It’s the hope that kills you. The saying is usually attributed to Sir Peter Ustinov, but it’s probably been uttered by people across the world for years.
It is the hope that kills you, and I feel perhaps our play-off push was finally killed off yesterday. I hope it isn’t – it’s still mathematically possible, but it would take a huge effort from a group of players who look to be running on empty. For more than 90 minutes yesterday, they fought, they scrapped, and they battled, but sadly, it wasn’t to be. We’ve fallen at the last hurdle like Devon Loch in the 1956 Grand National. Like me, a couple of hours ago in the City of Lincoln 10k, the final straight proved to be a leap too far.
Should this result be the nail in our coffin, then it certainly isn’t the reason we have not been promoted, even if it comes at a crucial time. You can point to late goals from Bristol Rovers and Northampton in August or the lack of a striker throughout autumn. The truth is we are probably where we deserve to be and to get there has been such a wonderful effort from a talented group of players; it feels almost crass looking at this single chapter with any sort of objectivity. Still, I guess we’ll have to.
There’s no value in me breaking the game down and looking at different moments in too much detail. If we’d lost this back in October, I’d have been content that we’d done well, that on another day, we could have won the game. I said back in December that Wigan are a good team, and I stand by that – even with the points deduction, I cannot see how they’re not knocking on the door of the top six, and like Reading last week, they’re a side who’ll be a real handful next season. They started brightly and knocked on the door incessantly before a player I admire (I’m getting sick of those), Johnny Smith, smashed a great (deflected) effort past Lukas Jensen.
That did spark anger around me; there were a lot of people getting really wound up, and whilst it really hacked me off at the time, I understand it. The problem you have in football is blame. Someone always has to be to blame. It could be a player misplacing a pass, a team selection you don’t like, or an injury to a key player, but there’s always got to be blame. We cannot walk away from a game that we probably deserved at least a point from and say, ‘That’s how it is‘, because that doesn’t give us a chance to process it. As humans, we need reason; we need to deal with the emotions such an event throws up. Wigan scoring had to be someone’s fault, and if the goal wasn’t, the defeat certainly needed blame.
I heard people shouting about a lack of effort, about missing Ted Bishop, about us being tired, and maybe a couple of those are true. Lack of effort certainly isn’t right, nor is the notion we played badly. We didn’t hit the levels we managed in March, but that was unsustainable. The 5-0 and 6-0 home wins were outstanding, but teams have watched those games and now work harder to stop our threat.
Their goal fired us up, and we took control after that. We had the ball in the net, ruled out correctly for offside, as the assistant referee on the far side had a good, clear view of the incident, so we could make a fully informed decision without any guesswork. We kept pushing and kept fighting, and I always felt a goal would come. Steve, behind me, did not, and I’m sure he won’t mind me saying this. As we attacked, Mandroiu picked up the ball, and Steve said, ‘for flip’s sake, don’t shoot‘ (PG version), just as Mandroiu let one fly into the back of the net. Rather rudely, I turned and jeered as soon as we scored, but luckily, we know each other well enough for it not to be rude. I love moments like that, and I’ve been guilty of them in the past. Steve was just upset at the outcome and his process, like most of that row (Dad included), is to express unhappiness with what we’re doing. Often, it’s misplaced unhappiness, but it’s only an emotional response. It was more evident yesterday because there was something on the line.
The 30 minutes before half time, we were the better side. We penned Wigan in, scored, and had 10 shots, three on target. I didn’t believe we would lose the game at that point; it felt like there would only be one winner. Once Erhahon and Mandroiu got a grip on midfield, I felt we dominated (Wigan had two shots, one on target in that period). We had chances, we didn’t take them, but it felt like it was only going to be a matter of time.
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