With Tamer TUNA on the scene, why did Mark FISH retire?!

By: Martyn | April 23rd, 2009

Were Jack Nicholson to make something rotten happen in Gotham City during the afternoon of December 25th, a bloated Bruce Wayne would be in a bit of pickle. Or a post-dinner chocolate and eggnog-fuelled haze of lethargic sofa-lazing. With his employer attempting to get into his trusty suit, Alfred Pennyworth would only be able to utter one thing in that icy manner of his: “Sir, it just is not happening”. Replace the preface of ‘Sir’ with ‘Lad’, ‘is not’ with ‘ain’t', a posh English-accented butler and his wealthy but turkey-stuffed aristocrat master with two twenty-something status-equal Welsh boys, make the general tone angrier and pronounce the word ‘happening’ in a Cardiffian and 3 pints o’ John Smith’s-induced drawl, and you have the exact sentence that I spat to my mate Steve at the Valley (of the Dead, “Can you hear the Charlton sing, noooo, noooo…” etc) during Tuesday’s 2-2 draw against a team set to battle it out against the likes of Hartlepool United, Yeovil Town and maybe even Bury next season (Offensive? Not as much as Paul Parry’s idea of *effort*). Why the long-winded intro? Well after watching City embarrass themselves toiling against a wretched Charlton Athletic, I resorted to making my own fun in noting my musings on the match during the coach ride home to South Wales in the wee hours of Wednesday!

THE GAME

Cardiff City
From Chopra’s woeful finishing, to Parry’s sheer lethargy/wastefulness/anonymity/effortlessness, via Kennedy’s Kennedy-isms (Get Ball. Hoof Ball. Offer Native American ‘How’ sign to colleagues), Cardiff City were worse than Pierce Brosnan’s James Bond. Nay; WORSE than the Sven-Göran Eriksson-meets-Alastair Darling lookalike who played the megalomaniac villain in the travesty that is Tomorrow Never Dies. Shudder. With Parry and McCormack starting in the wide mid-park positions, Gavin Rae and Joe Ledley operated from the centre of midfield (supposedly). Miguel Comminges played RB with McNaughton injured and Tom Heaton replaced Stuart Taylor – probably because the latter has more of an obsession with lines than Danniella Westbrook. Alas City’s performance from the coin toss until the first batch of Charlton supporters trickled away was ineffectual, stodgy, tired, nervous, limp (bizkit), rotten to the core. Our style was about as coherent as a 50 Cent verse lyric, our shape – normally as organised as an Arrigo Sacchi offering – as straight as cooked spaghetti. And that’s not a good thing, especially when you try and scoop it up with a fork and it slides all over the bloody plate, some even onto your desk, or Heaven forbid, your laptop. Bad times. I digress somewhat. Comminges is so bad that even his team-mates could barely speak to him as one Ed Balls-up followed the next. The body language and stress-indicating inhaling-exhaling that greeted his every touch, decision and NODDING OFF ON MARKING DUTIES WHICH LED TO THE OPENING GOAL shows the confidence they who see him on the training ground four to five times a week have in him. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: he cannot cut it at this level. He strays and stays too far forward, and even when forced to stay back during simple routines like set-pieces that we need to defend, a mistake is never far away. Compounded with his woeful hoofing whenever given the ball, one dreadful player.

As with the aforementioned trio of Kennedy, Chopra, and Parry, a few of the other players in yellow rivalled the former Swindon Town (Swindle Town given the fact they offloaded him to us) man for poorness. Jay Bothroyd, on his return to the stadium where he failed to win over the home fans, proved them erm, right. His battle with Mark Hudson began to resemble a duel between the strapping Gene Kelly and feeble Frank Sinatra on the set of Anchors Aweigh. Hudson, one-time star of Singin’ in the Rain, was so in control it was shameful. Bothroyd tumbled meekly, battled ineffectually and offered little else. From being consistently one of our better players every week, Bothroyd’s halo is getting paler than Andrés Iniesta by the week. Soon enough, it’ll be more see-through than Paul Parry. Ross McCormack, though the only player seemingly willing to want to guarantee our spot in the play-off’s, had an off-day primarily because his set-pieces were absolutely atrocious. I’m sure one of his free-kicks cleared the stand and whenever he prepared to take a corner clearly a phantom bull abducted his body every time, such was the enthusiasm he showed to hit the men in red. Roger Johnson looked dodgy at the back which is a rarity for him (it’s normally just his passing which shows him up), but then given the fact that he had Darren Purse (sat in a sulk on the advertising hoardings rather than in the dugout; read into that what you will!) throwing him evils and Miguel Comminges giving him brick-sh*ts, Johnson had little time to focus on dealing with the task at hand. His defensive counterpart Gabor Gyepes must have been as gutted (and culpable) as his centre-back partner for letting in two sloppy goals from corners. However, the Hungarian’s last minute equalizer saw the best Budapest skill since Puskas! Maybe… Gavin Rae and Joe Ledley were confronted by the duo of Zheng (Dragonball) Zhi and Racon, and although it wasn’t quite like comparing Pokemon and Digimon, it was like watching Digimon and Digimon. Neither Ledley or Rae added any personality, grip, invention or creativity on or to the game. Like the team, the pair were terribly slow and predictable. Substitute Chris Burke may have scored, but it was his failure to mark that led to the second Addicks goal. Which good God, leads us to the only player to have a non-bad game (yes, I didn’t say good for a reason): Manchester United’s much maligned by me Thomas Heaton! Back, with more of a bang than the subject of a certain innuendo-heavy Ricky Martin hit! And improved kicking to boot! Nevertheless, one could argue that throwing yet another goalkeeper into action resulted in the understanding built up by custodian and back-line going back to the drawing board for what must be the umpteenth (surely umpteen deserves its recognition as a number in its own right by now?) time this season, hence the conceding of another two God-awful goals.

And that was that. We scraped a draw after playing horrifically against who looked like they were bottom of the league on merit. Who would’ve thought we could be so bad after a 6-0 tonking?! Then again, football often shows about as much logic as Mario Kart.

Charlton Athletic
The title of this post refers to the Athletic substitute who failed to grace the pitch. If the former South Africa and Charlton stalwart Mark Fish were still around, much humour would have ensued. Anyway, Charlton, Charlton, Charlton. The team from the London Borough of Greenwich (as the posh street signs in London regularly informed those of us on the coach) were garbage. In a slow game devoid of quality, Charlton Athletic more than contributed. Sure, they attempted to play the ball on the deck, but a lack of confidence and a plethora of inexperience and sloppiness generally permeated their play. They had a multitude of systems in operation, Phil Parkinson showing that he has more shapes than the assorted pasta on sale on the shelves of Tesco. What lined-up as a 4-4-1-1 (with Shelvey pulling off Burton, ahem, in the support striker role), often resembled a 4-3-3 with Lloyd Sam supporting the front two in attack. With Sam up top, you’d have thought that Butterfield (RB) would have made an extra effort to cover. But oh no. In a sign of how bad we were/how teams have identified that they can target the slow Mark Kennedy, Butterfield was generally overlapping. After going 2-0 up and making a number of substitutes, Charlton’s formation began to resemble a Luciano Spalletti-esque 4-6-0. Minus De Rossi, Aquilani and Totti of course! Some more notes I made on the Addicks:

- How the funk did Nicky Bailey not get sent off?!! He was a persistent fouler and enjoyed showing off his broad range of docker’s language to the man in black, yet finished the game with merely a yellow card?!

- The Valley is an odd ground. If there was a bridge between *old* and new identikit stadiums, the exterior of Charlton’s stadium would be the bridge itself. The interior, for the large part, is very brand and spanking. The facilities on offer to the visitors were okay given that the weather (no roof for the toilet/amenities area) was sunny-tinged on Tuesday evening, but with a bit of rain it would have been a miserable experience.

- The corporate boxes were under half-full. Oh dear. Saves on the ‘leccy bill mind.

Mean Keane Tractor Factor?

So yes, all very disappointing and what not. Now I know this get everything quick and effort-free culture that we live in is infectious, and maybe my disgust at the performance shown by the team on Tuesday (and Saturday) should take into account of where we are in the league and where we were a decade ago, so on and so forth. But as society changes (we’ve shifted from an age of the torpedo the age of the strawpedo!), so does football and so expectations. And therefore, I and many others feel it fully justifiable to feel aggrieved by the fact that the team seems hell-bent on ruining the hard work of a season. A point is the minimum we should be taking from Saturday’s encounter against Ipswich Town at Ninian Park, a task made ten-times harder with the appointment of Roy Keane.