I watched the Oldham game on TV as I have to say I care much less about cup games than the league and especially when we're on TV so I can watch. I wont say much about this as it just felt like a pre-season and I hate to start complaining so early on in the post, although I assure you some are complaints coming.All I'll say is 2-0 down and I got so annoyed I started lifting weights (yes,weights!) as I was so pissed off, but by the time the game finished I was grinning so that's good.
Onto yesterday, I was up bright and early and very excited, nothing like my Saturdays getting back to usual. Paced around the house,was ready about an hour early and practically sprinted to the train station. Derby is....lets be honest here, a little bit shit but a nice enough stadium even if it is on an industrial estate and seems far away from everywhere despite being 15 minutes walk from the station. As I approached the ground I could here The Wednesday and they seemed in as good voice as ever, if not better.
To take 6500 people and be louder than 21000 Derby fans just shows who we are and what absolutely fantastic fans we have. If you compare Hillsborough on the first day of the season (when we're there!) with yesterday then you understand what a special place Hillsborough is and what amazing atmosphere we have. Pride park was beautiful, a really great stadium (especially when you come up from league 1!) but lacking in any atmosphere. There seemed no equivalent of the Kop, the whole place was like the south stand on a Tuesday evening mid January.
Here's what you've all been waiting for, my complaints and it's not the obvious that we can't keep giving away 2 goals, our defence needs sorting and the players need to pretend they've had a bollocking before they start the game. This has to do with a tiny minority of the fans. As I said earlier I was sat in the SW corner and obviously everyone stands as we're away but there was a group...what's the collective name for a bunch of idiots? Asshats? Lets use that. So there was a bunch of asshats stood in the isles, smoking (rather you didnt) and generally being aggressive. Not interested in the game except to occasionally call the referee a c*nt. So the stewards come over and very politely ask them to stand in their seat location, remember this is what they get paid for and if they dont do it they get fired. Unfortunately the main steward asking happened to be a woman, big mistake on her part as this makes her 1) a c*nt 2) a slag and 3) she should get her tits outs. She was a small woman and a bunch of about 10-15 drunk, large men decide it's ok to scream abuse and be generally intimidating to her. I dont know about you but as a women this doesn't make me feel welcome or comfortable at football. I wouldn't go to an away game on my own and I was pleased that there was an older man separating me from the men as to be honest I got very close to telling them to stop being sexist pieces of shit, to shut the f*ck up and watch the bleeding game. But I imagine that wouldn't have gone down well. Instead I just mouthed "sorry" to the steward despite having nothing to do with it. Then to make matters slightly more annoying when we scored the first goal the asshats decided to barge into the man next to me sending me flying and leaving me with a very attractive bruise. Like I said, this was 10-15 people out of 6500 that I saw but it does affect your day, shame it cant just be about the match.
Now to the match, like I said the less said about giving away two goals the better but it needs sorting. I thought we were lethargic and off the pace apart from one player who we all love (as much as he frustrates us), JJ. JJ was the JJ that you wish he would always be (could learn to finish!). We seemed to wake up about 5 minutes before the end of the first half and that goal by O'Grady was beautiful.
Then I dont know what Jones does in the changing room but it seems to work and we came out as a all together different team, not everyone was on form but at least not everyone was off form. I thought Pecknic seemed pretty ineffectual, I can see he may be a player who when he's good is brilliant (seemed to see a little of this against Oldham,second half) but when he's not he actually a liability (first half against Oldham). Antonio was totally not the player we know and adore, it's got to be the worst performance I've ever seen from him. He seemed almost scared of the ball, yes they may have been man marking him but he has to get used to this. Madine was an improvement on Pecknic obviously didnt make a difference but seemed lively enough. The defence needed a strong captain amongst it to keep them working as a unit and we may miss Rob Jones for this reason. Another solution to that may be Danny Batth who didnt make the Wolves 18 on Saturday so perhaps he'll be willing to come back for a loan?
All in all a good result and I look forward to Tuesday and Saturday at Hillsborough.
RJ
Xxx
