Substitutions and (again) game management

[cidered abroad]

2 hours ago, Red white and red said:

Maybe Bristol City and Liam Manning just aren’t very good? Maybe. 

That performance following Tuesday tells me that Manning may be a good coach but he is NOT A MANAGER.

[BigTone]

15 minutes ago, Back of the Dolman said:

I agree with you, but there’s plenty on here who think differently.

For me he’s got no pace, can’t beat a man, his final ball is poor and his awareness for his defensive duties is lacking.

Not championship standard 

And thats his good points

[Ivorguy]

25 minutes ago, BigTone said:

Mehmeti did zero today which pretty much sums up his time at the club.  We will never progress with players of his calibre.

We have had too many wingers of his type over the years who have pace but lack a football brain

[Back of the Dolman]

Just now, Ivorguy said:

We have had too many wingers of his type over the years who have pace but lack a football brain

Problem is he hasn’t got pace either 

[Supersonic Robin]

1 hour ago, JP Hampton said:

I think we actually missed Mehmeti when he went off. To my mind he was the only one creating anything. 

Agreed. He was the one player who was causing them a threat, especially after moving onto the left hand side in the first half.

[Harry]

33 minutes ago, BigTone said:

Mehmeti did zero today which pretty much sums up his time at the club.  We will never progress with players of his calibre.

We’ll have to disagree on this one big guy. I thought he was the only player today who looked like he was giving qpr anything to worry about. 
If everyone scores a 4 today, he’d at least get a 5. 

[Robbored]

3 hours ago, Graham76 said:

I thought bringing Cornick on was a terrible decision.  What a sign of intent by Manning! 

Needless to say he went on to have an absolute shocker. We need to get rid of him asap. 

It’s harsh to slag off Cornick when he came on wide right -  I can’t imagine that it’s best position and consequently he was ineffective. Surely he should  have come up front?  All the guys around were as baffled as I was so in that regard it was a strange decision.

TGH should  have replaced Williams at half time - he was way off his game today but we saw no changes until the hour mark.

[exAtyeoMax]

27 minutes ago, Back of the Dolman said:

I agree with you, but there’s plenty on here who think differently.

For me he’s got no pace, can’t beat a man, his final ball is poor and his awareness for his defensive duties is lacking.

Not championship standard 

To be honest I don’t think I know what championship standard is anymore

[Davefevs]

Just now, exAtyeoMax said:

To be honest I don’t think I know what championship standard is anymore

It’s league one at best I think

[Back of the Dolman]

4 minutes ago, exAtyeoMax said:

To be honest I don’t think I know what championship standard is anymore

Actually that’s a very good point

[Graham76]

1 minute ago, Robbored said:

It’s harsh to slag off Cornick when he came on wide right -  I can’t imagine that it’s best position and consequently he was ineffective. Surely he should  have come up front?  All the guys around were as baffled as I was so in that regard it was a strange decision.

TGH should  have replaced Williams at half time - he was way off his game today but we saw no changes until the hour mark.

I see your point, but that doesn’t excuse Cornick constantly losing control of the ball and giving away possession.  Same could be said for the whole team, but I’m running out of patience with players like Cornick and Memehti who don’t grasp the chance 

[tin]

21 minutes ago, Graham76 said:

I see your point, but that doesn’t excuse Cornick constantly losing control of the ball and giving away possession.  Same could be said for the whole team, but I’m running out of patience with players like Cornick and Memehti who don’t grasp the chance 

I think that’s fair but where’s the money coming from to move them on or signing better? Cornick, for example, was identified by Gilhespy - along with other forwards who were available at that moment in time - for £300k. We don’t know who else was on that list, but Cornick’s experience ticked a lot of boxes for the powers that be at that time. 

Mehmeti was a rising talent, according to Sky’s 21 under 21 or whatever it’s called. Why didn’t our recruitment team pick up his lack of athleticism if they were forking out £1m? That was a huge amount of cash post-Covid and in times of austerity.

EDIT: Basically, if we want proven quality players, SL has to be prepared to pay for them. 

Edited February 17 by tin

[Dr Balls]

First half we looked reasonable certainly until Bell went off and probably until they scored. Second half we were clearly second best and the subs made us worse not better, such that by the end they were all over us and playing it around us at ease. It’s the same old story that we don’t play well when sides sit back and we have the majority of the possession.

[pongo88]

1 hour ago, Back of the Dolman said:

I agree with you, but there’s plenty on here who think differently.

For me he’s got no pace, can’t beat a man, his final ball is poor and his awareness for his defensive duties is lacking.

Not championship standard 

There one extra failing you didn’t mention - whenever there’s a 50-50 ball he turns it into a 40-60 ball in favour of the opposition. He’s got no strength, is easily pushed off the ball and isn’t prepared to fight for the ball. 

[Back of the Dolman]

1 minute ago, pongo88 said:

There one extra failing you didn’t mention - whenever there’s a 50-50 ball he turns it into a 40-60 ball in favour of the opposition. He’s got no strength, is easily pushed off the ball and isn’t prepared to fight for the ball. 

I didn’t want to lay it on too thick

[AppyDAZE]

43 minutes ago, Harry said:

We’ll have to disagree on this one big guy. I thought he was the only player today who looked like he was giving qpr anything to worry about. 
If everyone scores a 4 today, he’d at least get a 5. 

Not his best game, but looked far less likely to score after he was subbed. I agree 

[Silvio Dante]

58 minutes ago, Harry said:

We’ll have to disagree on this one big guy. I thought he was the only player today who looked like he was giving qpr anything to worry about. 
If everyone scores a 4 today, he’d at least get a 5. 

When he moved to the left in the last fifteen minutes of the first half he was reasonably effective with a couple of good runs. 
 

On the right for the first thirty minutes he was abysmal. His positioning was way off and McCrorie gave him a deserved bollocking for it mid half. He was pulling way too narrow which made sense if it was making space for Ross wide but it wasn’t - possibly it was tactical but it wasn’t working. Start of the second half he was ineffective again.

Dont get me wrong, most people were poor today. But I don’t think he was a cut above (even a 4 to a 5) for any period other than that 15 at the end of the first half. But that’s balanced from being a 3 out of 10 before then!

However, he was still miles better than Medube.

[Beni71]

3 hours ago, Dr Balls said:

It’s the lack of a “Plan B” if “Plan A” isn’t working. The only changes are different players in the same system. We were getting done in midfield and had no creativity. Why not add TGH to James and Williams to have 3 in central midfield in the second half? Yes play Wells and Conway together but how about having them both upfront rather than Tommy trying to play a number 10 role I.e. going 4-3-1-2, rather than continuing a 4.-2-3-1 that was achieving very little?

Twine was on the bench. If he was fit enough for the bench why not use him? As for Dire, more “oh dear”. There are so many things about him, even before coming to us on loan, that don’t quite add up. And as for his performance, he was significantly less impressive than Yeboah, who appears to have been sent back to the U21s by Manning.

Usual service has been resumed. City remain consistently inconsistent and mid table mediocrity appears to be the best that we can hope for.

And one final point on Manning being a young coach. Yes he is, but he’s been coaching at some level for 10+ years. It’s not like a guy who has been playing to his mid 30s and just taken up coaching. If he doesn’t know how to change things mid game to influence play then why not? It’s surely something that every coach should have learnt by this stage in his career.

I’m not in the Liam Manning fan club and still to be convinced he will move us forward. 
 

Despite his length of coaching he has no experience at this level and he personally will need to develop significantly if he can move the club beyond mid table. 
 

If you listened to George Elek from “not the top 20 pod” when Manning was announced then it was quite clear he liked to play 1 man up top, supported by players with energy to press and who had pace (very similar to Nigel Pearson). 
 

The major difference between NP/LM is LMs love of data. LM will have a much more scientific approach to analysis whilst NP was all about what you see.
 

In essence the club are asking an unproven manager to develop on the job. 

[Dr Balls]

4 minutes ago, Beni71 said:

I’m not in the Liam Manning fan club and still to be convinced he will move us forward. 
 

Despite his length of coaching he has no experience at this level and he personally will need to develop significantly if he can move the club beyond mid table. 
 

If you listened to George Elek from “not the top 20 pod” when Manning was announced then it was quite clear he liked to play 1 man up top, supported by players with energy to press and who had pace (very similar to Nigel Pearson). 
 

The major difference between NP/LM is LMs love of data. LM will have a much more scientific approach to analysis whilst NP was all about what you see.
 

In essence the club are asking an unproven manager to develop on the job. 

From my own personal experience, data alone is useless, it’s the analysis that’s the important part. And that usually requires a degree of experience to understand what it really means in practice. If you are dependent on someone else analysing the data for you, then that immediately puts you on the back foot. And finally, simplistic interpretation is often wrong, as context is key.

[RedorDead BCFC]

Maybe Twine was due to come on for the last 20 like Sykes, but the Bell injury forced the early sub. 

[Rocking Red Cyril]

1 hour ago, RedorDead BCFC said:

Maybe Twine was due to come on for the last 20 like Sykes, but the Bell injury forced the early sub. 

That's makes dine sense cause I think Twines talents was needed badly today 

[Back of the Dolman]

6 minutes ago, Rocking Red Cyril said:

That's makes dine sense cause I think Twines talents was needed badly today 

Then that calls in to question the triple substitution.

Make a double substitution and there would still have been the chance to bring Twine on.

I agree he was a better option and it’s not as if the triple substitution actually helped

[Superjack]

2 hours ago, Beni71 said:

In essence the club are asking an unproven manager to develop on the job. 

Again.

[Cityboy1954]

7 hours ago, Silvio Dante said:

First things first - we can all agree that was awful and only Max comes out with real credit today.

But…the subs.

I think on the triple sub the players coming off were broadly the right ones. But the ones who came on, with the exception of TGH, were odd.

Mehmeti had to be hooked. It was said in the game thread how poor his positioning was. But when you have Sykes on the bench who can easily come on and knows how to play at this level, it’s the obvious sub - most of us would have him in the starting line up when everyone’s available. Dire was dire, but when you’re playing against seasoned championship players putting a guy with 70 minutes experience in senior football was an insane risk.

(On Dire after today I’m really interested to see the reason why Westerlo were ok to let him go. The work permit story makes no sense when looked into)

Knight again being subbed I was ok with. But it should have been Twine. We played Tommy deeper than Wells and against a side sitting in you needed the press less and someone who could create. It was a case of not reacting that we needed something different in the situation.

I would have also gone Tommy for Wells, but the base is the subs were wrong either in personnel or way they were executed. And we didn’t solely lose due to that - it was an awful performance overall - but the game management there certainly didn’t help.

Crap subs i agree made no difference to the game but can only think twine and sykes were not properley fit when Bell went off natural choice,would be twine or sykes not cornetto

[Rocking Red Cyril]

52 minutes ago, Back of the Dolman said:

Then that calls in to question the triple substitution.

Make a double substitution and there would still have been the chance to bring Twine on.

I agree he was a better option and it’s not as if the triple substitution actually helped

Or how fit was Twine?

[Back of the Dolman]

1 minute ago, Rocking Red Cyril said:

Or how fit was Twine?

If he wasn’t fit to come on the pitch then he shouldn’t have been on the bench and then there would be no debate.

[Andy082005]

12 hours ago, Harry said:

Yep. 
No one can convince me or give any reasonable rationale as to why Twine didn’t come on. 
If he’s on the bench he must be fit enough for at least 15-20 mins. 
And he was signed for this exact situation - needing something different around the box versus a team happy to sit in. 
We signed him for these exact moments. 
Baffled I am. 
 

As for Gardner-Hickman. 
I’ve kept my powder dry on him so far but I’ve not as yet been overly impressed with him. Yes, a few decent moments here and there but he’s done nothing to convince me yet. 
And then today, he enters the fray with us needing to sharpen up, quicken the passes, start to impose ourselves etc and he’s the slowest effing passer out there, taking 3 or 4 touches every time he has the ball and getting easily dispossessed about 6 times. 
There was one moment he had an acre in midfield, received a pass, took 3 touches to turn, had a chance at a quick ball out to McCrorie in loads of space but proceeded to pass it at about 0.5 miles per hour and it eventually reached a now fully marked McCrorie the following week!  
Effing quicken it up man!! So damn slow at everything. 
I still need a lot of convincing on this kid. Sorry. 

I’m glad I’m not the only one. He has done ok but has our centre midfielders been so below average in recent times that it’s almost conned people into thinking he has been exceptional 

The centre midfield position needs addressing pre-season. It’s been weak for far to long 

[Super]

It was baffling late on when we are still persisting with slow passing instead of getting the ball into the box. Not sure if the lack of urgency was just tiredness.

[Ashton Fete]

For me Mehemti’s negatives outweigh the positives too much in game, lots of trickery and gets into good positions but end product is often poor, backs out of every 50:50 and when the game gets tough he goes missing.  Hopefully with a summer of protein powder he’ll come back next season better 

Cornick is clearly a likeable bloke and you could never fault his work ethic as it’s evident throughout but he’s just not good enough for a team aiming for the play offs, there’s a reason Luton didn’t extend his contract and he was their 3rd or 4th option up front

Everytime he comes on I want him to do well and prove everyone wrong but yesterday again I was away from the game thinking he’s Steve Torpey with a moustache.  Great work rate but falls short too often

[The Dolman Pragmatist]

12 hours ago, Back of the Dolman said:

I agree with you, but there’s plenty on here who think differently.

For me he’s got no pace, can’t beat a man, his final ball is poor and his awareness for his defensive duties is lacking.

Not championship standard 

I’m not sure.  I agree he doesn’t seem to be able to beat his man, but I think he does have pace and he does seem to make things happen.  I suspect that defences don’t like playing against him, and he can be a clever player (look at the assist against Southampton).  I understand the reservations about him, but I do think he offers possibilities.  I certainly think he’s worth persevering with for now.