Season 23/24 | The Official Match Thread | Birmingham City v Swansea City | The EFL Championship

[monmouth]

I'll be honest I know that LW has only been here a week but when he came out with the guff about 2k jacks coming down and the players showing their appreciation but putting in a shift and creating a spark FFS half of the match they couldnt find a team mate with a 10 yrd pass and for christ sake when they do why is it always 2 ft BEHIND the recipient. I dont think I saw any of our players take their man on and try to get past them its always turn round and knock it back. I was really really hoping that one of the spineless journo was going to ask if he was going to ditch this f**kin around at the back but it didnt matter cos we got our answer anyway. Rant over, but today there was no spark just more damp squibs

It was a bit better second half, except for the subs - what the hell was Yates for Lowe about - so hopefully it will improve over time.

People seem to conveniently forget that we were far more convincing under Duff at Millwall and Plymouth than we have been since, under Duff Sheehan or today. We have a long way to go to even get back to that. Today wasn’t it, so I hope Lukey isn’t going to be travelling down the yellow bullshit road.

We’ve got him for as long as he wants barring total meltdown, so we absolutely need him to succeed. I’m going to let the encouragement of the tiny, tiny, weak green shoots be my memory of today. Should have bloody won though.

 

[sainthelens]

Shot ourselves in the foot again conceding in injury time. That was happening way too often under Russ and he never learned.
Gotta cut Luke bitta slack ( 1st proper game), but FFS we need to grow a backbone cos we've had a titfull of chucking points now. He needs to learn very quickly now we ain't Notts County where they play basketball version of football.

 

[3swan]

Decided not to post last night but let my thoughts settle. This morning my thoughts haven't changed.
F
The least said about the first half the better as we could have been maybe 3 down. Link play was non existant , players getting caught in possession as teammate not making themselves available. Moving the ball, I won't call them passes, were either generally in a players direction but the weighting very poor or panic.
Second half did.improve but Birmingham had dropped off from the in your face press of the first half.
Overall we did get something from the game despite our first half non show. There is a lot of work and in a few positions a change as some players will never be comfortable playing the style. Speed of thought is needed as well as the tactics.
Very very early days but especially with the run of games before March it's going to be a slow process.
Progress needs to be seen, so we can believe we are heading in the right direction as we've had false dawns and wasted years.

 

[Bluenile]

Watched the game, and like everybody, gutted at conceding that late goal. Watching it on the highlights I'm even more angry. Seeing Fulton turn his back on the scorer, and stepping out of the way of the shot makes my piss boil. Don't they get paid enough to take a hit? Bunch of useless yellow-bellies.

 

[Blackpooljack]

Another thing that was boiling my piss yesterday and in general all season was our almost 100% taking a throw in and losing possession straight away

 

[3swan]

Another thing that was boiling my piss yesterday and in general all season was our almost 100% taking a throw in and losing possession straight away

I can go back to the old 4th division days and it can be said for most seasons. It is a big percentage in a game and does need working on

 

[Pentyrchjack]

I can go back to the old 4th division days and it can be said for most seasons. It is a big percentage in a game and does need working on

It’s like a line out in rugby, there’s no guarantee of possession which infuriates me when we tend to throw back wards and not forwards. A long throw in towards the opposition corner flag is an attacking move likely to cause panic in the opposition. Phil Parkinson has mastered that with Wrexham, plus the Ben Tozer long throw in.

 

[Blackpooljack]

I know we scored from a corner yesterday but LW had said he prefered a short corner cos it opened up more angles for a cross but dont think we did that once yesterday

 

[jasper_T]

I know we scored from a corner yesterday but LW had said he prefered a short corner cos it opened up more angles for a cross but dont think we did that once yesterday

I imagine decent short corner routines are going to take time to implement and won't have been priority 1 on week 1. So we mostly just smacked it towards Darling on the back post like before.

 

[Manselton Jack]

It’s like a line out in rugby, there’s no guarantee of possession which infuriates me when we tend to throw back wards and not forwards. A long throw in towards the opposition corner flag is an attacking move likely to cause panic in the opposition. Phil Parkinson has mastered that with Wrexham, plus the Ben Tozer long throw in.

It isn't going to work for us because apart from a couple of our centre halfs we've got nobody who's any good in the air (Fulton isn't too bad but I don't think he should be playing anyway at the moment).
If the opposition deal with Darling we're knackered.

 

[cadleigh]

Williams has his work cut out eliminating the bad habits that this squad developed during two years of stagnation under Martin. All the negative backwards passing, failure to press, suicidal passing in front of goal - that's 100% Martin's legacy. Duff and Sheehan can't be blamed for any of that cack. For all his faults, Duff provided enjoyable football in games like Millwall, when Grimes remembered he had a forward gear.

 

[Manselton Jack]

Williams has his work cut out eliminating the bad habits that this squad developed during two years of stagnation under Martin. All the negative backwards passing, failure to press, suicidal passing in front of goal - that's 100% Martin's legacy. Duff and Sheehan can't be blamed for any of that cack. For all his faults, Duff provided enjoyable football in games like Millwall, when Grimes remembered he had a forward gear.

For most of the games this season we've been fielding a team where half of the players weren't even at the club when Martin was manager so can't agree with that.

 

[cadleigh]

For most of the games this season we've been fielding a team where half of the players weren't even at the club when Martin was manager so can't agree with that.

Fair point about the turnover in players. However, the engine room of Grimes and Fulton is where the problem lies. If the CBs know the ball will be passed straight back to them, no wonder they knock it from side to side.

And if the new players are making the same mistakes as their predecessors for the last two seasons, which is more likely: that they were told to by Duff and Sheehan or they picked them up from their senior colleagues, starting with our undroppable captain?

 

[Manselton Jack]

Fair point about the turnover in players. However, the engine room of Grimes and Fulton is where the problem lies. If the CBs know the ball will be passed straight back to them, no wonder they knock it from side to side.

And if the new players are making the same mistakes as their predecessors for the last two seasons, which is more likely: that they were told to by Duff and Sheehan or they picked them up from their senior colleagues, starting with our undroppable captain?

It's been the choice of the managers this season to continue to pick Grimes & Fulton & having them playing the way they have.
If they were going against specific instructions Duff would have dropped one of them whereas he kept picking them & left Patino out instead

 

[cadleigh]

It's been the choice of the managers this season to continue to pick Grimes & Fulton & having them playing the way they have.
If they were going against specific instructions Duff would have dropped one of them whereas he kept picking them & left Patino out instead

“Choice of the managers to continue to pick Grimes and Fulton.” True. One of the reasons I wasn’t sad to see Duff go.
“Having them playing the way they have.” Not so sure. I think the way Duff wanted Grimes to play was the way he played against Millwall. And Fulton has been subbed plenty of times when his negative play has gone beyond a joke.
Why managers persist in starting them both I do not know, unless there’s something in Patino’s loan deal we aren’t privy to. I guess if the only alternative is Joey, who is now an impact sub realistically, they may feel they have little choice.
Fulton was a player I had a lot of respect for until Martin ruined him.