I'm strangely distracted driving to the ground. So much so that I come off at the wrong junction for no reason and I'm randomly driving to Fleetwood. I've done this before. Gone into some kind of broken auto pilot mode. I once drove to Exeter when I was aiming for Bristol and after the last play off final I accidentally drove to Nottingham on the way home.
Happily, the trance is quickly broken and via the back lanes of Weeton and all that, I make it in good time. Critch has found the selection bingo machine in a dusty cupboard and chucked together a pure classic Critch random line up like it's 2021 all over again. I don't know what to make of it, but I'm happy to see Owen Dale has a reason to be here after all and genuinely delighted to see Kouassi.
Reading though. What are they? Does anyone actually ever get excited about playing Reading? There's a curious pall of lethargy hanging over the occasion and that not just the sideways and backwards magic dust Critch has sprinkled over things of late. It's all a bit 'League 1' - a small away crowd, a team in financial difficulties and we're banking on a signing from Sutton Utd.
The game starts oddly. Both teams knock it about a bit and everyone looks a bit like they're running through glue, not the pristine ball green that is the latter day Bloomfield Road pitch. It feels a bit like an early kick off game.
Reading start the brighter. Rhodes looks very slow as he chases one down. Kouassi looks like the game is passing him by, he doesn't look overly bothered, observing the ball like a bull watching a bird fly back and forth. Grimmy makes a save. Grimmy makes a bit of a mess of a poor back pass. Grimmy makes another good save.
Kylian touches the ball. Things perk up. It results in a corner. We have a corner, then a corner, then a corrner and another corner. It's odd to watch us pinning someone in like this. Kenny Dougall responds to a cry of 'shoooooooot' by actually shoooooting and his deflected shot skews off at an odd angle and spins just wide. From the next corner the ref bundles Matty V off the ball just as he's lining up a Matty V special. That doesn't seem quite fair. One day Matty V will have some luck.
Then there's a seemingly harmless ball forward. Kylian is getting tight with his man and he's rolling him and he's lumbering forward surprisingly sharply and now he's threading a lovely ball, weighted to perfection, slowing up perfectly for CJ to take in his athletic stride which he does and then, ole, he's in, then, oh no, he's down and oh yes, the ref is pointing to the spot before I can even shout for the penalty...
'Where's Jerry?' is my first thought. Jordan instead is on the spot. He doesn't strike me as a sniper. More a sporty accountant who likes a round of golf. Appearances deceive though, because he's got literally hundreds of kills to his name. He doesn't go for the headshot, instead, slitting the neck of the keeper with a papercut, a low placed effort that sneaks inside the post via the palm of David Button who looks rueful as he berates his bad luck in failing to stop it.
The response to the goal is curiously muted compared to the usual. I don't really know why. I know we've scored and I'm happy about it, but whatever demon it is that I purge when we score a goal still seems to lurk inside of me. I'm not yet cleansed.
I shouldn't have worried about that. I'm about to be born again at the church of goals. Owen Dale, (who added a lot today, showing willingness to both attack and defend, a nice touch and technique) is swinging it in. It's into a crowd and out. Norburn, shows perfect control and spreads play quickly back to Dale, the ball is again good, curving, and defying the defence... Kylian goes, pushing through the crowd like a man forcing his way on to a tube train, leaping with the timing of a Rolex and flicking, guiding, powering one of the best headers I've seen in years, into the top corner of the goal.
YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!
Did you fucking
see that? What a goal. Match of the Day Goal of the Month knows fuck all. All these fancy twenty and thirty pass moves. All these rockets from outside the box. Where are the far post headers? The only way you could improve on that is if it was a diving one... It was like Eyres to Bamber. Absolutely
beautiful. Sometimes the most beautiful things are the simplest of all. I'm on fire. The demon is banished. I loved that. Kylian stands alone and drinks it in. Kylian is buried by the rest of the team. Football is magic sometimes. There's literally nothing else that makes me feel like this.
He's not done though. Far from it. A lofted ball. He leaps, like a spring loaded fridge launching into the air then crashing into some empty boxes. The defender just crumples. His header is perfect. CJ is through. Ole! CJ is absolutely smashed from behind. Penalty!, not yet... Rhodes snaffles the loose ball... he's so fucking calm. Time slows down. He can make the ball do exactly what he wants it to. He dances into the perfect space, he lines it up, he rifles it into the bottom corner. YESSS!
CJ lies in agony. Jimmy clenches his fists and exhorts the crowd, the players mob Rhodes, he looks happy, but also bashful. This is what he does. He's just very good at it somehow. He can't help it. It's one of those things. Some people can play guitar, some people can understand particle physics. Some people can slow time and find the bottom corner with unerring accuracy. Hey ho. You make the most of what you've got don't you? CJ limps over. He's done good the boy.
We're actually decent for a good while longer. The midfield trio is excellent. It's got bite and intent. I think Virtue has had a good game. He just wants to move things forward, keeps it simple but effective. Norburn is relishing having two wide men who get forward and want the play spread for them. Kenny is ticking along just fine.
There's chances. Kouassi is in again, he hits the legs of the keeper. Virtue has a nice effort on the bounce that creeps just wide. Jimmy fizzes an absolutely filthy ball in that deserves a goal from it. There's probably other stuff as well, but to be fair, if you want a list rather than a load of random shite I thought, read the live text or something.
In short, we've absolutely twatted them. It was good.
---
'We've been here before... This could be 3-3'. My neighbour at the game reassures me. 'It won't be'
---
Are we going to sit in? Are Reading going to come out like a whirlwind of pained fury and inflict bruised ego fuelled damage on us?
The answer is 'yes a little bit' and 'no, cos we're going to score fairly quickly and crush their little pitiful attempt at a revival like a merciless tank driving over the skull of a enemy, splitting it, grinding it up and spreading the pulp over the grass.
Kouassi again. He's like a thoroughbred shirehorse. He runs with an endearingly heavy gallop. He's fucking massive. He wins the header. It doesn't go straight to Rhodes, but via some sort of shit defending and a nice touch by (I think) Weir (on for an injured Dougall), it gets to him and this boy doesn't miss. It's arrow straight, bottom corner, run to the corner flag and celebrate, how long has it been since anyone scored a hat trick?
(The answer is Fonz 2018 apparently, but accounting for the boycott, it's a fucking long time since we've actually
seen one...)
The game is done. All that's left is to marvel at how bad Reading are and hope that Dembele comes on and scores a goal where he runs round everyone, does a one two, one two with himself off both the posts and then flicks it up and scorpion kicks it home. I might be getting a bit carried away...
I marvel at how good Jimmy is these days. This an odd observation, but he looks more balanced. He looks more supple. I wonder if he's been doing yoga or something. He's so calm. He's rolling the ball out, he's taking it in his stride, he's skipping little clever balls up and over, he's stabbing canny passes through. He's snuffing out a Reading attack with a deeply cynical and utterly brilliant foul. He's snuffing out another with an absolute sidewinder of a slide tackle. He's absolutely at his best. I think my favourite bit is watching him dump a reading player into the advertising boards who has been giving him a bit of grief and tugging his shirt. He wanders over as if to check his well being and just stares down at him, the lad looks up. Jimmy meets his eyes. Point made. He wanders back to his position.
Give him a fucking song for fucks sake.
Owen Dale has a decent effort from a free kick that's touched off to him. Jensen Weir is played through but skies it after a lovely move and some excellent football from Rhodes who, not only has scored a hat trick of clinical poachers goals, but has also knitted things together in such a way that I'm left confused why he's been deemed not been good enough to start games for about 5 years at other clubs.
If truth is told, the changes we make weaken us. Without Kylian, we've not got the same threat from back to front and Virtue's industry is missed a bit too. It doesn't matter. They score, but frankly, it's nothing. Their fans do their best. I feel indifferent to Reading as a concept, but the little band of away fans, chanting sarcastically and chiding us for being shit and letting them score, in between demanding some kind of sanity be restored to their basket case of a club is hard not to feel some empathy for. Whatever the merits of our current set up, there's a stark reminder of other things in witnessing the masochism of fans who know their club is in very bad hands, caught in a doom spiral and trying to make a day out of the experience.
The whistle goes. There is a fist pump. I find I still can't join in. It's my loss I guess. There is warm applause all around. There is Robbie Savage's lad tapping Critchley on the shoulder to shake his hand. There is a sense of relief and a sense of satisfaction. Maybe a sense that today was a page turned and a reward for a bit of innovation and a bit of a risk.
---
Firstly, whoever the fuck found Kylian and decided to give him a contract deserves a lot of praise. Slating the recruitment is easy, some of it has been bizarre in the recent past, but finding a player for nothing, who can slot into a team at a higher level and have such an impact is remarkable. Similarly, I was very unsure about the signing of Rhodes, but the pair of them were tremendous.
Reading were really poor. They helped the cause by trying to play football but doing so very badly. We'll face bigger challenges from organised and brutal teams. That said, Critchley deserves praise for both tweaking what hasn't worked and making it much better and having the bravery to start Kouassi, which seems a quite 'un-Critch' move, but shows that the imp is a man of surprising contradictions, utterly predictable in every way until the moment he isn't. It's like that little shuffle he does in interviews, but instead he's swerving the expectations and cynicism of know it all blogging, gobshite podcasting and doom laden tweeting pricks and coming out of the other side with a little twinkly 'trust the process' look in his eyes.
I really thought Kouassi made a world of difference. Essentially, the difference between him and Beesley is that Kouassi does the same thing as Madine (no law system related jokes here please) - he doesn't run around all over the place, but, when we're in possession or launching it, instead finds a player and plays tight to him. If you are a big, but not especially rapid centre forward, whose prime attribute is strength and height, there's no point looking for the space - you make the space for others by drawing in a man and you either flick, lay off or roll him. Madine was very good at that and Kouassi showed a uncannily mature ability to do what the 32 year old veteran of 500+ games had taken a career to master. One swallow doesn't make a summer and one very good game doesn't make a goal machine, but fuck me, what a start.
Being able to go direct matters to a team like us. It means we can choose when to play and when to be direct and know that both will worry the opposition in different ways. It means set pieces have an air of threat. It means everything. It's literally why I worshipped the ground Gaz walked on, because, for all he lacked, his strengths made us better. Kylian likewise today.
Yes, we'll face harder challenges, yes, we very much need to go and work out away games and stop losing by trying not to lose, but that felt like a team starting to come together and realising they were actually half decent and might as well enjoy it by having a good go.
Oddly, the thing I liked most was the slightly eccentric nature of the front players. I'd found this team bland, but today, they seemed to click into something else.
Dale is funny little strutting thing. He's got a bit of arrogance and a decent technique. CJ is the opposite. No arrogance and a lot less technique, but a sprinter's physique and a random chaotic quality. Rhodes is an old fella who exploits his wisdom. Kylian looks like a random junior boxer who has just wandered in one day and doesn't give fuck.
Some character. Some misfits who fit together and make each other better. That's us. That's Blackpool. I think we might have just seen an actual, verifiable
masterclass.
Onward!
