You are currently browsing comments. If you would like to return to the full story, you can read the full entry here: “Team weighed down by “the biggest game in our history” factor?”.
Tags: Blackpool, Play Off Final
You are currently browsing comments. If you would like to return to the full story, you can read the full entry here: “Team weighed down by “the biggest game in our history” factor?”.
Tags: Blackpool, Play Off Final
Excellent point about media pressure, Other Bob. I think most of us expected us to win but we were all too afraid to shout it from the rooftops so as to not jinx it. The press, on the other hand, had us marked as winners before the first ball was kicked. This must’ve played into Blackpools’ hands, as they could quietly go about their business and prepare in their own way.
I was way too nervous to “let go” (in terms of singing, etc) on the day, and so were plenty around me. The press had planted in our minds that losing was not an option.
This must’ve affected the players, because half the team bottled it (worst I’ve seen McNaughton & Burke in a long time and Whittingham was the Whittingham of old). But another major factor was not having any kind of plan b when Bothroyd went off. When he & the team click we can be unplayable at this level, but when he is off form (or off the pitch) we have serious problems, and putting a winger in his place was never going to work. This has been a gripe all season though, and it should not have been exposed in “the biggest game in City’s history”(!).
But what’s done is done, and it is going to be VERY interesting Summer.
I don’t know if you have read this already Phil, but this arrogant drivel from Terry Phillips is exactly the sort of thing I was thinking of. After going on about the “biggest game in the club’s history”, he then writes off Blackpool – you can see from the comments the article attracted that this was noticed by their supporters and so you have to wonder if it also got through to Ian Holloway and the Blackpool players.
People disagreed with what I put on my blog yesterday about the impact the “biggest game in our history” had on our players, but I can’t help thinking that they are looking at things solely from their own perspective. There were 14 players who represented Cardiff on Saturday and some, but nowhere near enough, reacted in a positive manner to the challenge of “the biggest game in our history”, but the law of averages says that there will have been a few (and it would only need to have been two or three) who would be intimidated by it – especially when they are also being told that they are “red hot favourites” to win.
I maintain that the Blackpool team were under less pressure in the build up to the game than ours for quite a few reasons – the most important of which was that they are a much better run club than us and so defeat for them didn’t have the same ramifications as it did for us – the inability to cope with the loss of Jay Bothroyd was the biggest single reason why we lost on Saturday in my view, but there were other contributory factors and “the most important game in our history” stuff (combined with some of the idiotic reporting that went with it) was one of them.