Something I imagine would have the same effect as not winning yesterday.
Well, it was absolute whale wank for a lot of it, and penalty shootouts are not fun when it’s your own team.
But I’ll take League One 1 League Two 1 (League One win 5-4 on penalties) without questioning the whys and wherefores.
Not only did we get out of jail, but we were able to secure a first class seat on Eurostar, get ourselves to an uber-posh boudoir in France and film ourselves in bed with the prison chief’s missus.
Or to repeat what SW19 wrote after THAT Curzon Ashton game – we fell into a barrel of thumbs and ended up sucking a tit.
Yesterday reminded me a little bit of that Sunday lunchtime in outer Manchester, for some reason.
Whether it was the unusual time for a Carabao Cup game, whether we were still in pre-season mode, or something else entirely – it just felt flat.
Had we scored one of our (half) chances in the first half, it would have been much more comfortable.
And, dare I say, matching up to what the pre-game expectation was.
Nobody was really impressing though, and Sasu went back to being, well, Sasu. At one point, we took a very quick free kick and he managed to be offside…
You’ll have noticed I was doing media duties yesterday, so it (literally) gives a different perspective.
I’d also stopped typing notes out by the second half, because it somehow managed to get shittier and shittier.
Depressingly shittier, at that.
I wasn’t there for Gateshead last season, so I imagine this was starting to be on a par with it.
The shittiness could have got much worse when they got their penalty, but the roar when Bishop’s feet saved the day made us think we’d go on and win.
Well, for about two minutes anyway, before the proceedings of plop returned.
To be fair to their scorer, it was a stunning goal to watch. One not undeserved too, and I had visions of the AFCW world collapsing even before the League campaign kicked off.
Energy supplies around the world grinding to a halt, because it couldn’t cope with the millions of social media posts from angry, angst-ridden fans.
We would finish 24th if we were lucky, probably likely to go bust in a year’s time, and it would never have happened if Wally Downes was still our manager.
A week of gloom in the sunshine, questioning not only JJ’s tenure but his parentage too. All this before our inevitable gubbing at Huddersfield next weekend.
The impending doom got held off for another seven days, for which the world’s infrastructure is glad for.
Just before their penalty, Stockley (and Maycock and Sess) all came on, and I don’t believe it’s a coincidence we looked better up front.
Our new signing from Port Vale last week was the kind I hoped we would make, but in a strange way almost expect us to make.
With all due respect to our now-departed Lebanese international – Stockley looks a better version of Omar Bugiel already.
Hell, he even won some headers and they went in the direction of our players.
We were doing what we were supposed to be doing, namely trying to score, and it did feel like a second wind when it was nine minutes additional time.
Which if you were to add up all the stoppages, by the way, wouldn’t be far short of that.
If you’re losing though, especially in a cup game, nine minutes feels like nine seconds, and as it went from 93 to 95 to 97 minutes, it did feel like we’d done far too little.
However, one final cross into the box, whoever it was headed it back into the path for Maycock, who had enough time and skill to volley it home.
Somebody in the press box punched the air when it went in. Not me though, honest.
If you watch the replay you’ll see that none of our players celebrated, as though they felt they shouldn’t have needed to be in that position to begin with.
Could we have got a winner? Maybe, if we scored it a couple of minutes earlier, and had it gone to extra time I think we would have won it.
But penalties it was, and you forget how nerve wracking they can be, even in the first round of the Carabao Cup.
To our collective credit, all of our penalties were decent ones. All well struck, all had their intended outcome.
None of this slow-run-up-stop-start-quick-pirouette-another-couple-of-steps-does-this-look-good-on-social-media-clips-or-what bollocks.
It makes players look like twats when they do it, and even bigger twats when they miss.
Speaking of missing, it was always going to take a keeper to guess the right way, and thankfully it was Bishop who did exactly that.
No jubilant celebrations when Seddon fired home the decisive spot-kick, just relief. Everyone just knew we got away with it.
Looking back, there was too much complacency at times, too many not firing on all cylinders thinking it was still pre-season, still too much ring rust.
I’d like to think it’s a wake-up call for our squad though, that the proper games have now started, and we can’t be like that for so many fixtures in the next nine months.
I expect to see Stockley starting games, and maybe when Stevens comes back we’ll look a fair bit stronger up top.
Perhaps it’s also a guide to JJ and Cope that we still need additions, and we need to rummage down the back of more sofas.
If the rumour mill is to be believed, we might have a little bit of (literal) fortune. But more on that later.
For now, you can bask in knowing the second round draw is on Monday, where I believe the non-Europe playing Prem clubs come in.
So you just know we’ll get Gillingham, Luton or Peterborough. Not Franchise though…
Plus points: We won. Maycock’s volley. Stockley showing glimpses. Fighting to the end. Our penalties in the shootout.
Minus points: Utter pony for lots of it. Johnson looks slow. Lethargic at times.
The referee’s a…: Oh dear.
I believe he was the same official we had against Newport on Boxing Day a couple/few years ago, where he sent off Kyle Hudlin and gave a dodgy penalty against Biler.
Suffice to say, he hasn’t changed much. At least he calculated nine minutes injury time.
Them: You can tell when we’ve got out of jail, because I almost felt sorry for Newport.
Almost.
Obviously they saw us as a big scalp, they were up for it in a way we weren’t, and they were understandably on the floor after we won.
Again – Curzon Ashton away, anyone?
How many times do we see the lower division side just not be able to hold on for a couple more minutes against a higher ranked side?
They could have still won in the penalty shootout, needless to say, and that’s something that often gets forgotten in these situations.
Their manager, Hayden Mullins, has only been in the job eight days (nine days now) and he’s already managed them against ourselves and AS Roma. It only gets anti-climatic for him from now on.
He might do well with them, although he did amuse me in his post-game interview when he said we were a club with money who could bring top players off the bench…
Point to ponder: Just why are we so shit against lower division sides in cups?
Is it a complacency thing? Do we suffer from motivation issues (and that’s not a new thing either)?
Can we not cope with the more, ahem, brutalist style of play that such sides employ against us? Judging by recent results against lower division teams, you have to wonder that.
I also wonder if there’s a complex about being the favourites coming into a game as well.
It’s as though when the expectancy on us to win is much greater, we just can’t seem to deliver.
We got away with it yesterday, but in recent years there’s been Gateshead, Dagenham and Redbridge, Chesterfield (when they were non-league) and further back Sutton and others from the hall of shame.
Conversely, we’ve beaten Ipswich and Coventry, and didn’t disgrace ourselves at Chelsea and Newcastle, so when we’re underdogs we’re fine.
Maybe that’s the problem – the Wimbledon “thing” is backs against the wall, defying the odds, and other such cliches that don’t always hold true.
When it’s us who’s the big scalp, we just don’t know how to handle it.
Everyone loves it when we do overturn a bigger club, but maybe we should trade some of that in for the bread and butter games? If only for our coffers.
Truth is stranger than fiction: 1) Hydration break. Roundly booed, and was mocked by Phillo on the PA with Kenny G’s “Songbird”. 2) Carabao Cup first round on a Saturday. I’m not against it, but the crowd of less than 4000 probably wouldn’t be much lower on a weekday.
Anything else? The saloon bar talk last night was Junior Nkeng possibly on his way to Nottingham Forest.
Yes, you read that right.
He wasn’t around yesterday, and apparently he deleted all AFCW related content from his Instagram account, which is often a sign.
The money, which has been quoted as much as £850k will be very useful of course, and to be honest if we can get decent dough for any of our players – snap their hands off.
I doubt if it’ll be as much as that, although Prem sides do like to gamble those sort of sums for promising L1 players.
From our point of view, these days you don’t get to be choosers.
The days of a youngster coming through the ranks, establishing themselves for a couple of season then going for seven figure sums are long gone.
If they’re any good at Academy level, they move on quicker than you can say signing-on bonus.
If they blossom a bit later, like Nkeng or Rudoni (or even AAH/Assal) then they’ll be picked up by somebody before they get a full run in the team.
And that’s the way it is these days.
Our fans in particular need to forget about the WFC era of the 1990s (especially) with buy cheap and sell expensive. Football has moved on.
Every game (even down to non league) is scouted to a great level, and there are few hidden gems these days.
There’s video clips, more stats on t’internet than is healthy, and Prem sides in particular have whole scouting departments that watch so many games each day.
Somebody last season obviously saw Nkeng, decided he was worth a go, and we now probably lose him.
Although a conversation about him after the game yesterday made me think we should grab the money.
It would be a shame if he ended up in the Forest u21s and played cameos in ex-JPT fixtures, but he’ll be well paid as a result.
What it does prove is never get attached to the one-of-our-own players. If they’re staying with you, it’s because they’re not good enough…
So, was it worth it? Eventually, I guess.
In a nutshell: Name on the trophy.