What a way to end a twelve game unbeaten run!

One Response to What a way to end a twelve game unbeaten run!

1. Dai Woosnam says:

   February 22, 2026 at 10:01 am

   Thanks Paul as ever. Your analysis was fair, and your comments on team selection were pertinent in the extreme.
   The two centre backs should have been Fish and Lawlor… but I note that the former was not even on the bench. Was he injured? And as you say, where was the man who should be first midfielder on the team sheet… Ryan Wintle?
   As for your two best performers… I am really puzzled as to your choice of Trott… but more later.

   It was a sobering day yesterday. A series of games on TV riddled with mistakes, where the two teams I favoured both lost… the City at Plymouth, and Wales at the Principality.

   And then the evening highlights were a real black comedy. Watching Villa v Leeds on MotD, I said to my wife as Leeds prepared to take a free kick 30 yards out… ‘Look at the crazy gap the Villa keeper is leaving on his near post… if I were the Leeds player I’d aim to shoot hard there’.

   And so it was that the Villa keeper of course failed dismally to get across in time. A child of six could have told us that would happen. When I was a boy/youth, Gordon Banks and Jack Kelsey stood in the middle of their goal… not to do so would get them fired from the Goalkeepers’ Union.

   And when you consider that the goalkeeper in question was the guy who most football pundits regarded as the best in the EPL until the arrival of the remarkable Gianluigi Donnarumma, then things are really bleak on the goalkeeping front.

   And further evidence of insane coaching ruining the art of goalkeeping came in the ITV highlights, where we had the usual farce of playing out from the back leading to goals… watching this regular nonsense just makes me feel that modern coaching has had a deleterious effect on standards.

   Which brings us to our Messiah… BBM. Gosh, some chickens came home to roost yesterday, did they not?

   He may be a good coach for tiki-taka, but I genuinely wonder if he is that bright. Only last weekend Paul, I just like you, urged him not to pick Chambers for the trip to Home Park, because I knew he would wilt when faced with a Plymouth attack (assuming the Pilgrims brought their A-game). But what does he go and do? He perversely picks him, and Calum predictably delivered a shocker.

   At the start of the season I suggested we buy at least one big strong centre back. We ended up on Aug 29th buying Gabriel Osho from Auxerre and astonishingly giving him a 4 year contract.

   At the time I questioned whether he was the answer, even though some of our MAYA fraternity now think he is… and I too almost started to believe that, after a couple of good performances recently. My fear however was that he could be bullied… and yesterday was another example of him and his mate Calum Chambers being taken to the cleaners by the big Plymouth strikers. I forecast at the start of the season that once we came up against a strong pressing side with two strikers who can ‘put it about’ physically… that we would crumble.

   Oh if we could have those two big blond central defenders Plymouth had under Muslic… or Nathan Wood/Harry Darling when they played for the Swans, I’d feel so much happier.

   You cannot beat a ‘Dolly & Daisy’… (as Fergie called Gary Pallister and Steve Bruce).

   Yesterday, I reckon only two City players came out of the game with credit, Kellyman and Tanner. A poor show.

   But weirdly I am happy… we were getting far too smug: many fans convinced that BBM was a shoo-in for the Div 1, Manager of the Year. To me, we needed to be brought down a peg or two.

   I had to laugh at Cleverley saying of Nathan Trott before the game …’they have a goalkeeper who can stroke a ball 60 yards with the precision of a number six’. Ha! Yesterday Nathan had three number sixes on his back… 666…

   Eh, what Nathan Trott did Tom see play? Not the same guy that I see, that’s for sure. His long kicking has been getting worse as the season has progressed and is now pub league standard.

   But even that incompetence is better than him suicidally ‘playing out’ from the back against a Plymouth team who shook the daylights out of our defence with their ferocious press.

   Let us hope there is no last minute freakish disastrous run of results (of Dave Jones proportions)… for if we only make the playoffs, I do not then fancy our chances.

   Other thoughts? Well,
   (1) Bagan’s form seems to have dipped since we got Scanlon… it is as if he knows that BBM has to give him playing time as part of the loan.
   (2) Oshu was a lucky boy yesterday – after that stupid sneaky assault – just to get a yellow… luckily the ref was not a homer… and when he came over to the linesman to hear what had actually occurred, ignored the crowd who were baying for a red. I can recall so many instances of City players being sent off in similar circumstances down the years… going back to an identical incident on St David’s Day 1964 when the brilliant Gareth Williams was sent off on a linesman’s say-so at Leeds Road, Huddersfield…. an event doubly memorable for me as the great John Charles gave me and my mate Graham Pritchard of 301 Trebanog Road, Porth two grandstand tickets… which King John got from his companion in the next seat on the team coach leaving Huddersfield’s George Hotel for the short journey to the ground. And that teammate was young Gareth…!!
   (3) Although Lorent Tolaj has scored with a panenka penalty earlier this season, his shocking tamely-struck miss from the spot before a packed Home Park in the 1-4 defeat to Reading on Boxing Day made him promise his then beleaguered manager to give future penalties all his energy. So when he came to hit it yesterday, one just new from the way he lined up, that the ball was going hard to the keeper’s left. The fact that even if Trott had guessed correctly, no keeper in the world would have saved that, is beside the point. I just felt disappointed that our athletic keeper just weakly dived the other way.
   (4) we got 70% possession yesterday yet for all our fancy tiki-taka, Plymouth wonderfully showed that soccer is at its best as a blood and thunder game. God bless them for reminding us.
   (5) And if we play like that in the Championship, we will come straight back down.

   TTFN,
   Dai