Friday night football, live on Sky TV. Obviously when the brains at Murdoch Ltd. looked at the fixture lists this one stood out as a must see! Indeed, if this is one of the games of the weekend then I pity those forking out their hard earned for tomorrow’s matches. The use of the words Limited, Murdoch and brains in the same sentence is also noteworthy as well as probably right.
Notts County and more significantly Sam Allardyce feature in tonight’s weekend aperitif. Sam, our old pal Sam. Two summers ago, just after being fired from his job at Blackpool, Mr Allardyce sat on the O’Connor and Houghton tribunal that stitched us up big time. Sir Martin left for just short of half of his proper value and Houghton was valued at little more than a bag of lego. As manager of Blackpool, Sam would have been fully aware of the qualities possesed by two of the best atatcking players in their division at least as well as anyone else on the panel. As I recall, they’d just done him in the race for automatic promotion.
Uncle Ray included loan signing Paul Simpson on the left wing and relegated Marshy to the players lounge. A tad harsh on the Marsh but UR clearly calls the shots around here and we all nod in agreement these days. Simpson is on loan for a month from the dark side, so I hope he doesn’t miss very often.
I saw the kick off for the second home game running, albeit this time from the comfort of the Saddlers Club lounge (live footie on tv and an alcohol addiction can seriously damage your liver).
County had the better of the opening exchanges and, apart from their daft kit, looked pretty useful. Saddlers came back well and snatched the lead when debutante Simpson slotted home rather neatly.
Half time came and went and with it followed any semblance of rhythm we had. The visitors scored two goals in six minutes shortly after the break and to be honest we looked like a beaten side coasting into defeat.
Then Rammell came to the rescue as the heroic front-man first levelled and then fed Brissett for the winner. Darren Wrack then sent himself the wrong way from the penalty spot but we’d done enough to increase our points tally to a barely believable seventeen points from eight starts.
Into Walsall after the game for some additional refuelling and a late night kebab. Top night all round and I came to the drunken conclusion that Friday night football is the future.