Remember the present as you build for the future ... The David Rawson Rotherham United Fan Column
WHATEVER happens this season, Stockport at home is going to be a low point.
A drenching on the way to the ground. A drenching on the way home. A soggy mess in between.
A nothing-y sort of game, against a competent, organised opposition, that we failed to win because we seem addicted to giving cheap goals away. The story of the season away from home, now playing at a New York Stadium near you.
This is a period of transition. But what are we transitioning from, and what are we transitioning to?
The basic idea seems to be: make the squad younger (with a higher value in the transfer market) and better at football, on cheaper wages. Which is an excellent plan, but a bit like saying: “We want to do more good things and fewer bad things.”
Who doesn’t want to reduce the wage bill while improving the standard of their players? Who doesn’t want a squad full of “saleable assets”? Who wants to be reliant on ageing pros at the end of their careers, with all the jaded short-termism that implies?
That’s not to say that a bit of consistency in our approach to things wouldn’t help. It’s to say that in a period of change, there’s a risk in getting caught up in the process and forgetting about the here and now. Although, when watching games like the one against Stockport, forgetting the here and now is maybe the best thing. It’s certainly easy to do.
Apart from the offside goal, and a scuffed Powell shot in the first half, where was the action? There’s loads of earnest, diligent passing, but for what? Usually, a careful working of the ball back to the goalkeeper or a defender and a hoik upfield that our forwards don’t win against their defenders. No-one beats a man, no-one takes a risk, you glance at the clock: 20 minutes have passed and nothing has happened.
And if you don’t win matches, you get more reluctant to take a risk or try to beat a man. And the games become more attritional. And then you need to be tight and miserly at the back. And we are not.
There was a world in which, frustrated by the chalked-off goal, and desperate to salvage something, we shoved Jules up front and went old school for the last few minutes. Instead, we stuck to the process, stuck to the shape, stuck to the patterns, stuck three midfielders up front and got stuck in a rut.
Remember when the talk was of becoming a sustainable Championship club?
That was two years and three transitions ago.
All that time spent aiming at an imagined future, while the here and now has been pretty meagre fare.