Going back to that defeat v Brizzle last season. If you recall they scored from an out of the blue 25 yarder having not threatened all game and City, Bacuna & Hoilett each rattle the bar from the same range. Small margins but I understand even if we’d won Warnock was going to resign on the Monday for a host of other reasons.
Watched the Wales game earlier. Was relieved to see Moore on the bench so he gets a bit of a rest... However, when he came on he missed an absolute sitter again (albeit with his weaker foot). Getting a little worried that his record at Wigan and for Wales may be proving a little misleading.
Still haven’t got over losing to the Scotch at Anfield thanks to Jordan so brazenly cheating. Watching Peru stuff them in Argentina was a footballing highlight Anyways yes they surprised everyone
Injury situation is not great. Tomlin out for 2 months, desmond another 4 weeks. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/55002381
Bad news. Tomlin out means Wilson has to stay fit and play every game. Desmond's injury shows the complete folly of not signing another right back. Bacuna is a stop gap who could be exploited by a clever team and we also lose his drive and energy in midfield. I hope that shortcoming can be adjusted in January
Desmond out until realistically the new year, Tomlin realistically out till February. This season is just going to pass us by whilst we hover mid table.
You could be right, but if the difference between success or failure this season depends on 2 players being injured, then I despair for this club.
Get your point OS but I’m going on how effective Tomlin was for us post lockdown last season where undoubtedly he was the reason we got to top 6. A lot rests on Wilson and Moore’s shoulders but you never know if we can just get enough points to be around 10th, the return of injured players and maybe some decent new ones in Jan window may result in a decent 2nd half of the campaign.
Nin - my point was more about the club than your post. The lack of a decent RB option at the club and only the 11th hour (lucky?) acquisition of Wilson to supplement Tomlin is an indictment of City's poor decisions.
Looking at the table after yesterday's results and it doesn't make pretty reading - 15th place is not good enough. A dozen games gone and you'd expect some of those currently top half would be up there, but even the apparently "crap" Barnsley are above us, as are Luton and Millwall. Of those just below us, our point yesterday kept us above Huddersfield, Brum and QPR but only on goal difference - we're on the same 14 points as them and realistically we could be 18th. If Forest and Rotherham had got something yesterday, we'd be down in 20th place. FFS, when is the light going to dawn on the fact that even if as suggested we have a capable enough squad, things are just not right? It's always easy to blame the manager for poor table position, but I'm getting a bit sick and tired of Harris praising the squad but bemoaning the results. Shape up or ship out.
He just does not know his right team and tactics until the game is well under way and then has to re-adjust it. Why can’t he pick the right X1 and go for it from the start rather than see how the opposition shapes up? Let the opposition manager worry about how to react to City rather than the other way round. He did just that against Barnsley but all that good work was undone at QPR and yesterday. (I’m not putting the Bristol game into that bracket as we were the better team by far but got robbed by an average team)
The old chestnut always comes back to haunt - you can never get back the points you've dropped. Our early season form has seen us throw away numerous points let alone drop a few. What you earn and get in the bag you keep, and they can see you through a sticky patch that most clubs go through at some point. Reading have just lost 4 games on the bounce but they're still up there in the top 6. I doubt if we won 4 on the bounce right now that we'd actually get into the top 6 - that's the measure of playing catch up. For whatever reason, and we've all got our opinions, we've had a poor first dozen games with the highlight being a home win against Barnsley.
Nothing doing so just looked back at the first dozen games. We're just dropping (throwing away?) too many points. We've drawn 5 of the 12 - Derby, Boro, Bournemouth, Blackburn and Millwall. Apart from Bournemouth who are a very good side, we could and should have won the rest. You can argue that Derby, Blackburn and Millwall were on the road and a point is always a decent result, but I don't buy that. We gave two of them a goal start and had to come back for it. Of the games we've lost, the opening home fixture against Sheff Wed was a bloody disaster. Reading were just better than us and deserved it, but we were far better than Bristol City and still lost it. Never mind - we beat Barnsley. The high points on the road have been the wins at Forest and Preston but we have to face a few facts. Forest were and have been so poor, Newport would have trounced them. There was nothing in it in the Preston game save for the Ojo blaster that went inside the post rather than outside for a change. All in all, a poor/mixed bag. It suggests the best we can hope for is more games against Fulham and Brom - because they're coming down, we're not going up.
Reactive instead of proactive is what keeps going around in my head. Unfortunately and to make matters worse, some of our reactions have not been the best. On the field we have to wait to go a goal down before we do anything. It makes no sense to me that we can claw back a draw but not use the same players and tactics from the start and try to bury the opposition. I still don't understand why we spent so much money on strikers that we're unable to feed when the midfield and right back situation needs addressing. Most of all, I find the whole business around managing Tomlin's injury the most ridiculous element. Everyone has been saying for months that things will be better when he's back but how long were we prepared to keep saying it for? Of course now it appears that his injory has been severely badly managed and he's out for two months. I'm getting a bad feeling about the club returning to some dark days with very little direction, no creative energy and seemingly little ambition. I think I would feel differently if there was an obvious attempt to introduce a playing style but everything seems so haphazard. I think I've repeated a lot of Sparkeys comments here but I didn't want to just say I agree - even though I do.
A further thought, isn't our current situation how Harris set up at Millwall? A few good results then fall back to mid table mediocrity at best. Potentially we have many more good players than he ever had at Millwall but we are having the same experience. Can he actually put out a side with the basic instruction to get at the opposition from the start? We did against Barnsley but they were crap - and we took them by surprise.
Spot on clingo. Even though I accept we're "outside the loop" of the inner workings at the club, we're not blind. For me the whole handling of the club since Malky was sacked that Christmas time in 2013 (and maybe he did deserve it) has been amateur. The Solksjaer/Slade/Trollope sequence of management condemed us into purgatory mode. Dalman may well have been working under strict instruction budgetwise, but he's not the visionary we need to drive us forward. Only the eventual acquisition of Warnock changed the mood. Ultimately his time had run and it was the opportunity for the club to take up the baton with a capable manager and budget. Once again for me anyway, neither has been the case. We live with what we've got and unfortunately and for whatever reasons, it isn't working.
Wednesday will be another chance for Harris to pick the right starting X1 and play to an agreed pre match set of tactics. He failed to do this in 3 of the last 4 games, allowing all 3 opponents to open the scoring thereby requiring City to be the ones to readjust and chase the game. I watched Coventry in one of their early games and was impressed by their ability to pass and move at pace especially in the opposing half; only their poor defending and lack of a cutting edge up front preventing them from winning. The latter could be said to echo with City’s failings this season but the former is the difference in the two teams (albeit I’ve only seen them once). We can talk all day about the failure to replace NML and Ward and the poor management of Tomlin and not bringing in an experienced RB but as Harris has said on paper City have a decent squad, so as it’s his squad and he’s in charge of them he’s got to get the best out of them which IMO means he’s got to send the correct X1 onto the field with a much more positive intent and not be passive and wait for something to happen or chase the game when they go behind.
I watched them on the box a month back against Reading. They pressed them hard and got the result in the end - I think it finished 3-2 to them - brilliant goal from their sub and a great game to watch. They will be no pushovers and will battle to the end like in that Reading game. We'll need to face them up, get in front and stay there because they won't give up..
hope your right look forward to the across water Derbies … HANG ON might not make any difference we could be PREM team if the sh*** sticks...
Realred did you catch the Everton game v Bristol C on Big Match Revisited recently? Norman Hunter, Terry Cooper, Joe Royle, Peter Cormack, Gerry Gow, Clive Whitehead, Tom Ritchie.... 4-1 to the Toffees but that was harsh. They survived that season but their decline down the divisions wasn’t far off. It’s been some time since they were in the top flight BUT it’s not happening this season.
