Can anyone help me out here? I’m confused.

I’ve only been watching City since 1905. I really haven’t got the hang of seeing us three up away from home, strutting around like we own the place, disdainfully rubbing a perfectly competent home side’s nose in the dirt. But that’s what a large travelling support enjoyed at Plainmoor last night.

I mean, I really could get used to it. It’s just that right now it’s a shiny, brand new feeling.

Better than Northampton away last season? Well, you know, that victory, glorious though it undoubtedly was, felt a shade vulgar compared with last night’s canter. There were spells during that 5-1 crushing of hapless Northampton when our team looked like an eager bantamweight, looking to unload yet more volleys of punches on a dazed and beaten opponent. Last night we were more like a sublimely self-assured thoroughbred racehorse, lengthening the stride, doing quite enough to win but with time to settle back and glance in superior fashion at the astonished but enraptured crowd as the winning post beckons. We toyed with Torquay, we looked a Division and more better than them. A 4-1 win at Preston in the mid-80s comes to mind as an experience of similar devastation, but this kind of magnificence is not the Tiger norm.

Incisive attacking. A positionally sound midfield. Alluring width down both flanks. Muscular defending. Top-drawer goalkeeping. A sheen of self-confidence from 1 to 11. As I say, I could get used to it.

Myhill
Hinds Cort Delaney Dawson
Green Junior Ashbee Elliott
Barmby Alsop

Cort for the injured Joseph, but otherwise as Saturday, with retention of the ploy that saw Barmby free to roam and, in particular, to switch at will with Stuart Elliott.

And, again following Saturday’s model, we were ahead comfortably inside the first ten minutes of the game. The Torks began fluently, we replied in kind, and the first seriously imaginative moment of football brought us an opening goal. Barmby and Allsop attempted an audacious one-two on the edge of the box but were repelled by sheer weight of numbers rather than well-judged defending. The home side, understandably panicked by our attacking slickness, had left Stuart Green unmarked twenty yards from goal and when the loose ball tumbled out to him he had the simple task of lashing the ball just above the bounce directly back into the far corner of the net, allowing Bossu in the Torquay goal not the slightest chance of stopping the ferocious shot even though he had a good view of its full trajectory.

Yep, simple as that.

Ahem. Very, very high-quality stuff. Attacking panache, total conviction, just marvellous.

Soon after Alsopp strode clear of the defence and a smart cross-shot forced a full-stretch save from Bossu. But then the Torks began to take the game to us, and there were moments when we seemed to be at risk of defending a shade too deep. Then again, there were moments when Elliott surged clear down the centre, released a superb ball through the heart of the home defence to the feet of Barmby inside the box, who was clumsily bundled to the floor, got back willingly to his feet and shot against the keeper’s legs and watched in glee as the ball rebounded to Elliott who slammed it handsomely into the roof of the net.

That was 2-0, that was 20 minutes gone. This is thunderously brilliant. Who’s going to cope with us when we can attack like this?

Torquay had a decent slice of possession in the last quarter-and-hour or so of the half, and made a lot more of it than puny Bournemouth could manage last Saturday. On 28 a header slipped just the wrong side of the post and nestled in Myhill’s side-netting, fooling the unsighted home support who imagined they’d scored. Then a free-kick 25 yards out is blasted at the top corner – touched brilliantly on to the bar by Myhill, and we’re first to the loose ball to clear it. Then, on 34, the nippy Akinfenwa drifts intelligently into space at the back post, meets a deep cross and sends a deft header back across the face of our goal where it slaps meatily against the crossbar.

You could make a case that we are suffering here, and that with a bit of luck Torquay could have pulled a goal back and made a real game of it. And, City being City, a moaner here and there among our support was busily offering precisely that dismally negative argument. But come on, Torquay were the best side we played last season, and, with Kuffour and Akinfenwa up front and the very able Alex Russell in midfield, they had plenty of ability on the pitch last night too. Inevitably they’re going to enjoy spells of superiority. But we coped. Sure, we could have been a shade sturdier, especially down the right where Hinds was picked out as the Tork target-in-chief and never dispelled the impression that they’d done their homework accurately, but Delaney was back to his ruddy-cheeked best, Myhill was faultless and Ashbee and, even more so, Junior provided sensible cover from midfield when needed. And we were, after all, two goals to the good. As if to reinforce the point that we merely allowing the home side a glimpse of influence while we cooked up another dish of attacking succulence the final moments of the first half saw a slick Tiger attack, an Alsop surge to the by-line followed by a cross which a home defender sliced in desperation back beyond the keeper towards the top corner of his own net, only to be rescued from a comedy own goal by a team-mate hastily retreating to the whitewash of the goal-line and sticking his nut on the spinning ball.

A hot sun had long ago given way to a red orb sinking slowly towards the western horizon, and now, as the summer sun was confined to a few roseate flickers dancing on the twin church spires of Babbacombe, Plainmoor welcomed its floodlights, and we heralded a superb first-half from our team. The boys in blue – as we were last night – had done us very proud.

Torquay began the second half in lively fashion, but their most vivid moment arrived when a glancing header from a corner flew across the face of the goal and was booted off the line at the far post by Stuart Green. It looked close, it was close – but a player is stationed on the post to deal with exactly this, Green did deal with it. End of.

Doleful home manager Leroy Rosenior threw on two subs, to go with one already engaged in the play from half-way through the first period, and was promptly rewarded with a goal. To us. Stuart Elliott picked the ball up somewhere near the half-way line, surged forward with intent, set himself up for a left-foot shot from just outside the box and struck a low effort just inside Bossu’s left-hand post. Now, the absence of any reference to defensive interference is no oversight – it was a shoddy display of lethargy from Torquay’s midfield and central defence. But our team attacks with such purpose at present, with plenty of running off the ball to make space for the man in possession, that we’re close to irresistible. Torquay couldn’t cope. Because we’re great.

Half-an-hour left and rarely – maybe never – have we controlled a match so effortlessly. It wasn’t that Torquay had surrendered – they were understandably mooching around with little self-belief by now, but they were still canny enough to pose a problem here and there, notably when Cort was taken on for pace and was grateful to Delaney for cleaning out the cross and on a couple of other occasions when Myhill pouched shots from distance safely. And it wasn’t that we had taken out the ignition keys and garaged our elegant motor for the night – there were glimpses of a fourth, notably when Barmby slipped a shot just past the post, and when Elliott, arriving at the back post, had a shot from a narrow angle hoofed off the line. What was most pleasing was the shape of our team and the confidence of our players. Well-organised at the back, supported by the so-far admirable Junior and Ashbee, who are making opposing midfields bite on granite as they try to find space to hurt us down the middle, and full of invention and imagination out wide and up front. Big squad. Scoring goals, and not conceding them. We were supercilious last night, we were merciless, and as the second half progressed Torquay visibly didn’t have a hope.

France came on for Green, then Wilbraham for Barmby and finally Walters for Alssop, and the points were safely bagged for the return journey up to Hull. The only unsavoury footballing moment of the evening arrived with five to go, when Wilbraham assaulted an opponent’s elbow with his jaw. The youngster will have to learn there’s no place for this in the modern game, and referee Hall ensured that he walked off for first use of the soap. I don’t want to see this again from Wilbraham, and if he’s planning on using his shin to cause abrasion to an opponent’s boot delivered at his leg at high velocity or even to allow his torso to pour blood-stains over a dum-dum bullet fired at him from close-range by an opposing full-back, well, I shall think the less of him.

The Torquay defender, he of the flying elbow, was also sent off, and left the field with a guilty smirk. Poor Wilbraham looked understandably baffled.

All that remained was for Ian Ashbee to send a fierce header just a foot too high to beat another understandably puzzled City player, his own goalkeeper Boaz Myhill, and we counted down the three added minutes to a thumping victory.