One Game at a Time: You’re Only Here for the Pasties
Blackburn Rovers (H) September 2nd
“Cometh the hour, cometh the man.”
In 1948, English tail ender Cliff Gladwin walked out to the wicket in the Durban test with England at 117 for eight, needing a huge 128 runs to win. As he passed the South African captain, Dudley Nourse, he remarked “cometh the hour, cometh the man.” The last ball of the match came, the scores miraculously tied, and hit Gladwin on the thigh. He and fellow tail ender Eric Bedser ran a leg bye to win the test.
Seventy-five years later and it was not a man but men that cameth, as, after a superlative first hour, following which Argyle deservedly led 2-0 and would not have been flattered by three or four, Palace supremo Roy Hodgson sent on a combined total of 140+ international caps in the form of Ayew, Schlupp and Eze.
Throw of the dice or tactical genius? Or simply tilting the balance towards the higher calibre of team that Palace should have been, but up until that point, by all commentator’s agreement, clearly were not.
To be fair the most significant contribution of the trio came from the player who contributed a grand total of one cap to the total. Eze, a single England appearance to his name, rapidly took the game by the scruff of the neck. From the moment he arrived the balance changed, and it went from “all through Eze” to “all too easy” for Palace. Three goals in just over four minutes, the first from Edouard, followed by a brace from Mateta, both laid on a plate for him by the destructive Eze knocked the stuffing out of a previously rampant Argyle.
Up until the changes, Argyle had looked imperious, controlling possession, passing with purpose and attacking with potency. Even though Palace had made seven changes, it was hard to see that Argyle had made nine, with only KKH and Scarr remaining from the side that started at St Andrews.
If KKH was the standout performer (and he was), his combinations down the right-hand side with Tyreik Wright, who was delivering his most convincing performance since his arrival last January were creating havok in the Palace back line. It was Tyreik’s cross from an incisive KKH pass, a classic of the inverted full back system Schuey is implementing, headed back across by namesake Callum that fell for Waine to crash home the opener after six minutes. The Wright brothers were flying.
For the rest of the half Argyle poured forward, with Warrington, Pleguezuelo, the aforementioned KKH, Cundle and Butcher well to the fore. In truth no-one played badly, and Palace were restricted to a Rak-Sakyi offside effort, and later cross cum shot from the same player that was missed at the far post, and in effect became neither. Callum Wright was close to a similar effort for Argyle, and just before half time Miller also tried his luck, an edge of the penalty area drive flashing wide in the last meaningful action of the half.
Palace came out early for the second half, no doubt determined to change the momentum. Thirty-three seconds later Cundle picked up a pass from a loose clearance, took a steadying touch and arced a perfect twenty-yard tracer bullet past Johnstone.
Argyle looked in complete control and ten minutes later the fateful substitutions arrived. Even then, having surrendered a lead that looked so unlikely just moments before, Waine forced the best from Johnstone with an effort that almost repeated Cundle’s strike.
Palace, with the lead, controlled the game after that by and large, and with a host of attacking subs, including another promising cameo from Issaka who looks far from out of place at this level, it was another surgical pass, this time from Schlupp, after robbing a tired looking Butcher on halfway, that allowed Mateta to complete his hat-trick and surpass in a single half, his prior Palace goalscoring of the previous season.
By the end the Argyle formation looked more akin to the old style 2 – 1- 7 of yore. In the end, in the cold light of day, the score line looks like a standard Premiership victory over their lower division opponents. In reality, as Hodgson generously acknowledged, it was far from that.
The performance means Schuey will have some tough decisions to make for Saturday, in what will be the first game after the closing (or slamming) of the transfer window. With putative target loanee Coburn a playing sub for Middlesbrough (as was Scarlett for Spurs) time is getting short for a player or two to arrive, notwithstanding a brief flurry of pre-match excitement, soon dashed after a tweet from self-proclaimed transfer oracle Alan Nixon, responded to a fans query re Rak-Sakyi’s destination (on loan) as Plymouth. To play. For Palace.
The final opponents of the opening Championship salvos before the novelty of an international break for players and fans alike, will be the Wild Rovers of Blackburn, sadly for them shorn of their Argyle capture from pre -season Niall Ennis, who having arrived injured, (according to a frustrated manager Jon Dahl Tomasson) has recovered and then injured himself again. Sound familiar?
Blackburn, as part of the footballing hotbed of the Northwest were one of the original founders of the Football League, in 1888, and for most fans there are two distinct periods of history for the club.
The first period was those early years when the club, despite not winning the League title won five of its six FA Cup wins, when, had royal attendance been the regular occasion it is now, their trophies would have been handed over by Queen Victoria. Indeed, at the time they had joined the new-fangled League they had already won a hat-trick of FA Cups in 1884, 1885 and 1886. They promptly won again in 1890 and 1891. Hence most older fans recall them as one of the top row coins of the Esso FA Cup Centenary coin collection. Technically there should be two Blackburn coins but the cheapskates at Esso decided to roll Blackburn Olympic’s triumph in 1883 under the catchall of Blackburn.
Founded by public schoolboys from Shrewsbury and Malvern, initially the club played on a farmer’s field complete with drainage pool which had to covered with timber and turf each match. The ground perhaps appropriately was called Oozehead Ground. The clubs’ colours were proposed as green and white quartered shirts as these were colours of Malvern School but wiser Cambridge educated heads ensured that blue and white became the colours, which have prevailed ever since.
The Rovers finally win the league title twice, just prior to World War One, but between the wars a solitary FA Cup triumph in 1928 was the only silverware, before a first relegation (having survived their previous one on a re-election vote), then regaining elite status in 1938.
By now long established at Ewood Park, the post war years saw the beginning of a strange custom, when they were relegated in 1948. A Bamber Bridge greengrocer buried a coffin full of vegetables (apparently to symbolise the players) to mark the event. Local rivals Preston copied the concept, and the coffin is dig up only when the club is promoted again. Nowadays the coffin contains a doll called Chucky dressed in the club strip (because of course that’s much less macabre). There is no truth in the rumour that North End fans plan to change the starting syllable of their doll in the event of their relegation.
The post war years were not especially successful for the Rovers and in the early 1970’s the club were relegated to the third tier for the first time. It was this period that saw the only real rivalry between our clubs, when Rovers pipped Argyle to the Third Division title in 1975. The away game, won 5-2 by Rovers, was notorious for the impact of those hooligan ridden years when the local police chief stated the town was now more like Greenburn than Blackburn.
The match, watched by then England boss Don Revie, casting an eye over a young Paul Mariner, saw Argyle take the lead, and then concede a controversial penalty, which as per our last opponents, was saved by Big Jim Furnell. Blackburn took control and ran out healthy winners. The match was refereed by one Kevin McNally, whose previous away game in charge of the Pilgrims had been the previous season at Port Vale. On that day he sent off three Argyle players, at the time a League record. And you though Brett Huxtable was unpopular.
Only a fortnight before the clubs had met under the lights at Home Park in front of a packed in 28,000 crowd. Argyle had won that fixture 2-1 to knock Rovers off the top spot.
The next significant milestone in Rover’s history was the acquisition of the club by local businessman Jack (later Sir Jack) Walker. Walker who had made his fortune building and then selling the family steel business to British Steel set about investing in his local club. Twenty-five million went into the stadium, and Kenny Dalglish of Liverpool was installed as manager. The club won promotion via the play-offs to the newly formed Premier League and signed Alan Shearer from Southampton. Having finished fourth, then runners up, the club continued to invest in players and Chris Sutton joined to form the striking duo that became known as SAS. In 1994/5 against all footballing odds the club won the Premier League for the one and only time (so far). They remain the only town based side to have won the Premier League, and one of only six sides to have done so to date.
Walkers’ ambitions knew no bounds. They came close to signing Roy Keane, having agreed a deal, but they were gazumped by Alex Ferguson. Keane himself recounts that Dalglish was so upset he threatened to track Keane down on holiday.
Perhaps more bizarre was the potential double signing of Bordeaux pair Christophe Dugarry and Zinedine Zidane, then a 23-year-old French starlet. The deal fell through, and Walker declared “who needs Zidane when we have Tim Sherwood”.
Sherwood was to the fore again the following season, and not for fly tipping, but as peacemaker when, in a Champions League group match In Moscow, a fight broke out between David Batty and teammate Graeme Le Saux. After colliding, chasing a misplaced pass, the pair squared up, and polymath Channel islander Le Saux got his retaliation in first. Unfortunately for him the blow broke his left hand. The tie was lost 3-0 and Rovers failed to escape the group stage in their only Champions League sortie.
The death of Walker in 2000 from cancer was felt hard in Blackburn, but the man who had a sign in his office that read “I am always right. If I am wrong, see above” certainly delivered on his motto of "think big". He was Blackburn through and through, renowned for hasty sackings of his staff, later retracted, including of one manager who tried to get him to donate £100 to Burnley FC, the Rovers bitter rivals. Burnley fans once posted a sign twinning their town with Trelleborg’s after the Swedish largely amateur team knocked Rovers out of the Europa League in 1994/5.
On his death the club was placed in a family trust but 2010 they then sold out to the Venky family, and Indian conglomerate best known for their industrial scale chicken farming. The Venkeys have poured in around 150 million pounds to the club and remain its owners, but it is fair to say they have fallen out of love with the club and its fans and the feeling is entirely mutual.
Promising the likes of Ronaldhino and Maradona and a return to Champions League, the Venkys axed manager Sam Allardyce and replaced him with his number two Steve Kean. Now Allardyce had had some issues, not the least of which being trying to inspire his players before they played Manchester United with clips from Gladiator and 300. The one where they all die at the end. Rovers lost 7-1 Berbatov scored five. Were they not entertained though.
The Venkeys, advised by agent Jerome Anderson, sacked Allardyce. Kean, his replacement coincidentally had Anderson as his agent. As did Anderson’s son who, having played two minutes for Aberdeen, signed for …Blackburn. He never played a minute for them.
In also came Shebby Singh, a former Malay international and global adviser for the Venkys. Then came a job lot of lower league Portuguese players…..none of whom were any good.
Relegation followed, then protests led by Jack Straw the local MP. The figurehead of the Venky takeover, Anuradha Desai, known as Madam stopped attending after a snowball thrown by a fan hit her husband in the face. Her two brothers have not attended since their chauffeur suffered a heart attack and died driving to the ground, almost ten years ago. Toxic doesn't begin to describe it.
Recently the club have stabilised in the Championship, with Tomasson replacing Tony Mowbray who was released after a decent season. They finished outside of the playoffs last season on goal difference after a final day epic spoilsport win at Millwall, finishing behind, Mowbray's Sunderland.
The early part of this season was riven with rumours of financial woes and problems, although a news story of players being forced to buy their own flights home from a pre-season tour was conflated rubbish. They lost their goalkeeper to Luton and with the window still open rumours abound on possible incomings and departures. Their pseudo Chilean striker Brereton-Diaz decamped to Spain for free, and Bradley Dack who once assisted Argyle fans in the Soccer Saturday end of the show shoot out has joined his old boss at the Stadium of Light. They still have Sam Gallagher, pillaged from the Argyle wreckage of administration by Southampton though.
Argyle need to make sure they don’t make it a worrying four in a row for defeats. They too will hope to have a new face or maybe two.
We know it won’t be easy. But at least it won’t be Eze, although he only scores ten points, compared to Szmodics who scores twenty two.
COYG!!!!!
Blackburn Rovers (H) September 2nd
“Cometh the hour, cometh the man.”
In 1948, English tail ender Cliff Gladwin walked out to the wicket in the Durban test with England at 117 for eight, needing a huge 128 runs to win. As he passed the South African captain, Dudley Nourse, he remarked “cometh the hour, cometh the man.” The last ball of the match came, the scores miraculously tied, and hit Gladwin on the thigh. He and fellow tail ender Eric Bedser ran a leg bye to win the test.
Seventy-five years later and it was not a man but men that cameth, as, after a superlative first hour, following which Argyle deservedly led 2-0 and would not have been flattered by three or four, Palace supremo Roy Hodgson sent on a combined total of 140+ international caps in the form of Ayew, Schlupp and Eze.
Throw of the dice or tactical genius? Or simply tilting the balance towards the higher calibre of team that Palace should have been, but up until that point, by all commentator’s agreement, clearly were not.
To be fair the most significant contribution of the trio came from the player who contributed a grand total of one cap to the total. Eze, a single England appearance to his name, rapidly took the game by the scruff of the neck. From the moment he arrived the balance changed, and it went from “all through Eze” to “all too easy” for Palace. Three goals in just over four minutes, the first from Edouard, followed by a brace from Mateta, both laid on a plate for him by the destructive Eze knocked the stuffing out of a previously rampant Argyle.
Up until the changes, Argyle had looked imperious, controlling possession, passing with purpose and attacking with potency. Even though Palace had made seven changes, it was hard to see that Argyle had made nine, with only KKH and Scarr remaining from the side that started at St Andrews.
If KKH was the standout performer (and he was), his combinations down the right-hand side with Tyreik Wright, who was delivering his most convincing performance since his arrival last January were creating havok in the Palace back line. It was Tyreik’s cross from an incisive KKH pass, a classic of the inverted full back system Schuey is implementing, headed back across by namesake Callum that fell for Waine to crash home the opener after six minutes. The Wright brothers were flying.
For the rest of the half Argyle poured forward, with Warrington, Pleguezuelo, the aforementioned KKH, Cundle and Butcher well to the fore. In truth no-one played badly, and Palace were restricted to a Rak-Sakyi offside effort, and later cross cum shot from the same player that was missed at the far post, and in effect became neither. Callum Wright was close to a similar effort for Argyle, and just before half time Miller also tried his luck, an edge of the penalty area drive flashing wide in the last meaningful action of the half.
Palace came out early for the second half, no doubt determined to change the momentum. Thirty-three seconds later Cundle picked up a pass from a loose clearance, took a steadying touch and arced a perfect twenty-yard tracer bullet past Johnstone.
Argyle looked in complete control and ten minutes later the fateful substitutions arrived. Even then, having surrendered a lead that looked so unlikely just moments before, Waine forced the best from Johnstone with an effort that almost repeated Cundle’s strike.
Palace, with the lead, controlled the game after that by and large, and with a host of attacking subs, including another promising cameo from Issaka who looks far from out of place at this level, it was another surgical pass, this time from Schlupp, after robbing a tired looking Butcher on halfway, that allowed Mateta to complete his hat-trick and surpass in a single half, his prior Palace goalscoring of the previous season.
By the end the Argyle formation looked more akin to the old style 2 – 1- 7 of yore. In the end, in the cold light of day, the score line looks like a standard Premiership victory over their lower division opponents. In reality, as Hodgson generously acknowledged, it was far from that.
The performance means Schuey will have some tough decisions to make for Saturday, in what will be the first game after the closing (or slamming) of the transfer window. With putative target loanee Coburn a playing sub for Middlesbrough (as was Scarlett for Spurs) time is getting short for a player or two to arrive, notwithstanding a brief flurry of pre-match excitement, soon dashed after a tweet from self-proclaimed transfer oracle Alan Nixon, responded to a fans query re Rak-Sakyi’s destination (on loan) as Plymouth. To play. For Palace.
The final opponents of the opening Championship salvos before the novelty of an international break for players and fans alike, will be the Wild Rovers of Blackburn, sadly for them shorn of their Argyle capture from pre -season Niall Ennis, who having arrived injured, (according to a frustrated manager Jon Dahl Tomasson) has recovered and then injured himself again. Sound familiar?
Blackburn, as part of the footballing hotbed of the Northwest were one of the original founders of the Football League, in 1888, and for most fans there are two distinct periods of history for the club.
The first period was those early years when the club, despite not winning the League title won five of its six FA Cup wins, when, had royal attendance been the regular occasion it is now, their trophies would have been handed over by Queen Victoria. Indeed, at the time they had joined the new-fangled League they had already won a hat-trick of FA Cups in 1884, 1885 and 1886. They promptly won again in 1890 and 1891. Hence most older fans recall them as one of the top row coins of the Esso FA Cup Centenary coin collection. Technically there should be two Blackburn coins but the cheapskates at Esso decided to roll Blackburn Olympic’s triumph in 1883 under the catchall of Blackburn.
Founded by public schoolboys from Shrewsbury and Malvern, initially the club played on a farmer’s field complete with drainage pool which had to covered with timber and turf each match. The ground perhaps appropriately was called Oozehead Ground. The clubs’ colours were proposed as green and white quartered shirts as these were colours of Malvern School but wiser Cambridge educated heads ensured that blue and white became the colours, which have prevailed ever since.
The Rovers finally win the league title twice, just prior to World War One, but between the wars a solitary FA Cup triumph in 1928 was the only silverware, before a first relegation (having survived their previous one on a re-election vote), then regaining elite status in 1938.
By now long established at Ewood Park, the post war years saw the beginning of a strange custom, when they were relegated in 1948. A Bamber Bridge greengrocer buried a coffin full of vegetables (apparently to symbolise the players) to mark the event. Local rivals Preston copied the concept, and the coffin is dig up only when the club is promoted again. Nowadays the coffin contains a doll called Chucky dressed in the club strip (because of course that’s much less macabre). There is no truth in the rumour that North End fans plan to change the starting syllable of their doll in the event of their relegation.
The post war years were not especially successful for the Rovers and in the early 1970’s the club were relegated to the third tier for the first time. It was this period that saw the only real rivalry between our clubs, when Rovers pipped Argyle to the Third Division title in 1975. The away game, won 5-2 by Rovers, was notorious for the impact of those hooligan ridden years when the local police chief stated the town was now more like Greenburn than Blackburn.
The match, watched by then England boss Don Revie, casting an eye over a young Paul Mariner, saw Argyle take the lead, and then concede a controversial penalty, which as per our last opponents, was saved by Big Jim Furnell. Blackburn took control and ran out healthy winners. The match was refereed by one Kevin McNally, whose previous away game in charge of the Pilgrims had been the previous season at Port Vale. On that day he sent off three Argyle players, at the time a League record. And you though Brett Huxtable was unpopular.
Only a fortnight before the clubs had met under the lights at Home Park in front of a packed in 28,000 crowd. Argyle had won that fixture 2-1 to knock Rovers off the top spot.
The next significant milestone in Rover’s history was the acquisition of the club by local businessman Jack (later Sir Jack) Walker. Walker who had made his fortune building and then selling the family steel business to British Steel set about investing in his local club. Twenty-five million went into the stadium, and Kenny Dalglish of Liverpool was installed as manager. The club won promotion via the play-offs to the newly formed Premier League and signed Alan Shearer from Southampton. Having finished fourth, then runners up, the club continued to invest in players and Chris Sutton joined to form the striking duo that became known as SAS. In 1994/5 against all footballing odds the club won the Premier League for the one and only time (so far). They remain the only town based side to have won the Premier League, and one of only six sides to have done so to date.
Walkers’ ambitions knew no bounds. They came close to signing Roy Keane, having agreed a deal, but they were gazumped by Alex Ferguson. Keane himself recounts that Dalglish was so upset he threatened to track Keane down on holiday.
Perhaps more bizarre was the potential double signing of Bordeaux pair Christophe Dugarry and Zinedine Zidane, then a 23-year-old French starlet. The deal fell through, and Walker declared “who needs Zidane when we have Tim Sherwood”.
Sherwood was to the fore again the following season, and not for fly tipping, but as peacemaker when, in a Champions League group match In Moscow, a fight broke out between David Batty and teammate Graeme Le Saux. After colliding, chasing a misplaced pass, the pair squared up, and polymath Channel islander Le Saux got his retaliation in first. Unfortunately for him the blow broke his left hand. The tie was lost 3-0 and Rovers failed to escape the group stage in their only Champions League sortie.
The death of Walker in 2000 from cancer was felt hard in Blackburn, but the man who had a sign in his office that read “I am always right. If I am wrong, see above” certainly delivered on his motto of "think big". He was Blackburn through and through, renowned for hasty sackings of his staff, later retracted, including of one manager who tried to get him to donate £100 to Burnley FC, the Rovers bitter rivals. Burnley fans once posted a sign twinning their town with Trelleborg’s after the Swedish largely amateur team knocked Rovers out of the Europa League in 1994/5.
On his death the club was placed in a family trust but 2010 they then sold out to the Venky family, and Indian conglomerate best known for their industrial scale chicken farming. The Venkeys have poured in around 150 million pounds to the club and remain its owners, but it is fair to say they have fallen out of love with the club and its fans and the feeling is entirely mutual.
Promising the likes of Ronaldhino and Maradona and a return to Champions League, the Venkys axed manager Sam Allardyce and replaced him with his number two Steve Kean. Now Allardyce had had some issues, not the least of which being trying to inspire his players before they played Manchester United with clips from Gladiator and 300. The one where they all die at the end. Rovers lost 7-1 Berbatov scored five. Were they not entertained though.
The Venkeys, advised by agent Jerome Anderson, sacked Allardyce. Kean, his replacement coincidentally had Anderson as his agent. As did Anderson’s son who, having played two minutes for Aberdeen, signed for …Blackburn. He never played a minute for them.
In also came Shebby Singh, a former Malay international and global adviser for the Venkys. Then came a job lot of lower league Portuguese players…..none of whom were any good.
Relegation followed, then protests led by Jack Straw the local MP. The figurehead of the Venky takeover, Anuradha Desai, known as Madam stopped attending after a snowball thrown by a fan hit her husband in the face. Her two brothers have not attended since their chauffeur suffered a heart attack and died driving to the ground, almost ten years ago. Toxic doesn't begin to describe it.
Recently the club have stabilised in the Championship, with Tomasson replacing Tony Mowbray who was released after a decent season. They finished outside of the playoffs last season on goal difference after a final day epic spoilsport win at Millwall, finishing behind, Mowbray's Sunderland.
The early part of this season was riven with rumours of financial woes and problems, although a news story of players being forced to buy their own flights home from a pre-season tour was conflated rubbish. They lost their goalkeeper to Luton and with the window still open rumours abound on possible incomings and departures. Their pseudo Chilean striker Brereton-Diaz decamped to Spain for free, and Bradley Dack who once assisted Argyle fans in the Soccer Saturday end of the show shoot out has joined his old boss at the Stadium of Light. They still have Sam Gallagher, pillaged from the Argyle wreckage of administration by Southampton though.
Argyle need to make sure they don’t make it a worrying four in a row for defeats. They too will hope to have a new face or maybe two.
We know it won’t be easy. But at least it won’t be Eze, although he only scores ten points, compared to Szmodics who scores twenty two.
COYG!!!!!
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