I don’t know how it happened: it crept up on me while I was looking in the other direction. Believe me, I don’t feel good about it. But there’s no denying it so I may as well come straight out and say it: I want Man Utd to win the Premier league title.
An oasis of hope in this sea of bewilderment is offered by the fact that I still want Liverpool to win the Champions’ League – roundly beating Chelsea on the way, as is becoming traditional.
Stoke 1 – 2 Palace
We weren’t at home after all, so I watched it at the Half Moon, which I have long thought was a scrubby dive of a place, but which is actually fine for watching football in, and does really good pizzas, and has a Monday night “2 pizzas and a bottle of wine for £20” deal. I shall return.
Anyway, it was a really good game, with some actual playmaking by both sides. There was a 20-minute period early in the second half where they hammered us relentlessly and it looked like they were going to score, but the luck didn’t run their way and they didn’t manage it until the 85th minute, by which time it was too late for them to claw anything else back. I don’t know who Sky’s Man of the Match was, but mine was our keeper Julián Speroni, who rescued us on various occasions when nobody else managed to get to the ball. I’ve just googled him to check how to spell his name, and it turns out he’s Argentinian. I always thought he was Yugoslavian, even though none of his name sounds Yugoslavian, and I’m not even sure there’s still a country called Yugoslavia. Then I wondered if I was confusing him with Gábor Király, but he’s Hungarian, so now I have no idea what I was thinking.
But we’re back in the playoff spots, and it looks like we’ll have another nail-biting end to the season, one way or another. Hurray!
We’re at home to Stoke tonight. Stoke are the kind of team we should definitely beat, only unaccountably they’re in second place and look as likely as anyone to win automatic promotion. I don’t understand football. Anyway, a win tonight would see us in sixth (from tenth), so fingers crossed for that.
I’m feeling generally cheery about football today, after seeing Portsmouth and Cardiff win their respective semi-finals this weekend. Radio 5 had a caller on who had been at Wembley the last time Cardiff won the cup, in 1927. He was ninety and blind, and said that the R5 commentary was so good he felt as though he’d been there. The boorish phone-in host – who I’m told is called “Spoony”, which probably tells me as much as I need to know about him – was charmlessly dismissive, but it was a good story all the same. I was also cheered and heartened by the Southampton fan who called in to wish Portsmouth luck in the final (really!) and the Man U supporter who said that Middlesbrough had played “as though it was the Champions’ League final” in their 2-2 draw. He went on to be churlish about Chelsea, just to maintain the reputation, rather than smear it by being accidentally nice for a whole minute.
We’ve got five games to play, all but one of them against sides who are either above us in the table or just a point or two below. With five to play, it’s a bit early for me to don my maths hat and start working out all the possible permutations, but at this stage, and in ninth spot (but only two points behind a play-off position), I think our chances are looking quite low.
However, this will all get much more exciting when it gets down to one or two games to go and I can pore over the paper and work out every possible outcome and – much less accurately – the likelihood of each. Working out out what might happen is one of my favourite parts of the season.
I am suddenly worried that this makes me a very dull person.
We’re at home to Blackpool tomorrow, following a run of six games without a loss. I had half-made a plan to go, but of my two principal matchgoing buddies one is on holiday and the other would rather go to the pub, and if the weather stays like this I may join him. I will take a small radio with me and listen to the results from there.
Last Saturday’s last-minute equaliser against Sheffield Wednesday was cause for celebration, even though it was a match we should have won. But a draw in which you were losing for most of the game is a good result, just as a draw in which you were winning for most of it is a bad one. And we’re still in with a play-off chance, for now.
…after that appalling loss to Wolves at the weekend. But the weekend’s cheering footballing moment was Spurs beating Chelsea in the league cup final yesterday. I sort of hate them both, but I’ve hated Chelsea longer and for more noble reasons.
Last night’s draw against Bristol City is too boring to write about, except to point out that once again we conceded in the last minute of play. I think that’s happened in approximately half of all the Palace games I’ve ever seen. Try to keep playing right through to the actual end, lads!
Well, that didn’t work at all, did it? We are now back down to tenth. Still, tenth is an ok place to be. In fact, maybe it’s the perfect place to be at this point in the season: if you’re guaranteed promotion or a play-off place this early on, some of the excitement fizzles out, until the last few games. And likewise if by February you’ve not bothered the top half of the table, the only excitement you’re likely to face is the possibility of relegation, which is the kind of excitement I can always do without. But 10th means we’ll be fighting for a top six finish right through to the end of the season. And really, that’s what it’s all about. And anyone who says “it’s not about the excitement, it’s about the results” is definitely not a Palace fan. In fact, they’re probably an Arsenal fan and not worth listening to at all.
Glad All Over 