Coyle needs to inject urgency
BLUE-EYED BOY’S BLACKBURN VIEW
WE’VE all been there and we all know the feeling.
You come off a game you think your team should be winning but your team has now gained just five points, and won one, of the last eight games, has kept a solitary clean sheet in three months and has slipped down the table after promising to do great things.
But enough about Huddersfield Town.
As admirably impressive and easy on the eye as David Wagner’s side looked, the point Rovers perhaps undeservedly gained through Danny Graham’s penalty against the Terriers at Ewood on Saturday actually made it 12 points over the same eight-game period for Owen Coyle’s team.
Perception eh? True, the Yorkshire side looked everything we aren’t and haven’t been for years now – out of the blocks at breakneck speed, fluid, pacey, inventive, looking dangerous every time they crossed halfway.
You have to go back more than three years to successive games at home to Bolton and Barnsley to recall the Rovers looking as bright and purposeful from the very off.
That kind of urgency and “right, let’s set about this lot,” mentality is a fading memory despite every Ewood manager’s plea to his players and pledge to fans that it would happen.
But somehow Coyle’s side, more by good fortune than any great skill on their own part, hung on and took advantage of the softest of unnecessarily given-away spot-kicks to restore parity after the early opener – it tells you much about a game when a goal scored after five minutes “has been coming” – and even managed to see the game out without conceding another. A little bit more vision and artistry from Liam Feeney and we could even have given ourselves opportunities to pull off a complete act of grand larceny.
We know draws won’t keep us up, certainly not home draws, and a record of three wins out of 10 at Ewood is unacceptable but if you’re getting run rings round as we were on Saturday it’s a bonus not to lose and we’ve now taken at least a point from six out of the last seven at home, not much but a partial stemming of a dire record which reached its absolute nadir when Huddersfield provided the very darkest day of the unhappy Lambert reign by winning here in April.
Darragh Lenihan was head and shoulders the outstanding Rovers performer again and Ryan Nyambe acquitted himself with some honour against a very tricky and fired-up opponent.
Again the paucity of our midfield engine room was exposed. What shall we remember of Jason Lowe or Corry Evans? Five minutes after coming out of a stadium I can rarely recall anything they do, well or badly, save that Lowe puts an occasional pass out of touch or unerringly into the grateful feet of an opposition player?
They are the generic, faceless, run-around-a-lot but contribute-little, jobbing 21st century huffers and puffers who will leave no indelible mark whatsoever on the memory save for the pub-quiz moments when they contrived to score their once/twice a decade goals.
And so to PNE, they of the squabbling substitutes. Last season’s trip to Deepdale was memorable for many of the right reasons, a huge following at the proper kick-off time for a rarely-staged Lancashire derby, 3pm on a Saturday, with raucous Rovers fans on a surge of optimism under Lambert.
This season the away contingent will be muchreduced due to the growing inevitability of the familiarity of the game plus the tea-time, televised situation.
Of course the Lambert era was a false dawn as the relationship between manager and owners broke down and the quality of football soon largely reflected Lambert’s frus- tration. Coyle is at least invariably chirpy, even a tad annoyingly so, some feel, but the prospect of him getting even a fraction of what Lambert got in terms of fees and wages in the January window seems remote.
With high-flyers Brighton and Shane Duffy (and all that his return entails) at Ewood on Tuesday Rovers surely need to win at least one of the two games to keep heads above water. But that’s a better scenario than I envisaged going into the Deepdale game a month ago so there has been some improvement and some cause for hope.
BOXING SHELDAN KEAY
ACCRINGTON boxer Luke Blackledge plans on ruining Callum Smith’s world title dreams when they meet this weekend.
Blackledge faces Smith for the British super-middleweight title at the Manchester Arena on Saturday, on the undercard of Anthony Joshua’s IBF heavyweight title fight with Eric Molina.
Smith is set to challenge for a world title in 2017, but Blackledge insists he will end those hopes and pick up the upset win.
“Callum is supposed to be fighting the winner of Badou Jack vs James DeGale for the IBF and WBC world titles – he has to get past me first but he won’t,” he said.
“I’m going to take his British title and take his world title shot. “I was not willing to miss out on this opportunity, nothing was going to stop me.
“I do see weaknesses in Callum which I don’t want to go in to, but he is a class fighter you can’t deny that.
“He has had some hot performances against Rocky Fielding and Hadillah Mohoumadi don’t get me wrong – but I’m not going to avoid him because he is Callum Smith, the next future superstar and he’s unbeaten.
“I’m a fighter, I want his belts and his position. He’s one of the best fighters in the world, number four in the world at supermiddleweight and number one in the WBC.