No Wanderers, Athletic, or United invited

By: Martyn | October 22nd, 2009

Masahisa Takenaka Chris Coleman’s dusky complexion and diamond-cut suit lend him an aura (?) that the charcoal bagginess of Dave Jones (and his threads) lacks. Nevertheless, it was the Jones-led City edging it in the alphabetical stakes who came out on top during a meeting the pair’s respective sides on Tuesday evening: a 2-0 margin that wasn’t as indubitable as the digits being restrained by the hyphen ostensibly suggests.

SYSTEMS, TACTICS, FORMATIONS
On pressed-together wood-derived cellulose pulp, it was same old same old for the “BOYS IN BLUE AND WHITE AND WE’RE F£$@*&G DYNAMITE”. MRSH/MTWS-HUD-GRD-KEN/BRK-LED-MCP-WHIT/CHOP/BOTH. For those of you who read that last bit of text as a conglomeration of punctuation and letters indulging in argy-bargy, get your code-cracking Vodafone-harvested grandchildren to the monitors immediately! However, confusion permeated as the match began with City’s defence (namely, the wing-backs) uncertain on how to handle the threat of 3 strikers (Morrison/Best/Eastwood) whilst simultaneously rampaging in attack as WBs do. Thus, our formation temporarily amalgamated into a weirder-than-George-Formby’s-obsession-with-Mr-Wu 5-2-1-1-1. Matthews was virtually simulating anal sex with the corner flag, such was the dominance of Freddy Eastwood in pinning him back. Meanwhile, Kennedy looked rather lost and began acting as an auxiliary centre-half. Rather than fully assimilating into this role however, he’d keep tentatively eyeing up the area of turf he normally stands around: his body language was akin to that of the new kid at school, awkwardly poised between pricking either the Adidas ‘poppers’-clad sporty-gang with their Blackburn Rovers and Newcastle United replica jerseys, or the one with them playing Pogs and quasi-homoerotically discussing how amazing Ken is on the SNES version of Street Fighter II. All this confusion led to Whittingham being forced to come in at left-back, despite the fact that Martin Cranie was making no attempt to push on and our opposition had nobody positioned at right-midfield. The ‘2′ comprised of Ledley (standing there, not really doing anything), and Chris Burke, who did a sterling job in protecting Matthews and eventually nullifying Eastwood.

Normality eventually resumed, as City’s usual 4-4-1-1 began to regain balance, conciseness and 4-4-1-1ness. The forwards were constantly running out wide to feed on the “‘AVE IT!!!” balls from the defence, and Bothroyd in particular was really quite masterful in his holding and bridging. This, compounded with Chopra defending from the front and dragging the DM Jack Cork here, there and everywhere meant that Cardiff were able to engineer some flowing moves. The centre-midfield pairing of Ledley and McPhail were on the same wavelength tactically. On-ball, it was Ledley who supported the forwards and McPhail who sat in the quarterback role looking to dictate; off-ball, McPhail pressed and Ledley tended to sit in front of the defenders. From the first peep of the ref’s whistle in the second half, City dictated and orchestrated the game’s structure. The full-backs were pushing on, while Burke and Whittingham were free to tease, beleaguer and maltreat. The former of the named midfielders was the latter period’s star man, stretching and scaring Coventry into submission, and the tie into a petered-out contest.
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Coventry lined-up in an ambitious-ish 4-3-3 system. I insert that grating ‘ish’ because the full-backs Martin Cranie and Patrick van Aanholt were somewhat shackled. Thus, the point where Coventry’s right-attack should have been penetrating City’s left-defence region generally remained neglected (Eastwood stuck to the attacking left-wing fort, thus not facilitating the need for van Aanholt to sally up and down). Osbourne and McIndoe were stationed as the more advanced pair in the midfield threesome, though neither ghosted into the box or sought to exploit the space on the right often enough. Coleman – conspicious by his paucity of touchline-managing, that task left up to menacing first-team coach Frankie Bunn instead – prioritised the grass-pass, and getting the ball out/down the wings. It is a game-plan reliant on the kind of dangerous delivery that either the gangly Leon Best or tactically astute Clinton Morrison could attack. Route one balls were few and far between: those that were hoofed up highlighted Best’s inability to get the better of bulky centre-backs like Mark Hudson, indicating why the former-Sociedad manager keeps Graham Taylor’s love-child to a premium.

Cricket and table-tennis fan Clinton Morrison’s high-octane, hard-work ethic was necessary in tracking/getting numbers back wherever was required, although Eastwood seemed firmly planted into the AML position save for a few saunters to bolster the body count near the pitch’s Pokéball. Jack Cork sat in front of the two central defenders, but the son of a recent former City manager was left marooned and isolated far too often. In possession, you could sense he had the idea of where the cleverest place to pass to was, but doing it in the blink of an eye with the necessary aeronautics proved too onerous. In terms of physical application, the Sky Blues were pretty sterile: the antithesis to Chocolate Starfish-era Fred Durst. Often a lack of *fight* emanates from lost support in the manager, tactical confusion or crises of confidence, but given that they are a squad depleted by injuries at present – thus forced to fill their bench with nippers probably too young to even have heard of Pat Sharp in Funhouse – this poverty of atavistic-exertion, coupled with the tactical naivety (I’ll levy the same criticism at Coleman – he should have opted for a cautionary approach rather than leaving gaping gaps for inexperienced players to cover) was unsurprising.

r257767_1068266 WHAT, WHERE, WHY, HOW
Cardiff’s 90 minutes were rather like the experience of listening to one of Ludwig van Beethoven’s pieces. You can be walking along with your I-pod in your ears, track-skipping through one of his many compilation CDs wondering, “What the hell is this classical music malarkey all about? It’s naff, it’s rubbish, there’s nothing to it.” And then, you land on ‘Turkish March Opus 113 from the Ruins of Athens‘, and there’s a spring in your step, you’re a world-beater, classical music is incredible, powerful, just… wow! We started the match in far too sloppy and casual a manner. Passes went astray, territory wasn’t seized and a lull descended. But then, our talents (collectively and individually) began shining through, albeit not as a continuous process. McPhail’s assist for Gerrard’s headed goal highlighted why we ride high in this division – not many teams have the quality that we do when it comes to feeding the box-lurkers.

All evening, McPhail stuck to being his clever trequartista best, ignoring the semi-ironic cries of “SHOOOOOOOOT” in order to delicately dink-in the last-shoulders-hovering Chopra (his finishing was naff all evening unfortunately). As for some of the moves we constructed, they were quite simply Turkish March-esque in their conjuring of uplifting feelings and sheer beauty (although after getting a handful of early chances and having opted for an open formation, the helping hand of our guests splitting with relative ease did make the task a fair bit easier). The paradigmatic operation began with Whittingham and McPhail effortlessly giving-and-going, one-two’ing their way out of trouble from near the Kennedy corner-flag. The ball was distribruted to Bothroyd’s feet through a plethora of black shirts, and his turn and carry alleviated all the pressure Coventry had just been exerting. The former Perugia striker fed the overlapping Ledley, and his square to Chopra was tamely directed to Westwood’s shinnies. If we can keep on creating moves of such majesty on a more frequent basis, and continue riding our luck in not conceding despite being sloppy for the large part of the game, just maybe we’ll have this promotion quest sewn up at long last!
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Coventry’s 90 minutes were rather like the opening correspondences between verses and chorus in the Metallica song ‘One’. For the song’s peaceful, dulcet medieval tones interjected by brash, snarling despair, read outta-possession surrendering and consternation mingling with inventive, neat, to-the-point forays. One such move led to a brilliant Best dummy-preceding ‘keeper tester. Another culminated in a magnificent, stinging cross from the left channel by Freddie Eastwood, it was met first-time on the left-foot of Clinton Morrison; yet there was Marshall, Sudowoodo-esque in the sprawling hand-growing save. I was impressed by our ‘keeper’s all-round performance on the wet Tuesday evening (the conditions contriving to keep the flowing football to sporadic appearances). He was far more ostentatiously screamy than he normally is, and this gave him a degree of command and demand over the defence that has been so often lacking (not just in the Scot, but in recent City net-tenders such as Tom Heaton). Meanwhile, Kieran Westwood had little to do, but the Irishman is very springy and not many in the land can match his Roadrunner line-leaving speed.

As I touched upon in my previous post, Coventry were shorn of a number of key personnel, including their burly, commanding central-defender Elliott Ward. Ward has always struck me as having the air of a twenty-something card you see ‘Big Fish Little Fish Cardboard Box‘ing it up purposefully towards the dancefloor of some God-foresaken town’s Flares franchise, whilst successfully managing not to spill a drop of his 4 bottles of alcoholic Sunny Delight. Newcastle United’s Steven Taylor would be alongside him, flies undone and chest freshly waxed, whilst someone generically football-joker like David Bentley would be hovering by the tables asking unsuspecting mademoiselles if they’d ever seen an elephant drinking a pint (for those of you unaware of this particularly tasteful party piece, all one needs is a set of pulled-out trouser pockets, 568ml of beverage and a floppy bit attached to your midriff…).

That digression cast firmly to one side, the point I’m trying to get at is that even without Elliott Ward, comedy was provided in the form of his replacement, Ben Turner. Not only did his weak backpass set in motion the move that began the Bluebirds winning a dot-shot, but his repeated blunderings led to his team being unable to develop and gather rhythm in the second batch of 45 minutes. Equally clumsy was poor young Patrick van Aanholt. I know Chelsea have a transfer embargo imposed, but I can’t foresee any circumstances under which they are likely to recall the Dutchman in order to use/plug holes. Blessed with dire touch, selfish and incorrect decision-making and a disregard for holding your position in the system, the youngster was hauled off by Chris Coleman after receiving a yellow card for hauling down Chris Burke: he’d just been caught AWOL for the umpteenth time. In the FK that followed the caution, Michael McIndoe was comforting a left-back who looked on the verge of tears. I’m certain such comforting words weren’t bestowed upon the Scottish winger by Chris Coleman mind – his set-piece deliveries were truly shambolic.