Football in the Twilight Zone – Rotherham Report

Last night was strange, very strange, almost other worldly.. The strangeness started as I found my way to my seat at the Don Valley Stadium, as I climbed each step I could almost hear the music, “dodododododododododo”, building to a crescendo. However watching football in an athletics stadium was just the start of it. When the whistle blew for kick-off, the night just got weirder. Wolves went on to give a performance that was indeed, out of this world, unfortunately not in a positive sense.

If watching Wolves against Ipswich was like watching Brazil, this was like watching England. I’m sure Wolves have played worse over the last few seasons, but I really can’t remember when. Some solace can be taken in the fact that Wolves had a much changed line-up from Saturday’s game, with SEB, Iwelumo, Jarvis, Jones and Elokobi all missing (and in case you haven’t heard the news, Elokobi has damaged EVERY ligament in his knee and looks like being out for the season, read here). Vokes was missing with a slight knock, Keogh also had to be replaced at half-time as he was suffering from an illness.

So the game. Let’s see. No tempo, no shape, no threat and no quality. First half we started reasonably well, Steven Ward getting himself into of shooting positions. He also hit one cracking volley into the back of the net but it was disallowed for offside, he also could have had a penalty, although it looked 50/50 from where I was, although everything looked 50/50 from where I was.

Henry was battling well and pulled most of the strings, Keogh was having a shocker, but hearing about his illness may now explain that. We were on top for the first half hour or so but then things started to change a little, their wingers causing as problems, and also the continual knocking of long balls into our box (they had obviously done their homework on our defence).

The rest of the game was a snooze fest of low quality football, the ball constantly being hoofed up, down and off the pitch regularly. As the man next to me said (I had named him “pulling his hair out man”) it was like watching rugby league (and again, from where we were standing maybe it was rugby league). The sum of our tactics was the long ball to Iwelumo, who looked like a big lost boy, all alone and no one to play with. There were a few half chances for both sides but the finishing was dreadful, at one stage Henry cleared the bar by a good 20 feet, maybe he was going for a drop kick.

Then on to penalties. When Rotherham missed their first I had a feeling things would go our way. Never trust your feelings. Ever! Foley missed the target, Elliott never looked like he thought he could score, and of course he didn’t. Rotherham tucked their final penalty away and that was that. I really hope they go on and have a longer run, and pick up some much needed finance along the way. Losing matches is always depressing but I’m already over this one, maybe in the blind hope that all will be rosy again in the garden on Saturday.

Category: Team News

Tags: Team News

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