Andy Munro gets tired and weary watching the Blues.
Dire, dreary, dismal, depressing. There’s not enough words in a thesaurus to describe this performance, although ‘performance’ is probably a misnomer anyway. Yet, many Bluenoses went to the match full of hope – proper protests at last against Carsen & co, a recent excellent win against Charlton, Macheda doing the Italian Job and Blues playing against a team just above us in the table who we had already beaten away. Surely a great chance to beat the home hoodoo. But this is Blues we‘re talking about .
We started off quite brightly for the first ten minutes but that was our only moment in the sun as we soon fell apart. The key to that first goal was Reece Brown losing his man. Now I like the youngster and I think that he’s got an excellent future but a wide midfielder he is not. If you play him it’s in the centre or in the hole and yet again we looked unbalanced down the left. I’m a great admirer of Robbo but he’s not exactly a rampant overlapping fullback and without a genuine winger in front of him, it’s never going to work offensively. Martin in the centre was adequate but Packwood gave away the ball far too many times although, in fairness, often the options were non-existent.
Down the right, Caddis failed to get near enough to Burke too many times to play their usual one twos. In the middle, Adeymi was abysmal and seemed to chase around with little purpose. The Terriers had done their homework on Huws who was marked out of the game which meant that Novak and Macheda struggled to make any impression. Both players, not the quickest, need service to be effective and there was a distinct lack of that commodity.
Huddersfield’s second was deserved and although it was a cracker of a shot, one wonders if Randolph could have done a bit better. In desperation, Clark brought on Ziggy to a mixed reception. Maybe his exile would inspire him? Bumbling around wide, ineffective in the air against central defenders six inches shorter, barging players with the ball nowhere near and rolling around on the floor at the slightest contact? Sadly, Ziggy hadn’t lost his touch!
Finally the ‘great’ Dane was brought on and I’m not sure what is the opposite of the cavalry arriving but Lovenkrands’ appearance felt exactly like that. Our consolation goal was quite frankly anything but in the circumstances.
At the moment,Clark has his get out of jail Carsen card but Blues lacked desire and confidence the very thing that a manager is paid to inspire. We were outfought by a team who closed us down with a passion and also played some decent stuff themselves. Mind you, you would expect that, wouldn’t you(?), from a team containing Smithies, Lynch, Clayton, Hogg, Dixon and Norwood – hardly household names. So the question remains whether Clark and his team of hangers-on should be taking some blame for not getting the best out of a team who, on paper, are probably better players.
The truth may be that while we can squeeze some results away from home by playing on the break, we just aren’t good enough or hungry enough to offensively open up teams when we are on our home patch.
Can it get any worse? Probably.
