September 12, 2008
Pitch 9
After last week’s horror show I had today as a day off in lieu. I’m not great at days off, but today’s been good so far. I’ve been reading a book by Roger Deakin called Waterlog, in which Deakin travels around England swimming in wild places: rivers, lakes, pools; all very back to nature, all very interesting to me.
It’s the opposite of what life is like for many of us. We get up early, but not in a good way. We plug our ears and shut ourselves off and arrive at our office, where we do uninteresting things for a while, plug in the ears again, and journey home. By the time this is done we’re another day older and can celebrate our achievement with a pint or a glass of wine and sprawl out in front of the TV before doing it all again tomorrow.
Not today though! Deakin writes about a number of quite exotic places, but he also writes about Tooting Lido, which is a huge outdoor pool in South London. So today I wandered up there. Took me about an hour to walk I suppose. I wasn’t going quickly, and that was sort of the point. Up to Tooting Bec, right, then slowly down Tooting Bec Road and up to the gates. The girl on reception explained opening hours to me, and let me go in to see the setup for myself.
It was pretty huge, and blue. An old man had the whole pool to himself, easing himself up and down in the freezing water. At the far end a lifeguard sat on his raised chair, hopefully having a good think. I thanked the girl and wandered back, this time taking in Tooting Bec common.
Where I wandered across a series of football pitches and fell into a trance. I haven’t played football for years, not outdoors in a proper 11-a-side setup. In my mind I’m as good now as I was then, something that’s disproved every time I play 5-a-side, but out there on the big green pitches I can see myself intercepting a through ball, sliding hard into a winger, or heading back goal kicks. Heading back goal kicks. I did a lot of that back in the day.
There’s something about the grass of a football pitch though. Going to a new stadium is all about that first sight of the pitch. The first game I ever went to was Arsenal v Luton, funnily enough. I don’t know what we were doing there, but a family up the road took me and their son. Midweek game, the old Highbury, must have been 1984. That walk up the steps, then bang, a supernatural green field lights up before you. Amazing. Night games are great for this. The grass is just so vivid.
The grass on Tooting Bec Common isn’t vivid. The pitches are full of holes and green plants that aren’t grass but that cover the pitch anyway. But they’re football pitches and today I got lost just wandering around them as if I was five again. The edge of the box: which corner to go for?; by the corner flag (had there been a corner flag): whip one in; the centre-circle: big game coming; and so on. Everywhere I walked brought back memories of games past. You couldn’t play slick passing football on this surface, but you could have a lot of fun.
The real business starts again tomorrow.
1: A goalkeeper’s view of nothing
2: Centre-spot exhibits signs of male pattern baldness
3: The corner and the tree
4: Penalty spot. Everyone who has stood here before me has either been petrified or excited or both. Does the goal look big or small?
Bolton next
After a long break, we’re back with the serious business tomorrow. Bolton Wanderers visit, a team that, under current circumstances, we would hope to beat. Andy Johnson should start, Bolton aren’t what they were, and we’ve just beaten Arsenal. So fair grounds for optimism, I think.
But what are Bolton these days? Hard to know:
These are their three games this year: a 3-1 walloping of a startled Stoke; a 0-0 draw with West Brom, and a 1-0 loss at Newcastle. Probably about par for the course so far. What’s interesting is their varying shapes this year, as shown above in the splendid Telegraph density maps.
Most of Bolton’s play seems to flow through the estimable Kevin Davies (a player Roy knows well, of course).
Davies does a number of things well. He picks up (and gives away) a lot of fouls, which our players will have to watch. But there’s more than that. In all three games he had a significant number of passes, but it looks like he played in three different roles. Against Newcastle he was much further forward than any other Bolton player. Against WBA he played off another striker (Riga, who came on after 14 minutes for Joey O’Brien). Against Stoke it looks like he was dropping quite deep.
This is backed up by his ‘interactions’.
v Newcastle
Made 20 passes, most common: 6 to Joey O’Brien, 6 from O’Brien
v West Brom
18 passes, 9 from JLloyd Samuel, 5 from Ricardo Gardner, 6 to Kevin Nolan, 5 from Nolan
v Stoke
27 passes, 8 from Gretar Stinesson, 6 from Kevin Nolan, 4 from Muamba
Varied, no? I think this sums up his importance to the team: whatever’s happening out there he’s going to be available to his teammates and working very hard. A real leader.
The other thing to note is that our midfield could be in for a tricky time. Fabrice Muamba has already been in for 19 tackles this year. Fulham’s top players? Seol and Murphy with 8 each (in a game less, of course). Incidentally, our friend Clint Dempsey has 3 tackles (all won) in… how long on the pitch? Not long.
Anyway, it seems to me that Bolton will be a handful. We should beat them, and it’ll be really interesting to see how our philosophy of playing our own passing game works against a team like Bolton, who will surely make life difficult for our smaller players. It’s a game that could suit Dickson Etuhu, and Clint Dempsey perhaps. I mention Etuhu because if Bolton stick everything through Kevin Davies, who – as we see above – doesn’t score too many goals – then clearly their interested in the second ball, or whatever Davies can scrounge up. If Davies is the lone forward then this will mean Bolton are relying on midfielders attacking from deep… can Murphy and Bullard track Kevin Nolan? Can Kevin Nolan stop Murphy and Bullard, for that matter?
Also important is what I was on about the other day: if we can play a long way away from our own goal then the Davies induced chaos won’t be nearly so dangerous. If we find ourselves camped on (or inside, as happened against Leicester) our own 18 yard line then we could be in bother.
Please excuse all this theorising, but I think it’s all quite interesting to ponder. Looking forward to what should be a good game.
