Nobody's solving the problem, ain't nobody helping each other

Abandon ship. Proceed to muster station. Prepare the lifeboats. HMS Piss The League is on fucking fire.

I’m not judging you if you were queueing at the Regal Moon at 8:50am last Saturday waiting for them to start serving booze. Not for me, though, Clive. I don’t know how you manage to keep it down at that hour in the morning.

Having been inexplicably dropped from the starting line-up for the Tranmere game after getting 3 goals and 3 assists in the opening 4 games, Kavanagh was a bit crap v Chesterfield (as was pretty much everyone else), so he got dropped again v Rochdale and was replaced by Kai Payne. OK. If you like. Whatever. It was good to see Monthe back in the starting XI; while Delaney hasn’t done a lot wrong, the centre-half pairing of Monthe and Daniels was a big part of the good run we went on towards the end of last season. So we could expect to be solid at the back, yes?

Ugh. If only. 7 minutes in, Norburn somehow managed to foul Taylor despite being in front of him, and I still can’t decide whether that’s a terrible decision by Norburn, or a terrible decision by the referee. The resulting free kick was 40 yards out from goal and shouldn’t have presented any serious danger. And yet…it was played short to Smith, who passed to Taylor, and his ball into the box was left by our entire defence, allowing Moss to tap it in, with not one of our players looking remotely like putting in a challenge.

We had chance after chance after chance – Fondop headed over, Drummond hit the post and shot wide from a corner, Scott-Morriss put a shot wide from the edge of the box – and wasted all of them. The most memorable moment of the game was also the most painful. The Rochdale keeper faffed about with the ball at his feet, Appiah-Forson nicked it off him, the ball fell to Fondop, and…. well, you’ve all seen what happened. Let’s not relive it.

We had eleven shots in the first half. Rochdale had two. HT: Rochdale 1 Oldham 0. For FUCK’S sake.

The formation wasn’t working, Fondop was getting isolated up front on his own, and at start of the second half, Kavanagh came on for Payne. Drummond and Fawunmi had swapped wings towards the end of the first half, and it seemed to work. Rochdale sat deeper in the second half, but quite frankly, with the way we were playing in the final third, they could afford to.

Having that stood behind you while taking a corner can't help.

We continued to create chances (God I’m sick to fucking death of typing that sentence) and probably should have equalised when Drummond played the ball across goal, but no-one managed to get on the end of it. Kavanagh was convinced it should have been a corner, but let’s face it, we’d have wasted that as well.

The game was well and truly killed off just past the hour, when Brown got on the end of a header up the pitch, skinned Monthe, and put a low shot across Hudson. It was a great finish, but fucking hell. Maybe breakfast pints weren’t such a terrible idea.

Our heads completely dropped after the second goal. Fondop couldn’t even muster righteous anger at being fouled and the referee giving nothing. Norburn couldn’t even be bothered two-footing anyone. It was grim, and worrying.

As a final act of indignity, Drummond floated the ball into the box from a Norburn corner, and Fondop’s header hit the post. We were perfectly justified in asking “what the fucking hell was that?” at full time.

Mellon apologised for the performance (and so he fucking should), bemoaned our missed chances – “some of them probably beggared belief” – and acknowledged that “it’s a bad concoction at the minute”. Having frozen Monthe out for the first few games of the season, he somewhat threw him under the bus in his analysis of the second goal: “you see the guy, why don’t you just match his run?” Tough love? A much-needed kick up the arse? He knows the players far better than us, but it made me uneasy.

Norburn, in fairness, looked devastated after the game, and was brutally honest: “performance levels, not just today, recent weeks, haven’t been there for whatever reason”. It was oddly reassuring how many times he repeated “we’ve got to take responsibility”, as a captain should.

I just don’t get how we’ve gone from looking like world-beaters v Swindon to putting in three awful performances on the bounce. I get people being frustrated and losing patience with Mellon, I really do. I wanted us to sack him after we lost 2-1 at Yeovil. Thank fuck we didn’t, eh? This slump needs to end sooner rather than later, though.

To compound our misery, the offy on the walk back into Rochdale town centre was shut. Thankfully we managed to get a couple of cans of vodka a bit further down the road to commence the sorrow-drowning in earnest. I highly recommend drinking red wine, then 8% fruit beer, then a couple of pints of vanilla stout. I was in bed by 8:30pm and woke up at 5:30am with an axe in my head. God knows what state the people counting down to Jagerbomb O’clock at 9am were in.

Not even our women’s team could turn the weekend around. Despite a gutsy performance, they lost 2-3 to Curzon Ashton in their first game at Little Wembley. Ruby Crossman equalised after Curzon took the lead, and Chelsea Cook pulled us level again with a 30-yard screamer, but we couldn’t hold out for the draw and Curzon got a late winner. Wishing a speedy recovery to Shannon Heffron, who injured her ankle in the warm-up, and captain Abbey Rogers, who was subbed off with concussion. The girls take on Winton Wanderers at 2pm on Sunday at Leigh Sports Village.

There was finally something to celebrate on Tuesday. For me, anyway. Prescot Cables continued their impressive start to the season by battering Lichfield City 5-0. Apparently we also won in the B Team Cup. I have nothing to say about that.

I’m not optimistic about today. Our record against Salford is pretty crap. Happily, I have the best possible excuse for not going. Huge congratulations to my brother and his partner, who are getting married today. Wishing them a lifetime of happiness, and cheers for the great timing.

If you’re not quite so lucky and have to go to Boundary Park, remember to pace yourself for the teatime KO. It’s a pain in the arse not playing at 3pm, isn’t it? Now would be a great time to beat them for the third time ever. And if we do, I might have to accept that I’m a jinx. Good luck. KTMFF.

Written by Arlene Finnigan. Oldham Athletic.