crumbled.
The players should should take blame, yes - but Ian 'let me bang on about my mystifying process, which no one actually seems to know what it is or why exactly it is we should all trust in it' Evatt had the ability to respond and didn't. We just carried on in exactly the same manner, not shifting anything in the first ten minutes before Mansfield scored when it was obvious they were getting a grip on the game, not doing anything in the next 10 minutes before they scored again, when it was clear their boot was on our neck and doing fuck all else of any meaning for the rest of the game. This was a capitulation in line with the sort of collapses that were happening at the beginning of last season - only, Evatt has been supplying the detail now for over a year and we don't look hugely better and our underlying stats are poor.
Mansfield deserved their win. They reminded me of us in the Championship, able to soak it up and then to pounce. They were admirably committed, visibly united and resilient. I watched Clough, he strolled around his technical area, calm even when they were under pressure. He made decisions and they were bold ones. They paid off. Their fans sang their hearts out. It felt like they knew that this is a team that is giving its all and making each other play better than they might if they were elsewhere. I haven't got bitter words for them - I just miss that being us.
Changing managers isn't a panacea but it's obvious to me that Evatt is running out of road. Today, we drove over the cliff in disastrous fashion - but simply having the manager's head on a stick alone isn't getting to the root of the issue. We have to wonder why, over time, we seem unable to make anything work, why we can't compete in a division we should be able to and what it takes to put together something that looks like it's built on solid foundations and logical thinking as opposed to vibesy sentiment and people we happen to know or happen to be available. Multiple years of what happens in the transfer market feeling initially exciting but not adding up to a functional football team can't continue because we might as well just be setting fire to the money we spend. There are teams with less than us who make what they have work a lot harder.
We feel like a half hearted team representing a half hearted club and that's a crying fucking shame because whenever there's even a distant sniff of us being any good, the place comes alive.
The whole thing needs a fucking good shake for the good of everyone involved.
Onward
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