Davefevs

If I was anything to do with BCWFC I’d hit every set-piece like that. It’s unfair that the goals are disproportionate to keeper height, but take advantage of every little thing you can.

@Oléfeel like I’m picking on you….I’m not, honestly. Finished this last night and thought it was a good example of where being a bit direct, but with purpose / organisation has its merits. Just posted on twitter if you want to check all 5 pics. On the flip side what I don’t like about going direct is when Bents kicks long to Martin in a similar position and Kalas, and the midfield are 30-40 yards away. That’s when we get “strung out” (one of my favourite terms). That’s when teams pass through us. I want us to be compact(ish) to have a good chance of picking of any loose balls. One component of Martin’s aerial play, even if not his strongest suit, is that he tends to flick behind him rather than sideways. We saw against Blackpool earlier this season that Scott wasn’t quite in synch with his flicks. Against Peterborough we see Weimann well positioned. Easy for me to pick out a goal, but if Weimann had controlled, held it up, o think he’d have had good options around him to keep possession and build a different type of attack.

Fight the good fight BR. ??

When I said “when he wasn’t being tracked by him”, I didn’t mean Pring wasn’t tracking him, I wasn’t blaming Pring. I expect players to pass on markers / runners….I don’t expect players to follow their man all over the pitch. So, I am most definitely not talking about the goal, just generally. Ward drifted into little pockets and had too much time on the ball, especially 15-20 yards infield. Ward isn’t always Pring’s responsibility. What is also meant was Thompson being able to get forward too. Shit happens, we did the same when Williams got Tanner in, or Pring threaded O’Dowda in….what I’m saying is that if we want to cut down overloads we have to be better in these types of scenario. We have to put more pressure on the passer and receiver.

Pring did ok, was more referring to when he wasn’t being tracked by him. Even saying that I thought Pring had a tough afternoon defensively. Then again his first Championship start at LB.

All about the body parts me….pretty sure it’s why Bents sports a hairy chin. ?

I thought their right sided player Joe Ward was allowed to drift around a lot. His average passing position on Wyscout was in the centre circle. Think he made the extra man that allowed Butler to overload our right, their left. Was glad when he went off.

He caught his (rather large) chin on the post saving a deflected cross (?)….and Nathan Thompson stood in his hand….it looked accidental.

Yeah, it’s not our strong suit at the moment, but I still see more goalmouth oohs and ahs than the last season or so. We may see a slightly different style if Wells starts. Hey, that’s fair enough. I just felt their two worldies in the first half gave a bit of a false picture. They played some nice stuff. Nige and the coaches do need to look at how they stop getting overloaded. I felt a couple of weeks ago that Pring played a bit too wide in general defensive play and therefore we were not able to shuffle across to our right quick enough. Tough to tell on Robinstv if O’Dowda did similar. I watch other midfield fours (albeit usually PL or international) shuffle across the pitch quicker than us. Williams and Massengo together with James ought to help that. QPR playing a 5212 / 3412 with Massengo in behind was always gonna leave us open. I accept that, for the other benefits it gave us counter-attacking. But in a basic 442 like yesterday it needs a bit of work. But ultimately, I find myself being more entertained by this side than the past 2+ seasons.

Me too….

For avoidance of doubt: Maybe a copy and paste error from Weimann.

I’m no rugby officianado, nor am I being facetious but goals can be scored from anywhere. Teams might rather give away a corner or free-kick to stop a move / chance being created. Why the rugby quote? Back in 2003 when we won the Rugby WC, France criticised us for beating them in the semi final without scoring a try. They scored one. As I said I’m no Rugby expert, but watching the game, we had several “almost” moments where France decided giving away a penalty (3 points) rather than a try (5 plus potential 2) was acceptable. They did it 3 or 4 times in try-scoring situations, and those plays alone with Wilkinson’s kicking would’ve been enough for us to win the game. But they bleated about us scoring no tries, rather than them being second best. City are gonna fast get a reputation for being dangerous from set-plays, and teams are gonna feel giving away cynical fouls in their own third are gonna get punished and might stop doing them. That might lead to more open play. Opposite forces at play and all that. Bit like Stoke in the Delap days, when teams stopped trying to give them throw-ins. Nathan Jones recognised our threat, and was critical of his team for fouling (Pring?) on the break going nowhere. We are joint 14th for open play goals (8) and joint 2nd for set piece goals (5)….for some reason an own goal doesn’t count in the set plays total. Football is never quite as simple as it is said to be.

Atkinson, Dasilva and Pring all 23. Dasilva starting to look good again too.

@BS4 on Tour... here you go

Very good point. Here’s the minutes played by the new signings.

https://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/sport/football/hearts/taylor-moore-the-ball-playing-centre-back-showing-hearts-can-cope-without-john-souttar-3401136

Sounds like just the loan Owura needs….that’s not me being facetious either. Battle it out week after week at a good club just to get minutes.

Szmodics didn’t get a chance here. He may not have earned that chance on the training ground. But ultimately he was let down by a poor recruitment strategy.

It takes a while to detach the parachute! Why do you think his arse is so big, it’s the back-pack!

This is part of the problem Rob. When teams let us have the ball, we struggle to break them down. It’s not necessarily teams parking the bus, because I think most teams fancy their chances against us (home or away)…I can’t remember the last team that I thought came to AG for a 0-0. But a team with a good defensive shape, organised press, well-triggered press can force us into “passing it sideways and backwards”, and that becomes quite dull (understatement). We might go CB to CB to FB to Winger, back to FB, into CM, back to CB, all without the other team feeling threatened. The good teams do just that, but create a spare man and then they exploit it. So we tend to go into the front pair more quickly, and try to play from there. We did have some spells yesterday where we played off the direct ball, got possession in their third and played….it’s just we aren’t a team that capable of doing that through each third. And I think as fans we’ve become a bit snobby that playing pretty football through the thirds is the only way. Especially when a team like ex-Lg1 Peterborough appear to be able to do that. But they are sat there with 8 points and we have 16. It’s alright having footballing defenders, but if they can’t defend a corner / set-piece, you concede goals. That was us last season at times. What we did yesterday was what the likes of Preston, Millwall (pre-Rowatt), etc did to us under LJ early years. We played the pretty football but they created the chances from nod downs, errors, loose passes and scored. We we’re a bit better than that yesterday imho. Our Avenue out from the back is Atkinson finding a hole, or Dasilva (ink yesterday) sucking his man in and going past him on the inside. Kalas did that yesterday, a bonus. What we are also seeing is Williams able to get on the ball in the final third and give confidence for Tanner to get forward. So, I don’t think we are playing badly per se (not saying we are great either), we aren’t pretty. Other teams are. QPR we’re a joy to watch as an opposing fan.

I think when we look at our own players we tend to rate them based on their “best” levels and I’m not convinced we level-up across the league, so when we say Kalas is a top Championship defender how wide do we look. I’m not saying he isn’t, but I think we can be a bit insular. I think team-wise we are pretty average…lots of players of similar levels, doesn’t make too much difference which eleven is out there bar a couple of players (Bentley one of them). What we lack is a stellar “forward” player….if I take a team like Stoke, they have Powell AND Vrancic, that’s the difference. If I look at a team like Brum, they have….nobody stellar. They have Jutkiewicz but he’s not stellar. Being average at this stage is fine, we are starting from a poor position (end of last season). The squad will evolve in the next 12 months. League position-wise we are doing well. My expectation was a tough, slow start, Nige building slowly. To have 16 points from 11 games is great. I had us on 13 (w3 d4 l4) at this point….gradually improving as the season wore on.

Personally I’d be amazed if he’s “only” on £8k p.w. having negotiated his contract when he did. I suspect he’s on somewhere around the £12k+ mark.

Your summary of first half is pretty much what I wrote above. I think we are a bit blinded by passing teams, because we aren’t one.

Never a penalty, contact game and Williams got his body in a good position. Rob is a good observer of the whole of the game, not just focussing on City but why our opponents stop us too. My thoughts are generally aligned to his. His ratings are rarely a million miles from mine. In a league where anyone can beat anyone, and we have a squad of mainly similar level players (and a few that aren’t), we are rarely gonna spank a team. I watched on Robinstv and I thought we just about deserved the win, but tv and being there can give different views. We created a really good set of chances yesterday, forced an opposition keeper into saves which was a big plus for me. This isn’t a criticism ID, more an observation of OTIB generally….I agree with almost all that you write on here. I think there has become a bit of view that opponents who pass it / play “better” (define better?) football than us deserve better results. I’m not sure our fans have cottoned on to our new (and evolving) playing style, which attempts to be pretty direct, it’s about getting it forward. Some of that dictated by our players, and Nige wanting his defenders to defend first and foremost. We are most definitely not a “split the centre-backs, play out from the back” team, quite a lot of our opponents are, hence a lot of the middling teams playing back 3’s. The top teams can split centre backs playing a back 4 because they have better ball players at the back and superior midfielders. Peterborough did pass it about nicely, they had good patterns, had good movement, but a lot of it was in-front of us, possibly due to Dembele and Szmodics. They didn’t get behind us very often. After the first 15 minutes, when we sussed their movement, we spent a lot of the first half forcing them to turnover the ball playing into midfield. Second half the weather made it a different game. We aren’t an attractive watch from a “pure football” perspective, but I’m fine with that, but we have guts now, hard-work, physicality. Having been crap from set-pieces for seasons, we are now a threat. Getting the ball into the final third fairly quickly and getting a free-kick or corner is probably part of the plan. We have scored 6 goals from set-pieces. Last season we scored 5 in total (inc cup). How often have we been the team conceding from them? Theres a change going on….I know you know that….but I’m not sure many have noticed. City’s “overall performance” is about more than “pretty passing”. Expectations of how we are gonna play need to change alongside it. I thought we thoroughly deserved to go in at h-t ahead, not 2-2. Szmodics’s header was a killer….we were well on top having come from behind. We’d fashioned good chances, opportunities for chances.