Originally Posted by
the other bob wilson
Two things about Malky, although his approach changed after that Charlton 5-4 (for a while after that I think we had the worst away defensive record in the division, we’d conceded a five, a four and two threes in away games before three months of the season was out, but we’d scored nine in those four matches ourselves), I never felt it was as defensive as we’ve been under Bulut. Mackay also had the excuse that he was in the Premier League for the last half a season he was here and that was no more than a battle for survival from day one. Would he have won that battle if he’d stayed? Who knows, but what is clear statistically is that we were a better side under Mackay than we were under Ole.
The other thing is that Mackay was lucky from my perspective that we hadn’t had almost a decade of playing physical, attritional football with an emphasis on set pieces when he took over, if we had, I might have had a different attitude towards him, so, by the same token, it could be argued that Bulut has been unlucky when it comes to my opinion of him. After all, we play much less long ball crap than we used to under him, but our passing football is not played with a positive approach as the way we seem so happy to go back to the keeper once we get close to the halfway line indicates. Also, on Wednesday, Grant and Wilson-Esbrand, two of our better players I’d say, were guilty of shockingly bad basic errors of technique or giving a simple pass which makes you wonder about what they’re doing in training. I didn’t hear him say it, but it was claimed on here that Danny Gabbidon had compared Wednesday’s match unfavourably with pub football and this was a game which I’d say was a bit better than quite a few we’ve been involved in lately= City fans have had around a decade now where the large majority of our victories could be described as “winning ugly” and I’m pretty sure that I’m not the only City fan for whom that line has worn thin.
However, it’s not only the boredom factor that has made me anti Bulut, just as bad for me is how he talks after defeats and how he singles out players for criticism in public (all players who to different degrees have the “x factor” that we so lack without Ramsey). I don’t like how he went from about mid November to the end of December talking as if it was some sort of holding operation until the transfer window opened when he could get some decent players (if I were a regular in the team in the final two months of last year, those comments would have really annoyed me) and then we got his rant after the Plymouth defeat when we hadn’t signed any one yet.
It is possible to support a team and not like the way they play. Nothing would please me more than a win today where we went toe to toe with Ipswich in terms of attacking play and came off deserved winners, but I’ll still be very happy if we get a win by the more likely way of getting ahead, then spending the rest of the match defending our lead because we’ll have done something we’ve not done yet in beating one of the top teams.
I’ll finish by saying that those first three away matches under Bulut were not what we’ve become used to seeing from his teams - think back to the Ipswich game where we played some really nice stuff at times and Ramsey’s goal was a beauty in terms of pass and move football, but what happened at half time with Ollie Tanner was a huge clue as to what we had coming and what happened in the second half had a lot to do with that decision. If you compared our games at Leeds and Leicester with what happened when they came to our place a few months later, it was like chalk and cheese - of course, they’re good sides and we’d probably have lost even if we’d not rolled over like we did, but even last year’s team was never as passive as we were in those games and have been in one or two others at home - let’s hope that a more confident team can give Ipswich more of a testing time of it than Leicester and Leeds got.