Saturday Morning
It’s been a very grim week for us with a fourth consecutive defeat and hotly denied rumours that Keano was going to walk. The fact that it was largely Blackburn reserves who beat just about our strongest side on Wednesday does not bode well for this afternoon’s encounter.

I’ve got a feeling though that we’re going to get something out of today’s game and a glance at the Premier table makes it clear that a good result or two could move us rapidly upwards. A draw today with two winnable home games against West Ham and Bolton coming up will add a warmer glow to my autumn evenings.

It’s clear that we’ve played some very good football of late, particularly in the first half against Portsmouth, and this is the difference between this campaign and some recent ones where we were getting bad results but playing crap most of the time.

As for the Keane rumours, they seem to have disappeared as quickly as they flared up yesterday afternoon and we’ll just have to wait and see. The sooner he signs his new contract though, the happier most of us will be.

The team today should be much the same as on Wednesday and one glimmer of hope from that game was that Kenwyne found the net once, or maybe twice depending on your viewpoint. Personally, I’d always have Reid on and I don’t know why Murphy gets more time on than Chopra, who really knows where the net is.

In an hour or two my better half and I are heading up to Bedford and I’ll probably be spending a lot of time looking in estate-agents’ windows so I doubt if I’ll be able to catch much, if any, of the match but we’ll see.

Afterwards
I got checked into the hotel in Bedford and got Sky on in time to see that Cisse had just put us ahead. I then noticed that Cisse had also scored for Reading in the first half; what a guy. We hung on for the final twenty minutes and what bliss it was to see that final 2-1 appear at the bottom of the screen.

So, I’m not in a position to say much at all about the game but this was even better than I’d hoped for. We gained either two or three points on most of our rivals and have shot up eight places. I got my ticket for the West Ham match sorted on Thursday and am confident that we can get another win then.

I also finished reading Mark Metcalf’s Charlie Hurley biography yesterday and it’s a belter book, a fine bookshelf companion as Christmas approaches to our own ‘Sob’s Story’ and other quality ALS Publications releases. Well, I’m off for a spot of celebration.

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