Crumbs of Comfort

In difficult times such as these, we are all in need of something to raise the spirits. A couple of beers maybe or a few days off. And, of course, next week our prayers are answered in one respect as its an "International break", that time when our better players get to forget boring league games and hopefully jet off to more exotic climes.

As for ourselves, a couple of beers later, and we´re still in need of something to lift us so its back to searching the papers for more crumbs of comfort as we perversely case our beedy eyes over our peers in search of other hard luck stories.

Some of us are obviously suffering from our recent results but its worth remembering that in an environment where only one team can win, it´s usually true that there will be other teams that are also performing "badly". How you can quantity "badly" is open to question. Compare points, player scores, shots on target, even corners but however you do it there are obvious candidates for worst team of the weekend and it wasn´t us.

The pick of the crop over the weekend were london rivals Spurs and West Ham, neither of which managed a shot on target, according to the Guardian anyway, in their games against either Liverpool or Man. City. Both are slipping down the table, with "big-team" Spurs now down in 17th place with only 4 points to show from their 6 games and more significantly only 2 goals scored. In their 6 games, Spurs have failed to score against fulham, bolton, everton, manure, and liverpool and in their only win got 2 against lowly sheff.utd.

So its not all bad news and while Spurs bemoan the loss of Lennon as the reason for it all, I can´t believe that any other team has 7 potencial first-teamers out through injury.

Further afield, Middlesbro, in 16th position, were also found wanting against Blackburn with their entire front line of Parnaby, Mendieta, Aiyegbeni, Jason Euell and Morrison all receiving an equally appalling score of 4 each from the Guardian scorer. And they couldn´t score goals either. Since the 22 July, Middlesbrough have played 13 games, including friendlies, failed to score 9 times, managed only 7 goals in 1170 minutes, and won only twice.

Over the same period the Addicks have played 12 games ( including friendlies), won 4, failed to score 4 times and netted 14 goals. The bad news, of course, is that we don´t play them until 23 Dec.