Perhaps we ought to sign Cher, she was strong enough.

By: Martyn | August 18th, 2008

As Mark E Smith once said of the current music scene, the lump of bread dipped ravenously and plentifully into yoof of today chutney: “God help us if there’s a war.” Roger Johnson has chosen to come out and attack City fans for daring to chant at manager Dave Jones during Saturday’s encounter with Doncaster. The chants in question were the four-word-ditty, ‘Jonesy, sort it out’, and came after the team had put on an hour’s performance that dragged longer than doing a multitude of mundane household chores. Is the lanky centre-back for real!? As one of the 2000 or so fans who made the five hour trip up to Yorkshire (how many other teams in the Premier League, let alone this division would take that many fans to a game against one of the league’s lesser lights?), such chants were fully justified. They were in no way uncalled for, and in no way were they vicious, insulting, irrelevant or clueless. On the other hand, the team were insulting (to the fans who had paid good money to see the game), irrelevant (in terms of making an impact) and clueless (in the hour’s play which preceded the chanting). The delicate XI in the blue and yellow shirts weren’t exactly vicious mind…

Ironically enough, Dave Jones responded to the supporter’s despondency – not that I’m saying he wouldn’t have if all was hushed – and as it was, we took a point from a game that would have been criminal to lose. Johnson needs to learn to be more tactful and keep his trap shut up. The former Wycombe Wanderers captain earns £5k a week and was one of the main offenders that prompted the supposed surly serenading that so upset him. Does he think that was a good team performance on Saturday? If so, perhaps he shouldn’t be playing at this level because the way we struggled to break down such feeble opponents said an awful lot about this current crop of players. This is in no way doubting their potential ability, but after seeing statements from players like the one this rant has been about it does make you question how strong a backbone and how much mental toughness the side has.