From reading the title of this, you could be forgiven for expecting to see a blank article. Just come back from the Barnsley game and, abandoning the rather diminished lure of a post-match San Miguel with enthusiastic West Brom fans, I decided to come home and stew self-indulgently for a couple of hours in the current state of doom and gloom at my club. I've got a lot to get through, I hope you're sitting comfortably...
If I'm honest, last night I wrote this game off as a home banker. I actually felt really positive about things at the club. Yes, we'd had a bit of a rocky start to begin with, but Lee Clark is still getting to indentify his best team and getting to know the squad- it would inevitably take time and at that point we had picked up 7pts from our last three games. Assessing things, I felt that this was the time we would start to really come out of the blocks and put a run of wins together. For the past ten years or so, Barnsley have always been one of those teams towards the bottom of the second tier but always having just enough to stay up, so I felt confident we'd win, I think I said 3-0.
In the first half we played very poorly. At this point I'd like you to acknowledge, knowing this, that all of Barnsley's 5 goals were actually scored in the second half. Without being able to score, they passed us off the park in the first period and did pretty much everything I wished we could do. All of their players were always looking for the space, finding it, wanting the ball, and getting it. All of our players weren't looking for space, couldn't find it, didn't really want the ball, and didn't get it. Barnsley had quite a lot of young players coming through and played at a high tempo, which unhinged us. Clark maybe put too much emphasis on experience with his transfer policy in the summer and we looked very fatigued. I think in the Championship, you need players with energy and tenacity who can play week in, week out and in more midweek games. Our squad doesn't seem to have that at the moment.
Towards the end of the first half, I talked to dad about the game and he put it down to complacency. We did have the look of a team that thought it just had to turn up to win, but more worryingly for me the players weren't making the intelligent runs off the ball I hoped their experience would provide and Chris Burke, normally playing like dynamite on the right wing for us, couldn't beat the left-back once. I decided to dismiss the semi-apathy in our players performance in the first half as complacency, told myself Clark would probably have a stern word with them at half time and we'd score a couple of goals in the second half to win. With this thought in mind, I refreshed myself with an Oasis and retook my seat.
It could never have prepared me for what happened next. Just after half-time, disaster struck. We half-heartedly defended Barnsley's corner and one of their players pounced unmarked at the back post. To be honest, if I was to give you a detailed description of Barnsley's next four goals, it would be after I've had a look at the BBC Sport match report for it. The following twenty five-odd minutes were just condensed in my mind into one big blur of distress and anguish.
To say we were lackadaisical in defence would be paying a massive compliment to the players. Hayden Mullins, who was filling in at right back for the injured Paul Caddis, was pretty much ran out of breath against the pace on Barnsley's left flank, Pablo Ibanez got turned inside out for Barnsley's fourth as I recall, and players were ghosting through Caldwell as though he wasn't even there.
By the time Barnsley had scored their fifth, an eerie silence greeted the goal and there must have still been a good 20 minutes to play. Because we were a man down with an injury when we'd used up all our subs (I forget who got injured), we were playing with 10 men- it became a question of just how bad things were going to get and, strange as it sounds, there seemed to be an element of 'damage limitation' in our play. None of the players really pushed forwards towards the end and wry-humoured chants of 'we're gonna win 6-5' began to soak over ections of the ever-more diminished crowd, whilst other fans just sat there shellshocked.
I don't mind admitting that there were times towards the end when the goals flooded in that I had an almost overbearing urge to stand up and walk out of the game to get the bus back, but the Birmingham City fan in me held me back. Neither me nor dad have ever walked out of a game before it's finished, I felt almost like it would somehow dishonour the loyal, Blues blood in me to do so.
At the back of the tilton, a lot of chants began addressing the board and Carson Yeung that were quite unsettling. Not unsettling in the sense that I would support Carson Yeung because he hasn't put any money into the club, has left us in debt, has a court case coming up and we've never heard from him. What did unsettle me was the lyrics to the chant: 'you Chinese bastard, get out of our club.' I'm pretty sure that the use of the word Chinese was just a way of referencing that they meant Carson Yeung, rather than having any kind of racial component but it's still not a nice way of putting it. It was just unnecessary. It wouldn't matter to me where a chairman is from, just that they are a reasonable person, have the club's best interests at heart and have enough cash available to run the club properly. So far, I'm not sure Carson ticks those boxes.
In the short, but in many ways prelonged, car journey back into Moseley, a friend of my dad's mentioned that Lee Clark has allegedly got a history of having alcohol problems. That made me feel, if possible, even more concerned about the season ahead because it would explain why he was sacked by Huddersfield when they were top of league one midway through last season. So, let's have a final summary of the club's state of affairs. On the negative side, we've got:
-A chairman without access to his money who we're not in contact with.
-An old squad.
-A defence that concedes five goals at home to Barnsley.
-A team out of energy, in September.
-And an alcoholic manager.
On the positives:
See you.
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