Frustrating

Save Sunderland (1-0) and Stoke (2-2) our last 9 games sum up how agonising to watch and frustrating City are:

Watford 1-2
Sheff U 0-1
Hull 2-3
Blackpool 1-1
QPR 0-0
Coventry 0-0
Blackburn 0-1
Wigan 1-1
Millwall 0-1.

So that’s 5 losses by a single goal and 4 draws.

City aren’t getting stuffed 3,4-0. They’re always been in these games but it’s a freak goal (Millwall), a deflection (Blackburn & Blackpool), a goal most keepers would save (Sheff U), refereeing incompetency (Coventry & Wigan) etc…

In each of these games City have had enough decent chances to turn 0 points into 1 and 1 into 3 but haven’t been able to. It’s not as if the opposing keeper have had blinders but just a total lack of quality up top.

So if (and it’s a big IF) City can get a scoring striker then maybe they can turn the season around.

 

Scoring goals would seem to be our problem - whether that's a lack of decent strikers (probably but not necessarily) or maybe it's the combined effect of that and having very little creativity in the squad to make sufficient real chances.

As well as being the lowest scorers in the Championship. we've actually conceded less goals than Blackburn, Norwich, Middlesbrough, Sunderland, Swansea, and ALL the other clubs below halfway in the table.

The reason for our lowly table position is obvious, but we need to create more chances as well. There're definitely goals in Robbo, Zak Davies, O'Dowda, and dare I say it Etete with the right supply - but one thing, please forget Harris - the bloke just can't finish.

 

All good points Sparkey.

The thing that holds us back is the lack of creativity, emanating from our slow, laborious midfield build up. It's okay keeping the ball because the opposition can't score while we have it - and sometimes we don't keep it very well.

In reality we don't know how good at scoring our strikers are because they get so few opportunities. I'm not sure the likes of Chopra, Kenwynne Jones, Ross McCormack or Moore or even Whitts would have scored the number they did with our current midfield. Our strikers have a very meagre plate to feed from.

It could be that Watters and James Collins were not as bad as we thought. That is a bit of a stretch I agree.

Okay we had well over 20 attempts on goal v Millwall but how many of those were totally speculative efforts from outside the box? The occupants of Row Z behind the goal were in greater danger than the Millwall keeper.

And yet possibly our most creative player, Colwill, spent the whole game wearing out a trench up and down from the halfway line, outside the pitch.

I can only assume that Whitehead had a reason for not throwing him into the fray. But we were 1 down with little sign of scoring success. Surely giving Colwill a go for the last 15/20 minutes might have given us something different?

Whether we sign Assombalonga or another striker with a reasonable strike rate, at our level we need someone to create the space and opportunities for them. The last one we had to do that was the Lee Tomlin of 4 years ago.

As we cannot spend any money due to the limited umbongo surely we need a manager with the right connections to get us a loaner with these abilities.

The lack of any positive managerial rumours, as I type this is a real frustration.

Are the board not concerned that we appear to be hurtling towards Div 1 and visits to Morecambe, Fleetwood and the Azteca Memorial Stadium etc next season?

 

You would have thought so for obvious financial reasons.

Tan seemingly mistrusts football specialists making decisions for him so whatever is decided will be down to the self styled football guru sitting in his ivory tower on Malaysia.

 

Do we have any football specialists in decision making positions at the club?

 

No doubt Tan took this club forward - now he's holding it back.

 

Who’s going to tell him though

 

Masky

 

To be honest, I'm of the belief we are struggling with BOTH aspects here (strikers and midfield).

Robbo (and latterly Etete to a degree) are the only forwards we have that seem to be able to make the ball "stick" up top, even in small ways... that lack of hold up play is hampering our chances to get get anyone in the middle up in support of them.

Likewise, our wide men don't seem to be delivering too many decent balls in either... not just for the strikers but also any "onrushing" (if we have such a thing) midfielder coming in late around the edge of the box.

Taking on the original posts title, the hardest part of it all is that it's just frustratingly tiny things than need to change to make the difference.... as per my comment made on the Hudson thread. Just a little more composure, a cooler head or even just a lucky bounce and things could have been different for Hudson and the team as a whole as some of those results listed would indeed have been more positive ones.

I guess that's football for you though

 

Another 1 goal defeat to a team most championship teams would have potted with ease. Luton were bang average.

City had a couple of half chances but again blew them.

It’s going to take a miracle to avoid relegation

 

Massive task to turn this around.

All in all, defensively we're reasonably solid especially now McGuinness has returned, the problems lie elsewhere and are obvious.

The lack of goals is all too easily put down to poor strikers (in Harris's cast that's correct), but there are certainly goals in Robbo, Etete and Davies and hopefully this new guy. Robbo having to drop back to collect the ball himself is a complete waste of time and of the player's strength.

I'm still convinced our inability to score has more to do with the poor midfield which hasn't been addressed in this window.

 

Can’t disagree
McGuinness adds much needed height but can’t recall who got out jumped for their goal.
The midfield is poor; no forward movement or penetration- our forward passes mostly come from the defenders. Nobody is capable of picking up the ball, running forward and passing forward. Sawyers supposedly the man who to pull the strings was so deep last night and slowed everything down. Ralls does nothing and Wintle save one decent burst forward (which he fluffed) has become as bad as Ralls.
Don’t know why Davies wasn't brought on last night or even started instead of Harris.
Sabri has his work cut out for as has been said before if we can get at least one goal per game it should be enough for at least a draw as our defence is the best part of our team.

 

If you create half a dozen chances and take one of them, you've got a chance of winning the game.

If you create just one clear chance and miss it like Wintle's abysmal open goal effort, you're going to hug the bottom of table and eventually pay the price.

 

Looks like we're saving up to pay our dues.

 

We can blame the strikers all day long, but historically we've had great contributions from midfield to support the goal tally as well as making them for others.

Ralls is a shadow of his former self, Sawyers is a complete waste of space, whilst Wintle has gone well off the boil and his confidence looks shot. That open goal miss last night was the tin hat. When we do get chances like that, they've got to be put away. Midfielders like Mowatt or Dack would have buried that no problem.

Why has this not been addressed? Answer is we have decision making people at the club who are looking at balance sheets instead of footballing matters on the pitch. The obvious shortcomings in midfield have been ignored.

Also dismissing the influence of Morrison on the pitch and allowing him and now Nelson going to clubs competing with us at the foot of the table must be balance sheet decisions because they make no sense otherwise. Lamouchi will need to be the magician he said he wasn't.

 

The way it's going, if it weren't for the efforts of Allsop, Ng, Kipre and lately McGuiness we would be even further in the soft and smellies.

But you can't rely on your defence soaking up pressure indefinitely. At some stage they will suffer injuries, suspensions or may just crack after defending at this level for so long.

Our new centre forward needs to be something of a Haaland and starting thumping the ball into the net virtually every game.

In reality, with our midfield's lack of creativity, that is highly unlikely.

Lamouchi needs some coaching from the Great Soprendo to get us out of the fine mess we have gotten ourselves into.

 

Bloooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobirds

 

Dare I mention losing by a single goal again

 

At least it's keeping the negative goal difference down.

 

Don’t like to think it but just looked at our remaining fixtures and it’s difficult to see where a win is coming from. We’ve had Wigan & Blackpool at home and got the likes of WBA, Boro, Burnley, Norwich, Sheff U to come and both our local rivals who have got the Indian sign over us.

Unless the SAS can get a tune out of this bunch of misfits pretty darn soon it’ll be too late. Just hope we can still be in with a chance come our final game v Huddersfield but that’ll probably be a dead rubber by then for us.