Ron Jeremy - Sheffield Wednesday Legend
It’s the Capital One Cup 3rd Round and we welcome
Dave Jones and his Sheffield Wednesday side to SMS. Jones of course is one of our ex-managers and
so conversation around me before the game was of some of the players he signed;
for every Stuart Ripley, Lee Todd and Stig Johansen, there was a Marian
Pahars. Always a solid if unspectacular
manager, he got Sheffield Wednesday over the line and promoted to the
Championship last season, having taken over from Gary Megson who is universally
hated at every club he’s ever been at I think.
Our team is full of changes as you’d expect with Gazza in
goal and Superkelv on the bench as it’s the norm to have your second choice
keeper in goal for these Cup games and your third choice on the bench. The defence was interesting with Frazer and
Yoshida both starting, the latter in partnership with Big Jos so I’m guessing
that Nigel is looking at which centre back pairing looks the best. At left back we have Dan Seaborne which has
endless comedy potential, especially as Michail Antonio plays down that
wing. Chappers, Corky and JWP make up
the midfield with J-Rod up top, flanked by Guly and Steeeeeeeve.
I’d had some fun getting into the ground as I’d ordered a
ticket online on Saturday and chosen the postal delivery option. The online system is decent now as you can
chose a specific seat rather than a block so I reasoned it would be decent
enough to know not to offer the postal option if it was too close to the game. Wrong.
The ticket didn’t arrive Monday or Tuesday so I had to get to the ground
and join a mile long queue to get a reprint or so I thought. Turns out that they hadn’t mailed it out at
all and it was behind the desk anyway.
Look you buggers, don’t allow me to choose the mail option if it’s not
available then I won’t spend loads of time ringing home to see if it’s there
yet. My ticket was in Ticket Office 3
and it was pure luck that I was in that queue as no one was announcing what
queues to get in until about 15 minutes before kick off when the queues were already
massive. Piss up, brewery.
The game starts in confident fashion for Saints but one
players is struggling somewhat with our ‘total football’ philosophy as
Seaborne’s first three touches consists of a massive hoof down the wing which
goes over Steeeve’s head and out of play and two passes across the penalty area
which put Big Jos in shit so deep he needed a shovel to dig himself out.
We get our first decent chance on the quarter hour as Jack
Cork plays a great ball through to J-Rod who controls it perfectly on the run
but hits it straight at Bywater in the Wednesday goal. At our end, Wednesday get to lob a free kick
into the mixer after a Seaborne carthorse foul on the edge of the box and Gazza
has a little flap but recovers well and the danger passes.
It was always fun when we were in League 1 and to a lesser
extent the Championship, to notice a player because I hadn’t heard of him
previously and because he was utter, utter shite. Sheffield Wednesday have a player who has
all the ingredients to make him a figure of ridicule. He’s fat, he’s slow, he has long hair and suggestions of a
tache and on top of all that, he is the requisite standard as a footballer....
really, really shite. His name is
Pecnik apparently and he looks a bit like Ron Jeremy (see picture above or Google it if you’re not
at work). It starts off with an
accidental collision when Guly is not aware of what’s around him and runs
straight into him. Ron Jeremy goes down
like only a porn star can and writhes around on the ground like he’s been shot,
only getting up 5 minutes later when the ref comes over. Ron signals that he thought he was elbowed
and away we go – no you weren’t mate, you were just run over by a drink driver.
Wednesday should have taken the lead when Antonio went
through chasing a bouncing ball shoving Frazer out of the way and though he got there in front of Gazza, he
lifted it onto the roof of the net.
After that it all went a bit route 1 as the Wednesday defence failed to
deal with a big Gazza punt forward and Guly got there first, only to see
Bywater again get himself in the way.
We do look like the more likely to score and do so on the half hour and
Chappers fed a ball into J-Rod who left his marker looking very very amateurish
with a superb turn before drilling across Bywater into the far side of the
net. Lovely finish.
The goal has lifted us and deflated Wednesday and it’s
nearly 2-0 straight after as de Ridder tricked his way down the wing and
unusually and surprisingly, picked out a player with the cross as Guly headed
against the base of the post. Ron
Jeremy has another comedy moment at our end when he played an airshot and
Michail Antonio shows probably why we didn’t really want to sign him. If you dive in on him then he’ll go round you
but lay off him like Maya and Jos were doing and he’ll eventually leave the ball
behind. We will forever be grateful for
his performance in the JPT final though.
With all the talk of Ron Jeremy, I’ve failed to notice the Wednesday
No.10 who is another who looks like he has fitness ‘issues’. Either that or he’s wearing a Large Boys
sized shirt.
It’s all pretty comfortable as we reach half time 1-0 up and
the three Wednesday fans who are sat behind me decided to go and sit somewhere
else for the second half which begins after a Wednesday substitution with Joe
Mattock coming on.. He was on loan at the Skates last year but does anyone
care? No. Having laughed at the
technique and ability of Ron Jeremy, it did occur to me that he’d probably
score (as Ron always does) and he came pretty close with a volley from the edge
of the box which just cleared the bar.... or as Ron’s says in his movies “I
surprisingly smashed one into the box from miles out but finished hitting an
onlooker in the face”. OK, that’s enough
Ron Jeremy, I promise. He gets another
shot on target soon after which Gazza tips wide and Big Jos has his bid for his
usual Tuesday night goal saved by Bywater after the Big Dutchman gets his head
onto a Guly free kick. It then all gets
abit surreal as Steeeeve feeds Seaborne who flies down the wing and fires over
a superb cross which just goes over J-Rod’s head. Fair play to the makeshift left back.
Just after the hour mark, Wednesday make another
substitution with the Fat No 10 going off and they announce his name as Chris
Maguire. Hang on, is that the same Chris
Maguire who scored that one in a million goal for the Skates against us last
year? If so, I don’t remember him being
that fat. Anyway, he’s off now for a pie
and a cake and Chris O’Grady is on and I remember him being a right handful for
Rochdale when he played and scored in that unforgettable 2-0 home defeat we had
against them in League 1.
The motivation levels for some players seem to have dropped
for Saints and it’s no surprise to see Guly hauled off as he’s spent the last
10 minutes looking like he really couldn’t be bothered. His replacement is Ben Reeves who is 4 foot 6
but he’s keen as mustard and is soon flying around wanting to be involved in
everything. Jack Cork gives everyone a
scare by not getting up after a tackle but he walks off comfortably enough to
be replaced by another youngster, Andy Robinson who in contrast to Ben Reeves,
is a big unit.
Talking of big units, I mentioned Villa’s Benteke on
Saturday as a massive great guy who went down under the slightest touch...
today I give you Gary Madine who scored for Carlisle against us in the JPT
final and is huge but not huge enough to be writing around on the floor in
agony after the slightest touch from Maya Yoshida. Make no mistake, this was not a flying Ninja
dropkick of death or anything like that.
Get up you big ponce.
We put the game to bed soon enough when following some
quality League 1 hoofage from Seaborne, the ball breaks to Steeeve who bundles
past Mattock who falls over and clumsily knocks Steeeeve over. It looks a clear penalty to me so I have no
idea why they’re all giving the ref a hard time. Mark Halsey is the ref and I assume that no
Wednesday fans will be sending him ‘hate’ through Twitter which is what
Liverpool fans do. Up steps J-Rod and
smashes his penalty to the left and Bywater does really well to get to it but
it spins underneath him and rolls into the other side of the net. Not emphatic like you know who… but who
cares. This game is dead.
Ben Reeves’ identical 4ft 6 blonde twin (who we grew in the
same laboratory at Staplewood) Sam Hoskins comes on for J-Rod who picks up a
slight knock before he has chance to think about a hat-trick and the game
peters out with Wednesday testing Gazza with a few late chances which come
about largely because we’ve lost our holding midfield player (Corky) and no one
has really stepped into the breach. Game
over... 2-0. Easy
It really was an easy win in keeping with many of the home
games we’ve had over the past three years.
I’m not complaining one bit because any win we get in the league this
year is going to be anything but easy.
Due to our recent past it was interesting to be more awareof the
opposition players than I would otherwise have been even if two of them were
Skates and one was a porn star. Having
watched the whole game, Ron Jeremy obviously has a bit of ability which he
showed in the second half and it turns out that he’s an international for
Slovenia so he can’t be that shite.
If Nigel Adkins was looking for fringe players to impress to
step up then I’d say that J-Rod was a standout but as we know, the chances of
him getting the centre forward role in a league game are dependent on Sir
Rickie getting injured or suspended.
It’s nice to know that we at least have him as a like for like physical
presence to come in so we don’t have the change the entire way the team plays
if Sir Rickie is missing.
Gazza did well in goal despite a couple of flapping
expeditions from his goal line. He looks
to have all the tools in the locker and has a personality which is going to
make him very popular. on the downside, he has that ponytail thing which Chappers really should sort out for him. All he lacks at
the moment is the presence in the penalty area which only comes with
experience. Artur Boruc has this in
spades so though Gazza will probably start at the weekend, expect the Holy
Goalie in nets as soon as he’s fit enough.
The centre back decision will be interesting – Maya looks comfortable with
either of the others and Jos and Jose are decent together.
Everton have a quick striker in Anichebe and an aerial threat in
Fellaini and his wig. Jos is probably
the best in the air of the three but he’s the most vulnerable against a quick
striker. If it was down to me, I’d start
with Jose and Maya with Frazer and Nathaniel Clyne at full backs. James Ward-Prowse was decent in midfield today and
Chappers and Corky did what we knew they would, same as Steeeeve and Guly who
were their usual part-genius, part-what-the-fuck-was-that. of the two you'd have to say that Steeeeve had the better game today but they both need to ‘do a Puncheon’ and play to
somewhere near their potential on a regular basis to elevate themselves from 'squad player' status. Sound obvious really and that’s because it
is… I never said I was clever.
Dave Jones has a job on at Sheffield Wednesday. I dunno how many of what played today was
their usual starting line up but having lost 4 in a row in the league,
I can’t imagine he would have been taking this game lightly, or have been very
impressed by what he saw from his side out there. I thought Bywater did well in goal but other
than that, not a lot really, apart from Ron of course.
On my way back to car across the Itchen Bridge I was looking
out over the water and pondering the important questions. Can we get anything away at Everton on
Saturday and who is giving Guly a lift home right now?
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