One of the things we fans never get to really understand about professional football is how the little things are forever beyond our comprehension. This isn’t a referral to transfers, football finance and such matters. For City fans of a certain age, taking an interest in the club’s finances was an essential part of the fight for survival, and we almost certain know more than we’ve recently been given credit for. No, it’s the other things. For instance, I occasionally wonder how the way in which managers in the Premier League deliver their interval instructions, and how it differs to the fat tracksuited old bloke handing out the half-time oranges on the local playing field.

Whatever Phil Brown’s doing, it’s not working. Maybe he should try passing around some fags and cans of lager a la Sunday League, because his half-time instructions at the moment are either completely wrong, or his players aren’t listening.

To be fair to the manager (which is getting more difficult by the day), it’s probably the latter. I speak of the way in which City have conceded shortly after half-time in each of our last three games on the road. At Wolves, a very useful half-time lead was squandered within sixty seconds of the restart. At Sunderland, promising parity was handed over in five minutes. Finally at Anfield yesterday, City’s far-from-disastrous 2-1 deficit took less than two minutes to become an insurmountable 3-1 scoreline, from which a rout was simply unavoidable.

(more…)

Oh dear…this wasn’t pretty. We’ll keep it brief. Three down after half an hour, four-nil losers by the end, booed off at half-time and full-time…this was another bad night for City and for Phil Brown.

And let’s not kid ourselves that it doesn’t matter because it was only the League Cup. It was important enough for Everton to send a strong team, despite their European commitments and trek to Portsmouth at the weekend. This was a troubling demonstration of everything that is presently going wrong for City – from poor team selection to underperforming players, this dire 90 minutes epitomised the malaise affecting the Tigers.

Team selection: Duke; Mendy, Cooper, Zayatte, Halmosi; Ghilas, Boateng (c), Featherstone, Cairney; Barmby, Vennegoor of Hesselink. Not quite the reserves, but very far from the starting XI that took to the field against Birmingham on Saturday. Nine players different, in fact.

(more…)

Hull City succeeded on Saturday where Derren Brown failed on Friday night, in keeping people firmly in  their seat. There was nothing to stand up and cheer about in this match, which was a poor advert for the Premier League, and a gloomy portent about the Tigers survival chances this year.

Defeat against Birmingham suitably ended  a wretched week for the club, in which the chairman angrily, though unconvincingly, defended the club’s financial state and non-submission of accounts, while the manager needlessly traded faintly bitchy comments in the press with outgoing loanee Caleb Folan.

We needed a good performance to lift the shroud of  despondency that currently covers the KC Stadium. We didn’t get it.   (more…)