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Another mad dug out celebration after ninety first minute winner.
https://mauveandyellowarmy.net/
The big positive for me following the change of manager is the amount of chances we create. That should take the pressure of our strikers because they have relied on scraps for most of the season. They now know the next chance won't be long.
Also with all the dour football we've witnessed in recent seasons and lack of threat I never thought I'd see a city side that had out and out wingers in both wing back roles
The injuries are a real worry at this stage of the season. Hopefully O'Dowda and Philogene will be OK after a game or two at the most. Robinson looks a lot more doubtful. I was hoping it was a thigh strain but if it's a hamstring that would be very bad news.
I was concerned that we kept Robinson on. I know it’s good to have an extra player but that could have damaged him even moreOriginally Posted by Robin Friday's Ghost
I was going to post something almost identical on the subject of Romaine Sawyers, but you've saved me the trouble.
The fact that Sabri Lamouchi has immediately identified Sawyers as a key player in his set-up is interesting. Sawyers played the full 90 minutes twice against Lamouchi's Forest side in 2019/20, and no doubt Sol Bamba has played against Sawyers on several occasions. They will both know what he's capable of and it's really encouraging that Lamouchi has very quickly decided that having a combination of Ralls, Wintle and Rinomhota in central midfield simply doesn't work.
Sawyers started just three games under Mark Hudson - the 1-0 victory over Blackburn on 04/10/22, the 3-0 defeat at QPR on 19/10/22, when he was subbed after just 21 minutes following Jack Simpson's sending off, and the 3-2 home defeat to Hull on 08/11/22, during which he was subbed after 57 minutes with the score at 1-1. As you've pointed out, Sawyers has played every minute of all five games since Lamouchi arrived. That's brave management as the player has obviously needed to get a few full games under his belt and he's been improving gradually. He played well last night and offers that bit of creative quality on the ball that the likes of Ralls and Wintle simply don't possess.
As you've said, City got lucky last night with the McGuinness incident. I wasn't too sure about it at the game, but having watched the replays this morning it was a definite red card offence, no doubt about it, and I reckon if the challenge had happened in the middle of the park he would been given his marching orders. But City deserved a bit of luck, having been on the wrong end of a couple of dubious decisions earlier in the season.
I was encouraged by the football City played last night. While it was more direct than the stuff we saw under Morison and Hudson, it certainly wasn't a case of the useless 'hoof it and hope' policy of previous years. There were some really decent moves at times and the balance of the side looked good. The profligacy in front of goal is still a concern and there's a very long way to go before the threat of relegation disappears, but there were some encouraging signs that the team might have turned a corner.
He's not been reborn , he was always very decent at this level .
You can see that in the way he runs ,his balance , technique , looks up to pass a ball ..
At WBA the footy mag 442 listed him in the top 10 players in the Championship..
He is simply now man managed effectively..
When Simpson was sent off at QPR, it was bleeding obvious who the sacrificial lamb was going to be and, as someone who was excited by the signing of Sawyers, I couldn’t really argue with Hudson’s decision because he played poorly for much of the first couple of months of the season. It looks like I was wrong in my opinion about his legs having gone, but I maintain it was a reasonable conclusion to draw given what we saw from him in the autumn. However, it looks like he only wanted to be appreciated!
I’m with you on the type of football we played last night. We are definitely more direct, but I enjoyed a lot of the stuff we played in Warnock’s first year here.and it was the same last night - direct or not, we played far more football than Reading did.
We were a tough watch on Tuesday, but I was encouraged by how much progress we appeared to have made since then. Wintle is a better technical footballer than he is given credit for and we won’t just be whacking it forward Willy nilly with him and Sawyers in the middle of the park - your mate Ng is a tidy footballer as well and would be good enough to shine in a confident, top half team as well.
I think Sawyers' lack of legs was because he was playing in an unfamiliar 10 role which required more running. The plan by Morison to convert him from a deep lying midfielder failed miserably.
It's early days, but last nights performance was encouraging. The biggest difference for me was that we moved the ball very quickly and got wide players on it, really aggressive when attacking. We were out to win the game. Sawyers maybe benefited from the higher tempo, and the fact that he had players around him who gave him options, we didn't have that under the previous managers due to the slow play we employed, maybe sawyers isn't the type of player who wants to hold onto the ball, maybe it kills his game when everything is flat and slow, without options. Maybe we've been harsh on sawyers (Myself included) and the previous two weren't playing to his strengths.
You may well be right, about Sawyers, I thought he was the most frustrating player to watch, as he certainly possesses the quality required, he just seemed to coast it.
On reflection it may well be that now that we have employed a real manager as opposed to two inexperienced coaches, he can see how to get the best out of Sawyers. 🤷*♂️
I thought we were going to kiss and make up about bad subbing here but you didn't mention it. It was great to see Lamouchi celebrating after the game but there must have been a fair bit of relief in there, it can't be smart to play the last 15 minutes of a game with nine fit men having only used three subs.
O'Dowda had initially gone down around 25 minutes in and was obviously struggling from there. Ojo looked ready to come on but we were saying then that if Ojo was to replace O'Dowda then we'd need another centre-mid on too, however poor Reading were.
We assumed O'Dowda would go off at half time but were surprised to see all the subs warming up as normal and the same eleven come out for the second half. Wickham was the first sub but a few minutes later O'Dowda finally gave up the ghost and Ojo replaced him. Even though this had been in the pipeline for about an hour it seemed to catch everyone by surprise, Ojo had to pass messages on to other players and Allsop ran 60 yards to find out what was happening.
Maybe Lamouchi felt it was late enough in the game to 'go for it' but soon realised he needed another centre-mid on and Ralls appeared five minutes later so we'd used all our windows up in the space of ten minutes and couldn't cover one late injury, never mind two. Our ball retention was so good (for once) that we were still able to control the game and got a deserved winner but I wouldn't recommend trying it that way again.
His sub strategy did almost cost us on the day and could rule out Robinson for longer than had he been taken off immediately. Hopefully he'll learn and if he wants to make multiple personnel changes he'll do it at the same time in future.
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