Allow me to begin my column in somewhat chronological order for a change, even if it means mentioning Concordia again right away, but the game I watched on Friday evening strangely enough set the tone for the West Ham game one day later. A malicious tone darkened by flaring tempers and hot heads. If you bear with me you will see what I mean.
So, let me take you to the home “ground” of Bergedorf West, opponent of the Concordia 2 boys for their most recent league encounter. Imagine a worn out old cinder pitch under some dodgy orangey floodlights, surrounded by high-rise flats on three sides, similar to the ones around Priory Road/Upton Park. On the way from my parking spot to the ground, walking along a narrow pathway close to a local schoolyard I was greeted by a local rat having dinner under the cover of descending darkness. That didn’t exactly fill me with pre-match joy – Bergedorf isn’t the nicest borough of Hamburg to begin with, and Bergedorf-West is probably the worst area within the borough borders, so you get the picture.
There were probably 30 spectators in all, including kids and dogs (and the occasional passer-by returning home from the weekend grocery shopping).
The game was won 4:1 by the Cordi boys, with a lovely piledriver into the top corner from 30 yards out and another one coming from a well worked counter passing move. But the real story of this game was the tense atmosphere between the players from the first whistle (and the referee’s inability to deal with it in a consistent manner), Cordi had two players sent off for verbal misconduct, a third player who had been sent off shortly before the final whistle was allowed to come back on after some unexpected intervention from the opposition players who probably felt utterly embarrassed at this point – with the game already lost on the pitch and the ref all over the place. Oh yes, Cordi’s assistant manager was sent to the “stands” too in the process.
As this is a blog that doesn’t encourage swearing and cursing I cannot tell you the exact words the players used to rile each other up. Some of it was in German, some in other languages (Russian, Turkish), but translated to me afterwards by some of the players. It was basically about being of a certain nationality (with some nasty adjectives added for dramatic effect) and also boasting about having had sexual encounters with the other player’s mother, sister or girlfriend.
Strangely enough the referee was deaf towards any abuse dished out by the home team, focusing on the wrongdoings of Cordi only. I have rarely witnessed such a biased refereeing performance – if I didn’t know for sure that Bergedorf West are skint as a club I would have been convinced that the ref had been bribed for this one. But even with two men down Cordi won comfortably because Bergedorf West simply didn’t play anything resembling football, it was a throwback to the bad old days of kick and rush and half their team looked like they should probably consider playing Rugby Union rather than the beautiful game.
Which brings me to the West Ham game against Burnley. A contest that was heavily influenced by the referee but also by the inability of our Geordie leaping salmon to switch on his footballing brain just for a few minutes. The only mitigating circumstance I can conjure up for AC is that the way he goes into challenges is just the way he plays and probably also his biggest strength and unique selling point as a footballer. Take those challenges away from the man’s portfolio and you might just as well not bother playing him at all.
The problem with that is that referees no longer allow the kind of physical challenges that were deemed as acceptable or even welcome in football years ago. With his size Carroll will always find himself airborne in a position where his elbows are likely to hit the opposing player in the face, neck, back, whatever – and more often than not it will result in a foul being given against Carroll, with a booking or straight red into the bargain as well. Admittedly his first yellow was both harsh and unfortunate as Carroll had his eyes firmly on the ball and surely didn’t mean to hit or hurt his oppponent.
The second one though, just 90 seconds later, was sheer madness and I haven’t got an inkling what the hell Carroll was thinking at that point. It was the kind of challenge which would have left the average Castleford prop bursting with pride, tackling an opponent like that – but this ain’t rugby after all, so as a football player you simply cannot throw away the game in such fashion this early in the contest.
Players need to think more about what their actions on the pitch mean and represent for their teammates. I have no doubt that we would have beaten Burnley with eleven men. Looks like the Tower of Terror in Disneyland Paris got to Carroll’s head when he went there earlier with his family during the international break.
It’d be harsh to insinuate that AC did spoil things for his teammates deliberately, but you cannot ignore the disservice he has done to our cause there. A win would have put us in a nice league position for the time being and also boosted our confidence no end. We could really have done with two wins in a row.
And with AC of course there is all that baggage going with him which has been discussed on here at length: Numerous long-term injuries, high wages to go with it, a limited gameplan whenever he is on the pitch, opposing teams wising up in terms of how to deal with AC and minimising (or even nullifying) his threat. And now this stupid and totally unnecessary sending off on top of all the rest.
Similar to Arnautovic after his sending off against Southampton, AC needs to be fined for this. He also needs to be told by Bilic in no uncertain terms that this kind of conduct will not be accepted in future. As for the referee in the Burnley game he surely put his mark onto the contest, being very lenient at the start, but in my view letting some Burnley players off the hook over the 90 minutes as well. In my book he didn’t quite get the balance right with his dishing out of cards, but at the end of the day we have only ourselves to blame for not winning this.
It’s a shame that the main talk after the Burnley game has been about the sending off and the referee as we should really be taking a lot of positives from the defeat, sorry, draw at Turf Moor.
Burnley are no mugs these days and even with ten men we gave them one hell of a game. We played some beautiful passing football, even while playing with one man down, our defenders (apart from the goal obviously) stood firm and our team looked well up for it. We surely have the players to give us more goals in the upcoming games, more points and better performances.
If you shoot yourself in the foot though with a loaded gun full of stupidity and hot headedness (not for the first time this season either) you shouldn’t complain too much about losing points in the process. Discipline is the key here and if it’s not deeply engrained into the DNA of your team you are going to suffer from it time and time again.
The good thing is that there is no break in league football for quite a while now.
In fact our next fixture is looming large already as we will get the opportunity to put things right later this week on Friday evening against the Seagulls, flying into London Stadium from Brighton.
A highly winnable game. One where Carroll definitely will NOT start. A game where we may and should keep the ball on the floor and move it with pace and some panache. A game I am looking forward to a lot. Let’s have a thoroughly professional performance for once and give the players and the fans a game that’ll really boost our collective confidence.
PS: The less said about yesterday’s league game of my Concordia lads (first team) the better. They lost at the last placed team in the league 3:4. A team that had scored just nine times in the previous 11 games. All four goals Cordi conceded were basically presented to the opposition on a plate or were caused by individual mistakes of the most embarrassing kind.
Cordi are no longer chasing for promotion at this point.
It’s midtable mediocrity instead – not good enough for the ambitions harboured by my local club…