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The 90+ minutes


Red-Robbo

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If the ref had blown for f/t on the 89th minute, City would have 10 more points, sit in the play-off zone and still potentially be in the League Cup.

It now is such a routine occurrence, the tame capitulation in or on the verge of extra time that it must be more than mere coincidence and more than just "the players are poor".

It's happening so frequently, it's almost as if the players expect it and are paralyzed with fear as the end of the match approaches. We simply never compete then.  Even some of our rare wins were achieved due to opponents missing sitters at the end of the match while we do our usual backs-to-the-wall terrified defence, with no sort of outlet to even get the ball 50% down our half, let alone threaten the opposition goal. When was the last time we were the team turning the screw in the final minutes? Not once this season to my memory.

Although we played poorly, let's face it most of us would have been happy with a point on the road against a decent Coventry side. It would have stilled the nerves. 

But this conceding late goals thing has got to be psychological. It is what newspapers used to call a hoodoo. 

For this reason I think Pearson and Fleming, both admirable chaps in lots of ways, need more help if they are to stay here. 

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Surely you can work on this in training?

After a physical session then have the defence & a midfield player or two try to defend for short, sharp spells against superior numbers.

Analyse where players are out of position? Who looks like they can handle this & who cannot?

This might seem like hindsight but again yesterday we didn’t use our 3rd sub, at HT a point looked like a poor outcome but by the 90th minute we would have taken it.

Bringing on Simpson for his experience to try to see it out or even Bell for a tiring Martin to break the game up.

Agree though the fact that this is happening so often is worrying.

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You also have to remember that whilst its a physiological issue for our players opposition players now know full well to expose it.

Every team we now play against know to throw the kitchen sink at us in the last few mins and chances are you will get something out of the game.

Not sure what the answer is, i think we’d be naive to think it isn’t the topic of conversation on the training ground. They must do drills and try and work on.

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It’s called panic. 
It’s what happens when 2nd rate footballers who can’t control, pass and keep the ball, continually gift the opposition the possession and territory. 
If we had players capable of holding onto possession and playing passes to each other to run down the clock and run the opposition around, then we might give ourselves a chance. 
As it stands, we have players who don’t enjoy playing possession football - the likes of Weimann, Cod, Massengo, Dasilva, are always looking to ‘do something’ when they have the ball, rather than just think “let’s keep it”. It’s always rushed, always looking to force something. 
We actually had 2 decent spells yesterday, one in each half, where we started simply playing it side to side, into the middle, out to the wings, back the middle etc etc, and both times we kept the ball for 15-20 passes and resulted in working an opening for a decent cross which caused a stir. We don’t do this often enough. We don’t have the players with the composure, patience or brain to do so. We have a number of willing ‘runners’ but not enough with the correct thought capacity to pass and move and create space and options. 
Inevitably, if you can’t relieve pressure, you’ll blow. And flip me, do we blow!! 
 

I’m afraid all the best coaching in the world will not turn some of our players into a possession-based unit. The majority of them are simply not good enough and lack the brain to do so. It’s not an ‘ability’ thing for most - most pro footballers have the technical ability to be able to pass a ball to a teammate, it’s their intelligence on the ball and off the ball. We lack footballing intelligence. 

Edited by Harry
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14 minutes ago, bris red said:

You also have to remember that whilst its a physiological issue for our players opposition players now know full well to expose it.

Every team we now play against know to throw the kitchen sink at us in the last few mins and chances are you will get something out of the game.

This is a superb point. 
I listened to Radio Coventry on my way back last night and listened to their interview with Mark Robins. 
 

They asked him about his brave decision to keep all of his attacking options on the pitch after the sending off. 
His answer:

”we have to take into account the circumstances of the game. If we were playing Swansea we couldn’t have done it as they’d have just passed it around us”. 
 

That should be an embarrassment to everyone involved, players, coaches, board, everyone. Robins knew that even with 10 men his team had every chance of success. 

Edited by Harry
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It’s become the norm for City to drop deeper and deeper as a match enters the last 10 minutes. This just invites the opposition to attack more. Alex Ferguson said that often when opposition teams were winning or drawing at Old Trafford they made defensive substitutions to hang onto a point. This made it easier for Man Utd as the team could push forward without the fear of conceding another goal. NP seems to agree with Ferguson as he often brings on an attacking player when the team is under pressure near the end of a match. Unfortunately, the players can’t hold onto the ball, so as soon as City’s defence clears an attack the ball comes straight back. 
 

The solution seems simple - hold onto the ball, or break up the game to slow it down. Sorry to mention his name in this thread, but Warnock is a master of getting teams to slow things down when the going is tough. It’s not necessary to resort to all of the Warnock “gamesmanship” tactics, as there are more legitimate ways of doing things. Unfortunately, most of the players can’t grasp this basic concept. 

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I think we’d have 6 more points taking into consideration that Wells winning goal at Loftus Road was 90+3 but yes it is sickening to think that those late goals are now the difference between the relegation battle we now face and being more comfortable. I dread to think what it’s done for our confidence.

Imagine if Cole had scored right at the death last week.

Conceding late and losing points is now so expected that it’s actually worth waiting until the 88th minute and then putting money on whoever we’re playing. 

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Good passing sides can keep the ball and restrict opposition chances, and so reduce the chance of conceding. We can't keep the ball, in fact our game plan is hit and hope and at the moment we are getting little luck or hope.
Add it up......

We can't keep the ball.
When we get it, after the long ball we are 50/50 at best to keep it.
We defend deeper as we tire.
We tire because we chase a ball we can't hold onto.
we don't leave players up when we defend corners, means the clearance will come straight back.

All adds up to giving the opposition chance after chance,  and shots through a packed box will give the keeper little chance.  We won't be able to stop this until we control the ball better IMO. 


 

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1 hour ago, bris red said:

You also have to remember that whilst its a physiological issue for our players opposition players now know full well to expose it.

Every team we now play against know to throw the kitchen sink at us in the last few mins and chances are you will get something out of the game.

 

1 hour ago, Harry said:

This is a superb point. 
I listened to Radio Coventry on my way back last night and listened to their interview with Mark Robins. 
 

They asked him about his brave decision to keep all of his attacking options on the pitch after the sending off. 
His answer:

”we have to take into account the circumstances of the game. If we were playing Swansea we couldn’t have done it as they’d have just passed it around us”. 
 

That should be an embarrassment to everyone involved, players, coaches, board, everyone. Robins knew that even with 10 men his team had every chance of success. 

Spot on. I was saying exactly this in another thread last night. 

Opposition teams know that we'll crumble under a bit of pressure. We're now in a position of double jeopardy with it - not only is our confidence diminished, the confidence of our opponents is enhanced.

As Harry says, it's an embarrassment. It's hard to have pride in a team who are just not respected, and who are known as the pushovers of the EFL.

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1 hour ago, Harry said:

It’s called panic. 
It’s what happens when 2nd rate footballers who can’t control, pass and keep the ball, continually gift the opposition the possession and territory. 
If we had players capable of holding onto possession and playing passes to each other to run down the clock and run the opposition around, then we might give ourselves a chance. 
As it stands, we have players who don’t enjoy playing possession football - the likes of Weimann, Cod, Massengo, Dasilva, are always looking to ‘do something’ when they have the ball, rather than just think “let’s keep it”. It’s always rushed, always looking to force something. 
We actually had 2 decent spells yesterday, one in each half, where we started simply playing it side to side, into the middle, out to the wings, back the middle etc etc, and both times we kept the ball for 15-20 passes and resulted in working an opening for a decent cross which caused a stir. We don’t do this often enough. We don’t have the players with the composure, patience or brain to do so. We have a number of willing ‘runners’ but not enough with the correct thought capacity to pass and move and create space and options. 
Inevitably, if you can’t relieve pressure, you’ll blow. And flip me, do we blow!! 
 

I’m afraid all the best coaching in the world will not turn some of our players into a possession-based unit. The majority of them are simply not good enough and lack the brain to do so. It’s not an ‘ability’ thing for most - most pro footballers have the technical ability to be able to pass a ball to a teammate, it’s their intelligence on the ball and off the ball. We lack footballing intelligence. 

 

It's true that we panic whenever the ball reaches our final third, but it's much more acute in the 75th minute onwards.  The team theme song seems to switch at that point to "let's hang on, to what we've got!" but - as we know - this is a hiding to nothing.  The one time any opponent will throw everything including the kitchen sink at us is at the death. You cannot just sit back and hope they'll always miss. 

This shrinking back seems to happen every home game and now the vast majority of away games as well. I find it hard to believe that our predominantly young side is exhausted in the last fifth of the game. I just think it's fear, combined with poor subs and a lack of players who can keep the ball on their feet for more than 0.5 seconds. 

We might not be able to rapidly do anything about that last point, but we can about the first two. If we have decent spells at other times, we can have decent spells at the end. 

 

[Oh and @Peter O Hanraha-hanrahanis partly right. It's 7 extra points we'd get: Blackpool (w); Luton (w); Forest (w); Coventry (d) minus our late goal at QPR]

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The third goal gets worse and worse with every watch. 
 

CO’D sprinting aimlessly by himself to get passed around to lead to the ball to Kelly

Bakinson standing by himself. O’Dowda loses his runner. Martin sticking a weak leg out. Massengo losing his runner. Tanner marking two men and a free man behind Vyner at the back post. Absolute mess

B074A1F2-9142-46E9-B540-FCE5B97377B9.png

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3 minutes ago, Red-Robbo said:

[Oh and @Peter O Hanraha-hanrahanis partly right. It's 7 extra points we'd get: Blackpool (w); Luton (w); Forest (w); Coventry (d) minus our late goal at QPR]

Yep, you’re right mate.

I didn’t take into consideration that we would’ve left QPR with a point.

This should be used as a GCSE exam question…how many points have City shat down the bog in the last couple of minutes of games this year?

 

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2 minutes ago, petehinton said:

The third goal gets worse and worse with every watch. 
 

CO’D sprinting aimlessly by himself to get passed around to lead to the ball to Kelly

Bakinson standing by himself. O’Dowda loses his runner. Martin sticking a weak leg out. Massengo losing his runner. Tanner marking two men and a free man behind Vyner at the back post. Absolute mess

B074A1F2-9142-46E9-B540-FCE5B97377B9.png

 

Almost without fail it is these late goals that are the real horses arse of defending by us.

We aren't a great side and other teams are going to score against us. Some of those goals have been well-worked moves and bits of individual brilliance that you almost have to applaud as a City fan. But the late goals are the real, jaw-droppers: the WTF!!! moments.  The "how the hell did we not stop that?" moments.

This is why I think we are weak always, but diabolical at the end of the match. There has to be some psychology seriously wrong there. Multiple players simply stop doing their jobs. 

 

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What gets me is that we had, in most of those games, the opportunity to kill the game off before being punched in injury time. We can’t seem to see out games.

I guess though there is hope that if one day we find ourselves 1-0 down and a man short before HT we got to believe we can go on and win the game too. 

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55 minutes ago, 1960maaan said:


we don't leave players up when we defend corners, means the clearance will come straight back.
 

This is another excellent point. 
We do this when 11v11, so it’s clearly a tactic that we want to employ. 
However, I found it baffling yesterday that we were still bringing everyone back even when they were down to 10 men. 
Did no one in the bench or even on the pitch have the nous and awareness to make an adjustment. 
Someone with more coaching badges and / or professional football appearances I’m sure will be able to tell me exactly why a team would pull everyone back for a corner when you have a man advantage. 

My guess is they can’t give a good reason. I’ll tell you why, because there isn’t one. They were all simply unaware of the fact they were doing it. 
 

 

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23 minutes ago, RedM said:

What gets me is that we had, in most of those games, the opportunity to kill the game off before being punched in injury time. We can’t seem to see out games.

Yep.

If we’re at least 2 goals in front going into the last few minutes then the nerves aren’t so bad. 
Unfortunately being 2 or 3 goals ahead with minutes to go is as rare as rocking horse shit for us (4 times in the last season and a half?)

If we were better at converting the chances we get or didn’t routinely concede in the 75min-80min of games when we have a 2 goal lead then again we wouldn’t be shitting ourselves on and off the pitch around the 90 minute mark.

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3 hours ago, Harry said:

It’s called panic. 
It’s what happens when 2nd rate footballers who can’t control, pass and keep the ball, continually gift the opposition the possession and territory. 
If we had players capable of holding onto possession and playing passes to each other to run down the clock and run the opposition around, then we might give ourselves a chance. 
As it stands, we have players who don’t enjoy playing possession football - the likes of Weimann, Cod, Massengo, Dasilva, are always looking to ‘do something’ when they have the ball, rather than just think “let’s keep it”. It’s always rushed, always looking to force something. 
We actually had 2 decent spells yesterday, one in each half, where we started simply playing it side to side, into the middle, out to the wings, back the middle etc etc, and both times we kept the ball for 15-20 passes and resulted in working an opening for a decent cross which caused a stir. We don’t do this often enough. We don’t have the players with the composure, patience or brain to do so. We have a number of willing ‘runners’ but not enough with the correct thought capacity to pass and move and create space and options. 
Inevitably, if you can’t relieve pressure, you’ll blow. And flip me, do we blow!! 
 

I’m afraid all the best coaching in the world will not turn some of our players into a possession-based unit. The majority of them are simply not good enough and lack the brain to do so. It’s not an ‘ability’ thing for most - most pro footballers have the technical ability to be able to pass a ball to a teammate, it’s their intelligence on the ball and off the ball. We lack footballing intelligence. 

To add…there is a laziness that leads to the way we play.  

Liverpool used to say that you need to be fit to play passing football because you’re always working hard to create space, passing options etc.

So, City, let’s play a “killer” pass in the very initial phase of possession…if it comes off great, if not, I can saunter back into position, point at people to pick up my man, etc etc.  much easier to pass on a marker than do the hard yards yourself.  Sometimes that’s ok, it’s efficient, but second half yesterday we did it for the wrong reasons.

Its like a disease.

We don’t recycle the ball like other teams (e.g. across the back line), we take the easy way out and pass it back to Bentley, to launch downfield.

I think this is why Fleming talked about desire.  We take little responsibility as a team.

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as most fans and players know in professional football of Sunday league in the last minutes put the bloody ball in row z. this habit started against Blackpool and seems to be a continuing trend.as we all know a big part of football is having a strong mentality in panic situations,im afraid are players mentality is very weak and without a strong leader on and off the pitch we are going to keep struggling. We have struggled for a hard horrible leader on the pitch for to long and this needs to change quick as the young lads got no one to look up to.

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I don't know which of the 30 threads to add my thoughts into, so this seems the best place.

It's so frustrating that this has been building over three seasons, under three different managers, and 6 transfer windows. Something happened following the disappointing end to 2017/18, and the sale of Flint, Reid and Bryan, something changed in the way we approached the sport. Shot frequency dropped off a cliff, shots from outside the box evaporated. Passing sequences shortened and long balls crept in. We began trying to move the ball forward much more hastily, neglecting to build from the back and disposing of all patience, control, discipline, and grit in the process.

I was a shit defender at school boy level. But I was 6 ft tall by the age of 14 and so always got put at CB. I had no confidence in my ability to play the ball, and so would just try and launch the thing towards the other end of the pitch. I had none of the below!

7 minutes ago, big dosser said:

a strong mentality in panic situations

I see that panic now in our squad. It's a lack of basic confidence in the ability to reset, to redress, and regain some control. Everything is geared to getting the ball as far away form our goal as possible, as quickly as possible...but there's no plan regarding what to then do with it. It often just comes straight back on us, and as others have said, the lackadaisical attitude of the midfielders means that often it is coming back towards an unprepared shape. And that is a disease that has crept into the club over the past few seasons.

The warning signs have been there. A divisional all time record low shot count last season, allowing our opponents to pepper our goal at will, the number of times that our goalie has won MOTM in the past few seasons.

Would changing the manager change this? I would suggest that recent evidence suggests that the problem runs deeper. We can prune the branches, even chop the tree down, but the roots are the issue. We've seen the underlying issues persist through the past two changes in management, and in my opinion it would be foolish to try and fix a long-term problem with a short-term solution. We've tried that twice now and it's getting us nowhere fast.

So what happens then?

I'm not a coach but if I had 10 minutes with Pearson and Fleming I'd ask them how do you rebuild that basic trust and confidence that seems to be missing? Get the players to trust each other, get them to know that each has a clear, basic role. Become predictable. We won't win every game like that, but hopefully we'd manage to get the shots against down below 15 again, get back to conceding fewer than 2 goals per game (ffs how on earth do you expect to regularly win games of football if you're conceding 2 per game?) and try to genuinely become tough to beat.

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15 minutes ago, big dosser said:

as most fans and players know in professional football of Sunday league in the last minutes put the bloody ball in row z. this habit started against Blackpool and seems to be a continuing trend.as we all know a big part of football is having a strong mentality in panic situations,im afraid are players mentality is very weak and without a strong leader on and off the pitch we are going to keep struggling. We have struggled for a hard horrible leader on the pitch for to long and this needs to change quick as the young lads got no one to look up to.

 

I've seen some dreadful attempts to get the ball out-of-play and away from our danger zone where we've literally kicked the ball out in our half.  The resultant throw-in allows opponents to bring men up, get organised and puts us under more pressure than if the ball had stayed in play.  And because they don't do the whole towel-dry the ball, then stand searching for options thing, it only wastes about 10 seconds of time.

At least try to leather it into touch as far upfield as possible, or if nothing is going on, out for a goal kick. That probably wastes a good 2 minutes.

Basic stuff!

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