Thanks but you kinda get used to it. Stress and tiredness do very bad things to my vision but you can’t entirely avoid either in life and definitely not in football and with public transport.
My journey today was complicated by my 12:06 to Chester being cancelled and the email to notify me of that arriving just as I’d sat down to a coffee at the station… That meant having to get 2 trams to get from Victoria to Piccadilly to try and get an 11:44 or 12:10. Made it in for 11:43 so assumed I couldn’t get to 14 for the 11:44 only to have thetrainline app faff me about and discover when I was on 12 at 11:48 that the 11:44 wasn’t now due to leave until 11:49. Could have made that had the trainline app functioned as intended. They have had some forceful feedback since then.
Journey back complicated by Avanti train to Wigan being just late enough to make sure there was no chance of getting from North Western to Wallgate to catch my connection. Ended up on a Stalybridge train and then begging a lift which amazingly saw me get home as planned by 10:30pm.
Fascinating reintroduction to L1. Hard to judge after 1 game but the ref let challenges go repeatedly which in L2 and NL would have been fouls and cards so there’s definitely more physicality. Not necessarily more athleticism surprisingly.
Wycombe were well organised but lacked a cutting edge up front. They’ve a striker injured but I’d guess that they’re at best a slightly above mid table team, which gives us a strong hint as to what it’s going to take to stay in this division. This was definitely not a repeat of MK Dons as our intro to L2 where we looked shell-shocked and not even match fit for 20 minutes. We were superb for the first 20 here and totally deserved to go 2-0 up. The 2nd goal is easily an early contender for goal of the season and should at least be one of the best goals of the day on the EFL highlights. We then gifted them 3 chances which they really ought to have taken. They should have led 2-3 at half time. We never really started the 2nd half but when they finally scored they started to press for an equaliser and got caught on the break.
We have lots of issues to fix - keeper can’t not dominate his 6 yard box; O’Connor remains far too slow at left back. Cannon and Dobson disappeared 2nd half - but as a reintroduction it was far better than last season; actually a very good game of football indeed and the Cae Ras was absolutely rocking. Highest league attendance since 1980 when we played some Newcastle team.
Now to find myself a hotel in Sheffield.