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Yep, that’s a sinking feeling… We’re down by the bows and heading for the murky deeps…

30th September 2007 By Guest Blogger Leave a Comment

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Don't ask why, but every time Stan thinks of City at this precise moment an image springs to mind that he can't rid himself of. It's a scene straight out of Das Boot…

A German naval uniform bedecked PG is stood at the periscope of U39 with a surly looking Duffy stood stoically beside to his left. The news isn't good, the hunter has become the hunted and the mood of tension is so thick it could be cut by a frankfurter.

A destroyer has been spotted, presumably HMS Sheffield Wednesday, and the end game is nigh. At approximately 18.55hrs, with the sun setting over the North Sea and the sweat pouring from the brow of an animated Commander Grant, the first depth charge explodes. The lights flicker and then fail and the claxon sounds.

'Dive Jimmy, dive?..' Around him men rush this way and that and Seamen Von Doherty and Druryoltz attempt to stem the flood of water now pouring into the stricken boat's torpedo tubes!

A second charge takes the conning tower clean off about 18 minutes later and the end is here.

The oil now billowing from the damaged boat alerts all on the surface of the impending disaster unfolding beneath them as the boat sinks silently and gently to the seabed below.

If Commander Grant can re-float this motley crew and holed boat he'll deserve that Celtic job he so desperately wants and a medal to boot, because let's make no mistake, we are in deep water and back home the patience of the 'volk' has broken.

After watching City for nigh-on 30 years there aren't too many things that happen at Carra' Rud that surprise Stan, but the reaction to the goal by the Snakepit and Barclay genuinely shocked him.

It's not as if Stan doesn't share the frustration, and at times fury, but the vitriol that poured from the terraces as that first depth-charge exploded was quite extraordinary.

Maybe it's the realisation that we have spent a year watching a false dawn, the realisation that those niggles of doubt about McTinkerman's tactics and failure to build a spine to the team have proved correct.

Maybe it's the realisation that the cupboard is now bare and the likelihood of leaving this morass upwards is far less likely than leaving it downwards. Or just maybe three years of watching rubbish and backward momentum have finally told. Judging by the empty seats something is giving.

Stan will leave the pontificating about choice of tactics and team selections to The Expert because he does it better, but in a nutshell we were ineffectual up front, ultimately overrun in the middle, too narrow all game and hideously low on quality and confidence.

Dreadful in fact. Maybe not as dreadful as at Wolves, but is that really the bar by which we are going to set our standards this season?

There are those who will point a finger at the players for not performing, but the players seem as lost as the rest of us in working out the rationale of Grant's thinking.

No Russell? No Croft? What exactly is the formation we are looking to build a side round and who will form the spine of this team? One year on and I don't think even Grant knows.

There was also finger pointing in Hucks' direction. 'He didn't show up… He didn't care…'

Well, admittedly he was poor but then he hasn't trained all week and is only recently back from a long-term injury. Stan will also defend him by pointing at what he did last season.

Remove him, Dublin and Martin from the equation and we were Leeds. He's already baled Grant out in the past despite open criticism.

Right now Grant needs people to stand loyally on his shoulder, people he's stuck with and fought for. Will Cureton after being openly lambasted after a two goal display go toe to toe for him? Will Russell after being dropped? Will Chris Martin?

Will Dion who has never openly backed Grant? Will Hucks? Will any of them after yet another 40-minute dressing room lock in?

Equally importantly will we, the 'volk', after the scorn that was turned on us last year and Grant's subsequent failure to turn endless words into deeds? Somehow Stan doubts it.

Dive, dive, dive…


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