Masters of our own downfall

[eardun]

12 hours ago, Davefevs said:

Haven’t read any else’s comments from about 14:30 so here’s my review.

Surprised at line-up, then saw Wells wasn’t in 20 (19) so kinda got that.  Then found out it was teamsheet error and he was on the bench.  So surprise justified.

Than the game.  Times might not be 100% accurate.

First 5-10 mins: very sloppy, really gave Birmingham a lift early in the game, and then had a few opportunities.  Dembele causing issues for Tanner.  Vyner and O’Leary passing a bit all over the shop.

Next 5-10 mins: parity, we got into the game, started to pass it better, got ball onto Tanner who wasn’t being tracked by Dembele.

Next phase of game until roughly 40 mins: we controlled the game, Williams finding pockets in midfield, Dickie feeding Pring and sometimes getting the ball in front of him too!  Bell occasionally dropping in and then spinning in Cornick.  Cornick getting space, causing a few problems, although a few crosses straight to Ruddy.  Mehmeti pegging back Laird, Knight reversing a few passes onto runners.  Dickie heads over, think it was Tanner had a shot blocked after Cornick’s endeavour.  City, well on top, starting to create chances (5 shots v 4 shots appt this point having been 0-4 after 10 mins).  Looking better, Dickie driving into their half, etc, etc.

40 mins: Laird goes off injured, a moral victory you’d think.  Bacuna back to RB, Miyoshi on in RW.

41 mins:  Vyner whose distribution had been suspect anyway tries to play a Marlon Pack ball through the eye of a needle, underhits it, gets intercepted, they break on us, almost score but for a combo of Williams and O’Leary on the line to deny Miyoshi.  Then comes a flurry of corners and chances that leads to Miyoshi volleying home exquisitely.

HT: basically undone by a stupid 5-8 minute period.  Tanner has been poor, I see Sykes warming up.  I assume he’s the sub.  Take my seat to see Roberts on for Pring.  I’m surprised.  Also see Tanner is out there, surprised further

2nd half:

First few minutes: not a lot happening.

Next 10 minute or so, up to the hour mark: a bit of huff and puffing but we are in the ascendency.  Knight steals from Long, sets Sykes away, fouled, free-kick, hits the wall.  We make some subs.

Next 10 mins, up to 70 minute mark: putting a lot of pressure on from corners, without getting real chances.  Bell wastes at least three chances to sling the ball in with his left foot when beyond Bacuna, each time he tries to check back onto his right foot and the chance is lost.  Roberts has fed him a few times.  Knight is starting to find pockets and feeding Sykes.  Birmingham look out on their arses fitness wise.  Bielik and Sunjic are leaving huge gaps.  But we decide to let them have a couple of chances, one that clips the post, and that gives them a boost.

I lose a bit of track of the timeline at this point.

Next: Dickie suicide.  I assume first half yellow was for backchat.  It comes back to bite him on the arse.  He gets a second yellow.  Game over surely?

Next:  Wells chance.  Oh the effing irony of Bell slinging one in with his left foot.

Game peters out, they score on the counter.

Other points:

O’Leary: couple of crap passes, but distributed the ball decently to Tanner.

Tanner with Dembele back to him got rolled inside everytime. Poor today

Vyner: poor all game, defensively too, but passing especially.

Dickie: stupid.  Played quite well otherwise.

Pring: decent enough / Roberts: decent enough, played Bell in a few times, overhit some pinged cross field passes.

James: important foot-ins early game, did ok

Knight: a bit of the periphery at times, but ok

Williams: decent game, against a low bar, my City MOTM. / Naismith: did ok….shit pass intercepted led to 2nd goal.

Cornick: our first half threat came predominantly down the right side and he did ok. / Sykes: did ok, looked like he might create something

Bell: didn’t impact the game as CF, then wasted lots of chances to cross when LW, poor. / Yeboah: did ok

Mehmeti: worked hard, did ok without really being creative. / Wells: could’ve been the saviour.

 

Overall, our effing stupid passing out from the back was own downfall.  Generally we weren’t bad…we weren’t great either.  But we have to learn not to conced chances in batches and allow sides off the hook.

Birmingham:  decent enough side.  Gifted the goals / points really.

 

Today was far more open than I was expected.

 

In the week, @Spike put up a chart from sofascore to say how poor attacking we were, especially Preston.  Here’s today’s that I’ve just screenshotted.  City top, Brum bottom

I’m sure most will say how shit we were today, but the timeline tells is slightly different.

Did we create great chances, certainly not.  But we did work the ball into good areas.  That isn’t enough, I accept that.

Generally, we just about played ok, but the individual errors exaggerate the performance negatively.  Those errors frustrate / anger me tonight.

 

Mods - merge if you like, but I’d prefer you didn’t.

Exactly as I saw it. Certainly not the worst performance in 40 years, no competition, players not trying etc as some seem to be suggesting on other threads. I thought we did give it a go especially after HT and at that stage I thought we’d turn it around. Dickie’s second booking looks harsh to me looking at the highlights - but I gusss he needed to stay well away. Wells’ chance might have got us a draw on another day. For attacking intent, I thought  yesterday was better than v Preston. As you say, though, we made too many passing errors in defensively dangerous areas.

[spudski]

8 minutes ago, ralphindevon said:

When I was driving home I was telling myself not to over exaggerate how bad the passing and at times the receiving of passes was.

Then I saw this. You’d have to drop down some leagues before you’d find a team where that was not an embarrassment.

Hopefully it's a collective one off. 

I just read the Bristol Live post match interview with NP. 

He says twice that he sees us as a better team than last season, and that we will do better than last season. 

We maybe better collectively, however imo, the standard of teams in the league is stronger this season. 

One negates the other. 

Personally I don't think we are stronger to push for top 6. 

We needed to get stronger as a collective just to keep mid table standard. 

The strengthening isn't that great...that it will increase our chances imo. 

https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/sport/football/nigel-pearson-discusses-bristol-citys-8691105

 

[ExiledAjax]

26 minutes ago, ralphindevon said:

When I was driving home I was telling myself not to over exaggerate how bad the passing and at times the receiving of passes was.

Then I saw this. You’d have to drop down some leagues before you’d find a team where that was not an embarrassment.

This is a highlights package though. It purposefully shows you only what is needed to prove our terrible passing. It is designed to exaggerate the failure! Our actual basic passing numbers were good.

It's those 14 interceptions, and the 35 (thirty-five!) clearances, and the passes that relate to them, that stand out and outshine the basic good numbers beneath them. It's a relatively small number of important and noticeable errors that make us look, as you imply, embarrassingly poor.

To me that suggests it's an issue that is fixable at the training ground rather than in the transfer market. Others will disagree, and it might well be that the way to fix it at the training ground is to change the people administering the training, but I personally don't think that yesterday's game conclusively proves that we must spend, spend, spend in order to improve on last season.

Edited August 20, 2023 by ExiledAjax

[LondonBristolian]

2 hours ago, ExiledAjax said:

 

Mehmeti is a good case study. I've seen a few posts saying they he no longer takes people on in the way he did when he arrived last season. Now my memory is that when he did that, he often lost the ball, and I said at the time that he needed to learn to use his teammates and tone down the lone ranger runs.

But he may have gone too far the other way. He needs to be able to decide when to run, when to pass, when to cross etc. And yesterday I think he often got that wrong. Is that coaching? Probably yes, but it's also the player himself.

 

Isn't that partly also the learning process, though? It's frustrating for sure but, when you're trying to change an aspect of performance, there is going to be a period where you over-correct as part of learning to get the balance right. So I don't see that as a major concern. The bigger concern for me is that Mehmeti is a player who we've presumably brought in because he can effect games and he just isn't doing that often enough yet. Which is a problem because nobody else is either. 

I do think there is a certain level of hyperbole that comes after every win and every defeat but it is better to draw conclusions from a pattern rather than an individual game. So far, we've played four games. In the first, we played decently but couldn't break our opponents down and let them back into the game. In the second, we won convincingly against a lower league team but there was an element of the "flat track bully" about it. The third was a good away performance where we made ourselves tough to break down and took our chance when it arose and the fourth was a dismal home performance yesterday.

There is a lot of abject nonsense in this thread - it predictably took one poor performance for people to start writing Vyner again and one poster cannot the difference between "Tanner is still developing and makes mistakes" and "Tanner is a League One player" - but there are also things we can tell across the four games. As it stands, we're not creating enough and we offer too little attacking threat plus our midfield offers a lot of function but very little flair. We've gone from a counter-attacking team to one that has a lot of possession but not enough ideas. None of that is good and, without an injection of creativity and increased chance creation then we're not going to be troubling the top six this season. To have any chance of a play-off challenge, we probably do need an creative midfielder and we probably need another forward who can play in the centre of the front three. 

At the moment, the major question is whether our performance at Millwall or our performance yesterday is the better reflection of where we are. If it is more so the former rather than the latter (which I suspect to be the case) then we're not in for the most scintillating of seasons but will likely finish higher than we did last year. I think we still need two or three more performances in the manner of yesterday to suggest that the level of handwringing across multiple threads over the last 18 hours is any way warranted. 

[mozo]

2 hours ago, spudski said:

Re the poor distribution, passing and crossing. 

 

Well done Fevs for putting that horror show together. Glad I didn't watch just before going to sleep.

[LondonBristolian]

27 minutes ago, ExiledAjax said:

This is a highlights package though. It purposefully shows you only what is needed to prove our terrible passing. It is designed to exaggerate the failure! Our actual basic passing numbers were good.

It's those 14 interceptions, and the 35 (thirty-five!) clearances, and the passes that relate to them, that stand out and outshine the basic good numbers beneath them. It's a relatively small number of important and noticeable errors that make us look, as you imply, embarrassingly poor.

To me that suggests it's an issue that is fixable at the training ground rather than in the transfer market. Others will disagree, and it might well be that the way to fix it at the training ground is to change the people administering the training, but I personally don't think that yesterday's game conclusively proves that we must spend, spend, spend in order to improve on last season.

Not deliberately quoting you twice - you've just made two posts worth responding to - but I think it is possibly both. I think, with work on the training ground cutting out some of the unforced errors, we'll finish higher than last season but I also think we may need to go into the transfer market if we want to improve enough to be in contention for the top six. 

[And Its Smith]

37 minutes ago, spudski said:

Hopefully it's a collective one off. 

I just read the Bristol Live post match interview with NP. 

He says twice that he sees us as a better team than last season, and that we will do better than last season. 

We maybe better collectively, however imo, the standard of teams in the league is stronger this season. 

One negates the other. 

Personally I don't think we are stronger to push for top 6. 

We needed to get stronger as a collective just to keep mid table standard. 

The strengthening isn't that great...that it will increase our chances imo. 

https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/sport/football/nigel-pearson-discusses-bristol-citys-8691105

 

Without Scott it’s hard to see us as that much stronger really. 

[And Its Smith]

2 minutes ago, mozo said:

Well done Fevs for putting that horror show together. Glad I didn't watch just before going to sleep.

It wasn’t Fevs. It’s former otiber jondolman 

[ralphindevon]

26 minutes ago, ExiledAjax said:

This is a highlights package though. It purposefully shows you only what is needed to prove our terrible passing. It is designed to exaggerate the failure! Our actual basic passing numbers were good.

It's those 14 interceptions, and the 35 (thirty-five!) clearances, and the passes that relate to them, that stand out and outshine the basic good numbers beneath them. It's a relatively small number of important and noticeable errors that make us look, as you imply, embarrassingly poor.

To me that suggests it's an issue that is fixable at the training ground rather than in the transfer market. Others will disagree, and it might well be that the way to fix it at the training ground is to change the people administering the training, but I personally don't think that yesterday's game conclusively proves that we must spend, spend, spend in order to improve on last season.

Yeah I get that and indeed we could easily have drawn the game, so couldn’t have been that bad.

It was the manor of how bad the bad passes were, there were some mistakes that a championship player just shouldn’t be making.

As @spudski says, hopefully a collective one off because you can’t be making that many schoolboy errors at this level, however well the rest of the game may be going.

[ralphindevon]

5 minutes ago, mozo said:

Well done Fevs for putting that horror show together. Glad I didn't watch just before going to sleep.

Dave’s X (Twitter) account is @FevsFootball 

[Henry]

6 minutes ago, mozo said:

Well done Fevs for putting that horror show together. Glad I didn't watch just before going to sleep.

That’s not @Davefevs. I believe he used to post on here. I think that poster has blocked Fevs, so he wouldn’t have even seen it on Twitter!

[mozo]

2 minutes ago, ralphindevon said:

Yeah I get that and indeed we could easily have drawn the game, so couldn’t have been that bad.

It was the manor of how bad the bad passes were, there were some mistakes that a championship player just shouldn’t be making.

As @spudski says, hopefully a collective one off because you can’t be making that many schoolboy errors at this level, however well the rest of the game may be going.

If we'd have nabbed a point yesterday we'd have come away saying we probably deserved to lose a la Preston. 

[And Its Smith]

2 minutes ago, Henry said:

That’s not @Davefevs. I believe he used to post on here. I think that poster has blocked Fevs, so he wouldn’t have even seen it on Twitter!

In the replies someone has copied in Nige so he will see it! 

[Henry]

1 minute ago, And Its Smith said:

In the replies someone has copied in Nige so he will see it! 

I think Nige had a good view of it yesterday!

[ExiledAjax]

8 minutes ago, LondonBristolian said:

I do think there is a certain level of hyperbole that comes after every win and every defeat but it is better to draw conclusions from a pattern rather than an individual game.

Absolutely! And I've tried, in other posts, to be clear that we're discussing very early indications of possible issues that need correction, but that are capable of being corrected. I'm not calling for all our change, and hopefully I'm not precipitating that hyperbole!

9 minutes ago, LondonBristolian said:

So I don't see that as a major concern. The bigger concern for me is that Mehmeti is a player who we've presumably brought in because he can effect games and he just isn't doing that often enough yet. Which is a problem because nobody else is either. 

Agree, and what was unsaid in my post was that I think he is capable of making the decisions. It was case of pointing out where he is right now, rather than screaming for him to be dropped because he's awful (or other such hyperbolic reaction).

13 minutes ago, LondonBristolian said:

To have any chance of a play-off challenge, we probably do need an creative midfielder and we probably need another forward who can play in the centre of the front three. 

I do see the argument, and it's important to say that when I say we cannot conclude that it's necessary to spend, I'm not ruling out that conclusion entirely. It may well be that we miss Scott a lot. On strikers - we've seen in past seasons that this strike force is capable of finishing chances, and Wells is capable of playing in that central position. But they need supply, so I can absolutely see an argument for strengthening centrally. FWIW I think we've missed a fit and firing Weimann as much as Scott in these past games.

13 minutes ago, LondonBristolian said:

Not deliberately quoting you twice - you've just made two posts worth responding to - but I think it is possibly both. I think, with work on the training ground cutting out some of the unforced errors, we'll finish higher than last season but I also think we may need to go into the transfer market if we want to improve enough to be in contention for the top six. 

Fair enough, as I say above, my argument that we don't necessarily need to buy, doesn't seem to absolutely rule out that possibility. I think I, like you, was just trying to offer an alternative view to the dramatic cries of "buy, buy, buy" from some over the last few hours.

I've not picked up all of your points made, but I generally agree with your posts.

[ashton_fan]

I feel a bit sorry for Nige, the club sells our two best players for £35m this year, we invest about £6m in new players and yet we as fans expect the team to do better than last year, it's not really logical is it? Added to the fact it's the last year of his contract, I imagine SL's thinking he'll give him till January (or maybe a bit later) to show we're challenging for top six but if not he'll be gone to give the new guy a chance to assess the squad before the next summer window. He's probably also thinking he needs to keep some cash back to give the new manager funds if that's what happens. 

[ExiledAjax]

13 minutes ago, ralphindevon said:

Yeah I get that and indeed we could easily have drawn the game, so couldn’t have been that bad.

It was the manor of how bad the bad passes were, there were some mistakes that a championship player just shouldn’t be making.

As @spudski says, hopefully a collective one off because you can’t be making that many schoolboy errors at this level, however well the rest of the game may be going.

Yeh, and I understand that it's those critical moments that distinguish good from great.

A surgeon can do 999 perfect operations, then in number 1,000 he cuts out the wrong kidney and kills someone. That is failure, and must be rectified, but it doesn't indicate a deep issue, it just indicates one, admittedly serious, error. That is easier to fix than a surgeon who does 1,000 operations all of which have small errors.

[Rob k]

9 minutes ago, ashton_fan said:

I feel a bit sorry for Nige, the club sells our two best players for £35m this year, we invest about £6m in new players and yet we as fans expect the team to do better than last year, it's not really logical is it? Added to the fact it's the last year of his contract, I imagine SL's thinking he'll give him till January (or maybe a bit later) to show we're challenging for top six but if not he'll be gone to give the new guy a chance to assess the squad before the next summer window. He's probably also thinking he needs to keep some cash back to give the new manager funds if that's what happens. 

No different to any other manager we have ever had to be fair

[Sleepy1968]

2 hours ago, spudski said:

Re the poor distribution, passing and crossing. 

 

Utterly depressing seeing that again. Not sure why Tanner didn't get booked when he belted the ball away after he miscontrolled it out of touch in the second half. He certainly deserved it. But I guess the ref was like 'wtf is he doing trying to waste time when they are losing ...'

Edited August 20, 2023 by Sleepy1968

[Fuber]

13 hours ago, Rob k said:

Interesting that a few of you saw Williams as having a good game - i thought he was poor today and we look much better when Naismith was on the pitch.
I’m not a big fan of Memheti, didn’t think he offered anything, wouldn’t get a start for me. At half time I’d have shoved Pring forward with Robert’s behind or moved Cornick inside and Bell there for Mehmeti, Tanner was poor all game. 

I'm of a similar opinion - don't know if it's just me but I feel the injuries have guttered what little pace he had left. Playing him and James in the pivot at the moment is suicide.

For someone who isn't the strongest he looks slower than Matty much of the time now - way too slow on the ball. And as you say the difference when Naismith came on was telling.

Latter starts for me next game.

[LondonBristolian]

11 minutes ago, ExiledAjax said:

Absolutely! And I've tried, in other posts, to be clear that we're discussing very early indications of possible issues that need correction, but that are capable of being corrected. I'm not calling for all our change, and hopefully I'm not precipitating that hyperbole!

Agree, and what was unsaid in my post was that I think he is capable of making the decisions. It was case of pointing out where he is right now, rather than screaming for him to be dropped because he's awful (or other such hyperbolic reaction).

I do see the argument, and it's important to say that when I say we cannot conclude that it's necessary to spend, I'm not ruling out that conclusion entirely. It may well be that we miss Scott a lot. On strikers - we've seen in past seasons that this strike force is capable of finishing chances, and Wells is capable of playing in that central position. But they need supply, so I can absolutely see an argument for strengthening centrally. FWIW I think we've missed a fit and firing Weimann as much as Scott in these past games.

Fair enough, as I say above, my argument that we don't necessarily need to buy, doesn't seem to absolutely rule out that possibility. I think I, like you, was just trying to offer an alternative view to the dramatic cries of "buy, buy, buy" from some over the last few hours.

I've not picked up all of your points made, but I generally agree with your posts.

Cheers - I think the reason I quoted you was because you were making points I broadly agreed with and I didn't want to pick out someone I disagreed with and look like I was starting an argument! I certainly don't think you're in any way precipitating the hyperbole (and I think there's a lot of sensible posts from other posters in this thread too).

I agree with you about Weimann - and I think the absence of Conway is a factor. I like Wells a lot as a player but whenever I've seen him, either for us or elsewhere, he tends to only play well when teams are playing a system that gets players close to him. I certainly think he can play the centre of a three well - and did so several times last season - but my impression is that our set up so far this season has seen the wide players stick to the flanks more than last year and the midfielders sit a little deeper and I think, if that's a conscious tactical decision, it makes it harder to get the best out of Wells. 

[Sleepy1968]

3 minutes ago, Fuber said:

I'm of a similar opinion - don't know if it's just me but I feel the injuries have guttered what little pace he had left. Playing him and James in the pivot at the moment is suicide.

For someone who isn't the strongest he looks slower than Matty much of the time now - way too slow on the ball. And as you say the difference when Naismith came on was telling.

Latter starts for me next game.

Won't Naismith have to come in as Centre back with Dickie being suspended? ed: or do we see Pring being moved accross?

Edited August 20, 2023 by Sleepy1968

[Rob k]

1 minute ago, Sleepy1968 said:

Won't Naismith have to come in as Centre back with Dickie being suspended? ed: or do we see Pring being moved accross?

I’d certainly move Pring across and play Robert’s at LB with Naismith in midfield. 

[Davefevs]

3 hours ago, Engvall’s Splinter said:

Well that’s warmed my Sunday feeling. Thanks Fevs. 

Please don’t associate my Twitter account @FevsFootball with this account.  It is nothing to do with me.  It belongs to JonDolman, formerly of OTIB, who just like on here, doesn’t like debate.

[Davefevs]

1 hour ago, mozo said:

Well done Fevs for putting that horror show together. Glad I didn't watch just before going to sleep.

This account is not me.  I’m actually offended!

[Davefevs]

2 hours ago, ExiledAjax said:

This is a highlights package though. It purposefully shows you only what is needed to prove our terrible passing. It is designed to exaggerate the failure! Our actual basic passing numbers were good.

It's those 14 interceptions, and the 35 (thirty-five!) clearances, and the passes that relate to them, that stand out and outshine the basic good numbers beneath them. It's a relatively small number of important and noticeable errors that make us look, as you imply, embarrassingly poor.

To me that suggests it's an issue that is fixable at the training ground rather than in the transfer market. Others will disagree, and it might well be that the way to fix it at the training ground is to change the people administering the training, but I personally don't think that yesterday's game conclusively proves that we must spend, spend, spend in order to improve on last season.

Yep, there is some balance to yesterday’s performance.  But the twitter account loves to focus on negativity.

@Henry yes, he did block me.  For some reason he has unblocked me over the last couple of weeks, probably wants to see what I’ve been posting!!!  I don’t engage, long story, but a couple of us on here were trying to help him last year when he was going through a tough time.  And he threw it back in our face, got all nasty.  Then he blocked me anyway.

[Red Skin]

 

Thanks for some well needed balance @Davefevs.   I agree with your analysis.   It's wasn't great, but the overreaction on OTIB seems to be getting worse.  Is this the influence of social media algorithms on the group psyche, in that only extreme opinions are worthy of getting attention?

It's very frustrating though.  Individual errors aside we have struggled for years to break down sides that can defend.  We are still lacking players that are brave on the ball and can beat a man.  Maybe these should be  attributes we should look for in potential signings, and things we should develop and ingender in the academy? 

[Engvall’s Splinter]

28 minutes ago, Davefevs said:

Please don’t associate my Twitter account @FevsFootball with this account.  It is nothing to do with me.  It belongs to JonDolman, formerly of OTIB, who just like on here, doesn’t like debate.

Sincerest apologies, David. 

[Davefevs]

Just now, Engvall’s Splinter said:

Sincerest apologies, David. 

Apology accepted.

[mozo]

33 minutes ago, Davefevs said:

This account is not me.  I’m actually offended!

Good! 

I thought the song choice was bound to be you!