Did somebody say result of the week?
So, in the most unsurprising news of the past few days, the Karl Robinson Show will be postponed until a later date.
Given not only the weather since Wednesday, but the temperatures being more or less below zero for a week or more, and the playing surface starting to chill up after Blackburn, the only surprise is that it wasn’t called off earlier.
The official reason is a frozen pitch, although one suspects the surroundings aren’t much safer. And sadly, in these times of ultra-litigation, we’re at the mercy of insurance policies and such like.
True, the temperature tomorrow afternoon is earmarked to be an almost tropical 4c, but that’s only going to happen mid morning, and ice can be quite slow to melt – if you’ve ever tried defrosting a chest freezer at room temperature (20c) you’ll know what I mean.
We need the weekend off, to lick our wounds, to get Darius fit, and for our players and managers to regroup and try and think of a fucking clue for the next game. Because if tomorrow had gone ahead, and we’d lost, the opposition manager dancing around would have been too much of a downer.
As it is, we can enjoy the mental health break. Suddenly, tomorrow doesn’t feel so uninviting after all.
Which to be blunt we need. Thinking back to Blackburn, it hasn’t become a better performance with the passing of a few days. What made our players act like they wanted to be somewhere else is open to speculation, but it wasn’t a good sign.
Now, they can go back home, put on a box-set and get away from each other for a couple of days. Come back to training on Monday with a clearer head, that kind of thing.
Still, one can wonder if tomorrow would have gone ahead if we had undersoil heating. That won’t happen at KM, but I would expect plans in the new gaff for it. In fact, I’ll be amazed if it wasn’t included.
Think of another situation in the future like our current one, getting a game on when many others are off. After all, MOTD covered WFC v Walsall in 1984 because we could play in wet weather.
Plus, walking around various parts of London in the last couple of days, when there’s a fair amount of people walking around, you almost forget it’s been snowing. Slushy, maybe…
Speaking of NPL, news this morning that there’s going to be an increase of affordable housing. In fact, quite a fair bit of it.
It’s good news, apparently, because it will underpin the finances of the whole project. While Galliard can sell the non-affordable housing at the prices they want, they’ve still got to build us the shell of the stadium, plus whatever they owe NAMA.
They’ll get some money out of this, but not as much as you’ll think.
Galliard are also doing one of the things they’re supposed to do with the s106s, so we can make another step towards knocking the carbuncle down. Or “ground works”, as the link there put it.
Oh, and considering the grief from the anti-NPL NIMBYs and Wandsworth Council about lack of affordable housing, a penny for their thoughts right now? On second thoughts, they’ll now start whinging about the amount of working class people who will now live in the area…