MILTON KEYNES 1-1 NOTTS COUNTY
Right, before getting started on this report, I want to lay something bare for everyone to know. I don't like Milton Keynes. This isn't so much a dig at the club, we all know that they exist for the wrong reasons and enough space has been taken up writing about that injustice, but more the place itself. It's a dystopian wasteland - a bit like that town from the future in Demolition Man where there's no crime and everyone is very bored until they unfreeze Sylvester Stallone and he starts blowing stuff up. I almost think that Milton Keynes would be the better for it if they gave Michael Chopra a ring, stuck him in the Wetherspoons with Jimmy Bullard and waited to see what happened. Everyone walks around with an expression as blank as Joey Barton's Christmas card list - but maybe i'm being harsh and even the people who live there don't understand how you make your way around the place.
Things don't get any better when you finally manage to navigate the labyrinth of bland, featureless, identical 'boulevards' and find your way to Stadium:MK. In fact, you could be forgiven for not even thinking it was a football ground at all. It looks more like Hilton Hotels have somehow managed to get the planning permission for a massive oval swimming pool. There's no sense that you're going to a football match, either, there's just as many middle aged women trying to buy a Swedish flat pack coffee table or doing the big weekly shop as there are football fans. Indeed, the only unique feature of the ground is an accident of their overambitious early plans - the fact that the entire upper tier is nothing more than bare concre breezeblocks, which act as a reminder to football of the dangers of letting something like this happen in the first place. Then there's the padded seats inside, i'm sure they're just ironically mocking the rest of the league at this point, it'd be a bit like Josef Fritzl putting a three-piece suite in his basement.
Anyway, there was actually a game going on behind the shiny facade, and quite an intriguing one at that. Notts have, as we all know, started extremely well and battled hard to gain a point at Oldham at the weekend despite the ridiculous sending off of André Boucaud with barely a quarter of an hour played. The hosts had yet to show the form that made them title winners elect in pre-season, but that is an issue away from Stadium:MK where they'd won each of their games and were yet to concede a goal. With Boucaud's appeal scandalously turned down and neither Jeff Hughes nor Alan Sheehan fit enough to return to the line-up, Curle stuck with Joss Labadie in midfield after a promising showing at Boundary Park and brought in Jamal Campbell-Ryce for his first start, allowing Lee Hughes' aching bones to take their place back on the bench. Milton Keynes kept former Notts target Charlie MacDonald as a lone striker but somewhat intriguingly decided to try and shoe-horn talented but similar trio Shaun Williams, Stephen Gleeson and Darren Potter into the same midfield with Daniel Powell and Luke Chadwick operating from out wide.
It didn't really work, with three of the division's best midfielders all getting in each others' way, and Notts were able to control for the first half. The hosts started reasonably strongly and created a little bit of pressure, but never really looked like testing Bartosz Bialkowski, but this soon subsided as Notts showed composure on the ball coupled with pace and strength going forward. Alan Judge tested David Martin's alertness with a well struck free kick, whilst Dean Leacock headed the resulting corner over the bar when he really should've found the back of the net. The pace of Campbell-Ryce was proving to be a real threat for Notts, particularly coupled with the marauding Julian Kelly, with the pair giving the home captain Dean Lewington a torrid time down the left. Notts should've had a penalty, too, when Joss Labadie pounced on a loose ball at the edge of the box only to be crudely shoved over from behind. Not that it mattered much, they were in front just moments later from the most unlikely of sources. The ball broke to captain Neal Bishop, who whacked the ball goalwards and into the bottom corner via a slight deflection. Bishop's scoring record for Notts is, shall we say, modest. That header against Manchester City and that goal off the arse against Charlton, plus two other neat enough finishes, were all he'd managed in three and a bit years. None of those came close to being thirty yard screamers, so it's fair to say the elation amongst the 650 travelling fans was tempered by sheer surprise.
With their noses in front, Notts had to ride a little bit of pressure after MacDonald was forced wide despite rounding Bialkowski and a succession of corners, but were quickly back on the front foot. A lightning quick break saw Campbell-Ryce force a smart save out of Martin and Joss Labadie drag the follow up wide of the far post, whilst Kelly couldn't quite pick out Yoann Arquin after some neat interplay with Judge and Campbell-Ryce. Our favourite mental Frenchman nearly got in the act himself, but fired hopelessly wide after working half a yard of space for himself in the box. After Martin had again had to push a Judge free kick away for a corner, Notts could reasonably say that they'd thoroughly dominated the first half. Whatever Karl Robinson says.
However, after the break, things changed. There were two obvious factors involved - Notts began to visibly tire after playing for so long with ten men at Oldham and were unable to put the same level of pressure on the Milton Keynes deep midfielders, whilst a reshuffle from Robinson saw Williams drop back into defence allowing him to stop getting in the way of Gleeson and Potter and making their midfield a little less predictable, with Chadwick moving into the hole and Jay O'Shea coming on out wide. The opening stages of the second half were dominated possession wise by the hosts, but they struggled to open up a tenacious Notts defence, with Campbell-Ryce coming closest to creating a goal on the break but Arquin couldn't quite direct his header goalwards. The pressure began to build though and, despite the lack of clear opportunities created, the hosts had an equaliser that was pretty much deserved by the time it came. It was comfortably their best move of the match, with substitute Ryan Lowe eventually squaring to O'Shea who found a yard of space and curled past Bialkowski from the edge of the box. Notts had to weather a bit of a storm after this, Bialkowski smothering with MacDonald lurking, but kept their shape well to restrict the hosts to nothing more than pot shots - Lewington coming the closest. Robinson rolled his dice one last time and threw on Alan Smith, but he did little more than foul people, whilst Jeff Hughes came within a yard of pinching it for Notts. All things considered, Curle and his side will have to be content with an away point from a city where they had never got one before. A club record is always nice too, I guess.