There’s been plenty of talk in what is almost a third of a season now about how poor the standard is in League One. I’d agree to the extent that we’ve seen quite a few pretty straightforward chances missed by opposition forwards – opportunities that you feel would be taken in the Championship.
However, I reckon Port Vale, Stockport, Leyton Orient, Reading and Bolton off the top of my head have all been impressive in their different ways at various stages of their matches with us.
More evidence that this is not a division to be underestimated was provided by a Blackpool team that was in the bottom four today, yet City could have been traveling home tonight on the end of a five or six goal hammering, rather than the sobering 3-1 loss they suffered.
I thought Blackpool were very good, they were direct and physical when required and yet all of their goals came from swift counter attacks – albeit helped by naive and ineffective defending. Defensively, they relied on goalkeeper Bailey Peacock-Farrell to a large extent, but they also did well to nullify City efforts to play through the middle while also dealing well enough with City crosses when they came in.
When you consider the number of one on ones the home side missed in the second half, there can be no doubting that they were deserved winners, yet this was a very odd game in some respects.
If I had a concern about City so far this season it was how in too many games we were rendered almost completely impotent in terms of goal scoring – e’g. Port Vale, Wimbledon, Stockport, Bolton and Peterborough.
For all that we were impressive in winning at Wrexham, we were in “wouldn’t have scored if they were still scoring now” mode in the two 1-0 losses either side of that game – it wasn’t like that today though.
The BBC stats (especially the attacking ones) make for remarkable reading
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/live/c3w97w02n1xt#MatchStats
Forty seven touches in the opposition penalty area, twenty eight goal attempts, eleven on target. We didn’t labour away to no attacking effect today.
In fact, for about twenty five minutes we were very impressive with all of the youngsters in the team showing why they’ve created such a positive impression this season – Kpakio, Lawlor, Joel Colwill and Ashford all had their very good moments, while Joel Bagan was influential down the left, Alex Robertson showed he can be a more than decent number six at this level and Rubin Colwill was “running the game” for a spell.
City put together some lovely, fluent, moves during this time with the older Colwill, twice, Joel, Kpakio and Omari Kellyman all being foiled by Peacock-Farrell who would also deny Robertson and Yousef Salech after the break.
Calum Chambers also missed with a header from within the six yard box at 1-0 down. It was a bad miss, but although many of Peacock-Farrell’s saves were good ones, i wouldn’t say any of them were stunners and so you have to think that some of the multitude of chances we had should have been taken – the keeper should not have been given the opportunity to make some of his saves.
City started with a back four which included Lawlor and Chambers at centreback, Robertson was behind the Colwill brothers, with Kellyman and Ashford supporting Salech.
The aforementioned centrebacks were given an early examination that they only just passed as they defended long balls forward with a high line that the home front two of Tom Bloxham and Ashley Fletcher looked to exploit with their physicality.
With a very aggressive pressing game, Blackpool should have been front in three minutes when Chambers struggled to deal with Peacock-Farrell’s punt and the ball fell to CJ Hamilton who should have done better than stab into the side netting.
City continued to struggle with Blackpool’s directness as the home side really went for it in the opening stages.
City rode their luck and kept it at 0-0 until Blackpool’s energy began to wane – as it had to. For the rest of the first half, City looked likely scorers of the game’s first goal, but the final five minutes saw a bit of a Blackpool revival during which Bloxham volleyed against a post from twenty yards.
It had been a breathless and very enjoyable first half with the mystery being how on earth it remained goalless, but, the second half saw one of the teams get on top and I’m afraid it wasn’t us!
The deadlock was broken just two minutes into the second half when Blackpool rather luckily played through City’s press and a single pass released Fletcher who had a run in on goal from the half way line. Great things were expected from Fletcher as a youngster , but he’s been something of an enigma as his career has been played out mostly at lower end Championship level it seems. Now, at 31, he finds himself at the bottom end of League One, but here he showed signs of the ability which had some predicting great things for him more than a decade ago as he buried his shot beyond Nathan Trott on his near post – although you do have to wonder why Lawlor did not try to force him wider.
City pushed for an equaliser, but their earlier attacking fluency had disappeared and BBM’s substitutions didn’t work. In fact, all they did really was make us more vulnerable to counter attacks, as we proved on plenty of occasions in the game’s final quarter as the ball was lost in all sorts of dangerous positions.
Substitute Emil Harrison provided the defence splitting pass on sixty nine minutes for the home team’s second goal as Fletcher nonchalantly clipped his shot over Trott.
What followed was concerning as City were continually opened up as they chased the game – this will happen under such circumstances of course, but it all looked very naive by City to me.
Callum Robinson, on as a sub, was dispossessed on the edge of the Blackpool penalty area in the eighty first minute and seconds later the ball was in our net as Bloxham made it three from fifteen yards.
I’ve not even mentioned yet that Bobby Madley was ref. He was his usual self with plenty of strange decisions against us, but he was an incidental figure here who played little part in the outcome of the game.
Madley was as harsh in his handling of Salleck as any of the League One refs this season, but there was a small reward for the striker deep into added time when Peacock-Farrell spilled Ashford’s shot into his path and he scored from five yards. However, for all that he gets little or no protection from the officials, I thought Bloxham, who cost millions less than Salleck, looked much the better striker today.
In fact, that could be said about so many of the players on the pitch today – the ones in blue may have had the bigger reputation, but the ones in tangerine were the more effective.u
At other levels, two early Millwall goals did for the under 18s at Leckwith this lunchtime – they were two down in fifteen minutes and suffered a rare loss despite Jack Sykes getting one back.
