Steve Lansdown's Worst Fears

Bristol City verdict: Steve Lansdown's worst fears are realised but Antoine Semenyo strikes gold
Bristol City suffered a humbling and damaging defeat at Craven Cottage as Aleksandar Mitrovic and the Cottagers' free-scoring attack tore them apart

From suspicions of another famous away day to a painful reminder of just how far Bristol City are from the elite sides in the Championship, the emotional swing in west London was significant.

In many ways it's a hard game to analyse, given how clinical Fulham were in that brutal period before half-time when they scored four goals in 15 minutes, and the fact that the Robins until this encounter had strung together some decent performances.

The key, as ever, will be how they respond to this 6-2 mauling and the possible dents to confidence and self-belief that may entail, which could be crucial given Nigel Pearson's change in approach post-Christmas has been about bravery on the ball. That requires a lack of inhibitions but these sort of results only create such mental obstacles.

Cardiff City await on Saturday and the true effects of this savagery may not be recognised until then but, for now, here are the talking points from Craven Cottage...

Mitrovic is a cheat code
Readers of a certain age and persuasion will remember a time when FIFA didn’t hold a near-monopoly over the football game market, as the now dominant franchise was often in the shadows of the less glossy but purist’s choice Pro Evolution Soccer.

The programmers behind the 2006 edition of that particular game had installed a bit of a glitch, whereby one individual in the game was designed to such a level that he was just so unfathomably better than any other striker and near unplayable if on the opposite team.

That player was former Inter and Brazil striker Adriano who was just faster and stronger than anyone else and could strike the ball with a power (99, the highest in the game) that made you question his mortality; in a computer game context anyway.

We’re getting a little bit carried away with nostalgia here but the point is, in the Championship for 2021/22, Aleksandar Mitrovic is Adriano in PES 6; 27 goals in 24 games - matching or beating the collective records of 10 of the division’s teams, and he’s on pace to score 50 for the season, making Ivan Toney’s record of 31 in a campaign look modest.

In the first half, having felt his way around the contest a bit in the opening 20 minutes, he was unplayable and, to paraphrase Pearson, the City defence couldn’t lay a glove on him.

Everything he did was devastating to varying degrees; whether it be the simple act of coming short to receive possession, dragging a defender out of position or leaving a midfielder overloaded, and creating space for others, or, in a more obvious sense, his finishing.

Any ball into the box at an appropriate height was won by the Serb - scoring two headers and setting up Neeskens Kebano with another - while his third strike was just majestic and struck with such effortless velocity and accuracy.

However, there is also a wider observation which touches on a different meaning to the heading of this particular talking point: is it fair Fulham possess a player of this quality who they can pay in excess of £70,000 a week (£100,000 a week with bonuses factored in, if reports are to be believed).

Without parachute payments as a result of their Premier League relegation there is absolutely no way the Cottagers could stomach his wages, as was the case in 2019/20. But such are the financial safeguards received for top-flight failure, clubs can afford to gamble with retaining top earners for at least one, and sometimes two seasons.

Likewise it enables them to spend £12million on Harry Wilson who looks positively human next to Mitrovic but is still probably the second best player in the league.

Of course, having expensive players is all well and good, you’ve still got to play well and credit to Marco Silva for creating such a cohesive and exciting attacking unit.

But this is precisely why Steve Lansdown, through CEO Richard Gould, is so increasingly frustrated by parachute payments and his worst fears are being realised as the financial gap widens even further in the Covid age.

With the transfer market collapsing for most Championship clubs, they simply don’t have the necessary financial tools any more, compared to the Premier League’s not-so-finest who can still trade at a high level and although come down with alarming wage bills, have that 12-24 month period of grace to try and get back up while retaining, in theory, vastly unsustainable wage bills.

It does seem to be getting worse, with Fulham, Watford, West Brom and Norwich City yo-yoing between the divisions and two or three consistently in the promotion picture, when they’re not occupying the bottom three in the Premier League.

...that all being said
For all Fulham’s huge resources, depth of squad and frightening quality, City were far too meek in their defending - and that goes beyond just the back three - and, yes, they’ve scored 13 goals in their last two games, but prior to that the Cottagers had a run of four draws and one defeat in the Championship.

In recent weeks, albeit before the mini Christmas Covid-related break, Derby, Preston, Sheffield United and Luton Town had all taken points off of them and while we may be beating Lansdown’s drum regarding parachute payments above, Blackburn Rovers and Queens Park Rangers are third and fourth in the league and getting far more value out of their squad than City currently are.

Having twice taken the lead through two deeply impressive Semenyo strikes - doing his own virtual Adriano circa 2006 impression, it has to be said - the Robins just collapsed.

Mitrovic’s first was, in simplistic terms, about him beating Vyner man-for-man in the air, but it was also about a lack of pressure on the ball to stop Harry Wilson’s cross as Callum O’Dowda was a little too static and not proactive enough in moving towards the Welshman.

The second equaliser was also from O’Dowda’s flank as Kenny Tete delivered a deep cross and this time Kalas was beaten in the air by Mitrovic for Kebano to score.

Fabio Carvalho’s run and finish was a fine goal but also a classic example of City’s midfield being caught between players and not really covering anyone, as a regulation pass by Tim Ream into feet saw the Portuguese turn and run at the defence with King and Massengo caught on their heels.

The fourth was direct from the corner but also raised questions of the Robins organisation as it ended up being Scott and O’Dowda jumping with Mitrovic, while his hat-trick goal was as much a side-effect of that onslaught as the Robins looked punch drunk by that stage.

Any desire to get on the ball and try to play through the thirds was rendered irrelevant by the fact that they simply couldn’t get it, as Fulham’s press was almost as rapid and relentless as their forwards’ ability to find the corner of Max O’Leary’s goal.

Andy King and Han-Noah Massengo frequently found themselves stuck in the mud, in and out of possession, and faced with impossible decisions as Fulham attacked, because every time they looked to close down Tom Cairney or Harrison Reed, up popped Fabio Carvalho to roll into space.

That lack of possession meant Alex Scott’s influence in the first 45 minutes was minimal, although it was his quick break pass that set Semenyo on his way for his first goal.

After that, the only way the 18-year-old could impact the game was being drawn into the depths of midfield but then he was susceptible to Reed and Cairney’s rabbit trap and the whole process started again.

Backline bugbears
Pearson wanted more physicality from his defenders in trying to stop Mitrovic and that missing element could well have made at least a little bit harder for Fulham’s No9 to cross the 25-goal mark but it was more than just giving him a bit of afters in the challenge.

City won just 41 per cent of their aerial duels in the game and the player who led the team for most headers won with three was second-half substitute Chris Martin.

That can probably also be filed under “physicality” but for all Fulham’s neat patterns through midfield and the way they opened space up outside the penalty area and in the channels behind City’s wing-backs, they also won the war in the air.

That is why the set-pieces proved so vulnerable and Mitrovic pulling to the far post created all manner of problems for Vyner and Pring, in particular.

However, while individuals were at fault and that word “efficiency” comes up again, except this time it’s not regarding the final third, or midfield ball retention, this time it’s keeping the ball away from your goal, the set-up looked strange at 2pm and even worse at 5:30pm.

Dasilva as a right wing-back did have some merit, or at least you could appreciate the thought process, with Kebano’s penchant to move inside and having a natural left-footer there could prevent that.

While you can argue Cam Pring did enough last weekend in the FA Cup tie to suggest that maybe stationing him as a left-sided centre-back made some sense, although that is also probably putting two much weight on last Saturday’s game.

Although, in mitigation and in defence of Pearson, he wanted City to be more expansive as he felt the only way to beat the Cottagers was by playing on the front foot so having Pring and O’Dowda in the same team should have aided that, which it did at times. But defensively it looked all wrong.

The two standout bugbears, and you can’t even use hindsight as a way of countering this position, were Vyner in the middle of the three and Rob Atkinson on the bench.

To address the first, in the 3-0 defeat Birmingham City in early November, a game in which City were also absolutely battered in the air, Pearson surprisingly picked Vyner as his middle central defender with Kalas to the right and Atkinson on the left.

Troy Deeney smelt blood and matched him up at every opportunity, using his body strength and general nous to cause all sorts of problems for the 24-year-old, culminating in Scott Hogan’s killer second which came as the result of a big punt forward that Vyner didn’t deal with.

Exactly why Vyner was stationed there again against the might of Mitrovic isn’t clear and although he did well in the opening exchanges, it soon became very ugly for the academy graduate as he couldn’t get near his man.

Presumably Kalas was played to the right because he’s an excellent cover defender and his general reading of the game could help account for Dasilva’s potential vulnerabilities and defensive limitations on his wrong side; the Czech did make a number of impressive interventions on the right flank to stop Kebano.

However, Vyner has looked far more natural as a right-sided centre-back and while his many detractors were out in force last night at Pearson’s suggestion he’s been the team’s best centre-back in recent weeks, the truth is after the Huddersfield defeat he’s played at a high level.

It’s his job to stop strikers but he was fed to the lions, or at least the lion, a bit at Craven Cottage but at no point was there an adjustment to perhaps put Kalas on the Serb (albeit with the Czech beaten in the air for the second goal), and so it got worse and worse for the Robins.

Moving to the other aspect, Pearson ever-so slightly deflected the question around his non-inclusion post-match when he referenced Vyner - as was the origin of the aforementioned quote - as, in effect, being picked ahead of Atkinson.

Yes, that’s true to a point as, based on the FA Cup tie when Atkinson was in the middle of the three, Vyner was preferred in that role. But the real conversation was why Pring was picked on the left instead of the former Oxford defender.

Atkinson had, for the most part, played pretty well in the cup game and had given a good account of himself against Mitrovic. It looked the common sense and logical decision to reinstate him back in a Championship defence.

But instead proved an alarming return to the pre-Christmas trends of too many square pegs in round holes. Players can always play in positions to an extent, they’re professional footballers after all, but it’s about occupying those roles and fulfilling the necessary tasks to a required standard.

Unorthodox positional changes are always to be applauded to an extent, because it shows an element of thinking outside the box, but the trouble is when you try so many in one game, in defence, and against the best attacking team outside of the Premier League, well, it’s going to cause issues.

Semenyo strikes back
Hopefully those two goals in west London have ensured, at least for a few games, that a) people can stop talking about Semenyo’s lack of finesse in front of goal and b) his apparent inability to play through the middle.

The impact of those goals has been reduced somewhat by the outcome of the game but when they happened, Craven Cottage was left stunned.

Both his goals combined Semenyo’s best attributes on the ball, pace, yes, power, yes, but also a sense of adventure and willingness to try something.

For his first, he could easily have taken a shot on early, as he had done a few minutes prior to that, but instead the 22-year-old elected to stand Cairney up - and perhaps that was due to him recognising he was up against a midfielder, not Tosin Adarabioyo or Ream - and then run him down the left before a sublime finish.

The second was an absolutely outstanding goal to which most players may not have attempted.

As Mitrovic’s shot was charged down, Semenyo received possession with his back to goal but with Fulham having enough numbers back for a straightforward decision to be: maintain your body position and bring a midfielder or wide player into play, then spin off and try and chase the reverse pass.

Instead Semenyo, and again maybe recognising Ream’s limitations in broken play when having to turn on his heels, rolled the American and then took off, fending off Reed’s attempts to hold him back before picking the far corner of Rodak’s goal.

They were fantastic moments and showcased what Semenyo has long looked capable of and, through his own hard work, diligence and willingness to get better, is now producing.

What’s also worth mentioning is his overall play and how well he protected the ball when choosing not to ride roughshod over the poor Cottagers defence.

Not once when he received possession did he commit an unforced error or surrender the ball, as per Whoscored’s match stats, and not only was he an outlet for City’s midfielders to seek on the few occasions they did get on the ball to try and stretch the home defence, he brought a sense of relief as they could play it to feet and it would stick.

Semenyo’s performances since returning from injury December have been impressive and the jump he’s made from last season alone, extremely pleasing; Pearson wants his displays marked with more goals in open play, and he certainly got that on Saturday.

But also Semenyo is bringing a real sense of intelligence and awareness to his forward play, picking his moments to try the spectacular but also reining it in when required.

In the space of barely a month, he's gone from a player of potential typecast as an impact substitute, to a key individual in this Robins team.
https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/sport/football/bristol-city-verdict-steve-lansdowns-6499735

 

'Fulham possess a player of this quality who they can pay in excess of £70,000 a week (£100,000 a week with bonuses factored in, if reports are to be believed).'
'Likewise it enables them to spend £12million on Harry Wilson who looks positively human next to Mitrovic but is still probably the second best player in the league.'

Just proves you get what you pay for..