As Close to a Match Report we’ll ever do!

The home defeat to lowly former Football League Leviathans, Cambridge United was painful and threw up a number of issues worth delving into a little deeper.

Boots

What the hell is going on there? I counted 3 pairs of sky blue, 2 bright yellow, one red and one white amongst our starting line-up. That left just 4 of our players wearing honest to goodness black boots. Has the world gone mad? Doesn’t everyone know that there are only two types of player who can just about get away with wearing wanky coloured boots?

1. Premiership Prima Donnas who step-over the ball too much, wear make-up, dive as soon as an opposition player is within 10-yards, and are photographed getting into taxis late at night with glamour models who have left their knickers at home.

2. Anyone who plays football on the artificial pitch at the Kettering Leisure Village.

Home Supporters

Where are they? How can we take more people to Nonce Park than assemble for a home game? Why are we suddenly down to just our hard core support? We used to get more at home for the visit of all those pissy little Essex teams (who generally left with 3-points) back in the nightmare Ryman League Season. These days we are in the top 5 of the strongest ever division outside of the Football League. So why the apathy?

I hope it’s not down to the ground situation. Do people really not come along because it would appear we can’t be promoted? If so, we wouldn’t have ANYONE at the ground for most of the previous 138 years!

Is it the pricing and ticketing? Possibly. No matter what anyone says, upwards of £16.00 for football at this level is a bit of a joke. And queuing twice just to give half a dozen turnstile operators an easy job, (and stop the odd one allegedly dipping their hand in the takings) is a pain in the arse, and totally unnecessary.

Was Tuesday’s attendance hit by the glamour of Champions League football on the telly? I wouldn’t have thought so until last week, but now the dullards at the North Northamptonshire Development Company want to rebrand the area “North Londonshire”, who knows, maybe we’re all Arsenal fans now?

Whatever the reasons for our lack of numbers, isn’t doesn’t exactly scream out, “C’mon Council and Pickering! It would be an offence to God and Man if you allowed this mighty Club to fold!” does it?

Cambridge United

We can only assume that Cambridge United have a special dispensation from the League to be allowed to use any part of their body when controlling the ball. Otherwise it would mean that the referee was completely blind as he waved away handballs time and time again. And the way he chased the Ref around the pitch, Abbey seemed to suggest their goal also came from such an amendment to the rules that the rest of us weren’t let in on.

More obvious to everyone in the ground was the moment in the first half when one of the Cambridge defenders rolled the ball around his upper body and arms for what seemed like several minutes like some sort of party trick. “Play On” waved the Ref once again.

Thanks must go to the Cambridge supporters for turning up in decent numbers to stop the gate looking even paltrier than it was. Not quite as many as they had last year when we were practically herded into a pen inside our own ground, but still pretty good. It was funny hearing them bragging about “staying up” though. It doesn’t seem that long since they missed out on a play-off spot to get into the Premier League, and now they are happy to squeeze a win out of little old us to prevent them sampling the delights of away trips to Maidenhead and Dorchester.

Their Goal

We all know that football was invented simply to drive us all insane, but does the game have to kick us in the head every week? Cambridge No.10 Danny Crow spent 99.9% of the game whining and rolling around on the floor after imaginary challenges. The other 0.1% of the time he was scoring their winner and charging around the pitch like an all-conquering hero. Why, God, why? If we had to lose to a single goal, why did that dick have to score it?

The Team

No one can say that the players aren’t giving their all. Even Greg Taylor, who has been working through some nightmarish performances in the past few weeks, is at least giving it everything.

A little more creativity in and around the Cambridge box, and better finishing and we would have been out of sight by halftime.

Lee is at least trying to coax actual football out of the players which is always to be applauded. Imagine though, a non brain-dead version of Moses Ashikodi (difficult I know) playing up front in this team. That would be most agreeable, as long as he doesn’t take our penalties of course.