I always like a trip to Sheffield. I like the rolling hills, I like that it's a city of valleys, odd bits of woodland and dereliction with rivers weaving through it as if sewing the place together with watery thread. I like how you don't really know what's over the crest of the next hill and it feels like there's always a different way to get from A to B if you want.
I know I'm here for football, but sometimes it's tempting to think, actually, fuck the game, There's Victoriana, there's Edwardian glazed brick, there's brutalist concrete, there's shining new things. I could just disappear into it all. I'm sick of football anyway, it's shit.
There's a golden tower block that is the most 80s thing I've ever seen. There's an award winning restaurant next to a dodgy as fuck looking massage parlour creating a strange contrast between the classy and the seedy, in one window, prestigious awards and in the other, curtains so grim and faded that it is anything but alluring. There's so many old sheds and empty patches of land. There's a market with random shite being sold. There's a hillside, marked with industrial scarification. There's a tram every 20 minutes going here and there. Maybe I'd be better off just spending the afternoon walking and soaking up being somewhere I wouldn't normally be.
Yet, of course, like a magnet, football calls.
It's a defensive line up. Evo has plucked Coulson from under the perm machine and Lyons from behind the bags of balls in the corner of the training ground. He's blown the dust off the pair off them and shoved them out there to make a name for themselves. It's kind of logical because the others have been rubbish but it also does feel more than a bit like spinning the roulette wheel and seeing what players squad number it lands on.
Wednesday do a very impressive remembrance service. It's immaculate. Then, the roar and the game and ok, this is decent, this big old cavernous place and it's noisy and something is happening and it's not just Sunday afternoon nothingness, and I like football really.
We start passably. I'll take 'passable.' Bloxham looks lively. I mean to be fair,, looking awake gets you man of the match of late, so don't read too much into that. Lyons rolls back the years with a far post sneak in header. There's a scrimmage in the box, Clarkson lashes one across, Wednesday have to turn it behind.
Wednesday have a bit more of the ball but don't do too much with it. It's probably chances even. We show a bit of spirit, Wedensday's best moment creating block after block. Casey's last ditch tackle is good, but the ball pops straight up to a blue and white shirt, because even footballs hate us. There's (I think) Morgan on the line then Ashworth with another block.
We're doing 'ok' and where we are 'ok' is 'quite good' - we do some things that normal teams do, like heading the ball away when the other team crosses the ball and sometimes pass to each other , occasionally when we're in space. We have some corners - which we don't really do anything with because we're not great at corners, but it's good to remember when we were quite good at corners and imagine that one day in the future we might be good at corners.
Things are fine. Even Hayden Coulson's not collapsed in a heap yet. Perhaps we could be something other than a shambles today. Stay in the game, frustrate the big crowd and all of that.
Someone is free on the right. We've got it in the middle. That bloke on the right, he could run into loads of space... That's where the ball needs to go. Leighton Clarkson sees it but instead of a fizzing, curling defence splitting ball, hit like whip and leaving a welt down the shamed face of the Wednesday defence, it's a pass to no one with all of the conviction of dropped sponge landing in bath of lukewarm water. To be honest, I've no idea where that metaphor came from or what it means, but I do know that Wednesday a through, no one is getting back, not a chance and it's a free shot on goal and it's not realistic to expect Peacock Farrell to save everything and indeed, he doesn't save this and here we fucking go again.
We've served up yet another goal on a silver platter with a side of cress and a little crescent of crisps. Teams must love playing us because you just have to wait for a while and we'll give you a present. I like Leighton Clarkson, he looks like he's quite good at some things - but that was a vile mistake. I feel like everyone is like that at the moment, players who 'are probably quite good really but aren't in this team' and I'm waiting now for the inevitable collapse, the bowed heads and the self pity as Wednesday romp away with it, cheered on by their stupid brass band. (I like the band, it's a good thing really, but it's fucking irritating as fuck when your losing and also, for such a vaunted thing, the drum is nowhere near as good as Hoggy's cos it sounds like a toy.)
I don't see how we get back into this. It's all good picking Lyons and Coulson and having full backs as wing backs if you're going to keep it tight, but if you don't, how do you then get back into the game?. We seem penned back - Our strikers charge out with the ball from time to time, but no one can get beyond them, so they're just running blindly towards dead ends. I state that I'd be happy going in 1-0 down because at least then I could pretend we've got a clever change in us and kid myself that I believe the second half will be different.
Then the game suddenly changes. A ball into Bloxham, to me, he looks second favourite, but he's got this curious way of buiding up a head of steam and a deceptive bit of pace, like a traction engine running down a hill and the Wednesday man is suddenly panicking and there's a kind of shove-come-body check type thing and Bloxham is on his back and it's definitely a foul but there's the ref, marching up decisively with a straight red and I'll admit, I'm a little surprised because Bloxham was potentially through but he was probably running away from goal and had a bit to do - but I'm not complaining because that has turned everything on its head.
The free kick, a big scream for handball. Did someone come out of the wall with arms up? There's some furious rewinding of clips in the stands to prove the injustice but I'm not sure. The players seem to be.
There's time enough for a great little scrap where Bloxham has to be led away after some kind of outrage, his shirt being pulled off him and half the players seem to get involved and it seems like it keeps firing back into life and the ref, to be fair to him, does a good job of telling everyone to stop being knobheads without feeling the need to wave around cards just to show he's in charge.
We end the half, not surprisingly feeling in better shape that it looked like we might have done.
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How will we play this? Surely we'll go at them?
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Bowler is on so it looks like that's the plan. I feel a bit sorry for Andy Lyons. He gets so few chances and his Blackpool career looks all but over, but I don't think he did all that much wrong today and indeed carried the ball out reasonably well and gave some energy. He's sacrificed so Williams can step inside and Bowler provide the width.
It starts well enough. We push them back and for 3 or 4 minutes we look hungry. darting movement and interplay lets in Coulson who prods a pullback wide and runs his fingers through his hair in frustration. We press and we attack them directly 2 or 3 times and it feels like this might be fun. We have a few blocked shots, some corners, a bit of pressure.
It doesn't last. For much of the rest of the half, we resemble someone with frozen fingers trying to thread a needle with some twine that is too thick for the eye. Where we briefly danced, fleet footed and nimble, we soon fall back into a shuffle, a slow, heavy pattern of moving the ball predictably between us, forward and backwards, sideways, 1,2,3,4 passes and each one telegraphed as if we want Wednesday to meet us on the edge of the box so we can go round and do it all again.
That's not all. Wednesday don't completely retreat into a defensive shape. They have the audacity to continue to try and score a goal. A Wednesday player slaloms through, stumbling but keeping on his feet and launches a lovely effort towards the top corner, the first one might have crept by BPF but this one, he flings himself over and wrong handed tips it up and away before marching out, seemingly to ask the defence how their man was able to wander through them so easily. He's not happy and you can see why.
We make all the substitutions. It seems we've gone to 343, Taylor staying on to be complimented by Dion and Jerry. Bloxham doesn't seem happy to go off. I don't mind that. At least someone actually wants to play for us instead of looking liking it's a grim duty. I don't really grasp why we're taking him off as the point of difference, to bring on 3 players who do very similar things but then, what do I know?
I'm beginning to give up when Albie Morgan chucks what looks to be a hopeful ball in and there's some kind of coming together in the box, but then it looks like we've scored and as our players wheel away it seems we have and happily it's Jerry because we all love it when Jerry scores and now, surely the game is on properly and we'll really get into them.
That's not how it transpires. We seem to shift it round again between us, Occasionally Bowler (who has seemingly put the wrong boots on the wrong feet today) runs at someone and then usually loses it or just passes it backwards when he gets towards whoever he's running at and we don't make any great deal of headway. The most fun comes from a lovely bit of scrapping involving Bloxham and then about 3 of each of the teams, which the ref does well to defuse and not wave cards around.
At one points I shout 'FOR FUCKS SAKE, JUST DO SIMPLE THINGS BUT FUCKING QUICKER' - which is definitely a bit shit, but surely true. Everything looks laboured where you'd really hope to see players running full tilt and trying to break Wednesday, trying to rip them out of shape, trying to shock them, trying to tire them out, knock them off balance, but it's like we're politely enquiring 'would you mind if we go down the right, no, ok, very well, we'll have a look down the middle, ah, you've said no again, how about the left, nope, ok, don't mind us, we'll just try again in a minute but no problem if you want to defend again.
There's another scrap. Evatt and Barry Bannan inexplicably are going at each other. Bowler goes across or is the reason, I don't know. What is this? Why is this a thing. It's fun, but why?
There's one moment of near disaster, they nearly Catch BPF out with a long distance effort, It's a lesson to an extent in how retreating to the edge of your own box isn't the only way to play with ten men.
There's one moment of near joy, we move it around, we lay it back, there's our lethal centre forward, our midfield powerhouse, our fleet footed winger, ok, none of those, it's Ollie Casey shaping for a shot and I'm thinking how the fuck are we that shot shy that we're ending moves with Ollie fucking Casey in this scenario, when, to be fair to him, he hits a beauty, that flies, dips and pings off the crossbar and away.
Then time just seems to run out.
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I enjoyed the moments where it boiled over because that's always fun. I enjoyed Sheffield, I enjoyed the point in the game where we belted out 'go to the pub, have ten pints...' at the top of our lungs, whilst they sung something or other at the top of theirs and it was incredible to think this is Division 3 and two crap teams.
I'm not sure how much I enjoyed our performance though. In some ways, a point is a point, in others it feels like more of the same and more 'nothingness'. Another gifted goal and another laboured display where, yeah, we had a few moments but I'm not sure we did anything much to really merit 3 points and I'm getting kind of bored of being told that 'football is about moments' - when actually, football is also about partnerships, and quick incisive team play and spells where you get on top and stay on top and about having different ways to attack and about the fighting spirit and togetherness and and we just don't convince in that respect. You could make an argument in any given game that it could have gone this way or that - but over time, you have to make enough 'moments' and we're not.
In some ways it was 'ok' and outside of Clarkson's horror pass, we were reasonably solid in comparison to some games, but then we were facing ten men for 2 thirds of it. We're also sorely in need of points and whilst, yes, it's nice to get one in comparison to none, we're drifting away rapidly away from where we want to be, we don't look anything like what we want to see and I don't where or how we're going to put in the next actually convincing performance where it feels like we've really put someone to the test. We don't have pace in our legs or in the way we move the ball and without that, I don't know, we just feel, well, flat.
Wednesday weren't so great. They're clearly a side who've had a bit of turmoil, at times their touch was nervous, their play was only fitfully effective and though, yes, there was some ability in their team, they weren't hugely dominant physically and it felt like an opportunity we didn't really take. Maybe that's unfair, I don't know - but I didn't come away feeling frustrated with missed chances, more with the fact we didn't create all that much against ten men on a big pitch and nothing really told me 'this is going to get better' - because sooner or later, we have to see that.
Next, Hornchurch. What could possibly go wrong?
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