Monday, January 31, 2011

Don't Take No Notice



It's been an interesting couple of weeks for the Blues, and I am delighted to point out that I said, after the Villa game, that we were showing signs of improvement. I was right, everyone else was wrong. A pulsating night against West Ham saw us through to the Carling cup and a somewhat soporific afternoon saw us safely through to the next round of the FA Cup, where we will play Sheffield Wednesday. It's all been a pleasant diversion, but the proper business starts again on Wednesday and I am intrigued.

There were people who were thrilled when Eck named a 4-4-2 for West Ham but I wasn't, because I couldn't see where the midfield creativity was. I predicted lots of aimless chasing and I was right, and we conceded, which meant we had to score 3. Gulp. When do we ever score 2, never mind 3? (yes, I know, Millwall, but that doesn't count). I doubt if I was alone in believing that the game was up. But the game wasn't up.

Eck changed it at half time bringing Zigic on for Derbyshire. I continued to disapprove, still believing that we needed more creativity in midfield but the change worked. There are some who say Zigic changed the game and there is truth in that, but he didn't change it on his own. The midfield were much more involved and involved higher up the pitch. In short, we took the game to them, and we won. The crowd roared. You don't get much roaring down the Blues, and, even allowing for the fact it was a semi final, it was the committed, attacking performance that got the crowd going. We need more of it. I hope and pray that Eck doesn't go back in his shell, but I suspect he will.

It's been a good window for Blues, with Bentley and Martins joining. I have no thoughts either way on Curtis Davies. Zigic has shown that despite all the opprobrium heaped upon his head, he is a class act . Bentley has already shown what a truly exciting player he is, and in turn he seems to have invigorated the much maligned Hleb. Martins we don't know about yet. He clearly had something a bit different and special once, hopefully he still has it. If Eck picks all 4 of these, we will stay up comfortably, but I am convinced that he will remain  more concerned with what the opposition might do to us, rather than what we can do to them. It's all good though, never a dull moment.

I started the new James Lee Burke earlier, he had put me in a bad mood before I got to the end of page 2. Why can he not give his characters normal names? I have had a bit of a bad run with books, and ended up reading a Grisham and a Turow for the first time. Last time too. Those blokes just don't know when to shut up. I have the new Nesbo, but I can't bring myself to read it, I want to save it and savour it. Mind you, it has had some duff reviews. It would be nice to be on the sick for a few days. Too sick to work but not too sick to get stuck into a book. The house to myself. Peace. Quiet. Whatever that is.

There are redundancies at my old place of work, announced in a very uncaring and unprofessional way, apparently. It's a shocker anyway, but the bigger shock is that they seem to be getting rid of the more experienced social workers. Another area, not unadjacent to here has cut pay. None of us are safe. We are little more than paper tissues, to be tossed aside, at the whim of some fat faced berk in a shiny arsed suit. Already, we are told that we should think ourselves lucky, we have no cause to complain, just think, we could end up down the road, like the others. The subtext being, obviously, "shut the fuck up".

As usual, Unison has played a motherfucking blinder. I was being facetious there.

Twitter,  a repository of the instant and inane thoughts of chumps like me, who think that the world is desperate to hear their half arsed opinions, but it comes into its own at momentous times like this when the heroic people of Egypt are rising up and helping us put the goings on down St Andrews into a bit of perspective.

No comments: