Another promotion contender pushed all of the way, but it’s two defeats in four days for City.

Posted on January 29, 2017 by The other Bob Wilson

For the second consecutive game, I was unable to even listen to the radio commentary of yesterday’s 2-1 loss at Reading and, with it being broadcast live online as well, there seems little point me pontificating at any length about an encounter that I’ve seen very little of while many of those who read what I have to say have watched the whole ninety minutes!

So, here are a few quick thoughts/observations based on the online highlights package I’ve watched, some of Neil Warnock’s post match comments and one or two opinions I formed before and after the final whistle.

1. A lot of the “old guard” are becoming marginalised under Neil Warnock. The starting line up yesterday was interesting as much for who wasn’t involved as who was. For example, Rickie Lambert, Joe Bennett and Stuart O’Keefe were all missing from the match day eighteen, while Craig Noone remained on the bench in a match where we were looking for an equalising goal and Peter Whittingham was only introduced very late on. Tellingly, it was Kadeem Harris who Warnock turned to first when he made a change. With Rhys Healey in from the start and Declan John an unused sub, the fact that there is a way into the first team for those used to turning out for the Development team under this manager was re-emphasised.

2. Warnock certainly has a lot of faith in Greg Halford who he selected in front of another one of that “old guard” I mentioned earlier, Matt Connolly, to be part of a back three.

3. By mentioning twice that Allan McGregor was beaten on his near post for Brighton’s goal last Tuesday, Warnock rather gave away the fact that he thought his keeper could have done better with it and I wouldn’t be surprised if he was thinking the same about both of the goals we conceded yesterday. For my part, I wouldn’t be too critical of McGregor for his part in the first goal (I know plenty who will be though}, but the second one just looked wrong to me. Credit to Kermogant for his free kick, but, at the height it went in, you would have thought that one of, or both, out of the lining up of the wall or the goalkeeper’s positioning was at fault.

4. Seventeen goal attempts to eight in our favour rather tells a story on how the game panned out. As at Brighton, we seem to have competed well on the ground of an opponent at the top end of the league, but just came up short. For the first of these matches, it’s probably fair to say that our narrow defeat was down to Brighton being a bit better than us, but those attempts at goal figures suggest that this wasn’t the case yesterday.

5. That said, the fact that we only matched Reading when it came to attempts on target efforts (both sides managed four) rather makes Neil Warnock’s post match point about us lacking strikers who will get on the end of things when the ball is close to our opponent’s goal – although I do maintain that if Rhys Healey is given enough first team opportunities, he will score his fair share of “tap ins” like the one he got to secure the win over Burton last weekend.

6. Maybe Neil Warnock had the Burton game in mind when he said that he would rather his team play rubbish and win, than lose narrowly with a degree of credit like we have done in our last two games. All managers would probably say the same thing, but his words do betray that he recognises how easy it would be for us to drop back into the sort of precarious position we were in when he came here in the next few weeks. With a solid Preston side, who are proving hard to beat this season, and then a Norwich outfit capable of comfortably seeing off any team in this league on their day, coming here in the next seven days before successive away trips to Leeds and Derby, it’s certainly not beyond the bounds of possibility for us to lose our next four matches.

7. Our manager said that there seemed little chance of any transfer activity before the window closes on Tuesday, but, perhaps it is more accurate to say that there needs to be movement out before there can be movement in? If circumstances allow, I would not be surprised to see us go back to Aberdeen to try and get Jonny Hayes.

8. On that subject, maybe some of the players I mentioned earlier who were absent yesterday were injured (Warnock usually provides a straight answer to a straight question, but often gives very little away when discussing possible absentees through injury in his pre match press conferences), but it also could be that signals were being sent out to prospective buyers with some players.

9. Was anyone else a bit surprised to see us given that penalty? I thought it was probably a correct decision, but it struck me as the sort of decision an away side wouldn’t normally get.

10. Finally, it was Joe Ralls who took on the responsibility of taking the spot kick and he, just about, managed to beat a keeper who I believe has a good recent record when it comes to saving penalties. Although Ralls is thought of as something of a midfield grafter these days, I think he is someone who might, under different circumstances, give us some of the vision we could be accused of lacking these days. Ralls can be a creative and incisive passer of the ball, but the fact that Whittingham, Lambert, Noone and the absent though injury Pilkington would have, almost certainly, been ahead of him in the queue to take the penalty says something about where we are now as a squad. Healey and, to a lesser extent as Championship teams get familiar with his game, Zohore will have the capacity to surprise opponents for a while, but one of the things which make me think we could still be a relegation team is that we seem to have less and less players capable of doing something the opposition aren’t expecting.

Posted in Out on the pitch | Tagged , , | 11 Comments

The best goal of it’s kind I’ve ever seen City score.

Posted on January 28, 2017 by The other Bob Wilson

Eleven days ago, I wrote the following in this piece about the City Development team’s 3-1 win over Ipswich;-

“To illustrate what I mean, I need only describe the quite extraordinary goal that we scored early in the second half. Leading 1-0, City kicked off the second period and a couple of minutes later they had scored – the finish was a straightforward one and there was nothing in the five or ten seconds which preceded it which would merit it’s inclusion in any goal of the month/season competitions, but I believe my use of the word “extraordinary” is justified because as the teams took up their positions for the restart, I kept on asking myself if an Ipswich player had touched the ball in the second half yet?

Now I daresay that our opponents were able to get a foot on the ball somewhere along the way, but City were able to play passes, some simple, some not so simple, for what seemed ages as they pushed and probed for an opening while encouraging a press from their opponents and, when it did present itself, they were good enough to exploit it.

It was no surprise that, when it was played, the pass which opened Ipswich up came from Semi Ajayi. Last week I heard Nathan Blake say that there are plenty of central defenders who can “ping” a good long ball, but, based on last night and other matches I’ve seen him play this season, Ajayi is better at it than most. He’s not the finished article, as was shown when his failure to deal with what looked like a pretty straightforward situation allowed Albert Wilton to score Ipswich’s goal, but some of the passes he hits show exactly why Arsenal took him off Charlton when he was a teenager.

Ajayi’s fifty yard pass sent right back Greg Halford into acres of space and, if there was a slight suspicion that the cross which followed from the bye line was mishit somewhat, it still wrong footed many of the covering defenders as it rolled into the path of James Waite making the sort of late run into the box that I’ve seen him score goals for the Under 18s from.”

Leaving aside questions as to why it took so long for the club to realise quite what a classic goal their Under 23 team had scored, I’m pleased to say that this article on the goal, with accompanying video of the whole thing, on their website has proved me wrong on a couple of points.

First of all, the Semi Ajayi pass which so impressed me came a lot earlier in the build up to the goal than I thought it did and, more importantly, my assumption that an Ipswich player must have touched the ball at some time in the more than two minutes between the second half starting and the ball hitting the back of the net was incorrect – there were forty passes from City in a continuous passage of play without an Ipswich player getting close to the ball, the goal was even more “extraordinary” than I thought it was!

Now, I can imagine proponents of a more direct approach arguing, quite reasonably, that this is an extreme example of what pass and move football can achieve – what make that goal exceptional is that City’s Under 23s managed to keep possession of the ball for around ten times as many passes as it takes for the average goal to be scored.

Charles Reep was an accountant in the RAF who rose to the rank Wing Commander before turning his hand to statistical analysis of football games on his retirement. He quickly became an influential figure with his advocacy of a long ball game because his stats showed that most goals were scored after moves of four or less passes.
There have always been critics of Reep’s findings though with accusations of him not putting them into the proper context and that what may work in a lower league game in England is less likely to at higher levels where such basic tactics would be nullified more easily.

Yes, the stats show that eighty per cent of goals are scored from moves of four passes or less, but if you can make it to the end of this article concerning the increased use of what are called analytics in the game today, you’ll see a conclusion which claims that the man behind that stat (Charles Reep) did not analyse his findings enough, instead, he used them to justify a style of play which he favoured.

My own view of this is that the so called long ball approach can be effective and it’s a moot point as to what is most boring, a team getting nowhere by booting the ball forward into the air pretty aimlessly or a side which uses twenty passes to arrive back exactly where they were, or even further away from the opposition goal, before losing possession – I understand and applaud the desire to maintain possession of the ball, but not to the extent where there is no purpose behind the passing.

Going back to that pass by Ajayi, to me it embodies the best of both worlds. If all long balls forward by defenders were hit with the precision and technique that he showed with that one, then it would be hard to be critical of the sort of football Reep advocated, but you only have to see ninety five per cent of the ones played by City’s first team in any match this season to know that they aren’t.

It’s pretty clear under this manager that defenders are there to defend first and foremost, but if Semi Ajayi can ever satisfy Neil Warnock on that score to the extent that he trusts him to play in the first team, then he will gain a defender whose long passing would add an element to the first team’s game that they may not quite lack entirely at present, but they are very short of it – that pass wasn’t just a one off, Ajayi has shown over the past couple of seasons, albeit at the level below senior football, that his long passing is better than many of his seniors at the club who play in his position.

Anyone who watches City’s older age group teams play will know that, especially under Russell Slade and Neil Warnock, there are clear differences between how they play and the methods used by the senior side. Therefore. it could be argued that there is no point in the Under 23s being capable of scoring the sort of goal they did against Ipswich if they are never going to be able to play that way in the first team – if Waite’s goal eptomises the approach favoured by Craig Bellamy, isn’t it incompatible with the the more basic stuff we see from Neil Warnock’s first team?

My answer to that question is no. I say that as someone who appreciates what Warnock brings to the club, but becomes exasperated at how bad we are at retaining possession of the ball – I’ve not seen much of the Brighton match, but the way we fell down on some of the very basics of football in our three games before it (including Fulham in the FA Cup) was embarrassing at times.

There is always the proviso that they have to possess an all round game good enough to get them into the first team of course. but the more players we can get into the first team who have been used to playing in what I’ll call the Bellamy style, the more we’ll have a team with more than one string to their bow. We’ll have another way of coping with the challenge posed by the opposition when the long ball approach isn’t working and we’ll have a team which makes it harder for our opponents to get the ball off  them when we are leading late on.

Anyway, putting arguments about styles of play to one side, Waite’s goal may not be up there with the very best I’ve seen City score, but it is the best I’ve ever seen from us of it’s type – congratulations to all of those, on and off the pitch, who made it possible.

 

Posted in The stiffs | Tagged , | 3 Comments