In the words of my other half’s favourite singer Michael Bublé “It’s a new dawn, it’s a new day, it’s a new life, for me, and I’m feeling frustrated again”. Ok, they may not quite be the lyrics but whilst it’s a new year, it’s the same failings for Liam Manning’s Bristol City side.
I’m not 100% sure, but thanks to BCFCexile Rob on ‘X’ I’m told that’s 11 points dropped from winning positions after 75 minutes. Those eleven points would put us on 45 for the season so far and see us comfortably sitting in fifth place. To balance things up, we’ve picked up five points by rescuing games. Like I said, I haven’t validated Rob’s calculations, but we certainly should have won a lot more games than the eight we have from winning positions having looked set for all three points.
Of course, that’s football and there will be plenty of other teams in the Championship that can say the same. Until we turn these performances into wins, we are destined for mid-table.
When it was announced that Plymouth Argyle had mutually agreed with Wayne Rooney to part ways, I expected a reaction from their players and from the Pilgrims’ support. With popular club captain (and former City youngster) Joe Edwards in charge of the team, alongside first-team coach Kevin Nancekivell, I had just had an uneasy feeling about the game. Had Rooney remained in charge you just wonder if the crowd would have turned on him and the players if we had got on top early on.
As it was, it was Argyle who started the brightest and Max O’Leary made a great save low down to his left to keep out the impressive Rami Al Hajj’s shot from the edge of the box. The ball swerved and dipped, Max saw it late and thankfully Ryan Hardie, following in, could only blaze the ball over the bar. Max just had to get a hand to the ball and couldn’t be faulted for it falling to Hardie.
I did laugh when moments later, Max sent a kick out of touch to be met by moans and groans from some of those in the away end. As I pointed out to one lad, City’s number one had just kept us level and his kick was just slightly off. The joys of being a goalkeeper. Some fans take no prisoners.
Morgan Whittaker, Al Hajj and Darko Gyabi all had shots at goal while we were struggling to find our passes and it was against the run of play that we took the lead. For the second game running, we took the lead in the 32nd minute and to add to that coincidence, it was an Anis Mehmeti finish from a Nahki Wells assist. Rob Dickie brought the ball out and fed the excellent Max Bird who from just inside his own half hit a defence-splitting pass into Wells. Nahki drew Argyle keeper Conor Hazard before rolling the ball across to Mehmeti who made no mistake, firing in for his ninth goal of the season. It was a tight decision but having watched replays, Anis looked on and the assistant referee got it right.
There were more injury woes just before halftime when Cameron Pring was forced to leave the field with what looked to be another hamstring injury. Cam limped from the field to be replaced by Haydon Roberts and hopefully with the fact he was able to make his own way off, it won’t be too serious.
Wells so nearly doubled our lead straight after halftime and was left holding his head in his hands when Hazard tipped his volley, which was so sweetly met from a George Tanner cross, past the post. It felt like that could have been a sliding doors moment when minutes later Al Hajj at the back post drew his side level, steering the ball in from a Whittaker cross. Luke McNally had been pulled out wide and that meant Dickie, Vyner and Tanner were all pulled across and Al Hajj took advantage of the space afforded to him. Bird, who was excellent, will be left disappointed to have not stopped the Whittaker cross.
It would have been easy to fold with the home crowd up and O’Leary had to be on his toes again to tip a Whittaker shot over the bar. But minutes later we took the lead with another well-worked goal. Zak Vyner fed the ball into Wells who turned the ball around the corner to Scott Twine who spotted Jason Knight’s run and played a perfectly weighted pass in front of the City captain. Knight had a bit of time to decide on his finish and opted for a lovely chip over the onrushing Hazard. It was a good finish and reward for the energy and drive that City were showing.
Just after the hour mark, as he so often does, head coach Manning made changes bringing off Tanner, Twine and Wells for Ross McCrorie, Yu Hirakawa and Sam Bell. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but I just felt it was a little early for the Twine and Wells substitutions. Wells didn’t look tired and the experience that he brings at the top end of the pitch could have helped manage the game. It was also only a few minutes after Twine had set up Knight for his goal. The changes just seemed to disrupt some of our rhythm and I also felt the same when Mehmeti was subbed for George Earthy.
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In truth, we should still have seen the game out. Injury time had been displayed and we should have seen it out. McNally made what looked like a somewhat needless challenge out wide and we failed to deal with the resultant free-kick, which was well delivered, and Argyle equalised.
Some referees may not have given the foul and I wonder if we could have played a higher line. Dickie seemed to be deceived by the flight and I would love to have seen Max react quicker and perhaps been more dominant. It was tough on City with it being so late, but on the overall balance of the game, a draw was probably the fair result.
Our 3 Peaps In A PodCast player rating were Max O’Leary 6, Zak Vyner 6, Luke McNally 6, Rob Dickie 6, George Tanner 6, Cameron Pring 6, Jason Knight 7.5, Max Bird 7.5 *MotM, Scott Twine 6, Anis Mehmeti 6.5 and Nahki Wells 6.5.
For the substitutes who must play a minimum of 20 minutes (including injury time), we went Ross McCrorie 6, Haydon Roberts 6, Yu Hirakawa 6 and Sam Bell 6. A game average player rating of 6.27. That’s an overall season-to-date average player rating of 6.25.
For Liam Manning it was 6.5, maybe the substitutions came a little early in the case of Bell for Wells and Hirakawa for Twine and it disrupted our rhythm.