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.
Good morning Paul – As usual, an excellent summary of recent games against two of the top teams in Portugal. Watching on the City website, I became irritated at what I considered to be such a biased commentary in favour of our lot, but I suppose as it is the “City’s” site, that is probably to be expected. Disappointing though.
I am not a fan of Ojo, but he was certainly one of our better players last night and if Mr Bulot can find what it is that is necessary to light his permanent “mojo” for every 90 minutes, then perhaps both flanks of the team will be effective. But just who will score the goals remains a problem for Ugbo last night was anonymous, and some of the shots taken from elsewhere were poor.
I agree about Benjamin, also that young Evans deservers a place on the bench, and perhaps Tanner also even if he didn’t appear last night. As an aside, Tanner seems to have a touch of the Grealish about him. Good to see Ramsey on the pitch and I hope that he is able to quickly strike up a working relationship with those who play ahead.
Watching Mr. Bulot’s interview after the match, he seemed to indicate that their may be more arrivals but that will make our squad pretty hefty. Is there not a limit as to the number of players each team may have in the EFL?
I think I am hopeful for the coming season, and a glass half full sums it up nicely.
Oh and one last remark. Dai’s reference to Alf Sherwood reminded me of just how great, and I mean great, full back he was. If only…..
Hola, Paul, compadre,
The best news I gleaned from your usual comprehensive report is that we have signed the son of Andy Johnson. Yes, he could turn out to be another Charlie Sheringham, Diego Sinagra or Brooklyn Beckham, but methinks any of those would not seriously weaken our current crop of non-striking strikers…
Only Meite instils any real confidence… but one wonders if he is going to be a Sicknote Anderton, or – perish the thought – an Isaac Vassell…!!
There are definitely plusses with Mr Bullet. Straight away, he has Ojo looking like a different man (how I loved BJA’s witty Ojo/mojo play on words) … I could not believe the transformation in him yesterday. And there were some fine speedy attacking moments, which with some luck would have borne fruit.
But the saddest thing for me is that I have a terrible hunch that Bulut might be a Steve Morison Mk 2… true, a more intelligent and classy version of Morison, and thus one who would never commit the PR blunders the hapless Steve made*. For it is clear that he is yet another who has joined the ranks of Pep’s Army: oh for a manager with the confidence to say ‘I can think for myself, and will risk being termed a Neanderthal for rejecting playing out from the back**… let the footballing cognoscenti think I am not bright enough… I don’t care’.
Managers everywhere are running scared… they must conform at all costs to modish thinking. And that includes stupid under-hit back passes… I wonder how many more kamikaze goals we will concede this season from those.
Goals two and four ‘from playing out from the back’ were worthy of Sunday League pub team defences… do not give a quality team like Porto a POMO on a plate… they will lap them up.
Goal three was McGuinness falling asleep. A pity, as I reckon he was the only good legacy that the egregious Mick McCarthy left us.
I will now take some solace in music. I think I will play Calum O’Dowda’s late grandfather singing one of my favourite songs… your MAYAn faithful can all feast their ears on it in my article here… and go the previous 14 in the series in the top right of the webpage
http://www.folkworld.eu/80/e/dai.html
* Bulut would surely have more sense than to keep repeating Morison’s mantra of ‘it is what it is’ after we’d been walloped 4-0 by the Swans… let alone compound such a faux pas by suggesting that the margin of the defeat was immaterial.
** play out from the back if you have a keeper like Edison, and a back 4 of Bertie Vogts,
Franz Beckenbauer, Sergio Ramos and Roberto Carlos…and two midfield pivots of Danny Blanchflower and Bobby Moore, but – God help us – with OUR lot…?! In the immortal words of John McEnroe’s Shakespearean ancestor… ‘thou canst not be serious!’
TTFN,
Dai.
PS
Omg… I have just read what I wrote.
I see Dr Freud has been working overtime in my subconscious… I note I called Mr Bulut “Bullet’. I think I am beginning to lose my marbles.
I should claim of course that it was not a typo but a deliberate reference to him seeming something of an Action Man after dear old Mark Hudson… but if I had ‘tried it on’ with you, it would have assuredly momentarily been a RUBBER bullet at best.
DW.
Neil Warnock has said that when being interviewed for a job as club manager (not Cardiff City) he was asked “would our supporters like the kind of football your teams play”
He claims to have replied “You mean winning football “
He was speaking my,and I think most,fans language here.
Winning games is the most important thing for a team’s supporter with entertainment being an added bonus
Or are there some City supporters who have fonder memories of the entertaining play off defeat against Blackpool than the drab playoff win against QPR?
All managers obviously want to play winning football but how many have the ability to utilise the resources at their disposal to do this?
Steve Morison somehow managed to convert us from being the best to the worst at scoring from set pieces
A bit like someone inheriting a pig farm and losing all his customers by diversifying from pork sausages to silk purses!
I think that Mr Bulut starts with better material than did Mr Morison and I expect him to be more successful whatever style of football he adopts.
I would feel more confident if he could bring in loan players like the young Everton striker Tom Cannon who did so well at Preston last season (unfortunately he is likely to go back there) and Newcastle keeper Karl Darlow who made some inspirational saves on loan at Hull last season.
Mike, compadre…
Karl Darlow…
To use current parlance… what a good ‘shout’ that is. I reckon that we have never replaced the Filipino* keeper.
And congrats on that ‘pork sausages to silk purses’ line. A real zinger that made me LOL.
* I know Mr Etheridge’s name all too well… so why did I not use it? Not sure… probably a subconscious desire to show the world that I can spell. (But then, what is spelling if not a fifth rate skill soon to be replaced by txtspk?)
Spell what?
Well… ‘Filipino’ of course… and know that it does not have a ‘double p’… unlike the word ‘Philippines’, which does.
TTFN,
Dai.
Thanks both for the replies. I think I’ve made it clear that, despite my revulsion for hoofball, I’m not against direct football when it is done well, but I have to play the part of Devil’s advocate when it comes to Neil Warnock. If he’d have left City in summer 2018 after getting us promoted, I would have argued for a statue of him to be placed alongside the one of Fred Keenor outside the stadium. His line about playing winning football held true until that point and I’d also say that I wouldn’t be too critical of the job he did in 18/19 despite the fact he only added to the feeling that he falls just short when it comes to top flight management.
However, I don’t believe the club has recovered yet from his dreadful recruitment during the summer of 2019 in particular. What his City team produced in his last eighteen months at the club was not winning football and, for the first few months of 19/20 Warnock’s slow paced and slow witted side with their clear technical deficiencies were playing hoofball – when Warnock isn’t winning games, his style of play offers the watcher nothing to enjoy whatsoever.
In saying that, we were always a threat from set pieces under Warnock and other managers who played direct football and I agree with Mike that the change in style Steve Morison wanted to introduce didn’t need to, and shouldn’t have had to, mean that a consequence was that we lost our ability to score from set pieces. Erol Bulut has spoken of us becoming better when it comes to attacking set pieces and a couple of goals for Mark McGuinness in the games against the Cymru Alliance clubs promised an improvement in that department, but, as the opposition has got better, we’ve looked pretty innocuous from free kicks and corners so far.
Finally, when it comes to playing out from the back, we handed two goals to Porto on a plate on Saturday by trying to do that – albeit one of them should have seen play stopped for a foul before Ebou Adams’ “assist”.
My view on this subject is that even the best sides will be caught out every now and then by this approach, but the positives gained from playing around and through the press will outweigh the disadvantages over the course of a season. It’s when you go down in ability from those sort of levels that things become more problematical.
With City, they always seem to be flying by the seat of their pants when they do it, but, although I stand to be corrected if anyone can come up with an example when playing out from the back has cost us a goal in a competitive game since the start of last season, my memory is that it has not done so yet.
It seems to me that Allsop, Wintle and Ralls along with a set of centrebacks who do not try anything too extravagant can just about get away with it, but as soon as one or more of the three individuals I’ve named aren’t involved, I think the approach should be shelved and, given that, for all of the fact that it hasn’t cost us a great deal yet, it also hasn’t brought about many measurable benefits (i.e. goals scored from it) either, so I wonder if it’s worth continuing with?
Paul compadre,
There’s not much to ‘break a lance with’ you over in your comments there. Indeed, your feeling that NW should have been given his P45 immediately after getting us promotion, is what I too was calling for at just that time of celebration. In my case I was partly thinking of Malky and his disastrous moves against Vincent: oh how 20/20 hindsight is a great thing… because had he left in the summer of 2013, we might well have been able to survive that initial season of internecine strife in the EPL.
But there was also my feeling that NW had been enormously lucky that promotion year, in having a Championship totally devoid of teams that made you want to shout ‘Bravo!’… and I knew he would struggle in the EPL, and (to be honest) was also afraid that he would do his usual trick of vastly overpaying for players… that last trait saw him reach his nadir when he was led into overpaying for the poor doomed Emiliano, by his friend the agent who alleged that other EPL teams were interested… although such ‘third party’ interest was later denied by those two clubs.
Where I would slightly part company with you Paul, is in your closing comments. My eyebrows were raised by these seven words from you: viz… ‘can just about get away with it’.
Now don’t get me wrong… I am not disagreeing with you re the substance of your point, i.e. the personnel you mention. But my issue is as to why would we’d want to get ‘away’ with anything? Particularly when there is no need.
Look, when an opposition team impose a strong press, there is no need to dice with death. You bypass Thomas Hardy’s madding crowd of midfielders and play a long pass into all that green space where your boys at the business end can run into and latch on to… and an immediate POMO can result.
There ought to be a petition for us to sign to get Charles Hughes – in his tenth decade – the knighthood he so well deserves.
But alas he is something of a prophet without honour in his own land.
But give it thirty years and some Young Turk will suddenly be lauded for telling the footballing world that there are more exciting ways of playing football than the tiki-taka of last season’s 60 pass tedious goal of Glasgow Rangers, up there on YouTube. And guess what? He will be the new Pep of his day… and be thought to have invented the wheel.
Charles Hughes will be 94 on Friday. For those MAYAn readers who may not so much need to ‘brush up your Shakespeare’, as ‘brush up their Charles Hughes’, here is a superb piece from Norman Fox from 30 years back…
https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/profile-the-professor-breaks-cover-charles-hughes-1507161.html
TTFN,
Dai.
PS. You ask for examples of playing out from the back costing us goals last season.
Now Paul, that puts me immediately on the back foot, as my memory post about 2003 is totally shot. Ask me all the kids who were in my class in Porth Junior School in 1956 and – all these years later – I can call all their names out in the same alphabetical order that our teacher called them out when doing the register at the start of morning proceedings.
The same goes for FA Cup winners of the 1950s and 1960s… gee, dig up dear ‘Memory Man’ Leslie Welch and I will give him a good run for his money on that era of football, cricket, rugby, boxing, tennis and athletics.
But ask me about the 21st century, and I am all at sea. Not only can I not tell you what I had for dinner last night, I cannot distinguish one recent Bluebirds’ season from another.
But when you say, playing out from the back didn’t really cost us last season… well even I instinctively think ‘ach, that cannae be’…
The thing is that ‘playing out from the back’ is an infestation that is with a team for the whole 90 minutes… and is not just about goal kicks*.
About an hour into the Huddersfield game, Jack Simpson finds himself under no real pressure with the ball at his feet near the goal line. I bet his instinct was to aim a ‘Paul Bodin’ long pass into space in the opposition half for the new fresh legs of Isaac Davies (just introduced 5 minutes before) to run on to. That was the only way to beat the Terriers’ press.
But no, he did not want to incur the wrath of Lamouchi, so followed the kamikaze drills he’d gone through down The Vale.
He plays a ball to Romaine Sawyers who is immediately set upon, and the midfielder then sells Cedric Kipre short with his hurried pass back.
Hungbo (was that his name…? whatever he was called, he looked the real deal and will come of age as a Championship player this season methinks)… well, he said ‘thanks very much’ and thumped the ball into the top corner of the net. And the ref may as well have blown the final whistle, because our heads dropped and they quickly got a second. One wonders whether NW managed to stop smiling and muttering ‘that would not have happened in my time here’ for the rest of the game… for it was a totally unnecessary goal to concede.
A goal furthermore that resulted from the insidious misuse of language… people have been so brainwashed with this ‘long pass = hoofball’ nonsense – not you Paul: to your credit, you know the difference – that they now feel that the very act of refusing to ‘play out from the back’ is an admission of some sort of intellectual incapacity… as if the managers who abjure modish thinking were products of the Remedial Class in the coaching school…!!
You and I have talked before about the great Billy Bonds, and we agree he was the greatest midfielder of our lifetime not to win an England cap. Could you imagine Billy not being afraid to play a long pass when he found himself with the ball near his own line? Never. (Mind you, he’d probably beat three men on his own first and get up to the halfway line on his own…!!)
I first saw Billy one Tuesday evening on the 14th September 1965, at The Valley, 3 days before his 19th birthday, and he just took us apart. His performance that night was incredible… passing the ball 40/45 yards on to a sixpence, after winning it with crunching – but fair – tackles. A Declan Rice on steroids. (How sad to see Billy looking so frail these days.)
… I was high up on the incredibly steep East Terrace (I think the largest standing terracing in the country, dwarfing Liverpool’s Kop… with only Odsal Stadium to run it close… in its rake and capacity…) and came away chastened… I had travelled to The Valley a couple of years earlier and stood in the same place (blessedly before fan segregation) to see us lose by the same thumping score of 5-2. Would I never learn?
But this time, I had witnessed with my own eyes a personal performance that one never forgets… like Greg Farrell’s against the Boro in May 66, or that astonishing performance by Alan Brazil for Ipswich in that crunch potentially title winning Easter 1982 game at the Vetch in which his movement for 90 minutes was the most intelligent and dangerous I think I ever saw by a striker in the flesh.
But back to that floodlit night at the Valley…
Billy’s midfield partners in that Charlton team were also formidable… the experienced captain Mike Bailey, and a 17 year old Scot (16 months younger than Bonds) who I also thought would be a name to watch. His name? Alan Campbell of course.
*the clue should be in the word itself, folks… viz…‘kick’ the ball
… don’t emulate Fred Karno’s Army by immediately surrendering a POMO to your opponents who have done Sweet Fanny Adams to deserve one.
DW
PS…
So Paul, I am off now to count some zeds, having been up since 4am. But I promise you that if you look at videos of all the goals City let in last season due to 3 managers having acute Pepitis… you will find upwards of 15 goals from being über clever when in defensive danger.
And I haven’t got started on suicidal back-passes: Mark McGuinness should have been horsewhipped for that crazy back-pass that surrendered the game at Bramall Lane, and led to them pulling away at 3-1… when at 2-1 down we were really in it, and had Connor Wickham not been unlucky with that thunderous effort that hit the woodwork, it would have been 2-2.
But then Mark spoils it all with that silly mistake. It should have been banged high into touch.
But you cannot blame him totally… he is encouraged to play this way by so called ‘enlightened’ managers. The same managers who let him also last season dodge being hit by a thunderous free kick whilst in the wall… and a goal then resulting.
C’mon Mark, you should be braver than that.
So, I take to my bed dreaming of a Footballing Nirvana where back-passes to the keeper are ‘streng verboten’, where men are men and are prepared to be winded… and the Big Rock Candy Mountain really exists…?
Apols for any typos. Too tired to proofread.
TTFN,
Dai.
Apols for an otiose question mark in my penultimate paragraph. Also for a second PS… when it should have been a PPS,,,
Well, I really WAS tired, and this morning on waking, my eyes were like uncut buttonholes.
DW.
To be fair Dai, I do end by questioning whether the whole playing out from the back thing is worth continuing with when. although we’ve largely been able to get by without conceding goals that are directly down to it, it’s hard to see many positive benefits from it when we were doing it under Steve Morison in particular.
I will concede though that the goal you mention against Huddersfield could be put down to it, but then again, two of the three players I mentioned who I generally trust to cope with playing in that way weren’t playing that day – Allsop was suspended and Ralls, who was selected at left wing back, had been taken off by the time Huddersfield scored. Romaine Sawyers is someone I’d say could have coped with such an approach a year or two ago, but, after a big improvement in Lamouchi’s first few games, his form totally deserted him towards the end of the campaign and I’m not sure how much Bulut will use him in the coming season – the fact we’re supposed to be chasing a new central midfielder despite our manager never having seen Sawyers play for City sounds ominous for the player.
Rightly or wrongly, I look at goals conceded from trying to play out from the back and from back passes as two separate things – the first is a fairly recent thing which has arisen since the method of play became trendy, whereas there’ve always been goals which have come about because of poor back pases to goalkeepers for as long as I’ve been watching the game.
One last thought about the POMO philosophy, we’ve been linked with Keiffer Moore recently. By Championship standards anyway, Moore has been someone who you can knock long passes up to and you can play off him, but, going back to his second season with us, he was often left completely isolated from his team mates, due, in my opinion, to a combination of managers who wanted the rest of the team to play deep (even at home) and players who didn’t have the pace and general athleticism to get forward quick enough to support – consequently, we were either knocking long balls up to Moore and seeing it come back at us pretty quickly or we had to try to be a bit more patient as to how we moved forward, but our passing wasn’t good enough to work our way forward in a less direct manner.
Under Mick McCarthy in particular, we didn’t try to short pass our way forward and Moore (albeit a Moore who was looking for a move by that stage) was not able to hold the ball up without support from midfield runners. Players such as Grant and Meite by reputation may be able to get up in support of a target man quick enough to give us something to build off, but Cardiff City have struggled to play effective Charles Hughes type football in recent years despite mostly having teams generally better suited to playing it than more of a passing approach.