EFL Championship Match 31 - Bristol City 3 Southampton 1

 

If Ever a Picture Summed Up Our Full Backs Defending

A trip to Ashton Gate to take on Bristol City in another one of the recent run of games where we get to play a team who we weren’t brilliant against, when we played them last.  At St Mary‘s, Bristol City came with a game plan, in what was manager Liam Manning’s second game in charge, to sit deep and play on the break and that worked pretty well for them and if it wasn’t for wayward finishing and an inspired goalkeeper performance by Baz, they may have got more of a reward than the 1-0 defeat they eventually got, courtesy of a left-footed curling strike from the edge of the box by KWP.  

The issue that Bristol City had that game was that once they went 1-0 down, they had absolutely nothing else other than sitting deep and we were quite happy to pass the ball around and not really give them a chance in the second half. It was almost as if they settled for losing 1-0, which was somewhat bizarre and I wouldn’t have been happy if I was a travelling Bristol City fan to that game. This will no doubt be different with more onus on Bristol City to attack, as home teams usually do, unless they’re Norwich.

Tonight’s game of course comes just three days after the Huddersfield win and just three days before a trip to West Bromwich Albion. This is probably the toughest few days of the season so far and if we get out of these two games with four points, I’d be pretty pleased with that. I think you accept that in the Championship there are times when you’re going to be playing Saturday, Wednesday, Saturday, Wednesday but Saturday, Tuesday, Friday, Tuesday seems unnecessary.

The news coming out of Russell Martin’s press conference was that Flynn Downes would be missing and that Stuart Armstrong would probably be okay. This leaves us with the real possibility of a Smallbone, Armstrong, Rothwell midfield three which if it plays like it did against Huddersfield, will be a complete open-door policy….. averted, Shea Charles is playing with Stuart Armstrong on the bench.  Edozie comes in for Fraser and Brooks starts instead of Adams.

Away we go and we look sluggish from the opening whistle. There’s really not a lot going on in terms of passing and we allow Bristol City to dictate the opening 10 minutes without causing us too many alarms.   When we eventually settle down, we actually look okay and Rothwell pushes the ball to Edozie inside the penalty area.  He tries to feed it in to Brooks but it bounces back off the defender and sits up for Edozie who tries to cushion a volley and flights it over the keeper but it bounces off the top of the bar and over.

Bristol City have obviously got a game plan to get down the sides and put the ball into the box and we get lucky as they set up Jason Knight who falls over as he controls the ball. THB knocks it back to Baz who then casually chips it over Smallbone, straight to Roberts on the left.  His cross into the middle and THB has to come to the rescue and a superb tackle which sets Brooks away on the right hand side and he skins two players before playing the ball onto Smallbone and he gets the ball before the goalkeeper but can’t manage to chip it over him.  Shit defending trying to give a goal away but it did give us a decent counter attack.

The Manning Chasm is making an appearance today with crosses coming over from his side, usually from Albanian winger Mehmeti.  One finds Bell at the back post, who brings it down before scuffing it into the side netting.  They are not particularly having to work very hard to create chances and sooner or later they’re going to get it right.

Bristol City nearly get in again straight down the middle with a ball along the deck but Baz has an excellent starting position 35 yards out and the forward clearly doesn’t fancy it and shits it as Baz clears the danger.

Saints next attack grinds to a halt on the edge of the box but Charles gets in well to win the ball back.  A 1-2 with Manning and he slides a lovely ball to Adam Armstrong who has a clear sight of goal but hits it straight in the fucking keeper again and Bristol City break on us again down through the Manning Chasm and Mehmeti runs at Bednarek and his shot loops off the Saints defender into the side netting.

Half time and 0-0 and we’ve not been brilliant and Russell has clearly got tired of Shea Charles passing the ball straight out of play and replaces him with Stuart Armstrong, thus giving us the midfield that was the open door policy against Huddersfield with Smallbone as the defensive midfielder with Stuart Armstrong and Rothwell in front of them.  To be honest, the whole midfield have been shit.  Rothwell looks like he hasn’t got to grips with Russell Martin style of football yet and Smallbone, who has been playing to a reasonably high standard the last few weeks, has been back to his anonymous self so far.

Straight from the kick-off Bristol City try and pass around but cough up possession by passing it straight to Adam Armstrong.  He slightly over hits his through ball to Edozie on the left and he neither crosses nor shoots and the sliding David Brooks can’t get connect with the ball but instead, gets a healthy connection with the goalpost.

Brooks is eventually back to his feet in the game settles back into a scrappy sort of nothing affair.  Bristol win a throw out on the right hand side and Mehmeti tries to play a give and go and gets a bit lucky as it bounces back to him off Smallbone and he wriggles his way through and slides it across easily and Bell slides into the net from 4 yards out.  I momentarily hope for offside but of course it isn’t because it was Smallbone’s touch back to him.

Edozie is really the only Saints player looking likely to do something and he twists and turns past three players before finding Stuart Armstrong and his cross is met at the far post by KWP on the volley and he connects well but a decent saved by O’Leary.

Despite being our best attacker and us being one down, Sam Edozie is off along with David Brooks to be replaced by Sekou Mara and Ryan Fraser.  Manning tries to get Wee Man in the game but passes it behind him and picked up by Bristol and away they go, over to our right and another cross over everyone finds Mehmeti at the back post and his effort is blocked away for another corner.  It’s a good job the guy hardly ever makes the right decision.

Who the Fuck Was Marking Him Then?

Fraser gets a cross in from the left which is headed clear and Smallbone should pick up the loose ball but makes a bollocks of it and Bristol City break again and play through Harry Cornick and THB blocks the cross, it hits Cornick and the referee gives a fucking corner anyway. Useless prick.   In it comes and a free header for Rob Dickie past Baz and THB can’t keep it off the line.  Fucks sake.  It's all very well saying it shouldn't have been a corner but you have to defend it better than that.

2-0 down and the last throw of the dice is Sulemana for Rothwell, who has been completely anonymous all game.  Will our £25 million man do anything?  Of course not but he gets into the flow of the game straight away by giving the ball away a couple of times. Sulemana gives the ball away to start the next Bristol City attack, down through the Manning Chasm and McCrorie’s cross into the middle finds Cornick who sweeps it brilliantly past Baz and into the net. 3-0

Believe!!!  No, not today and this is nearly over. 94 minutes and Sulemana actually plays a ball for a player in the same colour shirts him with Stuart Armstrong picking it up on the left and crossing.  It’s flicked on by Mara and KWP emerges from behind Cornick to nick the ball just as Cornick swings his leg to clear and all he can do his boot KWP up in the air.

Even this Championship referee can’t fail to give that and so we get a chance for a consolation and Adam Armstrong puts it down and easily dispatches it, sending O’Leary the wrong way.

We were always going to lose at some point.

I feel that tonight there were too many players who just hit the wall and gave below average performances and when you get too many of those, you’re never going to get a coherent team performance. We were shite to be quite honest and got what we deserved and Bristol City played well, executed their plan well and totally deserved to win.

They had a game plan to keep the spaces tight with lots of players behind the ball and then spring on the counter attack when we gave it away and we played into their hands by giving it away far too often, which usually meant our full backs were caught too far up the pitch. The fact that Bristol City didn’t score in the first half was totally down to the fact that they couldn’t get anyone to connect with all the crosses that were coming in from our vacant full-back areas. We were just about holding our own at half-time with a score of 0-0 but then Russell’s blindspot came to the fore again when he thought we could play with Will Smallbone as the defensive midfielder and predictably, the roof fell in, same as it did against Huddersfield.  Over the course of the Huddersfield game and this one, we have played a total of about 100 minutes with Smallbone as the defensive midfielder, with Rothwell and Stuart Armstrong (two Number 10s) making up the midfield and we have let in six goals. It's not really Will’s fault because he is totally unsuited for playing that role. All he can do is try his best but it’s almost like putting a striker in goal. He might do the odd good thing, but he is going to get found out.  Honestly, Stuart Armstrong would do a better job as the deepest of the three – mainly because he can run.

When I saw the team chosen to start the game, I was okay with it. Shea Charles is a strong presence in the defensive midfield role to replace Downes.  He didn’t play very well and he gave the ball away a lot, usually by passing it straight out of play. That of course is anathema to Russell Martin so he hauled him off but when he went off, any defensive solidity we had in midfield went with him.  Remember, it was 0-0 at half-time when Charles was substituted so no matter how badly he played with the ball, we still weren’t losing.  A scrappy 0-0 today would have been fine.  Unfortunately, we went for the chaotic approach in the second half that will always lose you more games than it will win.  We got away with it against Huddersfield but not today.

There were however, substandard performances all over the pitch today and it’s probably easier to point out those who weren’t. KWP kept going for the whole game trying to make something happen going forward but as I said earlier, he kept pushing up on the right wing like you were supposed to do and then we gave the ball away behind him and they broke into the space that he left. With no Flynn Downes in the second half to cover those breaks, we were always going to end up in trouble.  Sam Edozie was also decent and as said earlier, was easily our best attacker until he got taken off.

Sloppy passing seem to permeate throughout the team today. Shea Charles gave the ball away repeatedly in the first half, as did Joe Rothwell, as did Adam Armstrong, as did THB, as did Ryan Manning. Nothing seemed to connect. In the second half we bought on Ryan Fraser and Kamaldeen Sulemana who both just gave the ball away repeatedly. The snappy passing and snappy movement that you need in order to pass the ball just wasn’t there.  As with the Huddersfield game – the midfield was wide open and we can’t control the game when it’s like that.

Russell Martin’s interview was as you’d expect, positive about what we had achieved over the previous 25 games and he did quite rightly point out that we had two good chances to take the lead in this game, one being the opportunistic effort by Edozie that bounced off the bar and the other one being the chance Adam Armstrong hit straight at the goalkeeper.  We also had the Brooks Versus Post incident, which we in truth, made a mess of.  Any of those chances go in and it’s a different game with a 1-0 lead.

Brooks vs Post

Having lost after 25 games, we now have to get back on the horse and start another run and it will be good if it started in three days’ time against West Brom. That is a proper tough game and on paper, it will be tougher than tonight but to be fair to Bristol City, they gave us a hard game at St Mary‘s and played with a similar game plan today, only today we didn’t get the first goal and Bristol City found a way to eventually stick the ball in the net, which they didn’t do at St.Marys. Fair play to them.  They had a bit of furtune on both of thir opening goals but sometimes you need that.

We were always going to lose at some point. Now it’s about how we respond.

Up the fucking Saints