Same Old Song
Concern has turned to worry at the Accu Stadium as the 25/26 season begins to mirror last season’s unacceptable disaster.
A promising start is dissolving, with goals drying up, injuries mounting, and the proportion of last year’s losers starting games becoming alarmingly high.
What felt like a different era — with a bright, if raw, manager and new players finally replacing the despised squads of the past couple of seasons — is in danger of turning very sour on impact with the better sides of this division. And Burton.
Completely outplayed by a well-drilled, committed and relentless Stockport side — who were arguably even better with ten men — Town’s dismal display elicited well-deserved and worrying opprobrium from a gaslit crowd waiting for the millions spent to translate into a team remotely resembling title challengers.
Other than Feeney and Nicholls, who did their jobs efficiently and to the best of their ability, the same team that had claimed three points in Devon last week simply didn’t function as a unit. Grant, increasingly looking out of his depth, refused to make obvious changes to personnel or tactics until it was far too late.
He isn’t helped by the thinning of his squad through injury over the past few weeks, but it’s hard not to think that a more experienced manager would cope much better — with his in-game management looking passive at best and petrified at worst.
In theory, playing three creative players behind May or Taylor with two holding midfielders should provide a solid platform to control games, but from the first minutes nothing was going right for Castledine, who looks entirely stifled out wide. Harness blows far too hot and cold, and Wiles’s sporadic prompting has been a feature for far too long.
Ledson’s form is far too poor to be ignored, while Kasumu’s energy was largely wasted by a chronic lack of movement around and in front of him.
All the while, the visitors’ superior organisation, team coherence and all-round nous reduced Town to a panicked, fumbling mess in a dreadful first-half performance.
Several good opportunities were spurned by the Hatters, with Nicholls called upon to make a couple of largely routine saves and Feeney making a last-ditch recovering tackle to deny Andressen.
In slick conditions, County were winning each individual battle and restricted Town to a Wiles effort following a rare half-decent move — which was chest-blocked — and a Harness drive from an acute angle which nearly knocked over the visiting keeper with its ferocity but lacked accuracy.
Town’s typically subdued first-half performance — now a feature — appeared to be heading towards a stalemate until a soft free kick was given against Feeney, which Norwood floated, not particularly dangerously, into the area. Stupidly, the strangely out-of-sorts Low tugged on an opposition shirt to concede an obvious penalty.
Norwood, a regular tormentor since his departure so many years ago, expertly despatched the spot-kick and Town deservedly went in behind, unable on this occasion to escape punishment for another weak first half.
Improvement in the second half seemed inevitable, rising from a very low base again, and Town were handed what to others would be a lifeline — but for the Terriers is always a dead weight — when Onyango was dismissed for accumulating two yellow cards in the space of a few minutes.
Incredibly, Stockport continued to look far more dangerous than their disjointed, seemingly bewildered hosts and had good chances thwarted by an excellent block from Nicholls and a desperate saving tackle by Kasumu before finally — and deservedly — doubling their lead when Bailey curled an excellent finish into the top corner.
Baffling substitutions followed, with Sorensen, who had been largely competent, being replaced like-for-like by Gooch, and Radulovic, rather than Taylor, seeing the end of the afternoon for the wretched Castledine — who looks entirely miserable out wide — shortly after the Chelsea loanee spurned a straightforward chance from close range which could have changed the dynamics of the game.
By the time Radulovic reduced the arrears late on with a decent header from a Gooch corner, Town’s scramble for a face-saving point picked up for the final moments. But the latter stages were most notable for Alfie May’s remonstrations first with Low after Stockport’s second goal, and then with Grant after Radulovic’s — with a vociferous suggestion that a defender be added up front for height.
Town’s previous failure at Blackpool against ten men was notable for Grant’s apparent lack of innovation away from the coaching manual — sticking a big fellow up front. May apparently remembered that omission; Grant did not.
The arguments were presumably born of May’s frustration at sometimes having to come back 50 yards for a touch of the ball, and the inability of the manager and his teammates to create even a single chance for one of the lower leagues’ most lethal marksmen.
Calls for Grant to be sacked, while premature and oblivious to the deep-rooted problems and instability caused by knee-jerk decisions — including the massive error made in dismissing his predecessor — are still another concern at a club which should be stamping its mark on this division with the investment made.
Educated, articulate and qualified up to his eyebrows, Grant is the football hipster’s dream — but his inability to waver from the manual is becoming worryingly restrictive.
It’s true that he can point to a growing injury list, but that only deprives him of a depth most clubs in League One would view as luxurious.
A thoroughly depressing day — watching a very well-run club, with a manager of significant longevity, easily brush aside our misfiring team — felt like a turning point.
It’s now up to Grant, his staff and the squad to revitalise during the enforced break ahead of them and get back on track.
We thought this season was different. It’s increasingly the very same.
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