Football is full of mysteries, for instance :
Who can explain the adulation heaped upon Nicky Butt by ITV commentators ?
Or understand how Nottingham Forest could get over 8 million for Stan Collymore and then waste it on players like Silenzi, Campbell and Bart-Williams.
In the same league is the mystery of how the score remained at 2-0 when we played Spurs this evening. It defied belief, but I digress.
Now, watching games on Sky has its pro's and cons.
The pro's being that pubs are generally warm, and you get instant
replays.
The con being that sometimes you have to listen to Trevor
Francis.
But sometimes, just sometimes, you get a guy sitting behind you
who looks and sounds like Ronny Moran. And that makes pub TV
footy worthwhile.
The first 40 minutes of the first half were forgetable, although our Ronny Moran clone kept on barking out orders to the wing-backs and anyone else the cameras caught slacking.
"... Come on son ..."
"... In there !!!"
"... Man on !"
A minute before half time though and we all had something to
shout about.
A brilliant Barnes through ball ...
" .... ooooooooh ... "
And Thommo fires home ...
"... yyyyeeeessss !!!"
Thommo's goal was richly deserved, I lost count of the number of attacks Thommo broke up, and he buzzed around the midfield all night.
Spurs had a good start to the second half, but we stood firm and soon had even more to cheer about. Macca took a typical Macca shot ( i.e. no power ) and I sighed as the ball rolled towards Ian Walker.
Tragically for Spurs, Ian Walker's attempted save was even worse than his haircut. The ball hit last year's Ewood Park star : Divot, and bounced over the keeper's hands. And we Reds fans spent the next 3 minutes cheering the replays to the echo.
At this point I was going to include the Spurs entry from my Dictionary of Football, but a lack of investment has left it berift of quality with only one decent joke in it.
Apart from one miraculous save by James, ( which meant I left the pub with fingernails intact ), Spurs never really threatened. Campbell's "goal" after an attempt to merge with James being rightly penalised.
But the last 15 minutes were the real mystery. We had so many great chances, Berger and Fowler the chief culprits. Macca however was the real star, at the heart of every attack, he should have had a hat trick. No wonder we failed against Everton and Wimbledon without him.
But it's a team game, and special mention to Mark Wright, who won everything in the air. And to the much maligned Phil Babb who even managed a defence splitting pass this evening.
So in the absence of further goals, we had to content
ourselves with singing "Cheerio Cheerio" to the Spurs
fans who walked out with 10 minutes to go.
And speaking of which, I thought the home crowd's booing of
ex-Spur Neil Ruddock was tremendously unfair. After all, our fans
never booed ex-Spur Paul Stewart, despite enormous provocation.