All the happier for Rovers win
BLUE-EYED BOY’S BLACKBURN VIEW
HAPPY New Year to all. And how much happier does it seem with a first win in six chalked up - a splendid victory at that?
As football fans, we are eminently capable of bending the arc of any unfolding story to the particular narrative we wish to shape.
“This is a great division where anybody can beat anybody” can soon morph into: “We couldn’t have expected any points against the top sides.”
Danny Graham can’t play 90 minutes but just did so three times over 10 days.
Sheffield United came up and did well and did even better the next season so exactly the same will happen to us. (Millwall came up and did better than Sheffield United and are now bottom six but have you heard anyone make that comparison? Of course you haven’t).
Ben Brereton hasn’t looked a £7m signing’s cousin but give him a year and he’ll be attracting bids of £20m.
We believe what we want to believe and see what we want to see.
When we win a couple the play-offs are in sight then when times get hard - as I’ve predicted several times in this column that they would over the course of a tough Championship season - the world caves in for those not rational enough to accept a period adversity or patently ill-equipped to deal with it.
Hence you get ludicrous mutterings of “Mowbray Out” and fans falling out with one another on the Brammall Lane concourses.
The truth, as it has been all season, is that we’re in a middling pack of clubs who were never going up and now, happily, look in perhaps as little danger of getting dragged into the scramble at the bottom where at least two sides are looking doomed while three or four more, some among our upcoming assignments, can presumably be kept at arms length comfortably, particularly if we consign a couple to damaging defeats.
It was perhaps an unexpected bonus to defeat one of the fancied promotion-seekers given the run of results preceding (one win in nine, none in five) and it wouldn’t have been the end of the world if we hadn’t but the manner of the win removed so many panic-station responses from the equation that even 17 hours in, 2019 looks a lot more attractive and less daunting.
Having got the fearsome run of games up to New Year out of the way - the last six fixtures have all paired us with teams now in the top eight, five of them in the top six - we now have a sequence which sees us meet some of the division’s lesser lights (although Hull City, unbeaten in eleven might justifiably object to that description ahead of their visit to Ewood later this month).
After the light relief of an FA Cup trip to St James Park where the cheap prices have ensured a bumper gate and a healthy away following almost befitting the status the competition used to exude, a trip to reviving Millwall (won their last three) for a tea-time televised kick-off is followed by home games against Paul Lambert’s still-struggling Ipswich and the aforementioned Tigers then Brentford away, who are improving but only marginally after a terrible run, inconsistent Bristol City at home then away at Reading, who are under brand new management but have been utterly dismal for 12 months.
If the last six games were intimidating, upholding the standards which prevailed against Albion should harvest a decent haul of points from the next half-dozen.
After establishing a two-goal lead quite brilliantly – what a thrilling counter-attacking goal Dack’s was with massive credit to Armstrong for what deserves a grander term than “assist” - then swiftly seeing it halved, the spotlight fell on the 70-90 minute period which has so proved Rovers’ undoing that we have conceded 22 times in the final 20 minutes of our prior 25 league games, catastrophically so in the previous three fixtures.
But there was an almost demonic edge and fervour to Rovers’ ferocious closing down, pressing, tackling and blocking as the clock ran down and the Throstles sought a winner. Even before the sending off of Livermore Albion were several times forced back from our half to their keeper, some feat of stamina on the occasion of the fourth game in ten games, the previous three all scarred by late misfortune.
Danny Graham who so pointedly admonished the slumpers who hit the deck in misery when Norwich bagged their late winner, gave more or less every one of his colleagues a wagging finger indicating: “Now don’t mess this up,” as they ran back after celebrating Dack’s goal.
It called for heroes, not wilting wallies, and they were for once everywhere getting a foot or a head in.
Lewis Travis, who those who follow the Under-23s have for a couple of years regarded as head-and shoulders the best young prospect in the club, has seized the opportunity it seemed Tony might never give him to transform his immediate future from likely loanee at a lower division club to possibly first name on the Rovers teamsheet.
If we make no other signings whatsoever in the window his renaissance is as good as a bigmoney capture in terms of what his youthful drive and energy brings to the midfield.
But hopefully there will be reinforcements, notably in the striker and centre-back departments.
For now, however, after a difficult few weeks we have a redemptive display which has gone a long way to securing our status to savour for a fortnight, while enjoying a taste of the big occasion at Newcastle. I recently watched a game at West Ham and walking to the huge stadium felt a pang of: “This is what I miss. Rochdale, Bury, Brentford and such have their charms but big games, big crowds, big grounds...those were the days.”
Who knows when or if those days will ever return?
I feel a whole lot better about the next four months now though!