So this game approached me as a bit of an unknown quantity for a couple of reasons. For one thing, it would be the first time I'd see this new look Blues team under Lee Clark and what his philosophy is (I mean in football, not whether free will or determinism exists). I'd not heard much of Clark before, though I seem to remember he played for Fulham about eight years ago and was sacked as manager of Huddersfield last season. With the much-loved Chris Hughton left for Norwich then, you could have forgiven the most optimistic of bluenoses for being rather sceptical about the choice of his replacement. I hoped this game would provide me with at least some degree of reassurance.
The other thing that intrigued me about this game, was that I knew nothing about Antwerp- and how good, or bad, they are in the scheme of Belgian football. Having said that, I vaguely recalled them to be an affiliate club of Man United from my dabbling in the football manager games.
In terms of Belgium generally, what interests me is that they are one of those multi-lingual countries. I knew from my European tour when we played Club Brugge, that they speak a combination of German, Dutch and French. I sometimes wonder if people there know what each other are saying in conversations.
To be fair to them, they were excellent fans. They were on their feet for the whole game, and quite a lot of their songs were English. They sung 'Hey Jude', a couple of trademark Manchester United songs, after which they strangely sung 'you'll never walk alone', which surprised me. I half expected them to burst into blue moon. The other funny thing was that once their third goal went in they started chanting: "shame on you, shame on you" I thought, what a middle-class way of insulting a team. What next? "you're not very good, and you know you aren't."
Anyway, this time me and dad sat in different seats. I was getting too heavy for him. This time we sat in the tilton behind the goal. When the teams came out, I made a point of standing up to applaud Jack Butland into goal, which I think he acknowledged due to the lack of people at the game. He had done fantastically well to get into the Team GB side at the Olympics from being on loan at Cheltenham for most of last season! If truth be told, it was also partly because I was concious of how well he would do. I think when any young goalkeeper comes into a team, there can be a tendency for them to be nervous, flap at balls into the box, feel overrawed by the defence- but there was something different about Butland. He shouted instructions from time to time, when he was told to collect the ball he would, he came for crosses. I felt comfortable enough with him in goal.
What worried me the most, was Lee Clark's team selection. Up front, we had a system involving Zigic as the central target man, Wade Elliott playing slightly deeper with Lovenkrands as part left winger/part forward, and Adam Rooney- who is traditionally a striker- on the right wing. I would have otherwise been positively interested in the effects of this system and the reasons behind it had it not been for the selection of players in midfield. We'd signed Ravel Morrison on loan from West Ham a few days previously, I knew him to be an attacking midfielder, but he was played in the centre alongside Morgaro Gomis, another more creative-minded player. To play that an attacking a team was a mistake on Lee Clark's part. We had no structure in the centre of the park and were left very vulnerable to the Antwerp midfield- we gave it away an awful lot. I think a better choice would have been to play Darren Ambrose and Hayden Mullins. Mullins, certainly, would have at least given us that protection for the back four in the 'water carrier' role. I also wondered why Chris Burke wasn't in the side ahead of Rooney on the right but was prepared to put it down to fitness reasons for the time being. In terms of the defence, he played Steven Caldwell and Pablo Ibanez. Curtis Davies was virtually an ever-present in Chris Hughton's team last season and had done very well- a strong contender for player of the season in my opinion. Instead of him, Clark played Steven Caldwell who can't run and Pablo Ibanez who gets scared of high balls that come towards him. The perfect combination, then, against a pacy striker and a tall target man. This didn't improve my confidence for the rest of the game.
We started the match looking very relaxed on the ball- almost to the point where we were too relaxed and lacked that bit of energy, that urgency and hunger to prove ourselves. Wegave the ball away in midfield a fair bit and with such an attack-focused line-up, I didn't feel like there were enough people behind the ball to win it back. Some of our long passes were sloppy and some of our players dwelled on the ball for far longer than they should have. It was like we played with a swagger that we didn't have the right for. I don't know how else to quite describe it.
Perhaps a partial reason for our sluggish start was that the distribution of the fans was very spread out. Chants that broke out were few and far between and it was more a case of individual spectatorship than support. I was pleased then, when Ravel Morrison scored on his non-competitive debut at the Railway End and that nudged the atmosphere up a bar.
What pissed me off then, was that we conceded almost immediately afterwards. When any team takes a lead, the thinking has to be "right, let's keep it tight, let's not give anything away". But when Antwerp kicked off, there was no body language of the sort, and we looked vulnerable down our left-hand side with academy graduate Mitch Hancox getting a start. The cross came in far too easily and Butland parried it onto the goalline for their centre-forward to get a cheap goal.
Now, all the momentum and energy was with the Belgian side. They completely outplayed our midfield and my suspicions about Morrison's attack-mindedness were proved accurate- he never tracked back to help the defence and Gomis was getting passed around the place in midfield. With the space between defence and midfield left completely open, Ibanez had to close down from defence, which left gaps at the back and he made a clumsy tackle from behind in the box on Antwerp's pacy forward. The penalty was converted despite Butland's best efforts putting us behind at half-time.
To try and cheer myself up, I decided to get myself a Coke from the refreshments bar. Annoyingly though, the one time I remembered to go before the interval to beat the queue, I found the bar closed. With a rare poor score from me at the half-time quiz in the programme, my mood was not improved when I found Clark had made no substitutions at half-time, when it was blindingly obvious how much we needed to change the midfield.
Quite early on in the second half, we gave another goal away. Again, we were pushed wide open at the back and Will Packwood, another academy graduate with Fellaini-esc hair, gave it away. He had done quite well up to this point, since he came on early for Stephen Carr who had a fitness issue. Another penalty, another goal for Antwerp. When that went in, I felt like unless we did something about the defence, they could walk through us and score five or six.
To be fair though, we did end the game on a minor high as towards the end Hayden Mullins and Curtis Davies came on which made us more solid at the back. Also, Nathan Redmond looked bright, Adam Rooney only narrowly missed a one-on-one chance and Nikola Zigic scored a goal that was ruled out for offside. It took the gloss off their win a bit and gave us some fresh hope for the season to walk out on.
Overall though, Clark was talking in his programme notes about this game being an attempt to get everyone's fitness up for the new season. I disagreed with him. I think the first few games of pre-season should be devoted to fitness and, this being our last friendly match of the summer, it should have been more about getting the tactical system mapped out for the players and a final run through. I would think we must be quite a bit behind the level of fitness other teams have at this time and the prospect of getting a point next week against a Charlton team with the momentum of last season's promotion from the division below is becoming almost an inviting one.
