McLeish’s Sounding Out The Right Message
Here is Dale’s latest thoughts inspired by our victory yesterday.
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The Cogs keep turning and the machine churns on! A packed out St. Andrews witnessed the Premier League’s latest phenomenon. Birmingham City.
Like a well oiled machine, Alex McLeish’s regimented side seemed to wear down a disgruntled West Ham team that really never looked like taking anything back to the capital. It seems now that blues fans expect a goal from Lee Bowyer. Clocking up his sixth of the season which proved to be the only goal of the game. It’s also to be becoming almost annoyingly predictable for the pundits who sit on the flamboyant sofas at Match of The Day. Another clean sheet, another 1-0 win and another Lee Bowyer run from deep accompanied with a tidy finish. Would be nice to hear something more from the likes of Lawrenson and Hansson about the so called “relegation candidates” though wouldn’t it. But we’ll save that argument for another day.
Today we should rejoice in the fact that we are competing in the same ball park as the Liverpool’s and Manchester City’s of the world. Daring to look higher up the table, I came across six teams who perhaps you would expect to be above the Blues. The other one we’ll not mention. But over our shoulder are teams like Sunderland, Everton and West Ham, so called established Premier League sides. And there at the peak of the form table, Birmingham City! Beautiful!
But – and there always is a “But” with Blues, we should not adhere to all this talk of European ambitions and superstar signings. The media love to heighten a teams fortunes and laugh from there offices in Central London as the form starts to drop and the league position plummets. Blackburn and Everton will know that we are the inform team and expect a tough test from us but January brings a new threat. Chelsea, Manchester United and Tottenham make up three of the four fixtures. Three games where at the start of the season we would consider a point as a blessing. Yes we are a different side to that who produces a woeful display against Bolton in September but let’s just get over that 40 points mark and then and only then can we start concentrate on the getting the like of Messi and Ronaldo leaping into the Tilton to celebrate . . . if only!
Without being a typical pessimistic Bluenose, I like the cautious and grounded approach from McLeish. He speaks wisely and tries to prevent all the tabloid bravado filtering through to his players. Securing Premiership status is our primary objective, something which none of us must forget. As the fog settled over St. Andrews on Saturday evening, McLeish reiterated the clubs position as premier league new boys but also stressed that striving up the table can only give us the best chance come the end of the season.
“The most important thing is for us to be in the premier league but there’s no reason why we can’t be aiming higher than 17th. But the top 17 will be a successful season.” If 17th is known as “successful”, then I’d love to know what adjectives McLeish has in his locker come a top 8 finish in May!
Dale Moon
VIEW FROM THE SOUTH – BLUES vs BOLTON
Filed under: Blues News, Match reports, Matches, Reports By Bazza
My journey up to the game was different this week. I met a new mate, fellow bluenose, Will whose company it was my pleasure to share on the 125 miles journey to St Andrews. He lives not far from me and contacted me recently to suggest we meet up and travel together. We went a different way to my usual route which made for a much more interesting trip and it was nice to have someone to talk to on the way up. People say it is a small world and it turns out that Will lived in the same block of flats as my family did in King’s Heath in our respective younger days. Coming through Moseley we saw a creature with knuckles dragging along the floor, moving like Gollum from Lord of the Rings with a face that only a mother could love wearing a Villa shirt. Will offered to run him over but I suggested he did not because the pieces would probably spawn clones. “Good point!” he said and we allowed the apparition to scuttle away around the corner. We got to the ground in plenty of time went for a pint and then went our separate ways to different parts of the ground to find our seats agreeing to meet up after the match.
We both felt that for this game that Alex McCleish would start with a 4-4-2 formation against Bolton Wanderers and get about them. I was disappointed to see that once again we were going to play with a lone striker in the form of Benitez. I believe that I told one bloke I spoke to after the Spurs game who suggested that Chucho should be the lone striker in a 4-5-1 formation that I felt it was a waste of a very good player. I can see no point in Chucho knackering himself against four thugs in the opposition ranks to then have nothing left in the last quarter when the defenders are tired. That is what you use bigger less gifted strikers for. The debate about the formation is the hot topic at the moment and we all have our views on it but what transpired in this match has absolutely nothing to do with how the team was set up. We got ourselves in trouble early on by failing to defend a long throw in properly. I thought their opener was the sort of goal that we had seen the last of for a considerable time to come given how well we had defended of late.
The naivety of the defending was truly breathtaking and there is simply no excuse for allowing one of the most dangerous centre-forwards in the Premier League (Davies) to flick on at the near post and then not win the second ball. Tamir Cohen had a completely free header three yards out that he merely had to divert into the far corner past a helpless Hart who must share a great deal of the responsibility for this debacle. Eight minutes and we are 1 – 0 down. It was to prove the only worthwhile foray forward that Bolton were to make in the first half. They merely proceeded to close our defenders and midfielders down quickly which resulted in us lumping the ball long towards our lone attacker marked by no less a colossus that Zat Knight; no prizes for guessing the outcome of that then! Nevertheless, despite everything, Blues carved out four excellent chances, all of which should have been taken; Tainio, volleyed wide when well placed, Fahey crashed a shot from 15 yards against the bar with the keeper beaten, Jaaskelainen saved brilliantly from a deflection by Cahill from Ferguson’s effort and the same player snatched at his shot on the turn just before half time when the Bolton defence got in a tangle. We were to rue this profligacy because Bolton were not so generous in the second half.
The game could and should have been put beyond us by Lee and then Taylor in the second period who both missed clear chances to score but somehow Blues survived. There is no doubt that Blues enjoyed the lion’s share of the possession throughout and it equated to 57% but Bolton forced Blues to either play it long or cross from deep and whilst Bolton may not be a great side they are big, well organised and defend properly and capably anything that is thrown at them in the air. The crowd started chanting 4-4-2, 4-4-2, 4-4-2 and “we’re supposed to be at home!” O’Connor came on to grant their wish and in desperation Phillips appeared for Vignal so the formation went to 3-4-3. Six minutes from time, the best move of the match occurred with a lovely one-two between Chucho and Phillips resulting in the latter cutting across from the left to send a searing shot into the bottom right hand corner of Jussi Jaaskelainen’s net. This beautiful goal was spoiled by what happened at the restart. Instead of focussing and setting up properly Blues proceeded to switch off and take a snooze. Davies ran straight at our defence from the kick off laid the ball off to Lee who was unceremoniously upended. Matty Taylor stepped up for the free kick at a perfect distance for him. Hart did well in deflecting the shot onto the post. The rebound nine times out of ten would bounce to safety or to a defender. It landed perfectly at the feet of Lee who thought more quickly than our dozy defenders and had time to take a touch, adjust his hair and side foot the ball home from six yards. We had been level for less than two minutes and a deserved draw was thrown away because of inept basic defending and this is the point here. The loss of this game had nothing to do with the formation. The two goals conceded were down to truly awful defensive play of epic proportions just as in the loss to Villa two weeks before. Our relative lack of threat is not helping but you cannot hope to win football matches if you gift the opposition the lead because you allow free headers in your box. At this level mistakes like this will be punished even by limited teams like Bolton. They stifled our game plan and it needed to be changed early on because of that not because we only had one striker. Well done to them, they got their tactics right and we didn’t.
On the way home Will told me a story of a Blues supporter who became more and more morose as the years went by until all expectation and hope was sucked out of him. Then one day God came along and said “mourn not for I have a job for you that is of great importance and for which I can find no other.” “Tell me what it is Oh Lord and I will surely do it rather than watch that load of rubbish each Saturday.” God smiled benevolently and seeing that everything that he hath created was good turned him into the Grim Reaper! Let us hope that he doesn’t come to our last home game of the season eh?
KRO SOTV
During the Close Season
As we “wind up” towards the new season back in the top flight, we will be reminding ourselves of some of the good days we have had in our previous seasons in the Premier League.
If you would like to get your name in lights, and want to write an article for the blog looking back on a classic game – please contact us through the contact page.
We will also hopefully be contacting other clubs to get their take on our chances, so if you are a blogmaster for a blog for another Premier League Club, please contact us as above.
Look forward to hearing from you.
Kev
Ahhhhh, NICKY Hunt!
As you may or may not have noticed from my writing thus far, I do a lot of thinking in the shower. Which is often bad because I end up just standing there and not doing much cleaning whilst my mind wanders from subject to subject without realising that I’m wasting precious and valuable water. Y’see, we’re not on town water here. We’re on rain water. Rain collects on our sloped roof, runs into some filter thingy (to give it its proper title) and then runs into our two giant tanks and remains there until we switch a tap on to let it escape like ‘normal’ water! So wasting water is bad. You shouldn’t stand underneath running water whilst doing something as trivial as thinking. I must remember this.
Shortly after writing my last article (before dialling up and posting it) where I openly admited that I couldn’t remember who Nicky Hunt played for, I stepped into the shower. I thought about Reading, the football team as opposed to the activity. I realised that I KNEW it was Stephen and Noel that played for Reading so quite why I came to the conclusion that we may have loaned him from there, I do not know.
Still, it didn’t help me remember who he played for and when I eventually dialled up and checked, I found myself giving myself a massive kick up the backside. How could I have possibly forgotten that he plays for Bolton? How? I’ve seen him play for Bolton on numerous occasions. I knew his name, I know Bolton, they’re a Premier League club and have been for a number of years now. There’s no excuse for not remembering who plays for Bolton. I am annoyed with myself and, as punishment, spend the next couple of hours trawling the BBC site for Championship – and League One and Two – news to try and help my faltering confidence in my own knowledge of the beautiful game. I never claim to know everything or be a footballing oracle but I do at least think I know who plays in the top division in a league that I claim to be a fan of.
Embarrassed.
I also read up a little bit about Nicky Hunt. The more I read, the more familiar he became. Which I suppose is sort of inevitable. He’s on loan at Blues until December 6th and is eligible for seven games including the Coventry City game that he’s just played in. There’s lots of positive chat about him from Alex McLeish and Radhi Jaidi although Blues fans seem to be less impressed. I’m not entirely sure why, he’s a competent right back and the only reason he’s not in the Bolton side is because of a £3.5m Megson signing. Megson would look fairly foolish if he signed a £3.5m full back and then left Nicky Hunt there, wouldn’t he? He’s also a stubborn so-and-so and I’ve always had the feeling that if he doesn’t like you, you’re stuffed. For a club of Bolton’s size, £3.5m is too much to spend on a reserve anyway.
Hunt is also relieved to be playing again after not making a single appearance for the Trotters (at this point during the ‘proof-reading’ segment of the posting of an article that Mrs Aff always does, she turns around and questions whether Bolton are indeed nicknarmed The Trotters. Ordinarily I’d shake my head, wave a dismissive hand and generally look miffed that an Australian non-football fan has dared question my extensive football knowledge but on this occasions, I rushed over to Soccerbase to check. Help me, seriously. Help me) this season. He’s already talking about Blues ‘bouncing back’ and winning the Championship. He seems very involved for someone who only joined a couple of days ago. Which I suppose is a good thing. As a supporter, there’s nothing more I like to see than a player who is committed, even if he is only a loanee. I can’t see it being made permanent with Stephen Kelly and Stuary Parnaby both more than competent in the right back berth. Parnaby especially has impressed me with his getting forward and supporting Larsson down the right. I said when we signed him to little fanfare that he might well end up being the most important signing of the glut at the time. Whilst that hasn’t been proven yet, he is making the right back spot his own – which was unthinkable at the end of last season after the season that Kelly had had.
Blues fans seemed to be underwhelmed by Hunt’s signature. I don’t understand why. He’s made over 100 appearances for his club, played in Europe and finished in the top 8 of the Premier League on more than one occasion. We had a problem position and Big Eck filled it quickly. I thought Hunt had a steady first appearance with plenty of trying to get forward to support attacks with one or two peaches of crosses. On another day, he might’ve had two assists to his name. I was impressed. Blues fans weren’t.
At the moment, I think the taking over the club by anyone less than Bill Gates and the signing of anyone less skillful than Kaka would disappoint Bluenoses… I want to write an article about the general apathy around St Andrew’s but don’t even know where to begin. It would be too simplistic to just blame the board but I do think that this period under Big Eck has highlighted the fact that all of this was not simply down to Steve Bruce and his negative ‘don’t lose’ tactics which was claimed by a lot of ‘noses previously.
Overall, I’m pleased with the Nicky Hunt signing and I’m pleased with how the season is going. Or at least, I think I am. Since my “Who does Nicky Hunt play for?” feck up, I’m questioning every footballing opinion I have. For example, I watched some highlights from the Championship on Fox Sports (yes, they have a show, yes, I found it!) a couple of nights ago and Stern John scored for Bristol City. I got worried. Did I know that Stern John played for Bristol City? Did he play against us earlier in the season? Had this deal completely slipped under my radar? I hurriedly checked and he joined on loan in late October. I can forgive myself that one, I was severely jet lagged at the time and I didn’t have access to the web for nearly a week. Phew!
But my fragile footballing confidence is quickly spreading to Blues and I’m finding myself going through the team in my head to make sure I know of all of our players and where they play. I’m also giving myself quick quizzes to make sure I know who is injured, who played in the last match, who has scored how many goals, who we’ve played so far this season and the results and the like. It’s worrying.
And what’s more, I’m starting to watch local sport. I sat down and watched a match of international rules the other night. It’s a cross – I think – between Aussie Rules Football and Gaelic Football. Ireland play Australia twice annually and it’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen. They’re allowed to play regular football as we know it but they’re also allowed to hold it, run with it, bounce it, bite it, chew it, eat it, sit on it, swallow it and, if they have time, get creative and paint it with colour pastels. They also have a goalkeeper and a net but if the ball flies wide or over, they still score points. What’s weird about this is that, I enjoyed it. And I got involved in a radio phone in about what is the best spectacle – international rules or ’soccer’ – for an alien who’d just landed on planet Earth and was looking for the most entertaining sport to watch. You would’ve thought I’d staunchly defend ’soccer’ to the hilt and defend it ’til my last dying breath. But no, I found myself muttering something along the lines of “Well, if you turned up at say, Rochdale versus Exeter and a 0-0 draw would get both sides promoted then international rules would probably be more entertaining.”
WHAT??? I’m either realising that football isn’t the centre of the universe and I’m developing other interests (this has never happened to me before) or I’m sick. I’m going for a lie down and an adrenaline shot. Just in case.
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