Can you do a weekly column for the website every Monday? Yes, of course, a dream come true. Thanks. Can you start the Monday after the international weekend?
Now, I know we did play earlier in the week but, realistically, what the hell am I meant to talk about when there was no game on a Saturday? Never mind, maybe there’ll be another news story in football that everyone will talk about constantly for three days that I can focus on…
Nope, nothing much going on as far as I can see in English football. Though it seems to have been a good week for market stalls selling tea towels and sheets in Newcastle for some reason.
One of the huge positives about our billionaire owners (just saying) has been their investment in facilities and the academy and, when you watch players who’ve come through the academy beat a decent Lincoln side in the Pizza Cup this week, it gives huge confidence in the direction of travel at our club. We seem to have effectively two full sides who could challenge in League One. All young, all hungry, all committed to the cause.
There’s also something magical about local lads playing and scoring for their local team. It lifts the fans to see Stephen Wearne able to celebrate with his parents, Dan Neill running to where he sat when he scored and Grant Leadbitter’s obvious ongoing love of the place. It makes it even more apparent that it’s our club filled with our people, like one big ‘mental and loud’ family.
The reason we had no game at the weekend is, of course, because two of our former academy players were off taking England closer to the World Cup and, while it’s entirely normal for Premier League players to be internationals, it seems these days there are more international players than uncapped players.
Morecambe v Cambridge and Accrington v Fleetwood postponed due to international call ups? Accrington Stanley have international players? Who are they?
It shows how almost any team we come across this season are likely to have at least a few quality players, unlikely to be phased by playing at the Stadium of Light and able to produce moments of magic. And along with another win for Plymouth and Wycombe on Saturday, it makes me appreciate that, it doesn’t matter if we’ve two or three full teams in our squad able to compete at the top of the division, there’s a job to be done to get out of it and it’ll need all of our players to perform to their potential if we’re to do it without too many ups and downs.
And the next step in that journey starts on Saturday away to Steve Evans’ Gillingham. This marks the last game of the first quarter of the season. Let’s hope it’s a very different game to the one Evans will be hoping for with football beating long balls and physicality, though we didn’t do brilliantly against that style at Pompey. Maybe it’ll be better on dry land. And if it does rain spare a thought for our fans. Let’s hope it’s the last league game for them in that God forsaken uncovered stand for a long, long time.
