The Diary

08 May 2007: Yesterday's Goal-Fest - Some Retrospective Odds And Sods To Ponder Upon.

And so we say farewell to Season 2006-07 ? well, the ?normal? bit of it, at any rate ? and say ?hello? to what is, in effect, one mother of a lottery. I guess it was the Fates that truly ordained we should play our local rivals for the honour of getting to try out the new, improved (allegedly!) Wembley. How come? Purely and simply because having not had to face either them or their distinctly unpleasant following for some five or so seasons, they thought they?d derive one hell of a laugh at our expense from watching, then rejoicing in our discomfiture, once realisation finally hit we?d have to face ?Them? again in but seven days time.

OK, chaps ? you?ve had your metaphorical pound of flesh, ample divine repayment for the comedic entertainment we?ve inadvertently provided you with this term. Yesterday, you even saw us cringe mightily at the very thought of having to take them on again in the knock-out stages. Now just be nice little gods, for once, and allow us to get past them over the two legs, yeah? ?Cos if you don?t, I?ll get young Carly to stonk the lot of you with some heavy-duty RE GCSE knee-drill, direct-line to The Man, yeah? Hell, it must have worked yesterday, so why not, I say.

Whatever the outcome of our forthcoming play-off alarums and excursions, good, bad, indifferent, or whatever, there?s always going to be one raging certainty for our football club, in the very near future ? and that?s some representative(s) of the club having to make the irksome journey down the M1 to Soho Square, then spending a goodly few hours trying to convince the FA we?re not that thuggish a side, honest, guv, on me dear ole muvver?s life, bless ?er, and Gawd strike me dead if I?m tellin? yer porkies, gents.

But it doesn?t look good. Whoever does go to plead our cause is going to need advocacy skills good enough to make even the late Myra Hindley look as pure as the driven snow. Not convinced, yet? Well, here?s the scoop. Darren Carter ? 12 yellow, 1 red: Paul Robinson 11 yellow, 1 red: Kamara 11 yellow, 1 red: Greening 10 yellow, no reds: Macca 9 yellow, 2 reds: Clem 3 yellow, 2 reds: Davies 4 yellow, 1 red: Albrechtsen 2 yellow 1 red.

That gives a total of 102 bookings and 11 reds (of which 2 were subsequently rescinded). Now compare with a couple of other sides, whose own League situations might well have provided reasons ample enough for a disciplinary record much worse than ours. Relegated Leeds? Slightly better - 90 yellows, and five reds, but still we lead by what amounts to a country mile. The Dingles, our soon-to-be play-off adversaries, of course? Over the course of what was just as irksome a campaign as ours, a mere 69 bookings, and a trifling six reds.

Compared with other areas of League football, especially those much less visited by the glitzy trappings of fame and fortune, our current record stands out as something of an embarrassment. Hereford United, who finished more or less in the middle of the Football League?s lowest rung, amassed but 35 yellows, and 5 reds. Poor Torquay, who ended up losing their League status altogether this weekend? 69 yellows, 4 reds: not brilliant, but nowhere near as awful as our own footballing Mark Of Cain, by any stretch of the imagination.

Finally, there?s Accrington Stanley, who were no shrinking violets when it came to common assault and battery, just a couple of seasons back, believe you me. Somehow, that very same year, they eventually managed to kick, thump and gouge their way out of the Conference, then into the Football League proper ? and from what I?ve since heard on the grapevine, their table manners have improved very little, comparatively speaking. The record below says it all.

Believe it or not, they are the only League side that comes anywhere near matching our truly awful record: 103 yellows, 10 reds was their massive contribution to road safety for the season just finished. Having seen them bust a gut trying to land half the Conference?s player-complement in Casualty, last season, it?s an ?accolade? they truly deserve, albeit a twisted one. You wouldn?t want to bump into any of that lot on a dark night, believe you me. Nor would you our current crop either, on the above showing.

But aren?t our favourites being hung for a whole flock of sickly sheep, rather than that solitary fluffy, bouncy ickle lamby-wamby, once seen frolicking like crazy out there on that lush green meadow, woolly Mum looking on approvingly all the while? After all, the fact we finished this season?s campaign having scored the most goals in our entire division ? as I understand it, only Man United have scored more than we have, to date ? doesn?t exactly run concurrent with the sort of unenviable reputation enjoyed by half the population of Winson Green?s A Wing, does it?

Think again. As I saw it, most of our problems this season stemmed from bookings earned for daft things, entirely preventable ones, at that. Take Macca, for example. A fine player when things are going right: on his day, easily capable of taking on anyone you might care to mention, their big brother too, then rubbing it in even more by making that same adversary look like a prize chump as well. But what a short fuse he has! I feel for Mogga, I really do. Managing Macca must be like dealing with a dressing room stashed full to the ceiling with sweaty nitroglycerine. The slightest thing, and ? WHOMP! Willie Johnston and he would have got on a treat, I reckon.

Was that horrid volatility of temper the real reason he was withdrawn on the break yesterday, I wonder? And, maybe the real reason why Fergie decided to get rid in the first place? After all, 45 minutes proved more than time enough for our Jimmy Saville lookalike to incur yet another booking, purely and simply because he couldn?t exercise a little more maturity and self-control when it really mattered. I?d like to think that Mogga?s reasoning was that with four goals safely lodged in our account come the break, we could then afford to give Jared Hodgkiss a little more first-team experience by sacrificing Macca.

But what with the unnecessarily petulant way in which he was conducting himself out there, and the ever-increasing probability of the ref finally losing patience and showing him red, it?s also equally reasonable to assume that those events formed a goodly part of Mogga?s rationale for making the subbing at the time he did. Having a player suspended in time for the play-offs through crass stupidity on his part is the sort of ?luxury? we can well do without.

As for the others, Robinson attracts attention because he really cares, gets stuck in way above the call of duty, sometimes with an excess of zeal and enthusiasm that never goes down terribly well with match officials, especially those particularly sensitive to the presence of assessors in the stands. Can be too much of a good thing, sometimes. The remainder of the ?criminals?, bar one? Clumsy tackling, at times, something half-decent coaching and match preparation should help snuff out. That, plus some chronic cases of ?not engaging brain before opening mouth? syndrome. And some passes that truly deserved the label ?hospital balls?, causing the recipient to incur some sort of official sanction or other, purely by attempting to retrieve a situation they should never have been lumbered with in the first place. Similar to Macca?s various defensive bete noirs, in fact, but lacking the same venom. It?s not rocket science, chaps. Sort it.

Kamara? Well, you ought to be able to work out where I?m currently at regarding what I maintain is a truly contemptible attitude shown by him towards both team-mates and club. Only a complete and utter congenital idiot could have earned a sending-off in the manner he did at the Ricoh, the other Saturday. I really hope he got his earholes well and truly incinerated by either Mogga or Mark Venus, for what he did that day. With Coventry pressing, and the game having entered its dying moments, late restoration of parity with the ten-man opposition could so easily have cost us our chances of getting into the play-offs. Were the decision left entirely to me, it?s for that reason, along with one of maintaining continuity, I?d stick with what we ended the season with, at Molineux, next week.

Mind you, it also goes without saying that there were a good many positives to be taken from yesterday?s seven goal blitzing of Barnsley, who were, strangely enough, the very last club finding themselves on the wrong end of a similarly-sumptuous dicking from us. Baggie veterans might remember that happy occasion, back in the late eighties, the one where the vastly-underrated Martyn Bennett played his very last game for the stripes, nearly getting onto the scoresheet himself. A great pity he couldn?t have bowed out in true goalscoring style, with a triumphal moment supporters could have cherished for many months and years to come. Had it not been for the crossbar getting in the way, he would have undoubtedly done so, that?s for sure.

So, having already moaned my bag off about our distinct lack of self-control out there, what?s good to take away from yesterday, then? Well, there?s Jared Hodgkiss: the more I see that young man strutting his stuff, the more he looks very much one for the future. Kev Phillips was also a steady hand, up front and personal with the Tykes, the whole time he was out there. Given both his extensive experience and England pedigree, it was to be expected of him. So was Kiely?s acrobatic performance, bar a couple of ricks that might have cost us, had the opposition been a little more astute in the performance of their duties.

Duke Ellington? Playing the sort of game, finally, we know he?s truly capable of. The way he turned his defender, then made sufficient space in which to pull the trigger to knock in his second, was an absolute delight to witness. That was the sort of thing he was doing for Wigan during their own promotion season, and in his sleep, more like than not. It?s long been a lament of mine, his failure to reproduce on a regular basis that sort of devastating form for us. I remember Cyrille Regis speaking fulsomely about his skills earlier in the season, and correctly assessing conditions and situations in which he seemed to perform to the best of his ability. That second strike of his was a virtual re-run of what Cyrille had said at that very same meeting, strangely enough.

Blimey, having as team-mates the sort of strikeforce and midfield that?s spent most of this season putting ?em in the back of the net for fun, almost, what?s been his exact problem, I ask myself? Most strikers at our level would die to be a part of such an embarrassment of goalscoring riches. Playing for such a side is the exact striking equivalent of being given carte blanche to shoot fish in a barrel. Now he?s managed to come up with the goods at a time when goals were desperately needed, maybe he?ll be very much up for giving the Dingles a bit of the old runaround in their own territory, come next weekend. I really do hope so, the lad having shown already his undoubted ability to come up with the one act of sheer brilliance that might just swing it for us, come next Sunday lunchtime.

Also commendable, as far as team spirit was concerned, was the imperious attitude we brought to what we saw as a basic demolition job: as a psychological booster, I can?t think of many better, to be perfectly honest. The Dingles must surely have cringed something rotten when they saw that final score. And yet I still see, randomly strewn, all those ?might-have-beens?, those long past sell-by date ?what-ifs?. Suppose, instead of going off the boil directly after the transfer window closed, we?d have continued to reproduce the devastating form that saw us top the table earlier that year, demonstrated the same sort of ? will-do? attitude that saw us triumph so spectacularly, yesterday? Would Blues have still gone up as of right, I ask myself?

As for other individual performances, yesterday?s from Robert Koren has to be one of the best I?ve witnessed from him, thus far. As my late mother (very Black Country!) might have put it, he ran around that park ?like a cowin? fart on trespass?. Proper respect also to Kev Phillips, and the clinical way in which he dissected out Barnsley?s defence, completely reduced it to rubble, in fact. In fact, it would be churlish of me in the extreme to make even the most trivial sort of adverse comment about any of our performers, yesterday. Goals needed to get the three vital points necessary to make qualification for the elimination stages a raging cert, seven duly banged in, Barnsley still wondering what hit them, probably. Job done?

Back on Saturday night, more likely than not, unless other concerns supervene. Given the magnitude of our victory yesterday, maybe it?s high time I shoved any previous reservations about our ability to cope with the pressure on, right to the back burner, when they truly belong. The Dingles? Bring ?em on, I say!

And Finally?.. Forget the massive stonking we inflicted upon Barnsley, for the moment. Yesterday, I was witness to a phenomenon of considerably more scarcity-value than a mere bagatelle of a massive points-earner. No, belay my last, an event truly worthy of the title ?astronomical phenomenon?. A bit like the periodic reappearances of Halley?s Comet, if you like. Every seventy years or so, blazing forth above our pitch-black evening skies, creating suitable degrees of amazement and wonderment among those gathered below. Then retreating into whatever bit of Outer Darkness it fancies visiting, for an elongated spell of rest and recreation, before embarking once more upon its preordained journey, for the umpteenth time since the very formation of the Solar System itself.

Not quite so celestial, by nature, is the subject of my current remarks, but he sure ought to be. It is with profound pleasure and satisfaction, therefore, I now reveal unto you that for the entire 90 minutes, yesterday, not once did I hear those familiar cries of ?RUBBISH!? and ?GERRIMOFF!? reverberating around the bit of the Halfords we normally inhabit! Wow. The Bloke In Front Of Me actually giving yesterday?s performance his personal seal of approval, if only by want of adverse comment? Does this count as a sign the King is going to return reborn, or something? Or one warning Baggies to stock up on survival goods RIGHT NOW, and head for the hills as fast as adrenalin will allow them, perchance? Oooer ? a bit too close to call, that one!

 - Glynis Wright

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