Oh won't you please take me home?

Meh. It was only a pre-season friendly. It must have been, right? It can’t have been a League Cup game. Not on a Saturday. No, it was a decent pre-season run out against a Championship team who’ve spent big. Onwards and upwards.

It did make me laugh how many people went on and on before the game about what a dump Stoke is. Good job we’re all from the Vienna of the North, eh? Everywhere is a shithole and everywhere is brilliant. There are bits of Paris that are fucking horrible, and there are some dead nice pubs in Stoke where you can have a perfectly nice afternoon. I can highly recommend the Glebe, which not only had a great range of beers, but also sold books and jewellery.

It might not have been the result we wanted but at least I got a pretty new bracelet

In the first half, Stoke did not look like a second-tier team playing at home against a fourth-tier team. Johansson made a great double save from Fondop early on, and if Mikey had managed to put either shot away, it could have been a very different game. We were the better team, and Stoke’s awful finishing saw them waste what chances they did have. Appiah-Forson was brilliant and gave them loads of problems. Lawal was booked for pulling his shirt when he was about to sprint away, and Johansson had to make a good save from his shot from the right.

📸 Thomas Lee Stacey

The frustration he was creating in their players showed towards the end of the half, when Ingelsson kicked him in the head, which somehow resulted in a Stoke free-kick, and Appiah-Forson being made to wait for about three minutes when he was ready to come back on after receiving treatment. I didn’t think the referee was as bad as some people thought – he was certainly better than most League Two refs - but that was bizarre.

Alas, the home side clearly got a kick up the arse at half-time, and three minutes into the second half, Thomas’ corner bounced into our goal off the back of Ollie Norburn’s head. What a kick in the minge. The first of the season, and very much unlikely to be the last.

It probably should have been 2-0 just over an hour in. Thomas played a good ball into the penalty area, Daniels fluffed his clearance after Gallagher headed it across the six-yard box, but thankfully Cisse hooked his shot over the bar.

Drummond had a few decent chances, and, as usual, a fair few fouls against him not given. The game was wrapped up on 82 minutes, though, when Bae Jun-ho played a great through ball to Bozenik to put him one-on-one with Hudson, and he made no mistake. We had the chance to pull a goal back late on, when Scott-Morriss played the ball into the box and Drummond controlled it well (yes, he really did, don’t be mean), but Johansson made a good save at the near post.

📸 Thomas Lee Stacey

Not the result we were hoping for, but hardly a pasting from a team two divisions above us (with a considerably more expensive squad). It reflects well on us that the Stoke Sentinel and Fotmob both rated the Stoke keeper as man of the match. I really wasn’t too downhearted, and headed back to the Glebe to drown my sorrows with a bottle of wine and a fucking massive cheeseboard. Honestly, Stoke’s great if you know where to go.

(I say I wasn’t too downhearted; I wasn’t, until the following day, when I realised that Mark Robins is the Stoke manager. Then I was furious.)

Micky Mellon was similarly sanguine about the result and said that we could be “excitedly optimistic” about competing in League Two after performing like that at a Championship ground. He rightly said that Keenan Appiah-Forson was “brilliant, he was outstanding”; KAF himself was more modest - “I thought that I had a decent game” – and described the fans as “very noisy!”. Son, that was far from our loudest. Wait til you score the winner at Rochdale in a few weeks.

You may have seen on social media that Mike Fondop’s partner posted about “3 male fans swearing and hurling abuse at Mike right behind me knowing I was sat in front of them with his little girl” and thanked the Oldham fan that checked on her and apologised on their behalf.

Elen Taylor

There is no excuse for this shitty behaviour. Even if they claim they didn’t know that his partner and daughter were in front of them – and the little girl wearing an Oldham shirt with PAPA 9 on the back should have been a clue – maybe don’t be a shouty aggressive dickhead, whoever you’re sitting next to? “I work all week and I’ve paid my money, I’m entitled to my opinion!” Yeah, plenty of us work all week, we’ve all paid our money, and we haven’t paid it to have an over-entitled self-absorbed arsehole scream down our earhole all afternoon instead of getting the therapy he needs for his anger management issues. Grow up.

If you see Ian Coop in the fans’ bar before or after today’s game, by the way, buy him a pint.

Today’s the real start of the season. A big crowd at home against one of the teams tipped to be a promotion rival (I am prepared for that sentence to come back to bite me on the arse), at lunchtime cos we’re on telly cos we’re massive. Let’s make it sound massive. And go easy on the 11am Jagers. KTMFF.

📸 Thomas Lee Stacey

Written by Arlene Finnigan