Cool Your Jets

OK everybody, calm down. There is no need to do anything, even on the back of a performance yesterday that was a first return to the bad old days of non committment and amateurish defending, players not seeming to know who to pass to and, when they did, not knowing what to do with the ball.

Let us start with the good things, of which there were a couple. The fans still chanting the managers name even though we were being soundly beaten and our most successful manager of the modern era was sat in the opposition dugout. If this game had happened three months ago you could be guaranteed that the Blackburn and Bolton fans would be chanting one name only. Secondly, and just for a second, the cameras caught Gartslime and Big Sam sharing a handshake. Nothing to be read into that except that a few months ago the two of them would have been standing behind stantions under the stand trying to pop each other off with a couple of 9mm while calling each other names unprintable in a family publication.

To the game however, and if it hadn't been for Jussi, called a fantastic servant by Jon Champion so many times yesterday I'm thinking of ringing him up and asking him if he can do the silver service for my wedding, the score would have undoubtedly been a couple more than it was. This is noted by The Granuiad and all papers agree this morning that Blackburn were the better team, but as that was obvious from about the first minute yesterday, we will spare you the bother of linking to all the articles that are predicting Bolton's doom.

However, while we usually come here to praise St Owen not to bury him, there are one or two things to note. First and foremost, if there was never an intention to play Jack Wilshere from the start in games, then why loan him from Arsenal. OK, all his little cameo against Wigan showed was teenage petulance rather than silky skills, but to keep the same team that played against Wigan, who should have won, was folly. Muamba is tracking people better, although yesterday he did it badly, but if you are going to play him then he should not be asked to go forward as his shooting is woeful and is now becoming a joke. Matty Taylor has not been at the races all season and if he was a racehorse would have been put out to pasture by now. Now we wouldn't want to tell the manager his job, although I bet he hasn't taken Trafford F.C. to Champions League glory in Football Manager, but it came as little shock that Bolton's best passage of play came once those two came off and Saturday's game screams for Dracula, Little Jack and Little Davies to come in for Muamba, Taylor and Ricky (who is not and never has been a central midfielder), as well as the returning Kidneys, who managed more shots on target in ten minutes than the misfiring Swede managed in the rest of the game. Whilst Weiss and Wilshere are cuptied on Wednesday, Klasnic HAS to be given sixty minutes and Little Davies HAS to start for either Muamba or Matty, otherwise this time Spurs are going to cause us problems, and they managed to score three goals on Wigan's pudding pitch yesterday. Christ, two of those were scored by Pavlyunlongname.

But getting back to yesterday's game. St Owen has called the defending "schoolboy" and has since admitted to the former BEN that he laid into the players after them game saying

we did not, individually or collectively, get anywhere near our standard and that’s what leaves a bad taste in my mouth

Well, it left a bad taste in my mouth yesterday, but drowning your sorrows with about three bottles of vino upsadaisy tends to do that, and further along in the article he admits that he may make changes on Wednesday but alludes that this is more to do with survival than getting to Wembley, and that is the first glimmer that he may consider the challenge greater than it initially was.

However, three points on Saturday, against a team who don't exactly leak goals away from home but should be easier fodder, will lift us up to where we should be at the end of the season, i.e. not in the bottom three. Obviously, the one problem that we have is getting goals ourselves, but this should be rectified by the return of Klasnic, who should be biting at the reins to get back onto the pitch full time. And that is the end of the equine analogies.

Yesterday, EPSN made great truck of the fact that this is our most barren run since the Kronenburg brewery opened its doors, but records, good or bad, are there to be broken. It is now up to our attacking players to make sure it isn't elongated. We at the Towers are sure that they will do us proud, and if not we will be visiting their house in the same fashion we visited Cashley Hole's last week but this time we won't be running off without some silverware bastards!

In other news, the Chelsea away game has been chosen for live coverage, moving the game to April 12th. This is good news for me as I was wondering what to do on my last afternoon of the honeymoon but I'm sure that Mrs X will be having a few words, having already seen her west coast sojourn elongated by a day due to the Stretford game being live.

And finally, there will be a small intermission at the end of this week, not unlike the one at the end of last week, but this time it is due to twenty two northerners and one southerner taking Essex apart pub by pub on my stag do. I'm sure you'll understand.

Unitl tomorrow, hasta la vista. Don't know how I missed that one.