CCFC 0 V 1 WOLVES

‘If you hadn’t flunked math you’d have been set by now’   Willy Loman, Death Of A Salesman

CCFC 2013-14 PL Income     £80m

PlayerTransfer costs (- £44m)

Player Salaries             (- £46m)

One Stunned Norwegian Blue  (-  £2m)

                                                    
                                                =  - £12m

As hard as it is to stomach, having botched the one chance of securing the club’s future through a deadly combination of petulance and hubris, Vincent Tan, the man who put the ‘sin’ in business, the ‘mug’ in smug and continues to take the ‘p’ out of propriety, is to all intents and purposes our last hope. The debt to VT now stands at £130m. And this may not include a new loan of £7.5m set at 8% interest through another shady off shore finance company which shares a director with the club’s holding company. (8%?! I’ve done the research and you can get a 0% balance transfer rate on Barclaycard…)

Now it may be the case that despite our (not unreasonable) misgivings we’ve got Mr Tan wrong; that none of this is his doing and he’s not the flawed calculating crazed scheming megalomaniac that he’s sometimes made out to be. Isn’t it just possible that really he’s terribly misunderstood, has our best interests at heart and our present plight results from incompetence not malevolence? Nah. It’s personal. After all, to quote the recently departed Mr Spock ‘once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth’

Due to the ongoing and perhaps terminal indifference that a City home fixture now produces we arrived to take our seats unfashionably early, fairly flying down the uncluttered apathetic roads. The echoey stadium and the overwhelming sense of futility at least allowed for nostalgia, a last refuge for the disheartened. We stopped on the way in to read some old team sheets posted on a kiosk selling ‘retro’ shirts, the names of Likely Lads ‘Davies’ ‘Carver’ ‘Bell’ ‘Toshack’ ‘Clark’ ‘Sayer’ ‘Alston’ ‘Evans’ etc. producing an involuntary wistfulness for lost youth and thwarted ambition. ‘Ooh what happened to you? Whatever happened to me? 

Anyway, moving on…

We’d heard a rumour that The Scoundrel was planning to make his first appearance of the season. (I steadied myself with a pathological disregard, the news dispatched direct to the junk folder of my consciousness). Ten minutes before kick-off a discordant ripple of applause drifted across from the grandstand as in the distance in some half revealed hinterland where chronic self regard meets the  cult of personality Tan glad-handed and invited selfies, swaggering his way around the edge of the pitch. Fickle fans ran down to pose with their occasional nemesis, all animosity lost in a haze of psychotic fawning as the charismatic authority of the bogeyman won over the feeble minded. 

Somewhere above the ground - Star Date 2015  - Leonard Nimoy raised a pointed eyebrow at the illogicality of the scene. Star Trek series 3 episode 4 ‘Without followers, evil cannot spread’ - Spock

We started brightly against one of the outside bets for promotion. Wolves, well-drilled by the experienced and able Kenny Jackett and supported by a well stocked and vocal away section, were always likely to present a challenge to a home team who despite a fortuitous away win in the week at Malky Mackay’s doomed Wigan have been struggling to adapt to the Slade / Trollope regime.

An early booking for Wolves fullback Iorfa as he lunged at the rampaging Noone promised a fun day out for the diminutive wideman and he didn’t disappoint. Up front Jones was winning the aerial battles and with the lively Doyle looking to feed off the knock-downs there were reasons for early optimism. We were generally better organised and while clearly some way off the finished article the process of assimilation is progressing, the players at last looking generally motivated and confident.

Having had the better of the early exchanges it was a real blow to go behind after 25 minutes. A smart rapid break out of defence had our central defenders on the back foot and pulled out of position, the ball finally breaking to Malian international Bakary Sako who side-footed past the stranded Marshall.

Inevitably with the team’s belief brittle, heads dropped as the early energy dissipated. The opposition began to take control, sitting back and dealing confidently with any threat.

This pattern continued into the second half as Wolves dominated possession without ever really threatening to take advantage. When they did threaten it usually resulted from the generosity of a flaky back four as we invited their front men forward with some wayward clearances. Following one Connolly gift Whittingham was obliged to calculatedly take one for the team, scything down Sako and earning a booking. Apart from the outstanding and ever-consistent Manga the defence was  again problematic with the right-sided Peltier playing on the left, allowing Connolly whose more assured  performances have come in central defence, to play right back. 

There’s been nothing settled about the back four during Slade’s time and this needs to be addressed by ditching the out of sorts Morrison, bringing Connolly inside and giving the right and left sided berths to defenders whose brains are wired accordingly! Easy really. 

On 65 minutes Whittingham was dispatched from the field of play for the first time in his (occasionally) illustrious career after an inexplicable touchline lunge. The great enigma is rarely piqued but with his creative powers severely diminished perhaps he could see the writing on the wall. A long spell on the sidelines awaits. Time for the criminally under-deployed Adeyemi to be given the chance to provide some grit to an underwhelming midfield.

The sending off although deserved was particularly galling after referee Madley had bottled it, failing to red card Iorfa for a tackle on Noone that was at least as severe as the one that merited his early yellow one. That old sage Jackett read the runes, immediately giving Iorfa the order of the hook to save him from himself

The sending off seemed to galvanise the team, as it so often does, and we enjoyed our best period of play. But ultimately the narrow misses, goal-line clearances and a half-decent shout for a penalty counted for nothing as we slumped to another, albeit undeserved, home defeat. Up in the handsomely up holstered director’s box the blue-shirted bizarrely upholstered owner surveyed the mess of his own making with malign equanimity, apparently ‘very happy with what he’d seen’. Highly illogical indeed.

‘The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one Mr Tan.’ 

- Spock, The Wrath of Khan (adapted)