Re-elect Mayor Cookie Coleman- progress is his middle name

So as the home fixtures are all done it's time to compare this season to last at Gift Shop Ricoh:

2008/9 8 won, 8 drawn, 7 lost - 26 goals scored, 26 goals conceded

2007/8 8 won, 8 drawn, 7 lost - 25 goals scored, 26 goals conceded

Yes - we have improved at home to the tune of one goal. So well done Robbie Simpson for that excellent free kick as we can now stride to the sunlit uplands of the close season knowing that we have progressed...

And let's just look back on the stats for our 8 seasons in tier 2:

points totals since 01/02 : 66, 50, 65, 52, 63, 56, 53, 54+?

league position since 01/02 : 11, 20, 12, 19, 8, 17, 21, (14/19)

Let's face it -this is not a team yet on the cusp of greatness. We had a purple patch in the February which deluded us all for a while.

Lest we forget

I was viewing the Southampton website last week to see how they handled the ten points deduction issue and discovered a feature on their past great escapes including this item from 1997:

At 4 p.m. Sunday 11 May, as the final games of the Premiership season kicked-off, the bottom of the table looked like this.

		P	W	D	L	F	A	Pts
16	SAINTS	37	10	11	16	50	55	41
17	Sunderland	37	10	10	17	35	52	40
18	Middlesbrough	37	10	11	16	50	59	38
19	Coventry City	37	8	14	15	36	53	38
20	Nottm Forest	37	6	16	15	31	54	34

In the previous evening's Pink Graham Hiley fiendishly plotted many of the more plausible and implausible relegation variations (including the possibility of Saints and Middlesbrough playing-off) but, basically, provided Saints avoided a drubbing at Villa Park they should be safe. Middlesbrough - who had been deducted three points for failing to honour a fixture - needed a handsome win at Leeds to overhaul them as well as Sunderland, while Coventry's survival necessitated the failure of both Sunderland and Middlesbrough. Forest's fate was immutable.

Souness took no chances, deploying his two cleverest players, Matthew Le Tissier and Eyal Berkovic, on the subs' bench - a tactic that paid off, until the 12th minute when Dryden stabbed the ball past Maik Taylor into his own goal!

Thereafter, Souness decided to hang on for a narrow defeat as, only slightly daunted, the 3,000 travelling faithful kicked up an encouraging racket throughout. Elsewhere the scores went Saints' way - Sunderland lost at Wimbledon, to a Jason Euell goal, Middlesbrough drew at Leeds and, amazingly, both north-eastern clubs were relegated as Gordon Strachan's Coventry snatched an unlikely one-nil win at Spurs.

Two comments - how the hell did we not go down that season? and I am fairly confident I saw us beat Spurs 2-1.

Barnsley and Watford at home

Some of us could make the last 2 home games of the season, most of us didn't.

With SBJ off for a late season break to Boston (not the one in Lincolnshire), there's unlikely to be a match report for either of these two games right now. A 1-1 draw against the Tykes coutesy of a 94th minute penalty, and a 2-3 defeat to Watford doesn't sound like they deserve too much of a write-up though.

Ipswich away for a completely meaningless final game of the season is unlikely to have many of us there either.

End of season dinner however will be much better attended. It will also be the last post on this season long blog. Emotions will undoubtedly run high.

Tarty picture of the season

What would the gay equivalent of Hooters be called?

Arty picture of the season

The Day before Forest, and a minor diversion

The Champagne Express departs St Pancras this evening with yours truly and SBJ aboard on the way to Nottingham for another away game. G2 is unavailable due to a hen weekend commitment, but will be with us in spirit modelling the 1989 kit for the hen's 1980's fancy dress party.

http://www.historicalkits.co.uk/Coventry_City/Coventry_City.htm

Not been to Forest since Stan Collymore scored against us, so it's been a while. Looking forward to a 3-3 goal-fest, though I fear we'll buckle under pressure and get done 3-0.

We will see. Lunch with forest Adam pre game will set it up nicely

Charlton at the Ricoh

Optimism was high before the game. A point would probably see us safe, if we won and Forest got a point then Charlton would be relegated. All to play for.

Unfortunately, no-one had told the Charlton fans, who had hired a coach to get to the Ricoh. Just the one coach mind....



Team news, Boozy and Mrs Doyle in midfield, Ddddddddan Fox left side of midfield, with Super Kev on the other side. More Reasons and Wheels on my house up front.



It was sunny, and there was a holiday spirit in the air. Unfortunately this was on the pitch, rather than in the stands. Two things quickly became apparent.

Firstly, the team were already on the beach. Listless, lifeless and lacking in commitment, effort and enthusiasm.

Secondly, Charlton were awful. Sounds like stating the obvious given their position at the bottom of the league, but they were still worse than expected.

The third thing soon became obvious as well. No-one was going to score. Ever.

Nothing really happened. Can't really remember any highlights until Citizen came on for his debut. He looked good, pacy, direct and not afraid to take on a defender. We like him a lot, looks promising, and one for the future.

That's about it really, looking forward to Forest away, which has to be better than this, with a bit of atmosphere. This was truly awful.

Didn't we have a lovely time the day City went to pieces (part 1)

I arrived at the Plymouth station at 11.30 am only five hours after waking up in that London startled by a dream involving Alex Ferguson and John Aloisi. It was a fantastically sunny day so I strolled through Plymouth's Festival of Britain style shopping precinct (a much nicer one than Cov's) taking the odd random picture (a plastic bag motif to echo Kev's from an earlier post).

My plan was to visit the front (or Hoe as the Devonians call it) to get some pictures of the inevitable armada paraphernalia and then get to the ground early enough to take pictures of the players as they got off the team coach. And then the first twist of the day,there outside a hotel right by the Hoe was:

Now I had a dilemma - should I go further into the hoe (a phrase I am unlikely to use ever again) and risk missing the team board the coach or sit around for ages? It was about 12.15 so I headed briskly to get the key shots of Sir Francis:

I headed back to the team's hotel for a vantage point that frankly did make me look like a stalker. On the train journey I had pitied the train spotters who were taking photos of the trains as they passed through Bristol - now I realised I was being just as spoddy hanging around player spotting. Such are the thoughts that bedraggle you when you are in glorious sunshine with too much time on your hands. Whilst waiting I decided to take some pictures of the surrounds very much with the opening of Blue Velvet in mind -thankfully there were no cockroaches to film to demonstrate the inherent decay beneath the surface of beauty - instead I had an afternoon of sky blue defending to experience to bring home that metaphor.

There was though a wedding immediately opposite the hotel and I recalled John Sillett's nonsense from the cup run about the team always winning when they saw a bride on match day, so hoped this was a lucky omen.

And in a sudden flurry the team came out of the hotel to board the coach:

From this intrepid investigative journalism we learn:
1) Freddy is always on the mobile phone
2) the players have rather posh hand luggage
3) Marcus is always on the lookout for paparazzi
4) Aron wears a hat even when it's hot and has a nifty pair of cans
5) Oggy supplements his football income as a fruit and veg trader.

to be continued...

Didn't we have a lovely time the day City went to pieces (part 2)

So I left the town centre at about 1.45 to head for the ground and decided to be flash by using the maps application on the iPhone to guide me to through the blazing sunshine to Home Park. I typed in "plymouth argyle football club" and up popped the directions to Home Park. Can we guess which of the two Home Parks in Plymouth is identified as a the home of a football club on googlemaps?

That's correct- by 2.30 I was about two miles from the ground on a little street called Home Park which led to a hill with an ancient fortification from which I could see the actual stadium some way off. Luckily the iPhone battery lasted long enough to organise a taxi to the stadium with ten minutes to spare but without much in the way of warm up photography:

The game itself started off slowly but with City looking comfortable, until the 14th minute when in response to a free kick Westwood fell over forcing himself to make a great save a yard off his line pushing the ball towards the post only for it to be lashed back in and squeeze past him. On the 27th minute Vivienne dropped a lofted cross to leave an easy goal gaping and a minute later he had little chance with a great shot from 20 yards. Gunnar went off injured straight after. The fourth goal came from a corner which was whipped across the six yard box with no-one challenging. We had conceded four goals in 22 minutes and ought to have been five down.

Unsurprisingly the team got booed off at half-time. And then the next twist of the afternoon - the halftime raffle-selector was "Plymouth legend" John Sillett. He is legendary in the south west for playing 39 games for the Green Army. He is slightly more legendary with the Sky Blue Army for his 100 games as a player including in our last-but-one promotion season in 1964, saving us from relegation in 1986, getting us to the semi-finals of the Simod Cup in 1988 and the League Cup in 1990. Oh and winning the fucking FA Cup. The announcer had the cheek to ask him how he thought it was going - thankfully Snoz said that as he was wearing his sky blue tie he was not happy - to change the subject the announcer asked him to repeat a tale he had told to the announcer over a few beers. So JS tells them about the cup winning team seeing a bride on matchdays and winning and how for the final he got someone to check that the church near the hotel had a wedding so the bride could be invited over the night before to meet the team and that just in case the church was not booked he had a spare couple ready to get married just in case. At this point I started to think about gold bars to see if just thinking about them would make them appear later in the day...

Sillett then came over to the City fans and got a rolling standing ovation - his calming presence certainly unwound the SBA.

It's quite worrying to think that many of the people who stood and clapped, and who ran to the front to shake his hand were not even alive 22 years ago. Then again I have ovated Jimmy Hill despite having been four years pre-birth in our last promotion season.

And 1967 might well be our last promotion season if our golden hopefuls play this badly.

Didn't we have a lovely time the day City went to pieces (part 3)

The team came out early for the second half and were lectured not by the team captain but by Hillary in his finest finger-pointing form. After he finished his pep-talk he stropped off to speak to Coleman and then to Oggy, gesticulating either that Oggy had forgotten the half-time oranges again or that Vivienne was shot to bits. Vivienne came off shortly afterwards - allegedly dizzy.



Dazed might be more accurate. Marshall did very well in his place, preventing us getting hit for six.At the other end the desperate hunt for a consolation goal or in Bolton style a consolation three goals was unsuccessful but we did at least get near and did look threatening. And the players didn't get buckets of sick thrown at them at the end of the game.

Homer objects to new position on wing

Simpson really was hopelessly out of his depth and would have been as effective if he had remained in this position all game. He is only any use as a last 15 minute substitute against a very tired defence.

City take the lead at Plymouth

The only time we were in front all day... when will Vivienne get rid of that bloody comfort blanket?

Gunnar watch

After Aron's superb performance in the heart of midfield against Palace I was hoping for more of the same against the Pilgrims - sadly he was under par, struggling to get in the game and then came off injured once the game was beyond rescue. Two games in a week is starting to catch up with him. Even though injured he came back at the end of the game to throw a boot into the crowd presumably in response to the shoes off for the lads chant.

The songs we sang...

"Four nil down, we're having a laugh"
and to be fair the sky blue army did have a laugh at the absurdity of conceding 4 goals in 22 minutes from some of the worst defending we have seen since the last time. Here are some of the chants from the game...

"0ne nil and you still don't sing .....two nil and you still don't sing
three nil and you still don't sing .... four nil and you still don't sing"

We're gonna win 4-3, ..we're gonna win 5-4, ...we're gonna win 6-4
we're gonna win 7-4 ... we're gonna win 8-4

"118, 118, 1 1 1 1 8 - he's got not hair but we don't care, 1 1 1 1 8"

This poor steward got it in the neck - "we've got your number" and the 118 A-team theme. To be fair his boss got "whose the wanker in the suit" and was told to give 118 a payrise by the sba.

"Petey is a paedo, Petey is a paedo, la lar lar la"

So Pete the Pilgrim became the butt of the paedo song because he was throwing sweets into the crowd. It reaaly is like a Monkey Dust sketch hearing 13 year olds chanting "paedo paedo".

"Who's the gay boy in the pink"

The homphobic classic was out in force aimed at the frankly cherry-blossomed fleece wearer. It's good to note that the crowd could count to four though one guy seems to be giving a five finger shuffle in response. The equally charming "does you boyfriend know you are here" and "do you take it up the arse" soon followed. At least fans don't throw quiches at players they think are gay so we might one day get rid of this Beavis and Butthead sniggering about homosexuality.

"He's got the best tan in the league"

"He's got a sun-bed in his house "

"His looks like Mowgli from the jungle book"

Although there were a few bursts of "coleman sort it out" for the most part the crowd were supportive of the boss, reasoning that it was one of those days and grateful that the rest of the season has been much more positive. The much more coherent second half display saved him from catcalls at the end and the players amazingly were clapped which as all of us at the Charlton away game last season will recall is not always a given.

"Shoes off if you love city"

"Get your shoes off for the lads"

Perhaps inspired by Iraqi journalists, the sba began waving their footwear in the air like they just don't care, as a means of supporting the team... I really have no idea why.

"We're gonna shoot in a minute"

This was rather a popular refrain given the utterly ineffective performance of our strikers in the first half and was deployed at all set pieces.

"ner ner ner ner ner ner ner ner ner Scott Dann"

The Batman song we heard first at Palace last week returned with a vengeance and with Batgirl there to hear the homage to Adam West. What a great way to spend a hen weekend.... the hens were also asked to display their charms for the gentlemen in the audience but sensibly declined.