After all of the comings and goings of the previous week, the last seven days were always going to be quieter as the City squad headed off to the Algarve for their week of warm weather training interrupted by a couple of games against two of the top three teams in Portugal if the 22/23 league table is to be believed.
Lisbon pair Benfica and Sporting Lisbon along with Porto have traditionally been the big three in Portugal, but Sporting had to give way to Braga in 22/23. Porto were two points behind champions Benfica, but seven points behind them were Braga who sealed a Champions League place by finishing four points ahead of Sporting.
So, with matches against Braga and then Porto to play, City were up against a couple of Champions League qualifiers from what I would call one of the strongest, probably the strongest, of the second tier of European leagues behind the big five of England, Spain, Italy, Germany and France – indeed, Porto have won what is probably the premier club competition in the world in their time.
Therefore, a 1-0 loss to Braga on Wednesday evening courtesy of a soft, but correct in my opinion, penalty award was nothing to get too down about. Indeed, there were encouraging aspects to the night for me, Braga were, just about, deserving winners, but it was never a case of City hanging on against their superiors – they spent long periods without the ball and defending, but there was an impressive organisation and discipline to City’s defending throughout.
Turning to the part of the team which disappointed me , I should say first of all that, clearly, the quality of the opposition has to be borne in mind and the fact that our second half front three (Karlan Grant, Yakou Meite and Ike Ugbo) are all newcomers to the squad (indeed, only the last named had, very brief, experience of playing for City previously) makes it hard to jump to any conclusions about how that trio will team up once the competitive stuff starts.
However, the brutal truth as I saw it was that the similarities were there with last season. Erol Bulut said that Wednesday’s first half front four of Keiron Evans, Kion Etete and Ollie Tanner backed up by Rubin Colwill playing as a number ten behind them struggled to create chances, whereas the second half forwards (with Callum Robinson in the number ten role behind the three newcomers mentioned earlier) were an upgrade on that.
Our manager is right, the four second half forwards had the look of a Championship front four to it in the way that the first half quartet didn’t, but, try as I might, I couldn’t see the evidence that we looked more likely to score in the second half than we did in the first. True, we forced a lot of second half corners, but these came to nothing because, strangely, we had Ryan Wintle taking them on the right and Joe Ralls on the left, so we were limited to sending in outswingers all game.
The main positive was that Grant out on the left. often had the beating of the Braga right back (Evans was able to enjoy some success against him in the first half as well) and the closest we came to scoring after the break was when a defender narrowly avoided turning the ball into his own net as he tried to deal with a low Grant cross pulled back from the bye line. For me though, the closest we came all game was in its first few minutes when some slick link play of a type not seen in the second half ended with Evans getting away a shot that was just about cleared off the line by a defender.
Braga wasted a couple of chances on the break as City searched for an equaliser late on, but they were isolated incidents in a game with little goalmouth action which still made for a decent watch.
The goal came in the last ten minutes of the first half when Mahlon Romeo (not at his best so far this pre season) grabbed the shirt of his winger just inside the penalty area. The referee, who was hopeless, pointed to the spot and captain Jak Alnwick, who played the whole game, was sent the wrong way by the scorer – it was a very soft penalty but, ,for me, a correctly awarded one.
City have just played the second of their matches in Portugal as they faced up to FC Porto in front of a decent sized crowd in a game which has left me somewhat baffled. Did I just watch a team that will improve greatly on last season or did Porto swat us aside like a mildly irritating gnat without really getting out of first gear?
There’s a game against QPR that I’ve referred to from time to time on here in recent years which I was reminded of as I watched the first half of tonight’s match. Back in October 2019, about a month before Neil Warnock left, City entertained QPR in an evening game and it was one of the strangest matches I’ve ever seen – City won 3-0 while being played off the park and the visitors must have left the pitch after the game wondering what on earth had just happened to them.
Although not quite as one sided, the first half tonight was similar – City dominated while playing some really attractive and tidy football, yet went in 2-0 down as their opponents scored from their only two worthwhile attacks.
City have shown hints of being able to move the ball around quite stylishly in their pre season – there was evidence of this in their match with Cambridge a fortnight or so ago and it was there for spells in their midweek encounter with Braga.
There are similarities with how we were playing out from the back at the beginning of last season under Steve Morison – I really enjoyed some of our early performances in 22/23, but there was always the elephant in the room that we weren’t scoring enough goals when we were playing well.
It was much the same in the two earlier games I mentioned, we were right on top for long spells against Cambridge and had Braga on the ropes at times, but, on both occasions, periods of superiority did not bring the sort of goalscoring chances they should have done – it wasn’t that we were missing chances, more that there were barely any of them.
For much of tonight’s match, it was different. The chances were there, particularly early on, and yet we made nothing of them. Last season, all City fans got too used to seeing promising situations wasted through poor execution in terms of shoddy technique and a failure to appreciate that others were in a better position when it came to shooting from twenty yards or more and, if the player concerned did opt to pass, it tended to be poorly executed to the extent that momentum was lost.
That was there in abundance in the first fifteen minutes or so tonight and you couldn’t help but notice how Porto cut us wide open the first time they strung anything together with slick passing and movement – you could point a finger at some of the defending and there was an element of luck to it, but the goal which put us one down involved some high quality attacking play.
Erol Bulut was right to note that we’d wasted four good opportunities before Porto opened us up, but, to be fair, not all of the reasons why we ended up with yet another nil were down to our failings in front of goal. Sheyi Ojo, replacing the injured Yakou Meite, gave a reminder of what he can be capable of during the first forty five minutes when he was our most effective forward – he did nothing wrong when timing his run on to a lovely chipped pass by Ryan Wintle to round the keeper only be foiled by a clearance off the line or when he cut in from the right and curled a shot which looked sure to go into the top corner, only for the highly rated Porto keeper Diego Costa to superbly turn it aside.
City responded well to being a goal down and there were more narrow escapes for their illustrious opponents as the otherwise anonymous Ike Ugbo shot across the face of goal and Karlan Grant was not too far wide.
The half went into added time with City wondering how they were behind, but, by the time it ended, they were two down. Bizarrely, VAR was in operation during the game, but it may as well not have been as a clear foul on Mark McGuinness was ignored which left the centreback on the ground and out of the game with the ball about twenty five yards from our goal. However, there was no great danger until Ebou Adams, on as a sub for Joe Ralls who had gone off, hopefully, as a precaution, with what looked like a groin issue, presented the ball back to Porto and from there scoring was simplicity itself for such a talented team.
Although playing out from the back is bad for supporters’ nerve at times, we, almost always, get away with it when we have Ralls and Wintle as our midfield pivots, but they’re the only two I’d trust to play in such a manner if Aaron Ramsey is going to be used further forward. Now we’re getting to seeing more of Adams, it’s clear he has parts to his game that can be a benefit to us in much the same manner as Andy Rinomhota, but I wouldn’t want to see them in the sort of positions Ralls and, particularly, Wintle get into as we try and create the triangles that can get us moving up the pitch with the ball under our control.
Half time saw the introduction of Ramsey for Callum Robinson and, within about twenty seconds, he had played the sort of pass I’m not sure we saw once from a City player last season to set Grant free. The man on loan from West Brom did well to pull his cross back to the oncoming Ramsey who tried to place his twenty yard shot low into the corner off the net, only to see it hit the upright and bounce away.
Maybe City were resting on their laurels after such an eye catching piece of play because, within seconds, the ball was up the other end of the pitch and McGuinness took too long to get his clearance away thereby provoking a mad scramble which saw Perry Ng acrobatically clear off the line only for the ball to hit Wintle and head back towards goal. Ng again kept the ball out, but when a Porto player shot from ten yards, the ball hit Wintle’s hand for the sort of offence that VAR is always going to penalise with the modern interpretation of the law.
I mentioned that the Portuguese ref on Wednesday was hopeless, well so was this one as he went from letting everything go before the break to booking anyone who breathed after it – Wintle was the first player to see yellow, but far from the last, there must have been six or seven others.
At 3-0, City knew the game was gone and, understandably, their standards slipped accordingly as Porto took control. VAR came to our rescue with a dubious decision to award a free kick for a foul when it looked like Porto had made it 4-0, but one of a host of late City subs, Xavier Benjamin made a present of a back pass to enable them to make it four legally and complete the scoring.
Benjamin has played a lot with the first team in recent weeks, but it’s hard to avoid the feeling that he’s not ready for it yet and, if Ng is not going to be considered in that position, then we need more cover in that area before the transfer window closes.
Ramsey continued to show that he can be a danger for opponents if he can be found in what I’ll call classic number ten positions, but it was Keiron Evans who had City’s only other worthwhile chance of the second half as his clever shot from twenty five yards forced a save from Costa that was not in the class of the one he made from Ojo, but was still a good one in itself.
With nine subs allowed to be named from this season (too many in my opinion), I’d like to see Evans rewarded for his good pre season form with a regular place in the matchday squad – I think he’s done enough in the last few weeks to deserve that.
So, just one pre season game left and, to try and answer the question I set at the start, I think I’m just about in the glass half full camp – we need more cover at the back and, apparently, we’re still after another midfield player, but there are enough signs there o suggest we can move forward a bit from last year.
The truth for me is that we weren’t a bunch of lightweights that Porto were able to see off while barely raising a sweat – of the goals we conceded, one was down to good play by our opponents aided by a little luck, but the other three were definitely avoidable and you’d like to think that we won’t see such assistance given to our rivals when the real stuff starts.
So, mildly optimistic I suppose, but with the caveat that if you take away the okay, but nothing special, five we scored against the two Cymru Alliance teams, our goalscoring record is pretty miserable – we look better equipped up front this season and players need to be allowed to settle in, but it would be good to see more evidence of an improvement in this part of the game.
Bulut revealed that Isaak Davies and Max Watters had not travelled to Portugal and were available for loan – indeed, Watters is rumoured to be wanted on a permanent basis by the Barnsley team he spent time with on loan last season. Portsmouth, Charlton and Oxford were all reported to be interested in Davies and he scored in one of the two sixty minute matches played by the under 21s at Weston Super Mare. on Tuesday.
Cian Ashford got the other goal as the first game was won 2-0 and it was Caleb Hughes and James Crole who scored in a 2-1 victory in the second match.
Last night, a young City team travelled to the Rhondda valley to face Cambrian and Clydach Vale in a Nathaniel MG Cup tie watched by a crowd of around a thousand. The home team scored early on, but an own goal and a fine Ashford effort had the visitors ahead at half time, only for a home equaliser to send the tie to penalties. City looked dead and buried when they were 3-1 down in the shoot out, but three straight misses by their opponents enabled them to scrape through 4-3..
A couple of other news items to finish with, City have signed eighteen year old striker Finlay Johnson (son of Palace’s former England striker Andy) from Stevenage for their under 21 squad and, apparently, around 700 more season tickets have been sold since Aaron Ramsey’s arrival to take the total purchased above 15,000.
