Bristol battering ups the pressure
BLUE-EYED BOY’S BLACKBURN VIEW
THE season restarts for everyone this weekend and I feel as if it actually starts proper for me.
I’ve only got to one of the six league games played so far (Reading at home) with cricket and holiday commitments so I’m rather ill-qualified to pass judgement or make any predictions based on seeing that match and two hammerings handed out to lower-league outfits in the cup.
You can’t, of course, fail to pick up on a largely positive vibe only slightly and hopefully temporarily ruptured by an uncharacteristic afternoon (or half an afternoon if you want to be exact) of sloppiness at Ashton Gate.
No-one is panicking but as I hinted at last week, the fixtures for the rest of the month, starting with Aston Villa on Saturday tea time, have in the light of that Bristol stomping assumed a rather more daunting sense of foreboding than had our remaining September schedule constituted games against Birmingham, Bolton, Rotherham and QPR.
Villa obviously come off their own micro-crisis, coincidentally a first defeat of the season 4-1 away at Sheffied United. Their record is practically identical to ours (Played 6 Won 2 Drawn 3 Lost 1) other than a level goal difference (For 11 Against 11) where ours is minus one.
Villa’s default response to problems under Steve Bruce, whose immunity to the sack during their two and a bit seasons at this level has become something of a mystery to me, has usually been to chuck more parachute money at it. Even in this regard I think they have sailed close to the wind and tried the Football League’s patience with regard to the Financial Fair Play regulations. No real punitive sanctions would appear to have been imposed or threatened though. Their three most recent signings, Anwar El Ghazi, late of Ajax and Lille, Chelsea’s Tammy Abraham and Yannick Bolasie are all loans.
They are the type of players most would expect to enhance any Championship squad so we must hope that Bruce’s uncanny ability not to be able to motivate star names in a Villa shirt at least extends to Saturday evening. Sooner or later you’d expect a squad with talents like those three, Grealish, Kodjia, Elmohamady, McGinn, Whelan, Hourihane and Jedinak to shape up but if they want to leave it another week, fine by me.
I’ve always enjoyed playing Villa outside the top division at second and third tier level. It’s sometimes almost been reassuring that another decorated Football League founder member has accompanied us on our downward trajectories.
FA Cup clashes of the 1980s were lovely dashes of glamour to colour a mundane spell although the novelty wore off in the early part of this century when it seemed we were destined to be drawn together in every knockout comp in perpetuity.
Up to press the Villa had sold around 3,500 tickets for the game and where the Darwen End has lately looked pathetically underpopulated I’m relishing the prospect of big match atmosphere despite the fact that television coverage will persuade a few in both camps to stay away.
There may also be a similar effect on Tuesday when Rovers visit Pride Park now that you can watch on the red button. It’s very rare I do away games midweek unless they’re within the old Lancashire boundaries and while nothing beats being there, if I did decide to set off and take the girls it would cost upwards of £60 for tickets.
Again, at time of writing Rovers had sold just 300 for this fixture. I’d expect to at least double, possibly treble that by matchday but it would be a shame if the convenience of watching at home for a tenner diminished the loyalty of the fabulous travelling army which so boosted last season’s efforts in farflung locations.
It was fascinating to see our Wandering neighbours from the Macron, where we go in early October, pull off yet another eleventh-hour recovery from the brink of administration.
While I have no particular grudge against Bolton or their supporters I have mixed feelings about clubs who continually cry wolf then emerge seemingly unscathed at the death.
Whether Bolton really do have a(nother) saviour in waiting or will be pleading poverty and failing to pay wages again in a month or two remains to be seen but there’s a limit to everyone’s good will.
In the 1980s it bothered me not a jot that Blackpool, Preston, Bolton and, most celebrated of all at the time, Burnley, languished in the Fourth Division while we enjoyed a frugal yet largely untroubled existence at the rarified heights of Division Two.
But I’ve mellowed a bit with age and these days rather like a Lancashire derby or two a season to look forward to.
And Wanderers’ predicament is possibly a salutary lesson for those who feel Rovers’ fortunes would be restored by a mere signature transferring ownership at a stroke.
The Championship is almost three-quarters full of clubs who enjoyed decent-length spells thinking themselves established in the Premier League since 1992 and whose fans would consider promotion a “return to our rightful place.”
Your only rightful place in football is where you are right now and while we may have no real illusions about immediately improving our status this season, let’s hope we can consolidate it this week while temporarily deflating the perhaps loftier aspirations of a couple of the division’s more fancied bets.