I said a little while back that if we continued to play in the manner we’ve done recently, then you’ll find that we’ll either win or lose a lot of games by the odd goal, and mainly 1-0 or 0-1 with the odd draw here or there thrown in for good measure. I don’t mean every game will end up with those scorelines, I just mean the actual play will be that sort of a game, and if a team gets killed off at the end because the other went for it, then that’s just how footbll can work. We’re in that cycle at the moment, it seems.
My main concern at the moment is that there doesn’t appear to be a plan. That’s what worries me. It’s like the players are simply doing just the basics without any remote sign of intelligence in terms of going forward or even defending resolutely with a clear plan of breaking with pace on the counter attack. Even the creative men are not sparkling but we’re also struggling to get any of them on the ball in the areas we want them to be in.
I don’t mind a performance full of grit and hard grafting. We’ve certainly added that to our arsenal this season, but we can’t rely on that all the time. In the end you stifle yourself and come up short, and so far in these recent games, that’s what’s been happening. Football is a game that requires skill , patience and the courage to take a gamble. The understanding of how and when to take risk is key to reducing the probability of something going wrong on the counter attack.
The shame about today is we grafted well for 40 minutes. In fact, up until then, it was an excellent first-half performance away from home against a top Championship side. We had just as much possession and had used the ball quite well without them ever really threatening us.
But, for 5 minutes there was a clear shift in our mentality and approach. We switched off and all the good things we did, we stopped doing, because we settled on the idea that actually going in at 0-0 was a good thing. This subtle change meant we began to drop off and sit deeper and deeper and allow Birmingham more time and space on the ball and then we got punished for it.
And the goal itself was a really poor one to give away. I mean, there was just so much wrong with it from a defensive point of view it’s hard to know where to start, but I’ll have a crack. Damion Stewart’s positioning as the ball came over the top was wrong. He played Gary O’Connor onside by about a yard but that didn’t stop him signalling that it was offside.
Fitz Hall then had a miserable attempt to try and block the cross and Stewart, who was covering behind that also got his position wrong. He was facing his goal towards the near post. It would be much better to shape your body outwards in that instance, so that you can sprint out and meet the flight of the ball as well as allowing you to see what’s coming into the box. He did neither and in the end, marked the area that Radek Cerny had covered.
On top of this, as that ball came over the top, there was really only Gary O’Connor and Kevin Phillips causing any sort of threat because the rest of the Birmingham players were well behind play. Damien Delaney could have tucked in and picked up Phillips as Stewart went off to the near post. Mikele Leigertwood could have been faster to pick him up, but really there were enough defenders there to deal with this situation and understand where the two dangermen were in all of this. Hard to blame any one man for the goal apart from several – it was so soft and really a result of the team’s change in mentality so we have only ourselves to blame collectively.
It’s these little details and small margins that make the difference between a top side and an avergae one an we’re showing signs that we’re in the mould of the latter right now. At the start of the season and having looked at the squad a lot during pre-season and the early games, I felt we would be a top 8 side with anything more a bonus. I still feel that way now but we’re still capable of breaking into that top 6 so long as we don’t hit too many sticky patches like this.
We already can’t afford too many more defeats because something tells me we won’t see a repeat of what Iain Dowie did with Crystal Palace or what Luigi De Canio did with us last season. The shame about us right now is I’m finding us a little bit on the boring side and a bit dull. We’re predictable too, which is amazing given the talent we have across the team.
I’ve been thinking a lot in the last days about what Dowie said about systems and that it’s about the players. I think it’s he’s got some points, but it’s really about both. If you want certain systems to work then you need a certain style or type of player. Buzsaky in a 4-5-1 behind the striker under De Canio was electric, but he’s still to be tried there in this system under Dowie.
When I think about the defence I also don’t feel any of the current starting four are good enough when in possession on the ball. They are not passing players and the way we’re trying to play they’ve got to be better. Matthew Connolly is the best of the lot on the ball, but he didn’t start and only got five minutes but I also liked the look of Kaspars Gorkss when he had the ball at his feet. Maybe, with these two in the side we’d see some more controlled build up, better ball retention and a better solution to getting our creative men on the ball in the right areas.
Right now though, we seem to lack an attacking plan and need to work on some patterns and passages of play. If you do that, then you can get the front two working and not standing like statues, because they’d know where they’d need to be… either short to feet, up on their marker or down the channels and reacting to movement around them rather than an ad-hoc chase after a random punt into a zone and area of the pitch that they’re never really going to get to. It would also compensate for lesser technical ability at the back as the players will know what’s expected in a given situation. It’s something that De Canio did fantastically well in his time with us and I just hope Dowie and his team can use some of that nous too.
I hope we don’t continue to come away from games like today and feeling like if we just went for it, and just dared ourselves to have a go and try and scare Birmingham, then we’d probably been walking away with something from the game.
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