I genuinely believed that Bristol City had turned a corner after the performances against Cardiff City, Luton Town and Preston North End... how wrong I was! It’s the hope that kills you.
After arguably our best performance of the season last weekend, I said to Geoff Twentyman on his BBC Radio Bristol show on Friday evening, that I thought we could continue our upturn in form and come away with three points at Blackpool. I was really confident.
We reverted to type and put in a display that just left me scratching my head at the final whistle, sitting cold and wet in the away terracing at Bloomfield Road, I just couldn’t believe the turnaround in performance from seven days previous.
We struggled to pass the ball, we were too static and defensively we were very poor at key moments in the game.
After his influential 30-minute substitute appearance last weekend, some fans were calling for Joe Williams to come into the side, but Nigel Pearson resisted any temptation that he may have had, preferring to keep an unchanged starting XI. Dan Bentley was ruled out following Covid-19 protocols and so there was a place on the bench for young goalkeeper Harvey Wiles-Richards.
Over one thousand travelling fans had made the trip up north to the seaside and were in good voice.
City had an early scare after some poor control and a wayward pass from Antoine Semenyo led to a quick counter-attack from the Tangerines and Max O’Leary was forced into a smart save. City created their own decent opportunity a few minutes later when Jay Dasilva played in Semenyo, whose powerful shot was turned away by Blackpool keeper Daniel Grimshaw.
City had the lion's share of possession, but the ball was mainly being played across the back between Tomas Kalas, Max O’Leary and Timm Klose. Repeatedly they would look for a pass into midfield or to the forwards, only to turn back and play it across the backline.
I’m not sure if it was lack of movement or a lack of belief but we just weren’t doing anything with the ball. Alex Scott and Han-Noah Massengo both showed some nice touches in the middle of the pitch, but we weren’t driving forward with any real threat.
Without wishing to make excuses, the conditions weren’t conducive to free-flowing football, but we weren’t helping ourselves.
Time and time again, we misplayed a pass or showed poor control and the chance to attack Blackpool was gone. Ironically, it was from a City attack that Blackpool took the lead.
Massengo won the ball on the edge of the Blackpool area and drove into the box but couldn’t get a shot away or find Andi Weimann with his pass and the ball went behind.
From the resulting goal-kick, the ball found its way into the City area and Callum O’Dowda failed to deal with the situation. It’s an old adage but as the saying goes, if in doubt kick it out.
A poor clearance was then played back into the back post, Jay Dasilva was easily beaten by former City target Jerry Yates and with Tomas Kalas caught under the ball and losing his man CJ Hamilton had the simple task of firing into the net.
It was a poor goal to concede with O’Dowda, Klose, Dasilva, Kalas and O’Leary all at fault to some degree. Of course, if Callum clears the ball in the first instance, the cross doesn’t come in.
Kalas from his reaction to the goal, clearly felt that O’Leary should have come for the ball, the Czech pointing to the ground, and to the point where the first header was won.
It was a blow, but it had been a fairly even contest, yet once again we showed our soft underbelly conceding a second goal just three minutes later from a corner, Gary Madine rising high above Kalas and heading powerfully into the net.
I turned to a friend and said, it’s a terrible thing to say but I’d take 2-0 now, as I could see this turning into a game where we conceded five or six.
The half-time whistle came and surely the manager would look to change shape and personnel. He did with Joe Williams coming on for the ineffective O’Dowda, but almost immediately, two became three and it was another really poor ball to concede.
A long diagonal ball from left to right found Blackpool wide man Josh Bowler who controlled the ball well and attacked Cameron Pring. Cam fatally allowed Bowler to come inside and was turned inside out and Bowler fired into the net sending O’Leary the wrong way.
It was very much game over and a number of City fans had seen enough and made their way for the exit. City did get a late consolation from a Nahki Wells goal but even that goal with just over five minutes to go plus injury time, failed to ignite any real fight from City and we meekly surrendered to defeat.
We know (and have been told many times by Nigel Pearson ) that we are where we are and that we are a work in progress, but we surely have to expect better than this.
The manager has to shoulder his fair share of responsibility. Defensively we are just so easy to play against. Of course, with a team so inconsistent results will mirror the performance.
We play Reading at Ashton Gate on Wednesday night and the manager has some big calls to make. There is no doubt as I have said that O’Leary has had a big part to play in the upturn of our attacking play, but I just don’t see Max making the saves that win you points. The backline just doesn’t seem to confident. Bentley has to come back into the starting line-up.
O’Dowda just isn’t playing well and Pearson has to look at his options and drop the out of form Irishman. It wasn’t just a poor day for Callum; Kalas, Klose, Pring, Weimann and Martin all showed a massive decline in performance from last weekend.
Williams has played a good few minutes now and I think he has to come into the team from the start against Reading.
Our 3 Peaps In a Podcast Bonus show ratings this week were Max O’Leary 4, Tomas Kalas 4, Timm Klose 4, Cameron Pring 4, Jay Dasilva 4, Callum O’Dowda 3, Alex Scott 5, Han-Noah Massengo 6*MotM, Andi Weimann 4, Antoine Semenyo 6, Chris Martin 4 and Joe Williams 6. A team average of 4.50 for the game.
As for Nige it has to be a 4 also. The current team average for the season is 5.84 with an expected performance rating of 6.
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