Birmingham City v Leeds Utd Match Thread - Nketiah Starts, Bamford Out!

[Chilli D]

And good to hear Colin Murray reading out an MOT post on Quest last night.

[1964white]

And good to hear Colin Murray reading out an MOT post on Quest last night.

From one of our new members Jay

[mothbanquet]

Too right moth. He really does have a great attitude, topped by that brilliant celebration after our fifth went in....

Oh indeed, that really put a smile on my face!

[mothbanquet]

Very true I believe we all realise that.

I do think he would have to slightly change his philosophy to a certain degree in the premiership though.

I disagree, better quality players to execute the philosophy will suffice. But that's another matter entirely...

[1964white]

Crazy game.....We attacked like lions & defended like schoolboys.

Great entertainment & incredible scenes at St Andrews but give me 1-0 or 2-1 victories any day Fantastic result in the end however there were more holes in that performance than my grandfathers vest.

Ironically we scored five goals without our regular No.9 but his stand-in Eddie wasn't on the score sheet.

Positives

Three points.
We're top of the league.
First time we've scored five goals in the championship since September 2017
We are relentless & never give up.
Luke Ayling wonder goal.
Ayling our best attacking player drove us to an astounding victory in the 2nd half.
Ayling's celebration.
Costa's performance & his class finish.
Harrison's dink pass to Costa for our opening goal
Our nearest contenders continue to slip up.

Negatives

We allow teams back into a game when we should be killing off a poor sides like Brum especially when we are two or three up.
We've leaked 11 goals in three weeks after conceding only 10 goals up to mid-December.
The form of Casilla, Cooper, White, Phillips & Klich has dipped considerably of late.
Our full-backs/wingers rounded far too easily, also caught out of position far too often.
Once again we appeared extremely vulnerable at corners/set-pieces.
Alioski is a poor defender.

Ratings

3 Casilla
9 Ayling.....not for his defensive work I may add.
4 White
4 Cooper
5 Alioski
5 Phillips
8 Costa
3 Klich
7 Dallas
7 Harrison
7 Nketiah

[rab_rant]

Time to get back to basics !

BORING!!!
You want us to be playing draughts when we are more suited it chess moves by Bobby Fisher... playing the King's Indian gambit and making brilliant moves that look like mistakes, but turn out to be strokes of genius.

You want us to be playing tiddly winks when we could be swinging from the masthead like Captain Jack Sparrow... a twinkle in our eyes and a blade between our teeth... buckling swashes like nobodies business.

you want us to crawl inside a box and close the lid on ourselves so we can feel safe... whereas I would want us to spring out like a jack in the box joker laughing like a loon and scaring the Shite out of the opposition.

I am for the charge of the light brigade at the Battle of Balaclava. you are for standing still like the thin red line.

I am for the triumphant sounding Hallelujah chorus, while you stand in the corner whispering Baa Baa black sheep.

The boring 1-0 wins will fade from the memory but the 5-4 victories will never be forgotten.

As the good book says. Without a vision the people perish.


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[weasel]

You played as a CB in your football days Weasel.

What do you consider are our defensive problems are over the last three weeks?

How do we eradicate the errors?

Any solutions?

It is certainly a tricky one and for me our strength defensively this season has I think been down to more how we defend as a team, all the pressing etc, rather than our defenders and keeper. Kiko has been a big improvement on BPF (despite the wobbles of late), his reading of the game allowing us to push higher up the pitch as a team which means less space for the opposition and easier for us to close down. White has been a great addition although I think the way we have played most of the season has meant he hasn't been forced to be a defender in a lot of the matches, maybe he is a better ball playing defender than an actual defender. In recent weeks have we seen teams play differently against us and test our defence more?

I think the biggest factor that made us so tight defensively was that we weren't conceding many corners or free kicks - we were stronger at preventing danger than dealing with danger. Take yesterday and Ayling was great going forward but if he loses the ball at any point then he was way out of position, maybe we have lost our discipline a bit. The goal against Preston and Klich lost the ball on the edge of their area and they ran straight through us - that hasn't happened before this season but it did a lot last season. The third goal yesterday and Kiko comes for the corner and gets nowhere near the ball, but did he do that because of the 2nd goal where he had nobody protecting him when he made the initial save and was then clattered into (admittedly I don't think he was catching that but he probably would if he didn't have one eye on the player about to clatter him). All little things that we are starting to do wrong or not do properly.

At this stage, if I was in Bielsa's shoes, I wouldn't be panicking although certainly concerned. Having Bamford back for set pieces certainly helps as he tends to adopt a near post position and is good at clearing from that area which makes the opposition have to aim wider or higher with their delivery from corners. This simple factor makes it harder for the opposition to put a quality delivery into a more dangerous area. Some fans would look at a corner come in and it goes nowhere near Bamford and not realise that it is because of Bamford's position that the opposition haven't played it there. They just count stats and in that instance Bamford hasn't made a defensive clearance. So stats wise he has has done nothing but the fact he has stood where he has has made the opposition's corner far less dangerous. That is just one instance of how stats can be irrelevant. It is also one of the reasons why Bielsa is reluctant to make changes as all the players have duties that we as fans probably don't see. We probably see someone having a poor game but he could be Bielsa's man of the match because he has done what Bielsa has asked him to do and it has affected the way the opposition has had to play and in some ways it has made the game bypass that player so we see a player who has hardly been involved yet because of that the opposition has been far less effective.

Not sure I answered the question but hopefully conveyed the point that I don't think it is just as easy as saying the defence/keeper are to blame. Also worth noting that a few players have had iffy games so hopefully that is just a temporary thing and once they get back to their normal selves then hopefully a lot of problems disappear.

[The Subhuman]

Great game, loved every second of it. Kudos to Brum who should consider themselves unlucky, Better than Brom the other week and matched up to us for long periods, they're going to struggle to raise their game against the lesser clubs in the division.

What a great league, I'm going to miss it if and when we enter the land of mercenary agents and footballers. Where money is the be all and end all.

[1964white]

BORING!!!
You want us to be playing draughts when we are more suited it chess moves by Bobby Fisher... playing the King's Indian gambit and making brilliant moves that look like mistakes, but turn out to be strokes of genius.

You want us to be playing tiddly winks when we could be swinging from the masthead like Captain Jack Sparrow... a twinkle in our eyes and a blade between our teeth... buckling swashes like nobodies business.

you want us to crawl inside a box and close the lid on ourselves so we can feel safe... whereas I would want us to spring out like a jack in the box joker laughing like a loon and scaring the Shite out of the opposition.

I am for the charge of the light brigade at the Battle of Balaclava. you are for standing still like the thin red line.

I am for the triumphant sounding Hallelujah chorus, while you stand in the corner whispering Baa Baa black sheep.

As the good book says. Without a vision the people perish.


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Maybe boring Rab!

I don't want to see anymore of those ludicrous scorelines again, that game fluctuated so much that the outcome could have gone either way, thankfully the result went in our favour!

Football is not just about attacking, top teams build their success on sound defences, there is an art to defending & we need to respect that part of the beautiful game.

[The Subhuman]

I think we still have the best defence in the division by a distance...and I do think it's sour grapes when teams actually score good goals against us (their first and fourth) So really only two defensive errors that lead to goals and both of those maybe could be a bit down to Kiko, Goalkeepers count as defence as well.

I'm not blaming Kiko in anyway btw, it's that position on the pitch where the mistake is amplified 100 fold and everything else gets ignored. Good keeper, our keeper, needs a good game for his confidence and he'll get it

[The Subhuman]

Maybe we should turn Bamford into a centre back ....if his best area for us is our box. Nketiah with a defensive clearance btw yesterday, probably jumps higher than Paddy so no reason he can't stand on the near post and do just as good a job

[mothbanquet]

I think once we get a clean sheet, which will happen soon, it'll settle nerves in a big way. I also can't help but feel Coops is rusty as hell and aside from the Cardiff lapse, White, Berra and Kiko had built a very good, well-coordinated relationship. I'm not going to oversimplify things by touting the partnership as the cause of what's going wrong defensively, I definitely want to see Roberts fit (for more than one game) and back in midfield, which will help Klich out to no end. That is where injuries have hit us hardest and as Weasel said, that is where a great deal of our defensive work is done to begin with.

As Jan approaches I find myself hoping more and more the Che Adams rumours have substance as he would solve at least two positional issues.

[John in Louisiana]

It is certainly a tricky one and for me our strength defensively this season has I think been down to more how we defend as a team, all the pressing etc, rather than our defenders and keeper. Kiko has been a big improvement on BPF (despite the wobbles of late), his reading of the game allowing us to push higher up the pitch as a team which means less space for the opposition and easier for us to close down. White has been a great addition although I think the way we have played most of the season has meant he hasn't been forced to be a defender in a lot of the matches, maybe he is a better ball playing defender than an actual defender. In recent weeks have we seen teams play differently against us and test our defence more?

I think the biggest factor that made us so tight defensively was that we weren't conceding many corners or free kicks - we were stronger at preventing danger than dealing with danger. Take yesterday and Ayling was great going forward but if he loses the ball at any point then he was way out of position, maybe we have lost our discipline a bit. The goal against Preston and Klich lost the ball on the edge of their area and they ran straight through us - that hasn't happened before this season but it did a lot last season. The third goal yesterday and Kiko comes for the corner and gets nowhere near the ball, but did he do that because of the 2nd goal where he had nobody protecting him when he made the initial save and was then clattered into (admittedly I don't think he was catching that but he probably would if he didn't have one eye on the player about to clatter him). All little things that we are starting to do wrong or not do properly.

At this stage, if I was in Bielsa's shoes, I wouldn't be panicking although certainly concerned. Having Bamford back for set pieces certainly helps as he tends to adopt a near post position and is good at clearing from that area which makes the opposition have to aim wider or higher with their delivery from corners. This simple factor makes it harder for the opposition to put a quality delivery into a more dangerous area. Some fans would look at a corner come in and it goes nowhere near Bamford and not realise that it is because of Bamford's position that the opposition haven't played it there. They just count stats and in that instance Bamford hasn't made a defensive clearance. So stats wise he has has done nothing but the fact he has stood where he has has made the opposition's corner far less dangerous. That is just one instance of how stats can be irrelevant. It is also one of the reasons why Bielsa is reluctant to make changes as all the players have duties that we as fans probably don't see. We probably see someone having a poor game but he could be Bielsa's man of the match because he has done what Bielsa has asked him to do and it has affected the way the opposition has had to play and in some ways it has made the game bypass that player so we see a player who has hardly been involved yet because of that the opposition has been far less effective.

Not sure I answered the question but hopefully conveyed the point that I don't think it is just as easy as saying the defence/keeper are to blame. Also worth noting that a few players have had iffy games so hopefully that is just a temporary thing and once they get back to their normal selves then hopefully a lot of problems disappear.

Fantastic post. Thanks.

[paddy parrott]

Great insight Weasel and your post was well explained .
We have remember for the record... & dont forget what MB has gotten and is doing with these players.
They are what they are and Yes Square and rounded does spring to my mind.
The Connumdrum maybe /is.. not what we need but Who?..

[paddy parrott]

Great insight Weasel and your post was well explained .
We have remember for the record... & dont forget what MB has gotten and is doing with these players.
They are what they are and Yes Square and rounded does spring to my mind.
The Connumdrum maybe /is.. not what we need but Who?..

[BGwhite]

But we are a different set-up since Bielsa's arrival

First taste of championship football for Marcelo last season, a learning process you could say!

This season we appear a better unit in what is a poorer league imo!

Don't get me wrong I'm not blinkered enough to realise there are elements of out game & squad I'm concerned about however I do believe we are the best team in this league all down to Marcelo's managerial skills

I think we're the best team as well dispite my negativity however we have always managed to hit the self destruct button very very regularly when the pressure mounts and I believe that this season is the last chance saloon to get promoted...fail and God forbid what will happen.

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[BGwhite]

Can't see a Villa coming from nowhere too!

I have a little inkling Cardiff will be up there soon, I've watched them a couple of times recently including coming back from 3-0 down against some other team can't remember , they haven't looked particularly outstanding but are getting results.

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[weasel]

Maybe we should turn Bamford into a centre back ....if his best area for us is our box. Nketiah with a defensive clearance btw yesterday, probably jumps higher than Paddy so no reason he can't stand on the near post and do just as good a job

For me I would have Nketiah standing 10 yards from where the corner is being taken to make it harder for the corner taker to play it to around the edge of the 6 yard box - make it so they have to aim wider, to miss Nketiah, so that the ball is further out towards the penalty spot so it isn't in the area of uncertainty for keepers as to whether to come or not. Nketiah would also then be free to sprint as fast as he could up the touchline so that if we got a clearance that went to him he would be in a great position to break at speed.

Bamford is good in the air and has a 10cm advantage over Eddie. PB is one of the tallest in our team so it is a good ploy to have him in a free role at defending corners and allowed to attack the ball if it comes near him. Monk had a similar ploy when we had Wood, Bartley and PJ with PJ primarily given a free role just to pick up the flight of the ball and attack it. If you only have a few tall people (or a few people who are good in the air) it is better to mark zonally and attack the ball in certain areas than trying to go man for man.

[mothbanquet]

I think we're the best team as well dispite my negativity however we have always managed to hit the self destruct button very very regularly when the pressure mounts and I believe that this season is the last chance saloon to get promoted...fail and God forbid what will happen.

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I'd never blame a Leeds fan for feeling pessimistic, or at least reluctant to be optimistic. God knows when the score went 4-4 I felt that way myself in the heat of the moment last night. Much as this team provides fertile ground for discussion, banter and conflict, one side of the argument will be vindicated come the end of the season but only then. This being the Championship, and a particularly competitive and unpredictable season in it at that, it's going to be a roller coaster until then.

[BGwhite]

Maybe boring Rab!

I don't want to see anymore of those ludicrous scorelines again, that game fluctuated so much that the outcome could have gone either way, thankfully the result went in our favour!

Football is not just about attacking, top teams build their success on sound defences, there is an art to defending & we need to respect that part of the beautiful game.

Well said 64. Wouldn't mind 6-5 on Wednesday though

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