IF you’re anything like me and my friends there will always be a part of the pre-game conversation in the pub which focuses on the club’s past. One of our favourite conversations looking back in time is about shortlived players. Sometimes they came in with considerable fanfare. More often than not they didn’t. As sure as night follows day, we often circle back to Ashlee Jones.

The conversation almost always starts with “do you remember when?”. After Saturday’s trip to Stockport County, we have a new candidate who might just challenge the mantle of Ashlee Jones. Step forward Osagi Bascome.

Before I go any further, I have just discovered Ashlee Jones is only 31-years-old and playing for Bedford Town in the Southern League Division One Central – the equivalent level to when we were in the NPL Division One North. For anyone who has forgotten, the infamous Jones played once for us in the Steve Staunton era and was in goal the night we lost 4-0 at Notts County, though he did not give the impression he was entirely familiar with the position of goalkeeper.

Unlike Jones, Bascome didn’t look as calamitous in his exceptionally brief substitute cameo appearance, but nonetheless looked well out of his depth. To be fair to the lad, I suspect he might have been asked to play out of position against a brutally well-organised and physical Stockport side.

Yet, despite the obvious challenge he faced, it would appear his arrival at the club is probably symptomatic of our situation, with a team desperately lacking confidence and a bit of genuine quality, willing to give anything and anyone a go to try and find a way out of a deep, dark hole which feels like it’s getting deeper and darker by the week. I might be unkind to the young lad, but his arrival feels like it has the hallmark of Paolo Mendes turning up in the final throes of Martin Gray’s reign.

Considering how low on confidence we are and how poor we’ve been in recent times, we actually had a decent tempo to our play and we knocked the ball around nicely. For a bit more composure, we might have even scored when Harvey Saunders was clean through on goal. Sadly, that was a rare sight of goal. For all of our possession, Stockport were in control pretty much all the way.

Their performance was typical of what we expect from a Jim Gannon side. Not terribly adventurous and determined first and foremost not to concede. For a team challenging for the title, they sat remarkably deep happy to let us have as much ball as we wanted knowing we’d struggle to get through. Rarely did we manage to get their defence turned facing their own goal. It was the sort of tactic that explains why Gannon has received so much stick from County fans over recent years. It’s great when you get the results but pretty turgid if not.

At 1-0, there was always a chance we might have been able to get something from the game with us having plenty of possession, but the dynamics changed when Luke Trotman got himself sent off. You could probably have argued for some leniency for both yellows and that there was a foul on Simon Ainge just before the penalised challenge, but ultimately it was a silly sending off. It showed poor decision making and immaturity to pull his guy back right in front of the referee.

Like so often this season, we were the architects of our own downfall. At 2-0 down, Stockport eased off and to be fair we gave them a decent go without really threatening. It was all very comfortable for our hosts.

A special mention goes to the 203 fans who made the journey, probably the smallest following I’ve seen at Stockport in a fair few visits. It turns out the fans are as punch drunk with this season as the players and yet for those who were masochistic enough to make the trip, the atmosphere generated throughout was highly commendable. The scant reward for making the trip, if there is to be one, will be the opportunity in ten or 15 years to recount the time we saw 23 minutes of Osagi Bascome.