Some thoughts on Cullip’s departure
After just 11 months, the Club have announced that Danny Cullip has left the club by mutual consent.
Danny played such an immense role in our fight for survival last season and will be fondly remembered because of the way he helped organise our shaky defence and add some much needed steel back there.
He picked up an injury towards the end of last season though and never quite recovered. I remember seeing him in the League Cup earlier this season against Leyton Orient and he was well off the pace. He was obviously rushed back a little too soon and then spent some time out of the season working on his fitness before making another comeback.
He still wasn’t at the races though and despite one or two relatively good games, he seemed to be operating very deeply whenever he played. At first I thought this was under instruction, then I thought it was down to his style and how he preferred to play but in the end, I felt it was actually down to his fitness and body.
I had the feeling he was concerned about either his lack of pace or lack of mobility. He’s not the quickest of blokes, but this season he’s looked slightly more sluggish on the turn than I remembered from last season. When you play deep it’s easier to defend and you’re less likely to get caught out by pace if you pick good starting positions. You can also get slightly more time on the ball which can make it easier to pick it up, take a touch and clear it up field.
The problem with doing that is this approach only suits certain types of opposition, but was also an issue for our actual team because in some matches, either the rest of the defence didn’t stay in line with him or the midfield did not make the same drop backwards which was leaving an awful lot of space for the opposing teams midfielders or strikers to operate in the hole.
The other issue was the defence getting too close to Lee Camp which made it difficult for him to make saves when the attempts on goal where coming in from anywhere between 6-10 yards out.
Having said all of that, it sounds like I’m taking a dig at Danny which I’m not. I think he was an inspirational performer in his time at the club and I can only look at his contribution last season with complete admiration. He came here to do a job and he did that job exceptionally well.
I hope he finds another club and he’s certainly capable of playing for a side challenging at the top in League One and perhaps can still do a job at Championship level providing he gets himself properly fit again.
For us, we’ve run the risk of leaving ourselves short of options for the December run in. There are not many other players in the same bracket in terms of quality as the starting four we have and we have a lot of other guys who are either low on confidence or haven’t played that many games. It is obvious however that Cullip’s playing style from the back is vastly different to Luigi De Canio’s way of playing.
I really hope we get through this period in one piece and we need to start picking up more points as fast as possible and it’s obvious to me that we’ve got to bring in new faces in January. Rowan Vine, Ben Sahar, Bob Malcolm, Scott Sinclair and Jason Jarrett (officially) will all be returning to their respective clubs by then, which means we will be threadbare unless we extend some of those deals or make them permanent.
Oh, and before I forget to say it, thanks a lot for everything Danny and good luck for the future!
