Bees Wax (17 replies)
Up until their goal it was a story of complete domination. If we had scored first then they may have been completely humiliated. Jansson took to the system brilliantly and looks the kind of centre half we have rarely seen at Griffin Park, with Pinnock not far behind. An interesting contrast to Harlee Dean who, despite being booed whenever he touched it, might have thought he was still playing for us the amount of times he gave us the ball (I assume that song the Brummies song is ironic). The front three were full of industry and Jensen showed some lovely touches. Then the goal happened about which I have nothing to say, except maybe sh*t happens.
Pep Clotet said afterwards that in the second half they started to close gaps and we had to resort to long diagonals to Dalsgaard. He is right, although it is not hard to close gaps when you have eleven men in your defensive third. Having to suddenly work harder to break them down, we struggled to play through the centre of the pitch. With Barbet and Sawyers leaving, we have lost a lot of verticle passing, which isn't helped by the fact that the main central passing option is...unavailable. Ollie worked hard but hasn't got the first touch to be a striker. The back three are all comfortable on the ball; they don't get in trouble, but they don't cause it either, and in midfield Jensen looks like a 'float it in behind' type, rather than the slide it right through the middle type that Sawyers was. I thought DaSilva was disappointing.
So it sometimes took too long to get the ball up the pitch. When it got there, it found that instead of being caressed and teased by the velvet boots of Benrahma, before being hustled goalwards by magic Neal, it was often just smacked in the general direction of the goal by Canos who too often just seems to hit it as hard as he can and then try and will it in through the power of his own enthusiasm, like when my dog thinks that funny shaped plant pot in the garden will move if he barks enough. Marcondes tried hard but the fact is we don't have a role for him.
The second half was very frustrating, both during the 3.5 minutes of actual football and the remaining time which was taken up by Birmingham's experimental theatre performance piece, which powerfully challenged our notions of what it means to 'play football', whilst they also attempted to bend the laws of time itself, by fitting all manner of shithousery into what amounted to just five minutes of added time. But I don't know why we stuck with three centre backs for so long.
Anyone who denies that we were unlucky, or says that we deserved that result should be bundled over some advertising hoardings by big Pontus. On the other hand it probably says something that as soon as they scored I 'knew' we were going to lose and never felt otherwise for the rest of the game.