The Weekly Bobbins: A Shrug Dressed As Professional Football
· Yahoo Sports
In his post‑match interview, Leam Richardson looked furious, anxious, feisty – pick your adjective, they all fit. And honestly, good. He should’ve been. Most of us felt the same, if not worse, after that timid, quarter‑hearted loss to a promoted Lincoln City side who barely had to break sweat.
Up until now, I’ve been… fine. Content enough. Not thrilled, not convinced, but fine. The points have totted up, the decent performances have been AWOL, and even that’s being generous because we’ve only put in a handful of genuinely good showings all season. But this? This was the day LeamBall officially jumped the shark.
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We’ve reached the point where doing the same thing over and over again and expecting anything different isn’t just stubborn, it’s delusional. Yet there we were, dutifully rolling out the same tired routine: give it to Lewis Wing and… well, what? What exactly?
“It was devoid of entertainment or anything remotely close to joy”
We knew – knew – Lincoln don’t want the ball. They thrive without it. They sit in, stay organised and wait for you to do something stupid. The table doesn’t lie.
And still we played like we’d never seen or even heard of them before, like we were trying to impose a “style” that barely looks fluid even on our best days. It was naïve. It was predictable. It was devoid of entertainment or anything remotely close to joy.
Over 70% possession. Zero shots in open play. And still the same move, over and over again: give it to Wing, lose the ball, get the ball back, pass it around the back. Reset. Repeat. Hope that something magically changes. It never did.
At many points we had Paudie O’Connor, Finley Burns, Wing, Jeriel Dorsett, Liam Fraser and sometimes Ryan Nyambe all stood in our own half while Wing – unopposed, unbothered – was left to pick out Daniel Kyerewaa, Charlie Savage, Paddy Lane and Kelvin Ehibhatiomhan against 10 Lincoln players. 10.
How is that a tactic? How is that a plan? How is that anything other than a shrug dressed up as professional football?
And this is supposed to be the product of a week’s training, every week’s training? This is the grand design? The fine‑tuned, meticulously drilled approach?
Come on now. When do we switch the play up? When do we move through the lines? When does someone do something unexpected or pop up when you least expect them? Even the players looked disengaged, disinterested, disheartened.
A one-man team?
Conversely, there are other factors at play. Yes, the injuries matter. Yes, it’s a recovery season. Yes, maybe we’re all guilty of wanting too much too soon. But none of that excuses how meek we looked.
The body language was off. The belief was non‑existent. Not one player carried themselves like we were a genuine top-six side. It felt like a group going through the motions, ticking boxes, doing the bare minimum of professional movement without any conviction behind it, already defeated.
“No shared responsibility. Just Wing or bust”
And this is where Richardson and Wing become the same problem. Wing does what Wing wants – and fair enough, he’s earned that freedom. He’s our best player by a mile.
But it has warped everything else. We’ve become a one‑man team, structurally and mentally. Everything goes through him because noone else has been allowed to develop their role. No Plan B. No alternative or repeatable patterns. No shared responsibility. Just Wing or bust.
He’s a blessing and a curse. Capable of the sublime, as we saw with the free‑kick. But where is everyone else? When do they matter? Are they even allowed to?
Richardson has let this dependency calcify. It’s easy to see why, but it’s still a cop‑out. Predictable, boring and increasingly pointless.
And that’s where I am now: bored. Not with the club, not with the evolution that we all want to see, but with the idea that our entire fate rests on one man doing something brilliant while everyone else rehearses the same tired routine of not receiving the bloody ball. Is this really it? Is this all we’ve got?
For my own sanity, I never believed this season was the season. Too much, too soon. But even with that realism, I didn’t expect whatever that was against Lincoln. It wasn’t just a defeat, it was a performance that stripped away any illusion that we’re building something coherent.
And that’s the part that lingers.