Ultimately, we’ll take a point against the high-flying chickens, but it could and maybe should have been more. However, there are still some very familiar flaws in our game.
We did well to contain Bradford City, barring the opening stanza when everyone defensively was sound asleep and Jake Beesley capped off a fine move with a very decent header. Other than that, we did very well to snuff out most of their attacks throughout the game.
It felt like we deserved a goal and we got one via the unlikely
source of Udoka Godwin-Malife. But it did feel like the goal would come from an unlikely source as, upfront, we were powder-puff for a lot of the match.
Jacob Brown is the substitute extraordinaire but, as we probably all suspected, he’s no Jack Marriott and he wouldn’t be able to keep up his previous outrageous goals-per-minute output. In his defence, he was marshalled by City’s huge central defenders, so launching the ball up to him was a fruitless task in the main.
That’s not to say he was the problem; he was one of several aspects we have to improve upon if we are serious about being in the top six.
The slump continues
I’ll address the elephant that’s in my room, at least, and that’s Lewis Wing. In this game he wasn’t particularly awful nor anywhere close to his best, but that’s part of my issue. He seems to be unable to get himself out of this average slump that he is undoubtedly in.
At times, he made some very poor passes that were unthoughtful and sloppy. On another day we could have conceded a goal from these errors. He was trying, undoubtedly, but the application isn’t good enough.
He seemed to be chasing the game but, equally, wasn’t able to put himself in positions where he would have been previously influential. There were occasions when he should have been taking control, yet he would pass the ball back to Benn Ward or Joel Pereira. Where has the old Lewis gone?
While I don’t want to see the return of how we played last season where Wing was the quarterback and everything had to flow through him, now he seems tentative, hitting and hoping. There’s something missing – the confidence has left him, he’s simply not influential or much of a threat.
But the sloppiness isn’t exclusively the preserve of Wing; the whole game was littered with repeated errors. Our crossing – from set pieces and open play – was poor, with Paddy Lane being the chief protagonist, although other parts of his game were of a much higher standard.
Some of our decision-making in the final third was frustrating. At times we’d overplay a situation when an early pass or cross would have been the better option, yet conversely, when a simple pass forward was proffered, we didn’t take it. Again, Wing was culpable here.
Back into bad habits
The main bone of contention was how we finished the game, though. After deservedly equalising, we then stopped doing a lot of the good things that we’d done to get back into the game in the first place.
That said, Bradford probably did some tinkering of their own to counter this, but we doubled down on that sloppiness and ill-thought-out moves that we had made a lot earlier in the game.
This isn’t isolated to just one game either; we have a great propensity to pass to players who have no angle or chance to do anything with the ball, so what is the pass for?
There’s too much playing the ball instinctively to who-knows-where, instead of just thinking for a second for a better option to appear.
Maybe it’s just a limitation of what a League One footballer is generally capable of, but at times we just don’t think about what the best course of action should be – we just play the most obvious action, instead even if the ball is likely to just dribble out of play instead or the receiving player is already marked. So what’s the point?
The most worrying part is that I’m struggling to see where this extra mental gear change is going to come from. We need to iron out these wrinkles, and they are wrinkles. Our fundamental game plan and direction does still have forward momentum, but our game management and our general control of a game remain wanting.
When we’re good, we’re scintillating and a treat for the eyes, but when we’re not we can look clunky and naive.
We’re not yet capable of consistently stamping authority on a game, home or away, and showing we’re complete and confident. That may come and I really hope it does, but at the moment there are times when we don’t look at all sure of ourselves.
That said, for large parts of the game against a very decent Bradford side, we did OK. I’m not saying for a moment that we were miles off it or punching above our weight class; we’re still a squad that’s a work in progress.
Given we’ve been told promotion is our aim – and that’s what I’m basing my assessment on – we don’t act like a team that has assurance and composure throughout the game. We have excellent periods and we have scruffy, lackadaisical tendencies. You need more of the excellence and less of the mental switch-offs if you’re serious about promotion.
A point against Bradford is no disgrace, they are further down the road in terms of their overall arc of development, but it does highlight with a big pink marker of how much further we still have to go ourselves.
