March 13th – Southend 0 Exeter 0 – Position: 22nd

As tempestuous a week with the Blues as I’ve ever seen one. Sacking the assistant on the Monday, almost being wound up on the Wednesday and a relegation scrap with some country bumpkins on the Saturday. A win here was absolutely vital and, with what is quickly becoming a recurring theme this season, the team disappointed with a tentative-at-best display of football.

Exeter are a side with not much about them. They attack solely down the left flank using Golbourne and Friend, hoping to feed the ball towards Haber, who is clearly Peter Crouch and Harry Redknapp’s offspring. It’s a game plan that might well work against half of this league, but it’s something we’ve all seen before. They never pressed themselves to attack in great swathes and they rarely showed the desire to win the game.

Which makes it all the more depressing when I say exactly the same about Southend.

We attacked solely down the right, predominantly because Scott Malone forgot how to play football and Francis Laurent was busy day dreaming about the time he skinned John Nutter, in the hope of hoofing the ball towards Paterson and Vernon so that they might be sent clean on goal. It happened once, but Vernon is too much of a “nice guy” to strike a ball harder than what would warrant a pass and duly obliged in handing the ball back to their goalkeeper when presented with a golden opportunity. It’s either that, or he’s a Colchester spy.

Special mention for Scott Malone, he’s only been here a few months but has successively forgotten everything he’s ever been taught about football and has blended in well with Laurent to forge the thickest left-sided partnership in our history. If Mitchell Cole was still here, I’m pretty sure we’d be meeting out “equal opportunities” entitlement with those three special cases alone.

A complete lack of action off the pitch led me to notice other things occuring, such as Tisdale’s metrosexual hat/scarfe/trenchcoat/cravate combination. If any Exeter fans are reading, I’d very much like to know where Tisdale shops if only for next Halowe’en when I want to go to a party dressed as Jose Mourinho/a twat. Stuart Fleetwood being completely spooked when a stray balloon hit him on the head also caught my attention, as did a spontaneous shout of “Martin Out!” by a guy who looked completely soul-destroyed upon finding out a) nobody had joined in with him and b) Ron Martin didn’t appear to be there to hear him.

Back to the football, todays result isn’t one to be disheartened by. We’ve effectively stopped the rot of consecutive losses and showed a great ethic to the game… Whenever we were pegged back, we looked to dig ourselves in and push through it. I’d like to say this is a result that, with two successive home games after this, could help us turn a corner, unfortunately spirals down have corners.