The quiet Koumas goes from strength to strength.

Posted on November 20, 2011 by The other Bob Wilson

If you had asked a cross section of City fans their opinion on Dave Jones by the time he was relieved of his duties at Cardiff last May after Reading had walked all over us on our own pitch in our biggest game of the season, I’m sure you would have got a variety of answers as to why it was the right decision. For me, his treatment of young players in general, and Adam Matthews in particular, was the thing that probably swayed it, but I’m sure there would be others who’d mention his lack of animation on the touch line, his tactical stubbornness, his failure to react to changing situations by making substitutions and his abysmal relations with the local media to name but a few of the reasons why they thought it was time for him to go. However, in any examination of our ex manager’s time with the club, it needs to be remembered that that not only did he sign Peter Whittingham, but he also did so for an absolute bargain fee (often reported as just £350,000, but there are those who’ll tell you it was even less than that).

Yes, that one piece of business in January 2007 is enough in itself to negate many of the aspects of Dave Jones’ management which rubbed people up the wrong way – has there been a better all round midfield player in the Championship over the past three seasons? Mind you, although I’ve become a confirmed Whittingham admirer, there was a time two or three years ago, when he was first linked with Nottingham Forest, when I would gladly have sold him for a fee which looks like absolute peanuts now because there was a maddening lack of consistency and substance to his game. He was a one good game in three merchant in his first two or three seasons with us and I think I’ve mentioned on here before that I often used to look at certain fixtures (usually away games) and predict that he wouldn’t last more than an hour before being subbed – I was proved right at least as often as I was wrong.

Yet, even during those times when he was such a source of frustration, there were plenty of examples of what a talent he was. Very early in his City career, Whittingham scored the first in a whole series of great goals for the club when he visited the Championship club nearest to his birthplace of Nuneaton – the goal he scored at Coventry in February 2007 would probably not feature in any top twenty of goals Peter Whittingham has scored for us, but it was still a quality strike which you couldn’t imagine many others in the team at that time scoring. However, it was a piece of skill that turned the experienced Graham Alexander inside out while laying on a goal for Michael Chopra in a 4-1 win over Preston which convinced me that we had a player capable of doing amazing things with a football on our hands. I was stood on the Grange End about ten yards away from where the Scottish international full back was left flat on his backside, but I didn’t have a clue how Whittingham had done it – it was only when I watched it later on telly that I saw the amazing sleight of foot that had dumbfounded Alexander.

An animated (by his standards anyway) Peter Whittingham celebrates the latest in a long line of ridiculously good goals in a Cardiff shirt after opening the scoring inside two minutes at Reading yesterday.

It was after this that I first started calling Whittingham the quiet Koumas. A year earlier Jason Koumas had lit up Dave Jones’ first season at Cardiff with a series of virtuoso performances which contained moments of individual skill of a quality that hadn’t been seen from a player in a City shirt in decades – Whittingham suggested that he could take up the Koumas mantle, albeit in a completely different way. Although Koumas was another who never went in for excessive celebrations when he scored, his moments of magic tended to have a big influence on proceedings. From his stunning goal against Leeds within minutes of his introduction for his City debut, to the numerous match winning free kicks or assists during that very enjoyable season, Koumas demanded to be noticed, whereas Whittingham went about his business in a far more understated manner – his You Tube moments tended to be of a blink and you miss it variety and, as the weeks and months went by, I began to notice that they tended to have little influence on the outcome of matches.

However,  things slowly began to change and, looking back, I think the seeds for the transformation of Peter Whittingham into the player he is now were sown in our run to the FA Cup Final in 2008. In the Fifth Round against Wolves he scored very early on when he was put clean through on goal from just inside in the Wolves half – any player who is clear of the last defender but is forty yards or more from goal has plenty of time to think before he gets to the position where he will shoot and many might have frozen in such a situation, but I can remember Dave Jones saying that the City bench had no fears of Whittingham doing that because he was the best finisher in the club. A few weeks later up at Middlesbrough, Whittingham was very influential in City’s superb win, as he not only scored  a marvellous goal when he beat about five defenders in a very confined space before curling in a superb shot with his, weaker, right foot, but also made Roger Johnson’s second goal with a pinpoint free kick.

Mark Hudson' gets the decisive goal in yesterday's 2-1 win with a neat finish - no need to ask who provided the assist with a beautifully delivered free kick.

This was Whittingham having a huge influence on big matches, but the old inconsistency and diffidence didn’t really disappear fully until 2009/10 when he was the Championship’s leading goal-scorer. Last season his game developed further as he made the transformation into a central midfield player who began to become more of a rounded player whose defensive awareness showed signs of improvement. Whittingham was the shining light in a midfield which still had a tendency to get over run too often, but it was usually to him that Craig Bellamy looked when in possession and, until he ran out of steam in the second half of the second leg, he was by far and away City’s best player in the two Play Off games against Reading.

Yesterday against the same opponents, Whittingham continued his brilliant form this season. No doubt having better (and, often, more) midfield players around him is helping, but, speaking as someone who believes that all Championship players over a certain age have weaknesses to their game, it is becoming increasingly hard to spot them in Peter Whittingham this season. Yesterday, Adam Federici followed Frank Fielding and Julian Speroni in being made to look a bit foolish by Whittingham as he made it three goals in three games – to be fair to Speroni, although it may have looked like he could have saved that free kick, it was so well placed that it was always just out of his reach, but Fielding did not have a clue where Whittingham was going to put the ball when he scored and Federici was just left flat footed by a moment of pure quality. When I saw the goal I thought that, coming from anyone else, it might have been a fluke, but, given who it was, the scorer knew exactly what he was doing – I then logged on to a City messageboard and read four or five messages saying the exact same thing!

The quiet Koumas has now developed so much that I would say he is producing performances week in, week out that are better than what we saw from the man himself in 2005/06 – there are now the match winning centre stage moments of magic, but there is also a team ethic and responsibility that wasn’t always there with Jason Koumas. Given how highly I rated Koumas six seasons ago, I’m paying Peter Whittingham some compliment there, but it’s a richly deserved one and, although I’m at an age now where songs for players is not a subject that occupies my mind too much, I must say that all of us should be ashamed of ourselves for not coming up with something to recognise what a special player we have had at the club over these past five years. I’m no songwriter, but I’ve already decided on a personal tribute to a player who now has to be ranked right up there with the best I’ve seen at the club – I mentioned on here just under a fortnight ago that my dog had died and, as yet, I don’t know whether the new one I’m going to get is going to be big or small, a mongrel or a pedigree or a dog or a bitch, but I do know I’ll call it Whitts.

 

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Forget “it’s just like watching Brazil”………..

Posted on November 13, 2011 by The other Bob Wilson

after watching the first twenty minutes of our our 4-1 demolition job on Norway (ranked twenty fourth in the world) yesterday, surely “it’s just like watching Wales” is more appropriate? In saying that, when the second goal went in, I couldn’t help mentioning the similarity between the Norway performance up to then and the one they gave in Wrexham in 2008 when they subsided meekly to a 3-0 defeat against a Jason Koumas inspired home side. Excellent as Wales were in those opening stages yesterday, it was hard to forget Brede Hangeland’s pre match comments about the Norwegian team finding it hard to get motivated for a friendly in Wales so soon after missing out on a Play Off spot for Euro 2012 on goal difference – were Wales just taking advantage of a disinterested opposition who were making them look good?

Being fair, the answer to the question probably has to be “yes”, but only to a degree, because what happened after those first twenty minutes reflected well on both sides while also suggesting that Wales are becoming a side to be feared on the international stage. If Norway would rather have been somewhere else in those opening stages, the feeling did not last long once they had gone 2-0 down as they paid Wales the complement of going like for like with them by switching to 4-5-1 and then began to work their way back into the game. For three quarters of the match, there could be no doubts about Norway’s level of commitment – they were hard working, passed the ball neatly at times and had more than their fair share of possession as they pressed Wales back.

However, apart from a fine shot against the post by Mohammed Abdellaoue and one other incident, they caused Wales few problems in the first half and that one incident I mentioned offered a telling illustration into the contrast between the dilligent, but fairly predictable, Norwegian team and their vibrant and confident opponents. Norway were able to break from a Welsh corner and a fairly lucky bounce of the ball saw Portsmouth’s Erik Huseklepp presented with a clear run in on goal from the half way line – for a while it looked certain that the visitors would pull a goal back, but Adam Matthews showed not only the pace to catch his opponent very quickly, but then also the technique to win the ball cleanly when he knew that any mistiming of the challenge on his part would lead to an inevitable red card.

Okay, the keeper should have done better, but Gareth Bale's viscous volley for the first Welsh goal was an example of a confident player succeeding because he was good enough to to do something difficult and unexpected.*

Technique allied with pace, that’s what Matthews showed in that incident and that is what Wales had that their opponent’s didn’t. The technique was there for the Norwegians, but they were never able to show it while travelling at the same types of speed as some of the Welsh players did – for much of the time from the twenty minutes mark onwards, Norway were the team who had more possession, but, for the most part, they did not have the pace to seriously inconvenience Wales. There were a few wobbles from the home side after Wayne Hennessey’s awful mistake (with his poor showing at Man City recently, it’s not been a good fortnight for the usually reliable Wolves keeper) gifted Huseklepp a goal and Morten Gamst Pedersen hit the frame which keeps the net in place with a shot that looked to have beaten Hennessey.

With Norway chasing the equaliser though, there was always the chance that Wales could hit them on the counter and when they did, it was that combination of pace and technique that did for the visitors. Bale’s flick to Bellamy to start the move which led to the third goal was a lovely bit of skill, but from then on, the move looked fairly simple as the two players combined to leave sub Sam Vokes with the easy task of tapping in Bale’s cross. The thing is though that all of this was done while travelling at speeds most footballers cannot reach – Bellamy and Bale were able to deliver the perfect passes in circumstances that fully tested their techniques and Norway never had anyone capable of moving quickly enough to see if their technique was up to those sort of tasks.

The excellent Craig Bellamy is congratulated after his goal by Adam Matthews whose fine all round display left me with very mixed feelings - Dave Jones has a lot to answer for as far as this player is concerned.*

Vokes’ second goal a minute later was a reminder that Wales now have a depth to their squad that hasn’t been there in recent years. While the goal didn’t involve the pace I talked about, it did show a good technique in action and this is something that now runs throughout the side. Although his standards slipped a little following his error, Hennessey is one of the best kickers of a ball around amongst modern keepers. the defenders are all pretty comfortable in possession (watching Darcy Blake yesterday, all I can say is City must have some team if he cannot get in it), we have a midfield capable of not only keeping the ball, but also passing it with a quality that causes opponent’s real problems and have a target man who is hardly a spectacular player, but his part in Bale’s goal shows that he shouldn’t be underestimated with the ball at his feet.

It’s becoming the norm lately in these posts on Wales games for me to give credit to a manager who I must admit to having real doubts about until fairly recently. With the score at 2-1 and Wales looking a bit nervous, Gary Speed sent on Hal Robson-Kanu. When I saw the Reading player about to come on, I assumed it was going to be for Bellamy or Bale, but instead he went for Joe Allen (who played well enough, but, given all the fuss about his recent Swansea performances, I did expect a bit more from him). This seemed a very strange move to me as Aaron Ramsey dropped back and Bellamy switched to a more central role behind the lone striker, but it has to be said that the substitution worked a treat. As expected, Ramsey fitted in to his new role with no problems, while Robson-Kanu gave Wales even more pace on the break – it was an attacking substitution at a time when it must have been tempting to shore things up and all credit to Gary Speed for that.

Finally, Speed will be taking part in meetings to sort out the itinerary for Wales qualifying group for the 2014 World Cup and, as sixth seeds in a group of six, I doubt it if we will get our own way too often, but, such is the ability and confidence being shown by the team at the moment, it’s tempting to say let the other five teams do their worst as far as our schedule is concerned. Despite what I said about our improved squad depth earlier, the fact has to be faced that there are two or three players who we could not replace adequately if they weren’t available for any reason and, because of this, I’m reluctant to predict that we can finish in the top two of our group, but I can certainly see us having a big influence on who eventually makes it through – we are capable of beating anyone in the group on our day.

* pictures from http://www.walesonline.co.uk/

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