Seeing Red

Hard to know exactly where to start. So I’ll start with a question to AC. Why, oh why, was Feeesh preferred to Chris Perry. Fish has never before played alongside El-Karkouri and Perry was excellent against Spurs in midweek in a defence that kept a clean sheet. Why change it ? If the idea was Fish’s slightly extra height then it didn’t work as what you gained in height you lost in both pace and positional awareness. It seemed a strange decision from the start and so it proved.

The team came out very sluggishly and after a couple of near misses and a couple of Deano saves it was hardly a surprise when Albion took the lead although poor defending from the Addicks played no small part especially from Fish who decided to chase the same ball as El-Karkouri leaving Horsfield unmarked to head home. When our equaliser came it was certainly against the run of play but it put us back in the game and a real chance of going on to win. However, the sending off of El-Karkouri (very harsh, not two-footed) changed the game completely. For the rest of the first half and the first twenty-five of the second we actually looked the better team, albeit with ten men, and the team most likely to score. In fact we should have done but Bartlett decided to head straight at the keeper from point blank range and our best chance was gone. Albion suddenly decided to throw on Earnshaw and the rest, as they say, is history. A close range header (unmarked), a chip over Deano (from a seemingly offside position) and a converted penalty (dodgy to say the least) later and it was game over. But it’s never that simple is it.

I left the ground, like many others, cursing referee Mark Halsey, who had a mare, and bemoaning our bad luck. Five hours later after watching SkyTV’s excellent Football First I had a different perspective on the game. In truth, we were second best from the off and we still may have lost even with eleven men. El-Karkouri, in my opinion, deserved to go. It was a two-footed lunge over the top of the ball and dangerous to say the least. What made it worse was the fact it was totally unnecessary. (More annoying though is referee inconsistency. In the Birmingham v Villa game on Sunday Lee Hendrie made a similar lunge at Melchiot and got away without even a booking. At least Baros in the Merseyside derby got his marching orders.) Anyway, back to The Valley. Calamitous defending cost us the next three goals. Fish lost Earnshaw in the six yard box leaving him both time and space to steer the cross home, a through ball caught the defence knapping and, with Konch playing Earnshaw onside and Fish standing statuesque appealing for a flag that was never going to come, the diminutive striker burst through and neatly chipped over the advancing Keily for the third. The fourth came after Bryan ’The Shadow’ Hughes felled Chaplow in the box and Earnshaw completed his twenty minute hat-trick from the spot.

Don’t get me wrong. Although the score line was harsh, Albion deserved to win. It's true that for a long period we looked the better side, without creating too much, but in many respects we more than contributed to our own eventual downfall. A bad start, bad defending, and a needless sending off. Add to this the strange recall of Fish and some questionable substitutions and you must also conclude that Curbs should shoulder much of the blame. It was however unfortunate that we had to play sixty minutes with ten men in extremely hot conditions. So shall we put this down as a one off ? Let’s hope so. A win next time out against the Massives and everything in the garden will look rosy again. If we had to lose then better to do so against a relegation haunted team like Albion than to Spurs. Now that would have been disastrous.