Saturday 18 August 2012

2011-12 Match Reports CCFC v MILLWALL


31.3.2012

CCFC 0 v 0 MILLWALL
I gorrabehonest, I wasn’t going to bother. What’s to say when there’s nothing to report? I’m only doing so, and briefly, for the sake of completeness. Barring a complete disintegration (possible) or a miraculous return to form (unlikely) this is going to be the pattern from now until the end of the season. A victory in a lunchtime kick-off would have sent us up to 4th. But then that would have been the case in each of the last 4 home games and we failed to capitalise previously so expectations were low. Betty was back in town and we tried our bit to ring the changes by relocating to the Grandstand to freshen things up. Perhaps Mr Mackay should try something similar.

Why the early K.O.? The South Wales Busies determined that this fixture still has the potential to panic the capital into submission. In the event, a rag-bag of about 150 pot-bellied Pitbull-fancying sons of St George decided that the fixture was marginally more attractive than taking the ferry to the English Defence League Euro-Fascist Scandanavian jamboree in Denmark. I have no problem moving out of the way for a Six Nations clash when clearly the wellbeing of our great nation is at stake, or taking our turn to entertain the nation’s armchair-dwelling lager-mitted lunchtime lounge lizards, and I’m quite happy to put myself out when our cup runs runneth over, but not to accommodate a bunch of sociopathic Cockney Geezers. 

In any case, the potency of the legacy of 1970s / 80s F Troop v Soul Crew thuggery is questionable and has been for some time. The last traditional 3.00pm Saturday afternoon kick off of the season was back in January. Madness!

Tactically the game turned out to be another Malky Mackay masterclass in the mundane. The fit again Miller once more ploughed a lonely furrow upfront, exasperated at the failure of the midfield to discern when and where he was going to make his runs. It’s April; if they haven’t worked it out by now, they never will. We completely dominated 2/3rds of the pitch, but yet again in the final third, the bit where it counts, we were clueless. 

It’s a bit like Heston Blumenthal spending a lifetime researching the perfect soufflé, forgetting to turn the oven on and wondering why it hasn’t risen. Malky would probably scratch his head and go back a beat a few more eggs. Malky, turn the bleedin’ oven on!

Too late in the day again he realised that we could do with a bit of width and brought on Conway, closely followed by Gestede and Earnie and we started to look, well, credible. We did manage to get the ball in the net but the assistant in front of us ruled it out for what? offside? an infringement? Anyway, a victory would have just papered over the cracks. I make that one win in the last eight; in Mr Mackay’s world that’s spun as one defeat in the last seven. There are facts, damned lies and an under pressure football manager’s statistics. 

Or, let’s spell it out:
de·ni·al n A defence mechanism characterized by refusal to acknowledge painful realities.              
fact   n  A truth verifiable from experience or observation.

Sadly we’re just not good enough (see ‘fact’ above)

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