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Not having a pop at you, but how can we experiment and do all the other things fans seem to want in these dead rubbers? People seem to want an awful lot.Originally Posted by Don Corleone
Enthusiasm should come from the players themselves though..
I hit send before I finished posting so just re - sent with the last few lines added which tries to put it more into perspective and probably more in line with what you posted , I agree there are plenty of extenuating circumstances and it is right to experiment now but no hiding that was a dull performance
I've had a weekend in bed ill and today didn't do much to get me off my mattress!!!
This is not a criticism of you in any way, shape or form, but I’ve read numerous comments alluding to experimentation today. So what were these alleged experiments? I didn’t see any.
It’s okay , I’m not so sensitive that I would take any disagreement as criticism. We played a flat back 4 which, though we have tried it in a few away games, is still much of an experiment in a home game. We played Doyle and Colwill together from the start today which I think might be the first time we’ve started them both together in midfield and we played Doughty up front which I’m sure hasn’t happened before. Nelson was captain from the start which is probably the first time that’s happened too. We tried a number of short corner routines during the game - which were mostly hopeless - but still an experiment compared to our normal pump it into the box corners.
So, yes, I’m pretty sure there were things being tried out on the pitch today that we might not have done if we needed the points
Ng being used in a 2 CB pairing as well although that has happened before, it still needs experimenting on
Well done for the positive response.
If people really think that was an improvement today it shows how much standards have slipped at Cardiff City in the past decade or so. Reading was an improvement, today I’d say the intentions were good, but the so familiar limitations in passing ability and individual and team technique, together with the usual lack of composure ensured it was just more of the same.
Not a great performance but you can't expect much with Vaulks in the side he either plays it backwards or passes it forward so slowly it barely makes it. Nelson was man of the match, thought he was terrific. Why Morison didn't make subs earlier is a mystery. Very disappointing.
Colwill is big enough to be a bully (in a football sense), anyone remember a night game at Brentford a few seasons back? 3-1 after being one down, Bamba scored a cracker but Zohore (he didn’t do it very often mind) bullied the feck out of their defence. Colwill is a Cissy who, with his size, should be battering into defenders instead of being a persistent twinkle toes. There was one corner today in the second half, he was towering over their ‘keeper, yet allowed him to gather it quite comfortably, dreadful, pile into him, ok it may be a free kick against you but get your head to it and the goal could be given. Either way the ‘keeper gets a wake up call rather than a ‘thank you very much’. I do like good football but for feck’s sake getting stuck in and making your presence felt is part and parcel. Please don’t say that he’s still learning the game, we learnt in schoolboy football to be horrible twats.
I thought it was a different Nelson today, apart from one dodgy second half misplaced pass, he really was a huge improvement on his previous shit.
I only hope Morison hasn't been caught up in this 'golden generation' hype. Colwill is skillful, has good vision and can pick out a good pass but he hasn't got the quickest 'feet'. It always going to limit him.
I await the usual idiotic responses when you use players well above the level of ours to compare..but another tall awkward player that springs to mind for me is Kai Havertz. I don't for a second think he will be that good, but he is another tall awkward player that seemed to struggle to find the player inside his body... didn't know his best position etc.
I think the best thing for Colwill is to play games and see what it is he turns out to be..can see the clamour to make him a 10 but he just may surprise us..
I thought our younger players (Drameh, Bagan, Doyle, Colwill and Davies) were varying degrees of poor yesterday - as is often the case, Drameh was the best of them. McGuinness didn’t get on, but he’s coming off what I thought was his worst display of the season at Hull and has not been playing that well for a while. McGuinness played a fair bit of League One football for Ipswich last season, so this doesn’t apply as much to him as it does to the others, but they are all ending a season in which they’ve played more senior football than ever before in their lives in a league where the games come thick and fast and, for Davies and Colwill especially, nearly all of the first team football they’ve played has been with the very real threat of relegation hanging over it.
I think it’s understandable that the younger players are struggling a bit now because they’ve never experienced a season like this one before in their lives and I think it’s a struggle to get themselves up for these dead rubbers to end the campaign. Doyle frustrates me because his dead ball delivery is not as good as it was cracked up to be and he can be careless in possession at times for someone with his raw ability, but I’d have him and Drameh back like a shot next season if their clubs were agreeable to them coming here because I’m convinced that, like the other players I’ve mentioned, they’ll be better, more effective, performers after what they’ve been through this season.
While I can understand the criticism of Colwill when it comes to physicality, I’d say there has been a slight improvement in that department as the season has gone on and, as the youngest of the group, it should be a little while yet before he becomes a “finished product” physically.
These youngsters aren’t the problem in my view, Colwill especially, it’s the older players - I don’t believe we have many of them who are clearly not up to Championship standard overall, hence why, this season, and one other (04/05) apart, we’ve not been in serious relegation trouble we’ll into the second half of a season since returning to this level nineteen years ago.
The problem which the club have been unable to shake off for nearly ten years now is that the “Cardiff City way” that has evolved under Vincent Tan’s time in charge over relies on physically imposing players with limited basic technique and passing ability which invariably results in teams that are limited in those respects for a side at this level.
There clearly is a desire to change that at the club, Paul Trollope was an attempt to change things, but, perhaps understandably, the club reacted a month to six weeks quicker than they needed to in my book. Would Trollope have been able to turn things around if given the time? Maybe, but Warnock# signing of Hoilett and Bamba made a big difference while him managing to get Zohore playing like he did for his first year in charge was probably the biggest single factor in us eventually staying up comfortably that season.
However, as I’ve mentioned before so often, Neil Harris decided to give up on what I thought was a bit of a half hearted attempt to change the way we played as he went “back to basics” to bring about a short term improvement that still wasn’t enough to save him in the end.
With Steve Morison, I think the desire to change is stronger - right from his first game, he tried to change things and I found the football more enjoyable to watch even if the improvement from a very low starting point was not strong enough to produce the consistency to pull us clear of the drop zone. To do that, he had to do the same as Harris and play in a way more suited to the experienced core of the squad he had and bring in strikers especially who were at home playing in what had become the Cardiff way.
Reading offered hope that Morison can make us a better and much watchable team, yesterday was an attempt to repeat that formation and display, but it didn’t work because the usual limitations were more apparent. I’d say that, once again, there was proof that we’re a better side with the increasingly injury prone Joe Ralls in it and I’d argue that the two players with the most composure and poise in the current squad may well be the pair bought up by Crewe Alexandra (even if, occasionally, this catches out Perry Ng).
I don’t get how Steve Morison can truly believe his post match comments about us dominating yesterdays match from start to finish and having all of the real chances to score apart from one, but I do have confidence that he is going to try to make the changes to the Cardiff way in the summer that he has been unable to achieve so far. Whether he can succeed is certainly debatable Id say, but those younger players I mentioned give him a better chance of doing so in my book - I don’t like the way he tends to have a go at the younger players while saying nothing about the clear failings of some of the more experienced ones at his disposal, but I’m hoping that this is because he knows there is scope for a big improvement in the first group, whereas a lot of those in the second group are beyond saving when it comes to the sort of football he wants us to play.
I think it also has to be recognised Bob that he is doing a lot of chopping and changing which I guess he might not do if we were still fighting to avoid relegation. This is what many advised him to do, and it does make sense so that he can see what players can do but the drawback is that the teams will inevitably lack consistency.
His post match comments on dominating the game are typical of the way many ( if not most managers speak) after close defeats like this ( I don't watch MOTD for nothing!!)
In fact for a change on pure possession stats and shots we did (63% - 37% and 13 to 10). I haven't checked our posession stats recently but surely 63% is not very common for us. Probably just shows how misleading these stats can be though.
High possession figures for us usually tend to highlight our lack of creativity, I think they did yesterday, but they didn't against Reading where there was a purpose to our passing and it was more positive than normal - quite a lot of yesterday's possession tended to be backwards and eventually to Phillips.
Or was that just because Reading are the fourth worst team in the League and Luton are the fourth best team in the League?
(I didn’t think that Luton looked very good btw, but I suppose they were disrupted by injuries during the game yesterday)
Let's face it, that unless you adopt the percentage football of the recent past, it's the middle of the pitch that governs how you're playing. Morison has got City keeping the ball much better in midfield and our possession stats support this - he just doesn't have the players to make it effective.
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