I've been trying to think of how and why I've become so negative about City in recent years and it's hard to put a finger on it, but I've always thought it's over simplistic to put all of our problems down to a particular part of the team - for me, our malaise runs from numbers one to eleven.Originally Posted by Tuerto
Agree with all of that, and pretty much all of us know that chances to score goals is scarce. But what about the things that they can influence Bob, there's more to playing in an advanced role than just scoring goals, especially in a team like ours. Do you have the sames thought on defenders, they're just there to defend? I'm not knocking it Bob, just curious
That said, until the second half of last season, I've always thought of us as being pretty secure defensively, but, by the time we were rolling over to let an awful Rotherham side tickle our tummies, we'd been defending poorly for weeks.
The midfield is the part of the team that annoys me the most - I don't see that we have made any real progress from when we had that much of a muchness quartet of Ralls, Pack, Vaulks and Bacuna, now we have Ralls, Wintle and Siopis who are slightly different versions of the same player - I think all three of them are Championship quality footballers, but, virtually from minute one, I was thinking why sign Siopis, he's not what we need in our midfield.
We've played with two wingers every season since we got relegated and when has it worked? Hoilet and Mendez-Laing were an effective pair for a while, but I don't remember another one since then.
As for our forward, whoever it has been in recent years, he's not been the finished article in terms of Championship quality apart from Kieffer Moore who we got lucky with because Wigan had to sell him at a knockdown price, whoever has played number nine for us has weaknesses to their game which makes their signings a gamble. However, let's be honest, unless we can do one of three things - find a 'gem|" that no one else know on the continent in the manner that Swansea did with Michu, break our wage structure to sign a quality Bosman or hit the jackpot with a young loanee from the Premier League, getting the sort of player who will be more or less guaranteed to score us the goals we want from them is going to leave with very little change from ten million pounds - if we had to go into next season with the strikers we have presently, I would make Etete my number one choice because I feel the potential for improvement id stronger in him than it is in Meite .
To try and summarise, I want to see us not making Championship football look so hard - apart from two seasons, we've been in this league continuously since 2023 and in that time, there have only been three seasons where relegation became a possibility, yet, having been a confident, front team with more falir and creativity than most sides we faced for our first decade back at this level, we've become a team that plays "underdog football" and goes into new seasons with a mindset which suggests to me that we think we shouldn't really be here - we used to try to win games by being more skilful and creative than our opponents, now do it by trying to drag them down to our level.
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