The Tigers traveled to Burnley for a game that marked the return of Adam Pearson and perhaps the end of Phil Brown. I felt like I was going to a funeral in the morning, I had low expectations for the game and felt like I was going to see the end of Phil Brown. The army of City fans was far more upbeat though. The roar the players got during the warm-up was incredible. If players can't lift themselves for support like that, they never will.
The game as it turned out was horrendous and that wasn't down to the City players or management. A good away performance was undermined by a terrible refereeing performance from Mr. Mike Jones, who most people will recognize as the idiot who allowed a goal to stand when the ball deflected off a beach ball 2 weeks ago. Mr. Jones was demoted from Premier League fixtures for a whole week before the powers that be allowed him to return in a low key fixture and terrorise us. He wouldn't have been given a fixture with any big club in it. This was a big two fingers from the Premier League to Burnley and Hull City. Thanks for that.
The Gaffer
Today was probably the biggest game of Phil Brown's reign, for him. He had to show something that would convince the owner and chairman that he's worth backing. In terms of personnel, there wasn't a whole lot he could change, his job was to find a way to get our key players on the ball in key areas of the pitch and to fire up our lot after an unbelievably tepid performance last week.
Matt Duke replaced the injured Bo, that was pretty much a given. He also chose to replace Mendy with Ghilas which I'm sure everyone would welcome. The team shape was quite odd though, Ghilas played close to JVoH, just off him. The four in midfield contained Hunt wide left and then Geo playing in front of the back four allowing Marney and Olofinjana to roam, I kid you not. That meant we had a big gap on the right hand side and it took us over an hour to sort that out.
PB may have saved his job with his half time team talk because we came out for the second half fired up and dominated the game until Geo was sent off. His substitution of JVoH for Altidore and McShane for Mendy (finally filling that gap on the right) kept us on the front foot and gave us good presence in areas we'd been lacking. Even after Geo's dismissal, he changed Hunt for Barmby, went 4-3-2 and we remained a threat, though conceding a sloppy second goal killed us.
The Defence
In the centre, we were superb. Kamil Zayatte was excellent. He won everything, every tackle, every header, he made superb blocks and he carried the ball out of defence well. He was head and shoulders above everyone else on the pitch. Gardner was very solid alongside him and also made one terrific goal-saving block. As a pair, they look very good. Our defensive problems came down the wings. Burnley just look for Eagles and Blake every time and we didn't find a way to stop them sweeping the ball wide at any point. On our right, we were fairly comfortable, which was more to do with Blake's lack of pace than anything McShane did well. On the left, where we should've been comfortable, having Hunt in front of Dawson, we got absolutely murdered. Dawson was terrible and Hunt was no better. Eagles was able to get to the by-line time and again and every time they went down that side they won a corner, or a penalty or delivered a dangerous ball into the box. The number of times Dawson got tight up against Eagles and was easily spun just beggared belief. As an attacking option, Dawson and McShane were useless until right at the end when Dawson had a shot that dribbled just wide, possibly off the post. Mendy gave us a better threat on the right and we were unlucky because we were well on top and he was getting forward well but Geo's red card stopped that. The second goal came from Alexander having tons of space on their right and then Dawson backed off and let him have a free shot. Mendy did the same against Guerrero on the other side and only got away with it because Guerrero was clueless. McShane took things to the other extreme, diving in needlessly and leaving himself exposed.
The Middle
The midfield line-up was pretty odd. The lack of a right sided option undermined our first half performance because some good approach play was ruined by the fact that we had no option on the right. Geo's role was pretty strange. I said he played in front of the defence but that wasn't quite true. He actually patrolled an area of the pitch quite deep and when we had the ball, he was in front of the defence to pick up the ball, yet when defending, the other midfielders dropped back to the edge of the box while he stayed a little in front of them. I'd imagine the idea was to try and replicate what someone like Bullard would give us, the ability to pick the ball up in midfield and pick out a team mate. I actually think it was worth a go because our distribution last week was terrible. We could've done with Geo being on the ball further up the pitch but when Hunt and Ghilas got into the right areas, we did OK.
Marney was pretty anonymous overall. He picked up some ball in the middle with a mixed success rate. He never provided a driving run, a decent shot or a ball in. Oily alongside did OK in the middle, holding the ball quite well and got in to some decent positions. He looked poor when he tried to play overly ambitious balls in behind and succeeded only in giving them the ball. If he'd kept things simple, he'd have looked quite good. His attempts at making tackles were pathetic. Where has the big strong guy who used to play against us for Wolves gone? If I said he tackled like a girl, it'd be offensive to girls. He had a terrific chance to score at the start of the second half but passed the ball to Ghilas when he should've buried it. I said on twitter that he'd bottled it which may have been harsh; he may have thought Ghilas was better placed to score. Either way, one of them should have. I was disappointed with Hunt again. He's not delivering balls into the box and isn't covering Dawson. He was very unlucky to concede a penalty because he didn't even make a challenge; Eagles kicked him and fell over. He made a terrific run through the middle to win the free-kick for Geo's "goal" but just didn't do it enough. The best work on the left came from Ghilas.
Geo had a fine game in an unusual role. He worked hard and made good challenges and he used the ball well. He scored a great free-kick which was chalked off. There may have been some pushing in the wall but if refs are going to start looking for that then there won't be a single set piece that doesn't end in another free-kick or penalty in any game. He was booked for arguing about the decision, which I think anyone can understand; how could he not be frustrated? The second yellow looked like a nothing tackle from the away end but was described as "wild" on the BBC website. I'll reserve comment on that one. However, if the free-kick isn't stupidly disallowed, then he doesn't get the first yellow. Barmby came on after he went off and held us together quite well. He played one pass to Mendy on the right that was incredible. He was falling backwards and yet had the awareness and ability to flick a great ball out wide as he fell.
The Front Line
A lot of our efforts in the first half were terminated by Ghilas' inability to stay onside. When he was onside, he looked dangerous and put in some good work, particularly when pulling out left and taking on defenders. JVoH struggled with a lot of the balls in to him which weren't particularly good. He did hold the ball up well at times and had two key moments. In the first half, he received a quick free-kick from Hunt and totally wasted it. In the second half, he spun a defender on the touchline and played a superb ball in for Olofinjana that ended with Ghilas fluffing a great chance. When Altidore came on, he looked more like the player we saw against Bolton. He was strong, he linked up well, turned defenders with ease and won free-kicks.
The Future
Phil Brown's future remains on a knife edge. This game will have helped, because of the way we played and the fact that we were robbed. On the flip side though, the reason his future is in doubt is because we don't perform to this level every week. He hasn't been sending out sides that are that brave and committed. If he had, he wouldn't be in trouble.
In the short term, we desperately need to find a pair of full backs who can defend and get forward. Every team we play throw their full backs forward and cause us a problem and we're missing out because we're two men down on every attack. If we were defensively strong, we might accept it as a deficiency but we're not, we're rubbish.
We'll now miss Geo against Stoke. This might be a good time on this evidence to pair Altidore and Ghilas again and play someone wide right. Whether those things are PB's decision remains to be seen.
Ratings
Duke 6, McShane 5 (Mendy 7), Dawson 5, Gardner 7, Zayatte 9, Geovanni 8, Marney 6, Olofinjana 6, Hunt 6 (Barmby 7), Ghilas 7, JVoH 6 (Altidore 7)