Davefevs

Szmodics didn’t get a chance here. He may not have earned that chance on the training ground. But ultimately he was let down by a poor recruitment strategy.

It takes a while to detach the parachute! Why do you think his arse is so big, it’s the back-pack!

This is part of the problem Rob. When teams let us have the ball, we struggle to break them down. It’s not necessarily teams parking the bus, because I think most teams fancy their chances against us (home or away)…I can’t remember the last team that I thought came to AG for a 0-0. But a team with a good defensive shape, organised press, well-triggered press can force us into “passing it sideways and backwards”, and that becomes quite dull (understatement). We might go CB to CB to FB to Winger, back to FB, into CM, back to CB, all without the other team feeling threatened. The good teams do just that, but create a spare man and then they exploit it. So we tend to go into the front pair more quickly, and try to play from there. We did have some spells yesterday where we played off the direct ball, got possession in their third and played….it’s just we aren’t a team that capable of doing that through each third. And I think as fans we’ve become a bit snobby that playing pretty football through the thirds is the only way. Especially when a team like ex-Lg1 Peterborough appear to be able to do that. But they are sat there with 8 points and we have 16. It’s alright having footballing defenders, but if they can’t defend a corner / set-piece, you concede goals. That was us last season at times. What we did yesterday was what the likes of Preston, Millwall (pre-Rowatt), etc did to us under LJ early years. We played the pretty football but they created the chances from nod downs, errors, loose passes and scored. We we’re a bit better than that yesterday imho. Our Avenue out from the back is Atkinson finding a hole, or Dasilva (ink yesterday) sucking his man in and going past him on the inside. Kalas did that yesterday, a bonus. What we are also seeing is Williams able to get on the ball in the final third and give confidence for Tanner to get forward. So, I don’t think we are playing badly per se (not saying we are great either), we aren’t pretty. Other teams are. QPR we’re a joy to watch as an opposing fan.

I think when we look at our own players we tend to rate them based on their “best” levels and I’m not convinced we level-up across the league, so when we say Kalas is a top Championship defender how wide do we look. I’m not saying he isn’t, but I think we can be a bit insular. I think team-wise we are pretty average…lots of players of similar levels, doesn’t make too much difference which eleven is out there bar a couple of players (Bentley one of them). What we lack is a stellar “forward” player….if I take a team like Stoke, they have Powell AND Vrancic, that’s the difference. If I look at a team like Brum, they have….nobody stellar. They have Jutkiewicz but he’s not stellar. Being average at this stage is fine, we are starting from a poor position (end of last season). The squad will evolve in the next 12 months. League position-wise we are doing well. My expectation was a tough, slow start, Nige building slowly. To have 16 points from 11 games is great. I had us on 13 (w3 d4 l4) at this point….gradually improving as the season wore on.

Personally I’d be amazed if he’s “only” on £8k p.w. having negotiated his contract when he did. I suspect he’s on somewhere around the £12k+ mark.

Your summary of first half is pretty much what I wrote above. I think we are a bit blinded by passing teams, because we aren’t one.

Never a penalty, contact game and Williams got his body in a good position. Rob is a good observer of the whole of the game, not just focussing on City but why our opponents stop us too. My thoughts are generally aligned to his. His ratings are rarely a million miles from mine. In a league where anyone can beat anyone, and we have a squad of mainly similar level players (and a few that aren’t), we are rarely gonna spank a team. I watched on Robinstv and I thought we just about deserved the win, but tv and being there can give different views. We created a really good set of chances yesterday, forced an opposition keeper into saves which was a big plus for me. This isn’t a criticism ID, more an observation of OTIB generally….I agree with almost all that you write on here. I think there has become a bit of view that opponents who pass it / play “better” (define better?) football than us deserve better results. I’m not sure our fans have cottoned on to our new (and evolving) playing style, which attempts to be pretty direct, it’s about getting it forward. Some of that dictated by our players, and Nige wanting his defenders to defend first and foremost. We are most definitely not a “split the centre-backs, play out from the back” team, quite a lot of our opponents are, hence a lot of the middling teams playing back 3’s. The top teams can split centre backs playing a back 4 because they have better ball players at the back and superior midfielders. Peterborough did pass it about nicely, they had good patterns, had good movement, but a lot of it was in-front of us, possibly due to Dembele and Szmodics. They didn’t get behind us very often. After the first 15 minutes, when we sussed their movement, we spent a lot of the first half forcing them to turnover the ball playing into midfield. Second half the weather made it a different game. We aren’t an attractive watch from a “pure football” perspective, but I’m fine with that, but we have guts now, hard-work, physicality. Having been crap from set-pieces for seasons, we are now a threat. Getting the ball into the final third fairly quickly and getting a free-kick or corner is probably part of the plan. We have scored 6 goals from set-pieces. Last season we scored 5 in total (inc cup). How often have we been the team conceding from them? Theres a change going on….I know you know that….but I’m not sure many have noticed. City’s “overall performance” is about more than “pretty passing”. Expectations of how we are gonna play need to change alongside it. I thought we thoroughly deserved to go in at h-t ahead, not 2-2. Szmodics’s header was a killer….we were well on top having come from behind. We’d fashioned good chances, opportunities for chances.

@Oléis suffering a bit….he’s recently had to write nice things about Wells, so he’s all over the place with his striker ratings at the mo’. ???

To be fair most of the RoI players of his era weren’t! I’d not heard him speak until recently, so wasn’t expecting the accent.

Very clairvoyant of you ??????

Said in the week that Martin needs midfield runners around him. Last couple of games, James has had to babysit Bakinson (bit harsh, but it’s constrained him) and today with a quiet King alongside him we saw James getting around the box into shooting positions…in fact it was him laying off to Martin for Tanner’s goal.

Paul cook….honest as ever. Worth a watch.

Guernsey jamming the inter web tonight.

Been impressed with him….lot of enthusiasm too. Seems to care about the players too. Perfect right hand man.

Would’ve liked to see Kalas or Atkinson clatter Dembrle and Szmodics. They have a comfortable afternoon physically….our 2 CBs should not have allowed that.

To be fair it was a hardly a goal saving tackle but a standard bit of tracking a runner and he slid the ball out of play. I’d expect him to do that without much thinking. If we are considering this type of play as worthy of such plaudits then I think we are being massively generous. FWIW I thought he was ok today, some decent bits but spells of the game passing him by. Some good crosses that threatened, one ball nipped away from Thompson. I’d probably give him between a 6.0 and a 6.5 out of 10 (I don’t like giving halves though). For context (not doing halves for anyone else): Bents 7, Tanner 7, Kalas 6, Atkinson 6, Pring 6, Williams 8, James 7, King 5, O’Dowda 6 and a bit, Weimann 5, Martin 7….Scott 6. Its about opinions. I think he gets some unfair stick on here, like on Wednesday, but I think some also give him a easy time and he lives off Norwich a bit too much. I really hope Nige gets more out of him. He’s just coming back from injury. Maybe we will see that after the international break.

Low played 90 in a 1-1 draw v Borehamwood (Harper on the bench. Towler played 90 in a 6-0 win v Dover to go top. Moore played 90 and picked up a yellow in a 2-0 win v Motherwell as Hearts go top.

He couldn’t run down the touchline today, his new application of Just for Men would’ve run.

He plays in a similar style, obviously nowhere near the level. Yep, a fair few of us thought he was exactly the signing we needed last season, such a shame he got injured. Massive boost to get through 90 mins today…for him and us.

People say we don’t work the keeper enough, we did today. Yep, 3 saves from Martin in second half iirc. xG fairly representative. They scored two worldies.

Very good comms / insight. Not biased either.

Tactically George is getting exposed, it’s not his fault. In a 442 like today, we must be able to shift two banks of four across the pitch and if they cross, it’s touchline crosses, rather than close to the 18 yard line crosses. We do allow switches too easily. Its difficult because we are trying to keep two up top, but at some point we are gonna have to accept that either Kalas allows George do give him less close protection or we allow easy crosses in.

Still 32.

Had three headers saved in the second half too.

Bears last night… …Flyers tonight???