Thursday, October 20, 2011

Iwelumo in Chesting Ball Down Shocker

The OS used this picture of him today, showing off his special move.  Can he actually do anything else?

Saturday, October 15, 2011

Bowel Movements- Watford 0 Crystal Palace 2

Well good bloody grief that was rubbish wasn't it?  I think I've had more entertaining bowel movements.

The worst thing about it was that once we went 1-0 down there was absolutely no belief from any-one, most worryingly of all, from us, the fans.  There was no chanting, not even much in the way of shouts of frustration.  The yellow order seemed to have had the mute button pressed on them.  Just a depressed resignation that there was no way we were likely to get back into the match against a decent goalkeeper and a generally better than us Palace side.

Because be in no doubt this was no 'we played well and were really unlucky'.  Neither was it anything to do with the officials who were pretty excellent throughout.  Although as it was Mark Halsey you'd expect this.  One wondered what he'd done to be ref'ing such lowly fair.   This was down to us just not looking up for it, not having the quality where it counted and too many players looking like they are simply coasting.

Dyche mentioned the fans again in his programme notes and how we've got an important part to play.  I really hope that he's not going to go down the same road as Aidy in the 07/08 season where we're being blamed as much as the players for the performance.  That would be fair enough if you paid us to sing and create the atmosphere, or at the very least let us in for free, but when paying £460 for a season ticket please don't expect me to clap my hands or stamp my feet to what we witnessed this afternoon.

I know we've lost good players as Dyche said in his post match interview on 3CR.  But he's also brought in lots of new faces and they aren't performing.  He needs to change things and pretty quickly.  And its not like he hasn't got options with our academy alumni either twiddling their thumbs or appearing in the lower divisions.

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Intentions to Party- Ghana 0 Nigeria 0

I went to the England-Ghana friendly in March and it was one of the most entertaining football crowds I've ever been part of.  The Ghanian supporters celebrated corners, free kicks, passes and even throw-ins with ever increasing enthusiasm.  Although I was supporting England I very much hoped Ghana would score just to experience their goal reaction and it lived up to all expectations when they equalised in the closing minutes.

So I wasn't going to miss the chance to experience that kind of atmosphere at the ground I know and love the most.  Okay so the crowd was much smaller, but the Ghana fans came with exactly the same intentions to party and the Nigerian fans had similar ideas.  The result was a unique atmosphere at the Vic, the likes of which the stewards or police weren't sure what to do with.  Luckily they took the sensible option of just letting everyone get on with having a good time and made no effort to stop the various bands, drums, trumpets and vuvuzuelas that had been brought into the ground.

Richard and Tim on Radio Hornet sensibly didn't try to compete much with the noise.  It was good to hear them though and they were one of the few notes of familiarity in an otherwise pretty bizarre evening.  Even the programme wasn't produced by the club.  It was two thirds full of unusual adverts and contained more typos and mistakes than the very blog you're reading.  Best of all were at least three different spellings of John Pantsil's name.  I know there are two official ways of spelling it, but at least use one consistently rather than trying both out and then making up a third.

The players individually all displayed a lot more quality than our hallowed pitch has seen of late but collectively the teams didn't come up with much of a spectacle.  It was a shame but perfectly understandable as they'd been involved in the final African Cup of Nations qualifiers at the weekend.  Nigeria got knocked out so must have been demoralised, whilst Ghana had got through, but even so must have thought this was a game they could've done without.  So 0-0 was predictable and watched in isolation this was probably a pretty boring game.  But the fans more than made up for it.