Pearson's Complaints, the Matty James Effect and a Strange Quirk of Fate

Bristol City verdict: Pearson's complaints, the Matty James effect and a strange quirk of fate
Talking points from Bristol City's 2-2 Championship draw with Hull City at the MKM Stadium

A point on the road is always to be welcomed and tangible evidence of a decent day's work but Bristol City came away from the MKM Stadium feeling they left two on the table.

Against an in-form Hull City side, momentum was shared with City predominantly on the ball and the Tigers looking to counter-attack, but the Robins were a little guilty of indecision in the final third.

Antoine Semenyo enjoyed a positive afternoon, scoring the first equaliser, and giving the attack more penetration but he did squander a good first-half chance when he elected to shift the ball onto his left foot rather than go with his right.

Chris Martin and Callum O'Dowda also found themselves behind the home defence but their crossing wasn't as purposeful or precise as the manager would have liked it to be.

However, to have taken a point on the road, having conceded a 79th-minute goal, which could have been a gut-punch to a team a little fragile in confidence, probably speaks of a greater collective unity and effort than we sometimes give them credit for. Here are the talking points from the MKM Stadium ...

Scoreboard journalism
Often when speaking to Nigel Pearson you have to read the room a little. The problem is a room is hard to read when it’s viewed through Zoom.

That being said, it was a pretty dumb opening question to pose the Bristol City manager, “what had pleased him the most about the game?” Swiftly followed by a comical facial expression, a prominent exhale and a loud guffaw, it was pretty clear very little had.

Hands being held up, there was an element of “scoreboard journalism” going on here. A term coined by former AZ Alkmaar head coach Co Adriaanse whereby the result of a game has a direct impact on the final narrative, which then makes it an unfair and unrepresentative account of what actually happened.

You could have framed that result as evidence of City’s fighting spirit; a gutsy comeback echoing the manager’s wish for absolute competitiveness and commitment. Which it was to a point, but also a performance riddled with problems.

Except up to the 92nd minute when James lashed in the equaliser it looked to be a fifth straight away defeat with questions raised of the Robins ability to, well, play well.

Too many wasted passes, too much indecision or the wrong decisions being made in the final third, and defensively they were caught quite a bit down the flanks plus Dan Bentley delivered one of his weakest performances of the season.

City were the worst of two poor sides and it was very much a game between the 18th and 19th best sides in the Championship. The quality bar wasn’t particularly high.

Had that finished 2-1 following George Honeyman’s strike - a bad goal to concede as City got caught down their left and were a little too static to react to Tom Eaves pull-back - post-match sentiment would have lurched back to Sheffield United-like responses from the fanbase.

But that was nowhere near as bad as Bramall Lane, albeit with Hull lacking finesse of their own in the final third as from half-time until Honeyman’s goal Bentley had little to do.

Pearson certainly wasn’t wrong in his assessment because Hull were there to be beaten, and his yearning for consistency continues to evade this team - something key to his frustration.

Another City contradiction
To continue that theme, Pearson’s unhappiness, which was at a level where he almost had to force himself to elicit some positives, was born out of very simple reasons.

It’s surely becoming tiresome for the manager to say but we’ve lost count of the number of times he’s implored his team to be more efficient and make continual good decisions, whether in defence, midfield or attack, in or out of possession.

Irrespective of the result at the MKM Stadium, that didn’t really happen to a notable degree with, as Pearson stated, City making the simple stuff look hard.

Hull afforded the Robins a certain amount of possession - this was one of the few games where City topped 50 per cent in a game (50.3, as it goes) - which allowed them to try and play their way into the game.

There were some nice passage of play, and as direct as this team may be, they do look better and more purposeful when the ball is on the floor as opposed to when its soaring through the air.

That may be some confirmation bias creeping in because we want the team to play that way, so naturally when they do show flashes you hope that's the rule, rather than the exception.

But Matty James, Han-Noah Massengo, Alex Scott, Zak Vyner, Rob Atkinson and Chris Martin are all decent creative passers of the ball when they get the chance, and Hull afforded them some opportunities to do so. Likewise, Antoine Semenyo, Callum O'Dowda, Andi Weimann, Atkinson and Massengo can all carry a ball progressively.

When you have the ball it also creates a sense of confidence in the individual; having touches and then moving it on gets you in the game and instils a sense of purpose in what you're doing. If you're successful in your actions (a bit of a Johnsonism there) it tends to have a cumulative effect on your overall performance.

Vyner is a case in point. His distribution wasn't always crisp but the more he's involved in a game - and he had 83 touches more than any other player - the better he looks on the other side of the ball, and for the most part he defended pretty well.

"Work in progress" was Pearson's summary at the end of his post-match debrief, and that assessment is relevant to individuals as much as the team, because how many games has Vyner played at right centre-back for City?

However, there is a contradiction within all this that needs to be raised because if Pearson wants City to be a more imposing team in possession they have to be more efficient, as he says, and use the ball more consistently, as he also says.

That's sometimes hard to do when so many long balls are being delivered from deep - 26 of Dan Bentley's 27 passes were classified as "long passes", as were 15 of Vyner's 65 (23 per cent). Now, that could be the with the fault of the player in the latter's sense, either attempting too many ambitious balls, but in the case of the goalkeeper that's surely a direct instruction given the sheer frequency.

Okay, so City's goals won't exactly be hung in the corridors of Ashton Gate - Semenyo scrapping a corner over the line from close range and James then arcing a low shot after some pinball on the edge of the penalty area - which speaks to their more industrial approach.

But there remains the feeling that this team are still being held back a bit, or holding themselves back. The message has come from the manager to be more open, expansive and creative so perhaps it is the latter, but you also sense it's not quite straightforward as that.

A strange quirk of fate
We’re indulging in multiple hypotheticals and even possibly alternate universes here but had Alex Scott not gone off injured, City may well have not scored that equaliser.

Not because George Tanner played a crucial role in it but, as Pearson admitted after the game, his plan had been to take James off towards the end of game as he was beginning to cramp up.

But having brought on Tanner and then Nahki Wells and Ayman Benarous to try and win the game, he wasn’t left with any more substitutes so James had to see out the 90-odd minutes in his first start since November 2, enabling the 30-year-old to decide the destiny of the result.

"Game understanding, technique, availability - all the above," Pearson said, in outlining what James brought to the game. "Somebody who is a good role, somebody the players look up to. I'm glad to get him back.

"Had Alex had not have to go off in the first half, there would have been a possibility of having substitute him when he cramped up at the end. With a player who's been out for a number of weeks to then go into a game like today and have to conduct the orchestra was quite a big ask for him.

"On another day we might have been looking to bring him off. But good for us he was still on because he got the equaliser."

If anything, the goal was James’ impact on this team in microcosm. As Han-Noah Massengo heaved a ball into the area after Hull had cleared a corner, it bounced off a head, a back, a suspicion of a shin and nobody was willing to able to take charge of the chaos.

Trust James to sort it out, much like the order and authority he brought back to the Robins midfield, he got his head over the ball and drilled home a shot that snuck inside Nathan Baxter’s post for the equaliser and his first goal in a City shirt.

He hadn’t been at his absolute best during the game, although his 86.5 per cent passing accuracy was the best of all 14 City players, using the ball better than any of his teammates and in that condensed central midfield area, but that’s also to be expected given the length of time he's been out.

Much-improved Massengo
Outside of his own individual impact on the game in terms of his qualities, James also has a canny knack of making his teammates better. He is, in effect, City's point guard - distributing and directing those around him, in and out of possession, someone the Robins simply haven't had since he left the field against Birmingham City last month.

Chief beneficiary of that is Massengo. His talent, ability and potential ceiling is all fully established now but the last 4-5 weeks have clearly shown that he still needs a guiding hand in that midfield area.

He's had it previously at the club with Korey Smith and Josh Brownhill, and he didn't really have it last season - hence suspicions that is progress had stalled and barmy attempts to trade him to Birmingham in the January window - but his best football has been played this term with one, or both, of James and Andy King on the field.

He admitted it himself in September when discussing their impact on and off the pitch in terms of everything from his decision-making to his conditioning and overall conduct. Also, it's credit to Massengo that he's an individual who's continually respectful of his senior players and always wants to learn.

With James alongside him, either directly through instructions or subconsciously, he has that extra sense of freedom to be more adventurous on the ball and try and make things happen, knowing the veteran's positional excellence behind him in restricting space and reducing City's vulnerability through the middle of the park.

In the first half it didn't quite click and although Hull directed the majority of their attacks in behind the wing-back areas - Atkinson and O'Dowda were particularly busy - the midfield didn't quite hum. Just as a side point, there did seem to be an issue out of possession where Weimann would leap forward to press the Hull midfield and one pass through that line would then leave James and Massengo outnumbered and overmatched.

But after the break City did get more of a hold on the game and Massengo was heavily involved, snapping into tackles, making a nuisance of himself and then on the ball showed good awareness and a willingness to get City moving on the front foot.

There were a couple of occasions when he received possession and was double-teamed but then rolled his markers and broke into open-field before drawing a foul. Frustrating in a sense because momentum then died but it then allowed City to earn greater territory and dictate the play as Pearson craved.

He's still not at his optimum levels, in relation to this season, and quite probably he'll be better in the second half of the season than he has been in the first, but it's undeniable that's more likely to happen with James by his side.

The long trek to Humberside
It's a bit of a strange place, the MKM Stadium. A fine-looking stadium for what is ostensibly a modern-type bowl, inside the way its stands arc and fall make for a unique-looking ground.

However, it's hard to generate an atmosphere inside a 25,586-capacity arena with only just over 10,000 and there were significant periods of the game where you could hear players shouting on the field, akin to when matches were being played behind closed doors.

Clearly there's far more at play here because although a rugby league town, Hull's following has traditionally been high in number and vociferous in noise but disillusionment over the Allam family's running of the club and a feeling of stasis as they wait for takeover talks to conclude has left the club in a slight state of limbo.

The stand in which the press box was held was barely a quarter full and clearly hasn't been properly maintained with just a slight feeling of dereliction about it (the lights in the toilets weren't even on, as an example).

However, in contrast, as many City fans noted on social media the small gesture of putting a sign up in the North Stand where they were housed bearing the message, "welcome to the Robins End" went a long way.

Once again the travelling Cider Army were magnificent. Small in number given the length of the journey and its proximity to Christmas but also because getting back from Humberside is so difficult (the last train for Bristol left at 18:25).

The few hundred that gathered (sorry, we're yet to be informed of the official attendance number for the away support) in the upper section of that end of the ground kept City going throughout.

Singing the Massengo song loud and proud after he dragged Ryan Longman back, plus Seven Nation Army can't be all that bad as it soundtracked their ode to Antoine Semenyo following his equaliser.

They were rewarded for their passion and endeavour with James' injury time equaliser, and they probably deserved it as much as the team.
https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/sport/football/bristol-city-verdict-pearsons-complaints-6338324

 

That being said, it was a pretty dumb opening question to pose the Bristol City manager, “what had pleased him the most about the game?” Swiftly followed by a comical facial expression, a prominent exhale and a loud guffaw, it was pretty clear very little had."

Nige let it slip a bit there..