Best Of

I watched Man City get schooled by Liverpool yesterday. The lauded Pep and his panto coaching was totally found out and I think the era of his passing teams to death is clearly over. 66% possession and nothing to show for it.

Liverpool pressed at the right time, showed tempo at the right time and were ruthless in attack. I am not comparing us to either team but I think English football has certainly tried to imitate City throughout the leagues and I hope that is now going to go away. It's boring. It's attritional. It's clearly beatable.

We have some great players capable of playing some fantastic football and I hope we exploit those talents and nothing else. As others have said the first half of the season we played without fear and attacked at will. Now we seem too safe and our first instinct is to not lose.

Who said we were playing for a draw?

But this is the nub of it, the absolute nub. We're second in the league. We're going to face lots of team who play cautiously against us. We've tried and failed to break them down by playing with control, a double pivot, long balls over midfield etc and it's not worked. Given the talent we've got in the squad, surely we should trust our players to bamboozle, to play with panache, to overload, to bomb forward, to get at 'em and up 'em. That's what I want to see from our team of many talents. Not an abundance of caution and the hope we might nick a goal somehow.

I'm sure he mentioned on comms last week he was needed elsewhere today.

On a positive note. We have been without Richard Kone for the best part of 4 league games.We drew 3 and won 1 of those. I would wager that we would have won at least 1 off those games with him in the side.If he stays fit keeping him this window could be the difference between automatic promotion and being in the playoffs.

That would do for me as we have a better goal difference. I would take that now if given it.

We shouldn't be playing for draws, especially with mid to low-table opposition. Not only for the points tally but the sense of confidence in the team. They should always go out expecting to win, with the arrogance and swagger to think they're better than whoever the opposition is and willing to believe they can always score, no matter how late in the match it is.

I have a horrible feeling we're going to miss out on autos by four points - and I will certainly look to the draws against Wigan and Crawley as opportunities missed if that happens.

Remember that next season we likely lose the majority of our best performers.

I'd say Taylor, Low, Harvey, Scowen, Humphreys, Morley and Kone have been our strongest players. I expect only two will be with us next year.

In that context, recruiting with an eye on next season makes sense.

I know you were. Talking of crap (and blood and thunder, for that matter), I had an ill-timed call of nature in the 75th minute so I missed what was no doubt a lively last 20 minutes with shots raining in on the Wigan goal from all directions. Yet again, the only consolation is that a single point may prove invaluable, together with the retention of our superior GD when it comes to the final reckoning.

I expect there’ll be a good many kids asking parents if they really do have to go again. That’s the really sad part.

14 games to go...

A slow Monday morning has led me towards soccerstats.com and some number crunching.

According to the "run in analysis" the H/A PPG of the teams we have left to play this season is higher than anyone else in the top 6, and the 4th highest in the league. This suggests that on paper, we have the hardest run-in of the lot. I think this comes as no surprise to anyone here.

Where it gets interesting though...

If we were to repeat the same results across our next 14 games that we achieved against the same teams earlier in the season (8 wins, 2 draws, 4 losses) we would finish on 90 points.

If Wrexham were to repeat the same results over their next 14 games that they achieved the last time around (8W, 5D, 1L) they would finish on (you guessed it) 90 points.

How's your nerve?