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Even set pieces , one of our strengths last season have been disappointing and that is putting it mildly! Last night , we played against a team that has been struggling to defend corners and free kicks and yet they coped quite easily.Quote:
Originally Posted by the other bob wilson
The few times we got into good wide positions , we either failed to beat the first man or over hit the crosses ..... don’t get me started on the long throw....would love to see how many goals have come from them !!
Last 2 games have been disappointing and I believe we lost whatever had inspired the team for those 3 games after the Sala tragedy.
Over that 2 week break due to FA Cup in hindsight we should have gone on the warm weather training instead of leaving the manager,coaches and players to dwell on matters !
We've got 1 point vs Newcastle, 2 vs Huddersfield, 0 vs Burnley (so far). We're going to look back on those games and the ones this week as why we went down. It's particularly galling as it's undone all the good work we did vs Bournemouth and Southampton (and to an extent Arsenal).Quote:
Originally Posted by the other bob wilson
Here's a radical thought - perhaps we could have treated the FA Cup like a competition we wanted to progress in and then, who knows, we might not have seen the complete loss of momentum that occurred between the Southampton and Watford matches. I've mentioned before on here that we are going to play just forty competitive matches in 18/19 which I'm fairly sure is the lowest number City have played since they gained Football League status ninety nine years ago. Yes, I know we're told that the physical demands on players are greater now than they have ever been, but the standard of conditioning and recovery work is way better these days as well. Back in the days when City sides played in Europe there were seasons where the team played fifty per cent competitive games than we're going to play this season - I'm an old fuddy duddy I know, but I fail to see why a team that is only playing forty games in a nine month period needs to rotate its squad.Quote:
Originally Posted by billy.ronson
I'm not sure you could play any other way than 'Warnockball' with our squad. We're mid Championship quality, which is really a testament to the colossal achievement promotion was.
With too many 'basic' players in the squad we couldn't change things around to a more skill full style by bringing in 3/4 new faces. Whilst midfield is where the obvious gulf in class exists between us and the others, it's really at the back where our problems start. Apart from Morrison not adapting to Prem. football in the way Bamba has, we can't play the ball out from the back like every other side in this division can do. Worse, we don't have fast fullbacks who can counter attack with the rest of the side.
Agree, Burnley play a similar game, but their players are better footballers - probably somewhere between ours and the typical Prem squad player. They finished 8th [?] last season which shows that tappy tappy isn't the only way to do well in this league.
I think it's quite a hypocritical blog this. You can't accept the football and praise Warnock for 18 months straight then as soon as we have poor back-to-back performances slate him for it. Yesterday and Friday was shocking, there's no doubt about that and Warnock is not immune from criticism, but it has to be relative to the circumstances.
Comparisons to the 4-0 against Hull are a bit strange. Watford are the best of the rest imo this season and Everton will finish top 10, Hull were nowhere near that. Granted Everton were on a poor run but I always felt the first goal would be the deciding one last night. It was only an excellent piece of defending from Digne that stopped us getting that goal after 60 seconds.
The overreaction to every defeat is annoying. It can't go from one extreme when beating Southampton to the other. We're out of the relegation zone (as it stands ahead of tonight) with 10 games to go. Southampton's fixtures look very similar to ours between now and May. Back to back wins at any point would almost put us there. Instead of going down fighting as a fanbase, the knives are sharpening ready to slate Warnock/Morrison/Gunnarsson/Zohore/anyone.
We had a couple of shockers last April and fans had a similar meltdown. Warnock got us over the line there, keep the faith that he'll do it again. If we don't stay up, will you really look back and think it was through a lack of trying?
I think under the circumstances of the Sala tragedy the call Neil Warnock made for the Players,staff & anyone connected to spend quality time with their families was a great call..... There are some values in life & I think Neil Warnock made the right call when he enforced that.Quote:
Originally Posted by billy.ronson
So, your solution when your team is not up to scratch would be to send them to a warm weather training camp?
If you are serious I think you would find that this season your players would not have set foot in Wales.
:tumbleweed:
You're right about our squad being restricted in the way they can play. this was something I tried, but maybe failed, to bring out in my piece and why, despite knowing who was guilty of the poor passes that led to the first two goals, I did not name any players when criticising the standard of our passing - truth is that I don't think there was even one of the fourteen players we used last night who could be said to definitely be a Premier League quality passer of the ball.Quote:
Originally Posted by A Quiet Monkfish
The introduction of Arter and Camarasa has improved the quality of our passing from last season and I think Joe Ralls is an under rated passer as well, but I agree that simply bringing in a new manager committed to putting a greater emphasis on quality of passing and keeping possession of the ball will not automatically result in those improvement targets being attained. I think you can go back to the appointment of Malky Mackay, at least, and see that we have generally favoured signings of players whose talents lie more on the physical than technical side - we have a squad which can play what I called Warnockball effectively when they are on song, but they really struggle to excel at any other mode of play.
From what I have seen the managers are the scapegoats when it all goes wrong, a prime example was Arsene Wenger. He was the Hero Manager at Arsenal for a bundle of years & then when a lean period came along the fans were baying for his blood !!Quote:
Originally Posted by SunderlandBluebird
Arsene went from HERO to ZERO
The same is now happening with Neil Warnock, you all praised him for 18 months & now your players are playing like cart horses you are baying for Neil's blood.
If you really think that the blame falls at the feet of Warnock you might need to look at not only changing the manager but changing the players on Cardiff's books.
A suggestion here, if you all think that you have a weakened side it might be a good idea to get Warnock to field 50% of the better reserves with the 50% of the best first team players.
Now, who is your best goalkeeper as he needs to be the best member of the squad if you are conceding goals at the rate you are.
I actually feel sorry for your goalkeepers because the CCFC defence must be real shite if your opponents can just saunter past them to get shots at the goal.
Maybe Warnock should draft the McKay twins back in as by the sounds of it they can't be much worse than the current players?
I agree with all of the above, but we are not down yet. This team is really quite erratic and could yet turn around and put together a run of competitive performances and pick up some points and survive.Quote:
Originally Posted by Pedro de la Rosa
Although if we do... what are we in for next season!?!
I used the term "fickle fan", but I accept that there is a level of hypocrisy in what I said - that's something that I made clear in my very first paragraph. However, that's what being a fan is all about - when your reaction to a game depends entirely on its result, you are always going to struggle to get balanced and sensible responses.Quote:
Originally Posted by SunderlandBluebird
Even so, just as "passing the ball for fun" sides sometimes paint themselves into a corner by relentlessly sticking to those principles, I believe that Neil Warnock is guilty of the same sort of thing but from an entirely different viewpoint.
It's all very well saying that Watford are the best of the rest this season and Everton are a top ten side, but that was Watford's biggest ever Premier League win on Friday and last night was only the fourth time in the last five seasons that Everton have won away from home by a margin of three goals or more. Therefore, we are not talking about sides that used to winning in the manner that they have done in Cardiff in the past week - for me, they were both helped on the way by the fact that their opponents were nowhere near Premier League quality in fundamental aspects of the game. I've heard Neil Warnock talk about getting the basics right, but I don't see how he can ever make this claim about us a Premier League club when we pass the ball like we do - passing the ball over a pretty small distance to a colleague is a "basic" of the game that we come up short in on too many occasions.
It may have been an excellent piece of defending by Digne to prevent us scoring in the first minute, but the point has to be that, from such a position, he shouldn't have been given a prayer of preventing a goal and he wouldn't have been if we had been able to perform Premier League standard "basics".
There was definitely a collapse on Friday that helped Watford stroll to their biggest ever away win, but I don't think that was to do with the tactics. I think Warnock should be criticised for chopping and changing his players though. We'd just had a 14 day break so why the likes of Patterson etc needed a rest (or were dropped) yesterday is a bit strange to me. I'm not convinced the tactics are the problem at the moment. It would be nice to go two up top but the defence is so fragile at the moment I'm not sure if we can, despite me wanting it for a short while before the last couple of games.Quote:
Originally Posted by the other bob wilson
As for the basics for the chance early on, I'm not sure what else Zohore (or Mendez-Laing) could've done for the first one? I've watched it back and it was the right choice as far as I'm concerned, Digne just read it well and managed to get a touch on it to prevent a tap in.
I thought Neil Warnock got his selection, tactics and substitutions wrong on Friday. I'd like to think these are not things that I have tended to criticise him for since he came here and although I was surprised by the selection and thought his substitutions were a bit predictable, it wasn't really this which annoyed me last night - we never passed the ball well enough to get the chance to see if Warnock's tactics could have worked.Quote:
Originally Posted by SunderlandBluebird
I've just watched the miss in the first minute again and I agree that Digne did well, but the commentators (both of whom are employed by City I believe) remarked that Reid was unmarked and would have been left with a tap in if Zohore had pulled the ball back to around the penalty spot - people talk about players "seeing a picture" these days, but I don't think there are enough at our club with that ability compared to all of our rivals bar, perhaps, Huddersfield.
I hope we have to answer this question! We've got to strike a balance between being hard to beat with playing some semi decent football. Whatever we've done in the last week is neither. It wouldn't surprise me to lose 5-0 on Saturday, equally I wouldn't be surprised if we won! Our away games are basically going to shape our season, as we've pissed 2 winnable home games up the wall this week :hehe:.Quote:
Originally Posted by Optimistic Nick
..and even with Warnockball the players have to make the basics count - keeping passes within the playing area, shots that don't go out for a throw in, free kicks that aren't offside, not passing direct to the opposition. To a degree, when we've got a result the players have avoided all of these - lately they've crept into our game.Quote:
Originally Posted by the other bob wilson
Longer term our biggest problem -assuming we go down - is how do you build a squad capable of challenging for promotion and then having a fighting chance of staying up. A club that gets 30,000 every home game has to prove the potential that exists here. Probably a discussion left for another day...