League Cup game.
I reluctantly tuned into 5Live last night for the away trip to Carlisle in the League Cup, no sponsors here without some readies stumped up, it was the only option.
With no TV coverage it was that or the BBC London local lot on teh interweb and quite frankly the only way I was firing up the PC would be if the national channel had that screeching bint Jacqui Oatley commentating.
You could tell they didn’t want to be there, for all their talk of past visits down the league to show their “credentials”. They were only present because they wanted to pile it on Andre Villas-Boas, wasn’t about the chance of a top division club being knocked out by a third division side, in old money, it was just to nationally broadcast some embarrassment for AVB by the current employers of ‘Arry.
It didn’t quite work out for them.
It took a little bit, only eight minutes before half time, but as soon as Jan Vertonghen put the visitors one up, with his first goal for the club, the mood dropped dramatically. When eight minutes after the break Andros Townsend also scored his first to double the lead all the wind was out of their sails.
But there was hope on the horizon. Hope that they could cheer on Brendan Rogers if they just get away from the game they said they would broadcast and shift to West Brom, Liverpool tie. And by Christ they couldn’t switch quick enough when it became obvious AVB wasn’t going to be explaining a humiliation.
No because unlike ‘Arry the new man wants to win things like this, even though he put out a young side.
In between going off to the other games and various chit-chat that had nothing to do with the game – though thank god we didn’t have to put up with Alan Green. Can only imagine how long his diatribe on the trip to Carlisle would have been – we heard some bits of the actual game that was going on. You knew the game was going on because you could hear the crowd reacting at various points. Incidents that were never commentated on. All they had to cling on was Lloris not being involved and that made up “controversy”.
They couldn’t bother showing more than the goals on the TV highlights later, in between Mark Bright saying you know
and shouting yes
. It just shows their loathing of AVB though as the ManUre v Newcastle was only on 5Live Xtra and they only went to Liverpool later. And don’t get me started on the BBC’s digitext. An upgrade on Ceefax my arse. You could watch a game on Ceefax but this if they ever actually put up any information it’s hours late. On Tuesday they were saying there was no games on the results page and last night no mention of the draw for the next round bar who their favourite teams were playing – Lollerpool, ManUre and Cheatski.
Good choices picked to play by the boss, a mixture of experienced players needing game time and youngsters that had done some stints in the lower leagues so know what away days like this were about. He really does seem to like Townsend, which is good and Townsend seems to be repaying this confidence shown in him. Wonder what would have come of him under ‘Arry.
So a clean sheet, three players opening their account for the club, Gylfi Sigurdsson got his first just before the end, and into the next round for an away tie at Norwich.