Notes From the Match No.9: Q.P.R. (H) 2-0

I fear I may have early-onset something or other. I can’t remember all that much about this game and it was only three weeks ago. So, in brief:

• I’m pretty sure that we wouldn’t have scored if the game had stayed 11 v 11. A wearingly familiar pattern had emerged of us dominating possession, them having the better chances and a goaless draw looking most likely. It took the red cards, both deserved, to allow us the freedom to score.
• Gower scored. It was an instinctive, neat finish and he didn’t make any proud attempts to cover-up how much it meant to him.
• The football authorities need to create some sort of mezzanine competition between the Premier League and the Championship for players like Wayne Routledge to play in. His performance for Cardiff in the first league derby last year was so good that it was probably single-handedly responsible for setting back Fede Bessone’s career by a year. For Q.P.R., who were a strong and effective team, he was the stand-out: as quick as Dyer but more composed and calculating. Even when they were down to 9 his presence on the pitch made it impossible to relax.

Notes From the Match No.8: Sheffield Utd. (H) 2-1

Again, I have left this too long to properly record what I thought of the match at the time (which was kind of meant to be the point when I started). But a couple of points have been covered in these posts.

My brother, on day-release from his domestic duties, was making his annual trip to watch the Swans. Unfortunately, he spent the early part of the day getting mildly pissed and, as a result, we missed the first five minutes waiting for him to make his way over from the pub. The first thing I saw as I took my seat was Bodde on the ground clutching his leg. There is not much to be said about the return of his ligament injury other than it is hugely disappointing for both him and the club and that the sooner he is back the better. Shamefully, it also occurred to me afterwards that the injury and the two years of care and support from the club does make it morally more difficult for him to seek a move away when he does return, but those kind of questions can be dealt with when he is back and playing again.

Generally, it was a horrible game and we played horribly. The crowd booed the players off at half-time, were edgy when we lead 1-0, and were ready for full-on mutiny when, at 1-1 and down to 10 men, it looked like a matter of time before United got a winner. Plenty of people were leaving with 10 mins to go and one man even stopped on his way out, turned to face the stand and launched into a good minute of bile and abuse aimed at Sousa and Lopez.

That Tom Butler should score the winner with a 25-yarder was hilarious. I hold the unfashionable view that Butler is a decent squad player who, on his day, can cause problems for defenders, but his performance up until his goal was comically inept. At one point he was bamboozled by a one-two in our area and spun 360 degrees before losing his balance and almost dropping to the pitch. By this stage I was wincing whenever the ball went near him.

But he scored and we won and all was right with the world. And there have been plenty of occasions when we’ve deserved to win and have failed to, so I’m not going to get too concerned about the reverse happening once in a while.

Tories Coming to Spotify

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Notes From The Match No.7: Bristol City (H) 0-0

So long has passed since this match that it has pretty much become indistinguishable from all those other games over the last couple of years that we have dominated but failed to win. 17 shots, 7 corners, hit the woodwork, 0-0, etc.

The (brief) return of Joe Allen was a huge bonus. For the first hour, Allen provided the nearest thing we had to a spark. He combines many of the attributes of our other central midfielders: Britton’s tenacity, Pratley’s energy and Bodde’s eye for an attacking opening. It is also worth remembering that Sousa highlighted Allen’s injury as a turning point in the opening day defeat away at Leicester, and his absence since then has emphasised how important he has become to the team. Unfortunately we haven’t seen him since the Bristol match, but the prospect of fielding a central three of Britton, Pratley and Allen after the international break is…well, it would be a relief. But probably best not to tempt fate.

The (brief) return of Ferrie Bodde. It’s just depressing to write about this given what’s happened since. But he was immediately Bodde-like: exuding confidence and authority, thumping the ball about with speed and purpose. It did seem that he was trying a bit too hard at times and the Hollywood-style passes didn’t always come off, but that was OK because he was easing himself back in and had a long season ahead of him…

Van der Gun, making his debut, came closest to scoring, but beyond that he was fairly ineffective on the left wing. Needs time to settle in etc, but didn’t look like he would be providing Dyer-esque bursts of excitement any time soon. Picked up an injury a couple of days later – so it looks like he’s settling in just fine.

De Vries made an astonishing save in the very last seconds of injury time. As with Tate and Ashley Williams, the recent difficulties at the club seem to have brought the best out of Dorus, and he has shown few of the weaknesses that seemed to plague his game even when we were, as a team, at our strongest.

Where’s your Diadora Trackie, Jim?

Jim Corr: Looks like a heavily-groomed Jimmy White. Is also as mad as a bag of frogs.

Read more about the coming one world government on his a-mazing website.

Big Ron and the Curse of the Reducer

The pre-meditated crunching tackle can turn a game. Ron Atkinson used to call it a ‘reducer’. With one act of measured violence a player can rouse both the crowd and his teammates. It is particularly important for supporters, who, above all else, want to see demonstrations of commitment – confirmation that the club’s ’cause’ is as important to the players as it is to us. This desire even has its own chant: “Get into ‘em/Fuck ‘em up”.

But the pursuit of the reducer was at least partly to blame for the sendings off of both Jordi Lopez and Nathan Dyer last Saturday. Lopez, with the crowd on his back after another underwhelming performance, started lunging at anything in a red and white shirt. The daft – and harsh – nature of Dyer’s second yellow (for kicking a dead ball back a couple of yards in injury time) has led many to overlook the equally unneccessary way he earned his first card (a clumsy sliding challenge). While some are calling Lopez’s unavailability for the next match a blessing in disguise, Dyer’s absence will be felt in Doncaster tonight.

Just as they always want to see the reducer, most fans, certainly the ones who sit near me in the East Stand, want and expect our strikers to chase down hopeless balls and hassle goalkeepers. Fulfilling these rituals may leave the players knackered, or stranded miles offside if we attack quickly from a keeper’s kick, but that is considered relatively unimportant. What is important is that the our man has shown willing. Unlike the reducer and Marcel Desailly, Big Ron didn’t have a name for aimless, crowd-pleasing running. I’ll call it the ‘Kuyt’.

It was Jason Scotland’s refusal to ‘Kuyt’ about that made him unpopular with the denser elements of our support. He also failed to drool over his badge for two minutes everytime he scored. But I hope those who gave Big Jase a hard time are honest enough now to see that we are significantly worse off for having shipped him out.

There is a place in football for both the reducer and the Kuyt, especially when club morale is as low as ours is at the moment. But large sections of our support overvalue the importance of these elements of the game. They can have temporary benefits (increased crowd noise, sense of momentum) but can also have permanent costs (red cards, lack of positional discipline). In rewarding this behaviour we may be damaging our chances on the pitch.

But the damage being inflicted with the reducer and the Kuyt is nothing compared to our most dangerous crowd activity: the cries of “sssshhhooooooooot” every time Tate gets into the opponent’s half. Yes, I was there when he scored that beauty against Preston last year, and, yes, it was funny for a couple of games after that. But it must stop. Please make it stop.

Koba Chameleon

Writing on the internet about Hitler or Stalin never ends well. So I’ll make this quick.

Why the sudden craze for likening fairly harmless people to Stalin?

Example 1: Siobhan McClelland, of Glamorgan Uni and Positif Politics, says that Edwina Hart’s approach to decision making is Stalinist.

Example 2: The excellent Cynical Dragon spotted the following line in a leaflet put out by Newport Conservatives:

“On May 1st 2008 the people of Newport chose to reject the Stalinist policies of Gordon Brown.”

Example  3: In this Jack-U-Like post Swansea City Football Club is likened – jokingly – to good ol’ Uncle Joe.

Three Stalins in just two days!

The worst thing is that I used the “Edwina Hart is a bit like Stalin” line when talking to a colleague a few weeks ago. What I should have said is:

“From what I’ve heard, Edwina Hart is not particularly keen on delegating.”

For all I know, my colleague might have concluded that Edwina Hart is responsible for the deaths of millions of people, and, if she becomes First Minister, she intends to wipe out Wales’ kulaks and have her internal enemies (Huw Lewis and Carwyn Jones?) executed. That’s not what I meant.

And why is it always Stalinist? Were Mussolini and Hitler really good team players? Imagine seeing a talking head pop-up on The Politics Show saying, “Yeah, Leighton Andrews has got his good points, but, in a sense, he’s just like Pol Pot”.  It is nonsense. If you mean “Edwina Hart is not really a team player” just say that. Or you could just say “Edwina Hart is a bit like Laurent Robert”.

The use of ‘Stalinist’ in the second example is even more confusing. Of course, there is the slur of linking the PM to one of the most evil men in history, but there is also the claim that Brown’s policies are Stalinist. But which policies? Presumably it’s the stimulus and his response to the recession. But, as any fule with access to Wikipedia kno, Stalin didn’t have to deal directly with the consequences of a global economic crisis: by the time of the 1929 crash the USSR was already pretty much cut off from the world economy. So while Hoover was busy ignoring the depression in the US, Stalin was busy putting in place the policies that would see 7 million citizens die from hunger between 1931 and 1933.  Maybe that’s what the Newport Tories think that Gordon Brown has been doing. Or maybe they’re just idiots.

It’s enought to make you want to vote for Paul Flynn.

Bring Some Understanding (Here Today)

Good post on Jack-U-Like about the unneccessary confusion surrounding our injury crisis and the club’s appalling lack of  communication with the fans. The message of the post is that it’d be nice to know more.

I’d go further. I think that the lack of information contributed towards the hostile atmosphere in the stands on Saturday. The team was booed off at half-time (which was kind of mad considering we were drawing with one of the strongest teams in the league) and certain players – I’m thinking of Lopez, Gower and (pre-goal) Butler – were getting a hard time regardless of what they did. Maybe I was inattentive before the match, but I arrived expecting to see Allen, Dobbie, Orlandi and Britton at least figure in the squad.

No-one knew what was going on. While that doesn’t excuse the bitching and moaning, it does partially explain why it happened.

Bugger.

Bodde out for the season. Absolute kick in the guts. Feels a bit like when Roberto left.

Mickey Owen’s Cheeky Little Beard

Important answers on Hughes’ attempted theft, the controversial Warnock/Doubtfire issue and Fergie finally speaks the truth about Neville.