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Where now and what next? Two of the biggest home games in recent memory, in short.

14th December 2008 By Guest Blogger Leave a Comment

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There comes a time when the excuses have to stop. The circumstances surrounding the game, the quality of the performance or apparent desire of the players cease to matter.

 
What matters is the end result; the points on the board; leaving the pitch as the winning team, not as glorious failures. Stan puts it to you that we are now at that point.

The crushing predictability of the Saturday's defeat and the familiar script spewed out once beaten almost drove an old(ish) man to tears as he digested yet more heartache. Watford? Played well and lost? Reading? Played well and lost.

 
If only Fotheringham hadn't handled. If only Russell hadn't missed a sitter. If only the ref had spotted the push.

If only Marshall hadn't dived over the ball for the second goal at Watford. If only, if only, if only.?. 'If ifs and ands were pots and pans there'd be no work for tinkers' hands' as Stan's Grandma used to say to him.

Stan has reached the end of his tether to the point of strangulation. A four or five game streak of failure and incumbent defeats can be put down to misfortune.

Playing well and being genuinely unfortunate. Injuries at wrong moments, decisions conspiring against you, wonder goals from 'on fire' opposition forwards? yep, it happens.

However, when you get to the half-way point of the season a mere two places above the relegation zone, with little prospect of improvement, it has to be down to something else. It's down to more than Lady Luck deciding to flounce off into the distance with the first choice centre-halves' knee ligaments tucked under her arm!

So what is the problem with Team Roeder? Why can we look a million dollars on Sunday and be incapable of hitting a cow's arse with a banjo the following Wednesday?

Stan has his theories but that's for another day and an ex-England manager. What even an amateur like Stan can clearly see is a side that is losing, consistently, when playing at what appears to be to their optimum.

When the side was announced to take on Reading how many people gave us a hope? Stan had this down as a defeat long before the team was announced, but with the team sheet in front of him he just couldn't see where were the goals were going to come from? With a defence as ramshackle as ours, was it realistic to go to Reading and look for a 0-0?

Fair enough we had two good chances in the first-half where we could have got our noses in front, but both fell to midfielders? Odd that considering there wasn't a striker on the pitch. Unsurprisingly both were missed, as they will be three times out of four by a midfielder who scores at best five a season.

Thereafter, despite never being totally outclassed, once Reading found another gear from about the 75th minute you sensed what was coming? and it wasn't going to be a Carl Cort winner.

 
Every time you watch City play you 'sense what is coming…' and very rarely are you wrong – and it hurts more with each occasion. What is equally depressing is that with January looming and little money in the pot very little seems about to change.

This isn't a side in transition, this is as good as we'll get. Stan can't see the long term makings of a quality side out there. With the exception of the outstanding Clingan, who can put their hand on their heart and see genuine grounds for hope? Big, quality, potential City legends who bleed yellow and green?

There's little whiffs of 'that could work…' here and there, but there's nothing that resembles the makings of a side capable of competing in this division where we want to be.

Any football team is a never-ending work in progress, but worryingly, however hard Stan looks, he can't see what the finished article is supposed to look like.

So where to from here? Two huge home games, that's where. Games that Stan, and he senses many others, will draw their ultimate conclusion of Roeder's tenure.

Win two of the next three (lets just forget Palace on Boxing Day!) and we limp into the New Year with some sort of hope we'll dig ourselves out of this mess. Pick up less than four points and the writing really could be on the wall.

For those out there who have made up their minds already, if not Roeder then who? Aidy 'Route One, Plato' Boothroyd? 'Never Managed Before' Malky? Rioch without an Irish Monkey on his back? Or how about taking the Leicester route and going for the wise-cracking Holloway?

 
Who's out there that we can realistically afford that has a proven track record?? Mmm? let Stan think?well, there's always Worthy!

Best we all pray we thump Charlton next week then; in the meantime Stan's off to sit in a darkened room with a single malt to cry a bit more!


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