Mancunia 0–0 Jesmond: Fielding is on a day trip

Oliver Fielding spent most of the match looking like a man who had forgotten why he had come to the stadium. It was a quiet afternoon for Mancunia FC, though that is a polite way of saying they failed to do anything of note. Fielding was the quietest of all.

He drifted. He wandered. He spent a significant amount of time staring at the turf as if searching for a lost coin. There was no real malice in the performance, just a general lack of urgency. He managed a few hopeful passes into the stands and a handful of touches that suggested he was merely visiting the pitch on a day trip.

It is a peculiar thing to watch a professional player look so thoroughly detached from the game. He was not out of position so much as he was out of the building. He lacked the honest graft required to break a deadlock, and the 0-0 scoreline felt less like a deadlock and more like a mutual agreement to do nothing.

He has tomorrow to fix it. There is barely any time to breathe before the next matchday, which is probably for the best. If he spends too long thinking about this one, he might actually start to feel the boredom.