The easiest way to deal with this game would be to ignore it, pretend it didn’t happen, don’t get dragged into the doom, gloom and… OH MY GOD, WERE ALL GOING TO HELL IN A HANDCART.

Well, actually, not.  This was a bad result, featuring some really poor performances but with some not so bad ones as well that ultimately ended up with Latics paying the price for not capitalising on possession and territorial advantage and ruing not making the best of what chances that they got.  No matter how bad people might want you to believe the game was, it wasn’t Bobby’s Canvey Island, it is a good point to draw a line under what’s happened so far and hope that the arrival of Moses and Moreno are enough to push the team onto better things.

Whilst I’m fairly blah about Latics part of this game, I think that it would be wrong to leave things with out giving Notts County the credit they deserve.  They had a game plan and stuck to it.  It was a game plan (two banks of four, sitting in and closing every route through off whilst two forwards annoyed the hell out of our defence) that worked as well.  They waited their chance and took it, so good luck to them.  Hopefully they can get a share of a bigger gate to help dig them out of their hole in the next round.

And whilst we’re on crowds, I suppose we’d better reflect on ours.  Not so much the quantity, I was surprised to find out that I was one of 5,500, but the quality.  I remember there being some moaning buggers back at Springfield, but there always seemed to be an element of (gallows?) humour in there too.  These days it seems to be that people just don’t understand what it’s right to expect and what’s a good thing and bad thing, they just take it all too seriously.

I went on my own tonight and the difference was stark, sat with my mates I could have tutted, moaned about and took the Mick out of the idiots sat in the general vicinity, in the end I just put my headphones on and drowned them out.  What option do you have when you’re sat near someone who thinks it’s ok to call our number 7 “Scharny” and at the same time lay into Gomez, Sinclair and Diame within the first three minutes?  I could have moved, but you can guarantee that I’d just have found another one.

And anyway, I am now able to confirm that even Jason Scotland looks good when he’s soundtracked by Issac Hayes.