Director Tim Burton is known for writing gothic horrors, quirky and slightly predictable in that they always seem to star Johnny Depp.
Burton Albion are like that for us – every season, they come to Sincil Bank and help serve up a drab, miserable affair that is not out of place in Tim Burton’s filmography, and yet somehow, they always win. Yesterday was as predictable as any game we’ve played this season. I called it on the podcast, I called it pre-game, and I wasn’t even slightly happy about being right.
In fact, the only thing that could have made it an acceptable result in some small, insignificant way, would have been for Peterborough to have lost, but they couldn’t even manage that. it was just a rubbish, miserable Saturday afternoon at the Bank watching (let’s be honest) poor football.
There were plenty of villains throughout the afternoon, none more so than referee Ruebyn Ricardo, a man so inconsistent he could have been wearing red and white. It might have helped us if he had been, because some of his decisions didn’t favour us at all. More on him later.
Imps fans seemed quite pleased Sam Clucas was starting, but around me there was upset that Tom Bayliss wasn’t. Not everyone can play of course, but James Collins got a start instead of Freddie Draper, who did well at Mansfield. It’s always nice to have options, but the problem in consistency. If the options we had all played to their best, or even 85% of them did, we’d be fine. Yesterday, I didn’t think that happened at all.
The game started okay, and I thought despite us not looking great, we did edge it. Makama had a decent effort which, on reflection, should perhaps have gone out to Ben House. That said, House prowled the pitch like an angry cartoon tiger who’d had his Frosties stolen, but didn’t actually influence the balance of play much. He wasn’t the only one, but in my eyes he started as our first choice this season, and now, I wouldn’t bat an eyelid if he was on the bench. We might give away a few less needless free kicks. Also, he did throw himself to the floor in the area early on instead of fighting for the ball – never a penalty, and it’s almost Chris Maguire-ish to try and claim one. I’m not having any of that, fight for the ball and let the referee do his job.
Not that he, Mr Ricardo, did his job adequately, and that became apparent as the half wore on. Burton did something I haven’t seen at the Bank since Wycombe in early 2018 – they were time-wasting within 15 minutes of kick-off. Sure, it breaks the game up, but aren’t referees meant to clamp down on it? A classic example of this came when their keeper got warned about the time he took over kicks. He then got a goal kick and crouched down by his post. He waited, and the ref told him to get on. He stayed down for another 15 seconds before getting up. A word of advice, Mr Ricardo – if you want to stop that, get the yellow card out. Job done. Booking people on 85 minutes for time wasting is like letting shoplifters take all your stock, and then, as they nick your last Twix, slapping them on the wrists and banning them from your shop.
Pointless.
Sadly, we didn’t really deal with Burton’s attempts to break up the game, which they’re entitled to do, by the way. They do what they need to, and it’s up to the officials to deal with it. Still, in a broken, bitty game, only a couple of players stood out for me in the first half. As always, I thought Sean Roughan was excellent, and he had our best effort in the first half with a powerful run and drive at goal. Jovon didn’t get a lot of joy but certainly put himself about, and Dom Jeffries was solid. That was about it – Paudie was Paudie, and that goes without saying, but we were just laboured.
I think what wound me up the most was how slow a lot of our play was. I’ve no problem with going backwards or sideways; you have to do it in order to probe for openings. But it needs to be snappier and quicker. If we go to Paudie, I want to see him stroke in on with one touch, two at best, get a bit of pace into the game. Instead, we go back, and the player takes a touch, rolls it forward, looks up, and then it goes one more. That player takes a touch, rolls it forward, etc. Before you know it, we’ve wasted more time looking to pull their defence to one side than Burton did over a throw-in (Chris did a count, and one throw took them more than a minute to take in the first half).
I didn’t have any fear that we’d lose the game in the first half, because I didn’t think Burton offered much at all. It had 0-0 written all over it, but the referee was spoiling things. He seemed to think full-on barges were fine, and players holding onto players was okay as well. Jovon had arms wrapped around him so much he was in a permanent state of hugging Burton players, and there wasn’t a free kick to be seen. That would be fine if it was consistent but, as we know, it wasn’t.
There’s one moment I have had to look back at and I still don’t understand how we didn’t get at least a free kick, if not a penalty. Tendayi Darikwa whipped in a cross to the edge of the area and Collins is first to the ball. He’s looking to cheat it, and as he does, Lofthouse just barges him over from behind. The first contact is in the area, Collins is knocked out into the D and nothing was given. It was a baffling moment, and it’s almost fine if similar challenges are not punished.
Look, I’m going to moan about the referee, but we still weren’t good enough. However, I geneuinly think with a better referee, we win the game. Another ref absolutely gives a penalty for that, and another ref doesn’t disallow our goal at the start of the second half.
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