Diamond Geezers, Episode 84: It’s All Kicking Off
My preparations for the visit of Liverpool have been changed by that last result. Jamie Davies, my young prodigy, returned with searing efficiency against Sunderland, and considering the form of my other central midfielders, he’s put a big question mark in my mind. Should he start again, against the Reds? I check in with our form so far this season for some guidance.
These are all the “midfielders” in my first team squad, but we discount Duff, Weston, Mahouvé, Carragher and Victory, who aren’t competing for the three CM positions. If Sousa was fit I would consider moving Mahouvé up into the centre of my midfield three, but he’s so effective as a DMC it seems silly to take him out. And so, we’re left with the sub-7 average ratings of De Boer, Farnerud and Källström competing for a spot alongside Hysén and Bubb, who are clearly the best regular midfielders we have. You know what, that settles it. Jamie Davies is going in from the start against Liverpool. He deserves it, and I want the lad to be a star. There’s nothing I love more than a local boy come good, apart from Vince’s famous wolf dogs. They’re hot dogs with cheese injected into the sausage. There’s no competing with that.
I check in with Liverpool, who are in a relatively lowly 9th position in the table, to see what’s afoot with them. They, of course, thieved Teddy Lucic from me via his unprotected contract in the summer, and they aren’t even playing him. Despite my bringing Jamie Carragher to the promised land, there’s apparently no way past Tommy Jönsson and Jonathan Zebina. I’ll have to remember Jönsson for another time; he originally came to England via bloody bastard Bolton Wanderers as a £550k transfer from Halmstad, and he’s now marked down as one of Liverpool’s ‘star’ players.
I glance at the team they put out for their last game forlornly. It’s like a who’s who of some of the Premier League’s finest players. Owen, Heskey, Berger, Biscan, Gerrard, Barmby, Welsh… Diomède? In goal?! Wait a minute. What’s going on here.
The eagle-eyed amongst you will see exactly what’s going on here. While I’d never normally question the judgement of Gérard Houllier, in this case, he might need to reconsider his transfer strategy. The Frenchman sold three of his four goalkeepers in the summer — Arphexad, Westerveld and youth keeper David Stevens — and replaced them with… nobody. And now, you see, Chris Kirkland, the only remaining ball grabber at the club, got himself sent off a few weeks ago, and now he’s suspended — leaving a selection of extremely nervous outfield players with the responsibility of keeping nets for one of the world’s most famous clubs. Now, to their credit, Liverpool have been without Kirkland for two games before this one, in which they managed a 3–2 win against Wolves and a 2–2 draw with Bolton, so their lack of any competent keeper hasn’t hamstrung them too badly due to the lethal strikeforce they’ve got at the other end… but my goodness. Will we ever have a better chance against Liverpool in our lives? If anything, the pressure is all on us now: we pretty much have to win this game. How could you explain losing to a team that don’t have a goalie? In fairness, it’s happened plenty of times to me on a Saturday morning down the years, which is probably why my own professional football career never got off the ground. I sit the lads down in the dressing room and explain the situation. I also tell them all to shoot from anywhere within 25 yards of goal — it’s a day for worldies.
The only thing left to do now is head out and see which poor sucker has pulled the short straw for the visitors. I think we’ve pretty much all been in a dressing room five minutes before kick-off on a cold Sunday morning when your keeper hasn’t turned up and the manager is looking around the changing room trying to work out which one of you can punt the furthest so you can at least take goal kicks. You pray it isn’t going to be you, nobody makes a peep when he asks for volunteers, and eventually, some poor soul is thrown the gloves and asked to just go in for a half. Well, this is what flipping Liverpool Football Club have been reduced to today. In the Premier League. It would be tragic if it wasn’t so funny.
It’s Bernard Diomède. He does have 20 for Agility, which is probably why Houllier has thrown him in, but I have a good feeling about Handling: 1.
And well I might, because with two minutes on the clock, João Paiva puts a ball into the box, Biscan heads it clear, but Jamie Davies plays a first time ball into the path of Byron Bubb, who lashes a shot past the stand-in keeper to put us 1–0 up! It’s the perfect start, but after that, Liverpool actually out-play us. The thing I’ve forgotten in all this nonsense is that they still have an incredibly good outfield ten, and their defenders set about snuffing out our attacks and launching counters of their own — and for half an hour, we’re extremely grateful to Chiotis and the woodwork for saving our bacon from Owen, Heskey and Barmby.
However, with the half ticking towards a close, we create three more chances — and we don’t waste any of them. First, João Paiva slides a ball through that nicks off Jönsson into the path of Davies, who makes no mistake with his first chance of the day and thumps a high shot past Diomède for two — and minutes later, Davies finds Mahouvé, and his centre is converted by João Paiva for 3–0. We’re not finished yet, either: right on the stroke of half time, Carragher breaks Red hearts with a killer pass to Hysén, who finds Karadas in the box, he takes a touch and slams a low shot past the flailing stand-in for four.
Despite their threat, I don’t really see how Liverpool are going to claw their way back into this, and so I make a couple of changes to rest tiring legs and give some strugglers a chance: Javan and Farnerud come on for Paiva and Hysén. However, the second half is pretty much all Liverpool; Javan does have a goal disallowed for offside, then Vegard Heggem takes over from Diomède in goal, and we’re grateful to Chiotis for a remarkable double-save from Heskey and then Jönsson on the follow-up. After that though, the game fizzles out into what is a pretty embarrassing day all around.
I’ll take it.
Consecutive man-of-the-match performances from Jamie Davies, too — I feel pretty stupid for overlooking him for so long. He’s squarely back in the first-team picture now, for sure. I just wish I’d noticed his progress sooner.
Hallowe’en arrives, and nobody from Irthlingborough is given any Of The Month awards. Steve McLaren wins Manager for taking Middlesbrough to one place in the table lower than us, thereby proving that the Football Association is populated by awful cretins. I knew not to trust them.
Since it’s a Sunday and there’s a week until we play our next game, I decide to stay at home with my feet up. At around 6pm, I decide to open the bottle of red that Ottmar Hitzfeld left me after the United game. I plonk the cork out of the bottle, tip it gently towards my glass, and then jerk the whole thing across the room as my phone vibrates violently in my pocket. It’s Susan, telling me that there are men in suits roaming around the board rooms at Nene Park, and I need to turn on the news. I scramble to the television and click the clicker. I can hardly believe my eyes.
Frothing at the mouth, I get straight onto the phone of the agents for Tò Madeira, Mark Kerr, Maxim Tsigalko, Ronaldinho, Kaká, Andrés D’Alessandro, Nicolas Anelka, Frank Lampard, Abgar Barsom, Djibril Cissé, Landon Donovan, Rafael Van der Vaart, Freddie The Fence and Mikael Dorsin. I am not messing around. I don’t want to disrupt my squad too much, especially since we’re doing so well in the league, but there’s no doubt that we still need something extra if we’re going to topple Manchester United. Fate has presented me with a chance, and I’m going to grab it with both of my shaking, clammy hands.
A few swift clicks of Continue later, and it’s almost universally bad news. Ronaldinho, Tsigalko, Madeira, D’Alessandro and Van der Vaart won’t leave their clubs to come to Irthlingborough. Frustrated, I release Duane Darby on a free transfer to make myself feel better. I go back and forth for a couple of other players, determined to spend at least some of my budget on at least one Premier League-quality megastar, but before I can announce even a single new acquisition from my car window, we need to climb aboard Chugger and hit the A1 north to Wearside.
We know what Sunderland are all about having only just played them in the cup, so I don’t spend much time looking at their team. Instead, I choose mine, and while Jamie Davies is making himself a regular in my midfield, João Paiva isn’t really doing the business up top alongside Karadas. Hopefully one of my bids for new strikers comes good between now and the end of this game, because we clearly need more firepower up front, but in the meantime, this game will see a reprieve for moany Meysam alongside the Black Stone. Otherwise, my team is as you’d expect for a Premier League game. It’s tempting to play the same second string that just humped them 4–2 in the cup, but I know better than to expect a similar result at the Stadium of Light.
As expected, the Black Cats are a different animal at home, and they are rampant from the first whistle. Julius Aghahowa and Kenny Miller are like men possessed, and it’s no surprise that after they’ve both forced Chiotis into a save each within the first six minutes, in the tenth, Stephen Hughes swings over a corner and Aghahowa rises highest to head home the opener. Frankly, we’re all over the place, and can hardly get into the game. Finally Hysén manages to get the ball into the area in front of Javan, whose high shot is tipped over by Jerzy Dudek — and Barker’s corner kick is powered home by Azar Karadas for 1–1, completely against the run of play!
The equaliser is a reprieve, but beyond that, Sunderland just keep coming and there’s nothing I can do to stop them. I move the players around, I try to get Karadas to drag the outstanding Jody Craddock out of position to create some space behind him, I tell my full-backs to man-mark their wingers, but nothing makes any difference. We only manage to reach half time level thanks to some superhuman goalkeeping from Chiotis, and it’s clear the problem today is that my midfield are not pulling their weight. Javan, as usual, is mostly shooting off-target but neither of my strikers are getting many chances; Davies and Bubb in particular look well off the pace. Again, I try to make some tactical tweaks for the second half, but when we come out, Sunderland enact yet another siege on our goal. Hysén manages to test Dudek from distance, but just after the hour mark and as I’m waiting to make my substitutions, our arch tormentors combine: Kenny Miller sets off on a direct run at my back four, plays a one-two with Aghahowa, and finds himself clear of my defence. Chiotis, who has been unbelievable all afternoon, can only parry the Scot’s initial shot, and Miller drills in the rebound to put the Black Cats into a deserved lead.
I make my changes hastily; Sousa and Farnerud come into midfield to replace Davies and Bubb. Sadly, they can’t change the flow of the game at all, and ten minutes later, our battleship looks sunk as Kevin Phillips beats bloody Azar Karadas in the air to head home another Stephen Hughes corner to put the home side 3–1 up. Annoyed, I replace my final starting midfielder, Hysén, with Paiva, and I’m even more annoyed to see him hit two shots on target and pull back a consolation goal with the very last kick of the game. I’m not upset we scored, of course, but rather that it looks like I probably should have started him ahead of Javan, or at least brought him on sooner. My mismanagement aside, we’ve been done today, in practically every department. It was only Dion’s efforts in goal that kept this score respectable, and I can’t tell you how irritated I am with my midfield three. Perhaps I need to think about that more than I do about another striker. I’ve never quite solved the problem of who plays alongside Byron and Tobias.
After the game, there’s some news. The Great Dane, Peter Møller, asks to go on the transfer list because he wants a fresh challenge. I understand; he’s fallen down the pecking order and he’s no spring chicken. I grant his request with a firm handshake and a lingering hug. I’ll never get tired of that musk.
However, that’s not all. Leeds have very unexpectedly put Mark Viduka on the transfer list at his own request, after he’s been unable to displace Michael Bridges and Robbie Keane in the Whites’ front line. As you can probably imagine… I’m interested.
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