CCFC 1 v 1 BLACKBURN

I had a pre-election funding call this week from the local Tory candidate Boris Snoutsintrovski, an invitation to a black tie fundraiser in the company of distinguished party donors including assorted merchant bankers and a world renowned expert on cockney rhyming slang. The top table consisted of prominent members of the Surbiton Cosa Nostra, a defrocked 1970’s disk jockey and assorted North African ferry boat entrepreneurs. Fundraising activities included the opportunity to contribute to Michael Gove’s humility implant which NICE apparently refused to fund, placing a bid for a Bavarian maize-based lager drinking competition with party chairman Grant Schnapps, entry to the James Naughtie Front Bench Freudian Slipfest and a shoe shopping trip with the Home Secretary. (That last bit was at least true…)

The event entitled ‘We’re All In This Together’ was held in the England Is Mine And It Owes Me A Living Banqueting Hall at HSBC House in the City of London. All contributions tax deductible. When asked by Snoutinstrovski how I evaded my taxes I replied indignantly that I was PAYE enrolled. Boris looked at me quizzically ‘Nope. New one on me. Cayman Islands?’

The BBC recently produced an online calculator aimed at contributing to the well-being of the nation by helpfully allowing you to compare your salary with a top footballer of your choice. I decided to keep it local and pitted myself against Gareth Bale. I learned that based on my current salary it will take me just 509 years to earn the annual salary of the extravagantly lugged one. This is what we call ‘a very long time indeed’. To provide some historical context, imagine replacing the Beeb’s adaptation of Wolf Hall with a live Hilary Mantell blow-by-blow commentary.

But in this Age Of Austerity it’s churlish to resort to the politics of envy, and divisive to talk in terms of the deserving and undeserving rich, so I’ll continue to make my own small contribution to the maintaining the equality gap by donating to my local football club squillionaires, purely out of habit and self-loathing.

This week saw the arrival of Paul Trollope, journeyman player at Swindon, Torquay, Northampton, Bristol Rovers etc as the club continued to help us reign in our aspirations and acclimatise to life in the lower leagues. Check wikipedia under ‘Notable Trollopes’ - you’ll find him sandwiched between  Barchester chronicler Anthony (no relation) and aga saga novelist Joanna (Mum. citation pending). 

Continuing the nod to impending nostalgia, Ali spun a few Ninian Park pre-match favourites including 70’s mod revivalists Secret Affair’s ‘Time For Action’ (sample lyric ‘take me to your leader cos it’s time you realised this is the time for action’. Quite.) 

The returning Rudy Gestede and Craig Conway, City PL misfits sold for a combined sum of ‘undisclosed’ (ie ‘embarrassingly cheap’) and currently in a rich vein of form having helped to dispatch Swansea and Stoke from the FA Cup in recent weeks, served to emphasise the sense of lost opportunities and decline. Gestede remember was forced out by £8m dud Cornelius. Ouch. Both received a generous round of applause from the home fans.

After the Brighton snore draw last time out and Slade’s recent candid interview in which his only  defence seemed to be that he’s perhaps on balance and taking all things into consideration possibly not quite as cr*p as we think he is but given time he will leave us in no doubt, expectations were low bordering on the subterranean.

The adventurous(!) 4-4-2 line up had Doyle partnering Jones up front with new boy Kennedy, signed from Everton last month starting on the right side of midfield. Encouragingly the team began well, playing with an unanticipated confidence and air of authority and there were clear early indications that the new coaching set up has revitalised the team.

The problem of lack of leadership both on and off the pitch has been highlighted during the recent decline and while there's still no obvious principal on the pitch, the site of the involved Trollope gesticulating, ordering, making notes and generally engaging with the team (as the inert Slade stood with arms folded, trainer-gazing) was heartening.

We might have taken the lead on 15 minutes, a last ditch intervention denying the busy Kennedy. The tempo was a huge improvement on recent games, Blackburn contributing to a lively encounter, unlucky themselves as Malone and Gunnarsson combined to effect a goal line clearance with Marshall beaten.

The possession stats show a 50/50 split but we did dominate the game for long spells and continued to chase back and harry the opposition, not allowing them to settle and forcing them into  retreat as they undermined their expected authority with a succession of misplaced passes. 

Kennedy was at the heart of everything good, a tireless runner with a number of crowd pleasing tricks in his armoury. A solid and creative presence in midfield, capable of taking on defenders down the flanks but more at home cutting back inside, he linked up well tonight with a revitalised Whitingham. Noone on the other wing was disappointing, running up blind alleys and failing to deliver the incisive crosses that Jones craves, his threat snuffed out by a shrewd Blackburn defence. 

As the game wore on it was increasingly difficult to see the stalemate being broken in open play as both defences dealt competently with any threat. The dead ball areas gave us hope as the defenders joined the offensive line to take advantage of Whittingham’s accurate anxiety-inducing swinging free kicks and it was no surprise when the breakthrough came that it was from a corner, Morrison rising above the far post defenders to head powerfully past Blackburn’s Steele with 84 minutes on the clock.

The footballing gods have long since ordained that returning favourites shall spoil the party; any fanciful notion that we would comfortably see out the few remaining minutes was rebuffed as a defensive lapse allowed the ball to run free to Gestede who slotted home from close range as the 90 minutes drew to a close.

So, disappointing to see victory snatched from our grasp at the death but on this occasion the performance was far more significant than the result. We are still in an age of austerity at the CCS but perhaps, just perhaps, we are seeing the green shoots of recovery and we can look forward to a brighter day.

CCFC 0 V 0 BRIGHTON

The new Premier League deal for TV rights values each broadcast game at around £10m, or £2000 per second. I’m sure everyone involved is very happy. 

Televised games can entertain but there’s nothing that quite matches the experience of watching live football in a veritable cauldron of visceral engagement with your team whilst enjoying the camaraderie and knowing banter of your fellow fans. The experience is priceless. 

How might one evaluate such a profound life-affirming interaction? It would surely be crass to try. I think it is however possible to place a value on the experience of watching The Bluebirds currently. How does ‘bu***r all sound?’

At around 11.30 last night Sky Sports News rounded up the highlights from the night’s games in The Championship. Thrills and spills galore, an abundance of goalmouth action, free flowing football on a night when the top two battled it out an incident-packed 2-2 draw as they fight for the right to party and take their share of the PL largesse in the seasons to come. 

I sat uneasily anticipating the humiliation of the inevitably truncated summary of my evening’s entertainment. Accompanying footage of a 5 second goalmouth melee the commentary ran ‘This goalmouth scramble was the closest either team came to breaking the deadlock’ as the banner at the foot of the page confirming the night’s PL results served as a roll call of starry teams forever beyond our narrowing horizons.

Make no mistake, on this performance our invitation to return to the top table will never arrive. We had our chance 12 months ago and proved to be the worst kind of social misfits - out of their depth argumentative vulgar upstarts who were forced to leave the party early by the back door, a flute of Tizer in one hand, a caviar and tomato sauce sarnie in the other.

Tan’s cut-price ambition was on display for all to see tonight. The new bargain bucket recruits, for all their endeavours, are cheap Woolworth imitations of their extravagantly gifted predecessors. Peltier, Morrison, Malone, O’Keefe, Doyle, Revell etc are lower league journeymen, squeezing the creativity out of their artisan teammates.

The blame for this shambolic display must surely be laid at the feet of Tan’s representative on turf. Slade set the team up with a lone striker against weak opposition, with a mishmash of a midfield which included a hopelessly out of form Gunnarsson, out of sorts Whitingham and out of position new boy Mc Aleny alongside out of his depth O’Keefe.

Brighton were there for the taking - a particularly poor opposition under new management and clearly floundering. Yet they managed to secure 68% of the first half possession. They did nothing with it mind, failing to register a single shot on target. The biggest cheer of the night was reserved for the fourth official holding aloft his board confirming that the torpor was to be advanced by just a minute.

The tumbleweed second half came and went in a blaze of indifference, punctuated with some gallows humour chanting, and then it was time to leave.

I was reminded that my parting shot leaving the office last night was a dismissive ‘I’m off to enjoy a 0-0 bore draw’. I hate being predictable so that’s it from me for now. I’ll clock back in in the unlikely event that I have something to say.

CCFC 0 V 2 DERBY

In the lead up to Christmas I made my usual mistake of visiting the Club Shop in the search for some reliably tacky stocking fillers. This year was particularly difficult as I’d exhausted the unintentionally ironic and the retro (ie. blue) goodies previously. I plumped for a couple of Cardiff City Fire & Passion Shower Gels which promised an ‘invigorating’ experience but included a warning to use sparingly, to keep out of reach of children, and beware of irritation. Sound advice you might think, and applicable to any transaction between CCFC and its fans.

In the event the items were discretely and not unreasonably left behind and will no doubt feature in future ‘most pointless Xmas gifts of all time’ alongside The Plastic Dog Moustache, The Russell Brand Guide To Humility, and iPants. 

A while back Gerald Ratner famously described his company’s jewellery as ‘total c**p’ in an endearing but commercially suicidal admission. Vincent Tan might as well do the same as the sparkling jewels in his shop window disappear in the January sales to be replaced by cut price cut glass pretenders in a deceit that no-one’s buying. Like the shower gel, the squad is diluted, ineffective, disappoints expectations and leaves the user feeling cheated and resentful. 

With a £20m wage bill reduced to £12m, the age of austerity has arrived at the CCS. (Austerity is of course a relative concept and to truly appreciate its connection with the world of sport it might be an idea to ‘stay humble’ and tweet Stuart Broad http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2015/jan/28/stuart-broad-minimum-wage-comments-innocent A graduate from the Tim Nice But Dim Sports Academy and apparently all round ruddy decent chap, perhaps he should learn to walk, before trying to run with the great unwashed). 

‘Shopping at Poundland’ or standing in line at the post Transfer Deadline Day food bank represents a return to the natural state of things for those of us who can remember getting excited at the arrival of Fowler (Jason). There is however a heavy cloud of doubt hanging over the prospect of Slade making a silk purse out of a sow’s ear in the manner of, say, Sean Dyche at Burnley or Bournemouth’s Eddie Howe. The signings of Malone, Peltier, O’Keefe & Revell suggest that we really are back to feeding off scraps. This might be just about acceptable to the pathologically disillusioned but not so to the generation of bandwagon-jumping opportunists and returnees who have become accustomed to stopping off at Harrods en route to Wembley.

Today’s line up included debutants Peltier and O’Keefe in a diamond formation with Whittingham pushed forward to loiter around the box and support frontman Revell. Signs of progress then. Blimey! The first patient build up out of defence, the darting runs down the wing from Harris and Noone, the decoy runs across the box from Whitts - surely it couldn’t last? It couldn’t. It didn’t.

After the dust had settled and the opposition had re-calibrated their response to a perplexingly imaginative approach from the home team, the shock of the new was to prove no more effective than the discredited conventional long ball game. With no signs of leadership on or off the pitch and playing like the strangers they were, this was to prove a performance of ineptitude on a grand scale. 

The game was a disjointed affair not helped by some wretched refereeing. Ninety minutes of frustration unrest and despondency for the taciturn crowd was punctuated with regular and justifiable ’You don’t know what you’re doing’ chants. These might fairly have been directed at the players though not in a vindictive way, more an observation - they clearly didn’t know what was being asked of them. To a man they were committed but confused, lions led by donkeys - one in the boardroom braying his vacuous decrees to the other, his dug-out stooge.

The game had its moments I suppose, but only one of rare quality. The Moore penalty save was a supreme example of the goalkeeper’s art - anticipatory, instinctive with studied feline grace, he propelled himself to the right and with one steady outstretched hand pushed the ball dismissively around the post. 

Unfortunately the lift that this provided was soon undone as Malone wrong footed Moore with a lunge at Ward’s low cross to deflect the ball into his own net. If the opening goal was hapless the second, on the stroke of half time effectively killing the game, was simplicity itself as the opposition collected the ball, pushed it around neatly, pulling the defence out of position before finding Martin who rose unchallenged in the box to head past Moore.

The second half was about as entertaining as a game of foosball as the ball pinged around a wooden midfield with neither team showing any initiative to bother the keepers. At 0-2 down Slade’s only option was to give his fringe players a spin.

The City bench included at least four players who might have started the game. Jones may not be a 90 minute option but if he’s fit and willing must surely be given a start. His 30 minutes upfront with the tireless but lightweight Ravell at least presented a challenge to a composed and rarely bothered defence, hinting at what might have been. Fabio lifted the spirits momentarily with a Duracell bunny runaround and Adeyemi was solid if unspectacular. 

A fanciful 22,000 attendance was announced to snorts of derision echoing around the emptying stadium as I studied the recently released payment options for next season’s ticket. ‘Free’ finance is available but at the moment this is nowhere near as tempting as the cheapest option - the one that involves walking away and not looking back.