It’s always difficult to write this column, soon after the game has finished. With it being an away fixture on a Sunday, I don’t have the luxury of letting the dust settle, having slept on it and so, I may be a little unfair with my comments having watched the game.
For me, it feels as though we have limped to the international break with two fairly abject away performances at Luton Town and the Swansea.com stadium. We have had some decent moments, but I think even the most ardent of Bristol City fans wouldn’t disagree that we were second best for large parts of both games.
The Hatters are flying high, and Kenilworth Road is a difficult venue to play at and so I wasn’t surprised at coming away with nothing, but I did expect to get something from our trip across the Severn Bridge, against a Swansea City side who have been low on confidence, after a poor run of results.
Of course, we are missing some key players through injury and as a result of our threadbare squad, we are having to play players out of position and also don’t have the strength in depth to freshen things up when needed. There is no doubt that the injuries and reduction in squad size has seen a number of youngsters given an opportunity and we saw another impressive performance from Omar Taylor-Clarke.
Nigel Pearson made three changes from midweek line-up, bringing in Taylor Clarke, Sam Bell and George Tanner for Anis Mehmeti, Nahki Wells and Andi Weimann. With Weimann on the bench and Matty James injured, the captain’s armband was handed to Zak Vyner.
I would love to have seen us go at Swansea from the start, but we didn’t, and we were the side that looked low on confidence. We know that Russell Martin’s teams like to keep the ball and have the lion’s share of possession, but they don’t always do a huge amount with it, where it matters most in the final third; something that Swansea fans were saying to me before the game.
We looked tired all over the pitch and the international break is coming at the right time. Hopefully, we will have Matty James, Kal Naismith and Tommy Conway back fit and potentially Tomas Kalas not long afterwards. We didn’t really create anything going forward and whilst it’s easy to be critical of Harry Cornick, he was having to chase a lot of lost causes with little support and very little to work with. I’m reserving my judgement until he has had a full pre-season and we have players who can provide a better service.
While Taylor-Clarke started slowly he grew into the game and actually had a decent effort on target and showed a good range of passing and was not afraid of a tackle. Andy King looked like a player who had played three games in a week and just struggled to make any impact.
We were perhaps a little unfortunate with the opening goal when former City player Liam Walsh hit a diagonal cross to Olivier Ntcham. The ball hit him on the back and fell nicely for him to feed the ball to Liam Cullen who was able to strike the ball low past Max O’Leary into the bottom corner. Vyner will be disappointed with his challenge and O’Leary will feel that he should have done better.
The manager adopted his now common tactic of replacing George Tanner at half-time, moving Mark Sykes back and bringing on Weimann in the wide role. I think throughout the game, Weimann played in three different positions and Sykes two. In truth, the options are limited but if we want to get forward a little quicker, is there an argument for taking off Tanner but instead bringing on Kane Wilson ensuring Sykes remains in his most effective position.
The other thing that gets my goat at the moment is the amount of times we have a free-kick near the centre of the pitch and our first thought is to play it backwards. We play it safe and pass the responsibility on rather than looking for a forward pass. It happens way too often.
We did improve after the break and had a decent shout for a penalty and also had a goal chalked off for offside, but Swansea deserved the win and it would have been unjust for us to come away with something.
I think we all need the break to re-charge and go again for the remaining eight games. We cannot afford to finish the league as we have done in recent seasons, letting it peter out.
Our 3 Peaps In A Podcast Bonus show ratings were: Max O’Leary 5, George Tanner 5, Zak Vyner 5, Cameron Pring 5, Jay Dasilva 5, Alex Scott 6, Andy King 5, Omar Taylor-Clarke 7 *MotM, Mark Sykes 5, Sam Bell 5, Harry Cornick 5 and Andreas Weimann 5 (subs have to have come onto the field before the 60th minute).
A game average of 5.17, and a season average of 6.28. For Nigel it was a 4, once again it was the Tanner off/Weimann on substitution, and we didn’t address our midfield inadequacies early enough.
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