After two impressive Hull City away wins under interim gaffer Andy Dawson, it was back to normal at home to promotion-chasing Blackburn Rovers at a subdued MKM Stadium.
Blackburn are flying under Jon Dahl Tomasson and showed their control, pace and movement to good effect in the first half and their doggedness and mastery of the dark arts in the last half an hour. We’ve been in the opposite position. February 2016 most memorably, going to Blackburn with no fear, watching The Tigers take three points and march towards the Premier League. It’s a good feeling. It was very much in reverse yesterday.
City: Baxter, Christie, Greaves, Jones, Figueiredo, Docherty, Slater, Seri, Woods, Pelkas, Longman.
I missed both away games due to girls’ football and an 8
year old’s martial arts themed birthday party (true story) and so my most
recent experience of watching City is miserable and the first half did little
to change that. City’s 4-4-1-1 with four grafting midfielders and a striker who’ll
work and work without the ball was effective away from home but didn’t live up
to the expectancy of playing in front of a good home crowd, who were never
given any reason to be excited. They were incredibly easy to defend against,
despite playing four central midfielders, there was never a pass on when Jones
and Figueiredo were on the ball. Greaves, short, or Christie, in behind, were
the only outball every time and Blackburn ate them up. Pelkas, playing off
Longman, was the creative outlet and he was hard to find. At the other end,
Blackburn had a bit of a donkey up front, in Gallagher, but had Brereton, Szmodics
and little Dolan running off him which was much more effective.
City were warned on 13 mins of the danger when Szmodics got in between Figueiredo and Christie and Baxter saved well before an outstanding Seri challenge denied Brereton the rebound but within a minute, the same run and slid through pass found Szmodics again to finish superbly from a tighter angle [0-1]. It was a game of fine margins but City would not make a chance this good in the game. The closest they came in the first half came on 26 mins when Docherty found Slater, whose excellent left footed cross just evaded Longman as he slid in at the far post and connected with the woodwork and not the ball. City had plenty of the ball, a couple of corners and some half chances but were way off the level of the visitors.
Blackburn have a bit of everything. They’re a young, fit side who have disciplined and tactically aware players carrying out clear instructions. They’re a threat from the three playing off the striker and the full backs and they have a target man to hit if all else fails. They’ve got all the tricks of the trade down to a fine art. Ben Brereton, particularly, showed this. It’s a great story, his conversion into a South American footballer and as well as growing out his hair and beard and sticking “Diaz” on the end of his name, he’s buying fouls and going down “injured” like a 70s foreigner stereotype. Four times he went down in the game with no-one near him. Four times. He won a free-kick claiming a push off Pelkas, who is about 2 feet tall. It’d be impressive to watch if it wasn’t so frustrating.
Half time: Hull City 0 Blackburn Rovers 1
Dawson made two subs at the break with Fleming and Tufan replacing Jones and Seri and were much improved for them. They showed greater urgency in challenged and taking restarts and Fleming was a good outlet on the left. The second half became a basketball game for 15 minutes and was genuinely end-to-end. Pelkas delivered a fantastic near-post corner that Figueiredo somehow didn’t connect with. Baxter immediately produced a tremendous save with a strong left hand to deny Brereton on the counter. Docherty then cleared a header from a corner off the line before Docherty crossed brilliantly from our right and Pelkas arrived to head down into the turf and it bounced up and over the bar.
Tomasson reacted cleverly to the openness of the game and sent on several defensive minded subs, the most familiar and impressive being Daniel Ayala. He dictated the rest of their game, ripping into Carter late on for his sloppiness from a quick throw-in. Dawson made more subs, introducing Estupiñán, Sinik and then Coyle very late, but for all their endeavour, City couldn’t find the momentum to create clear chances and Blackburn killed the game with their unabashed time-wasting and cheap fouls, aided by some weak refereeing.
The cheap fouls are nothing new but my tolerance for them disappeared long ago and they are killing the game. Turn on your radio and you’ll hear that referees are “letting the game flow” and it’s bollocks. They kill games with their constant interference and the selectiveness of it winds fans up. Longman and Estupiñán both had their shirts pulled blatantly but the game didn’t stop. A defender cleared the ball and then caught Oscar, who was trying to block, and the game got pulled back 30 yards for a free kick that took a minute to take. Woods was booked for a real nothing challenge. A few minutes later, he committed a clear foul that wasn’t given at all. I’ll never justify our players going down easily but Slater did it twice and was (rightly) given nothing but Brereton going down like Pelkas is Eddie Hall is given.
To top it all off, they ran out the 6 minutes of added time by taking an age over every gal kick and throw in. The ref didn’t book anyone, instead he kept pointing at his arm in the air to indicate that he was going to add on all the time. When did he blow up? Exactly on the 6 minutes he indicated. Cheers mate.
Full time: Hull City 0 Blackburn Rovers 1
For all the frustrations caused by the officiating, City’s biggest problems are our own shortcomings. In this calendar year, we’ve found two ways to play effectively, though inconsistently. Arveladze had some success with three centre halves in a back five. Dawson got some results with two banks of four including four central midfielders. Neither have been effective at home aside from the results we’ve ground out. It feels like, League One apart, we’ve been grinding out results at home for four years now. Creating a team with an identity who can make home feel like a place City will turn teams over again is a big challenge for the new manager. There are potentially exciting attacking players in the squad but they’re not playing and we don’t play a style that looks likely to suit them either. It’s a quandary.
Will the new manager be Liam Rosenior? It seems like it. He doesn’t have much more experience than Andy Dawson in terms of first team games managed. But he’s an impressive, well-thought of young manager with his own ideas of how the game should be played. He feels like the sort of person we’d all be demanding should be part of our club under any other circumstances. My only concern is that Rosie is so well thought of here from his time as a player that I’d hate to see things go sour for him. I hope he gets the time and patience needed to build something here. For all the optimism of the early part of the season, this is clearly still a huge work in progress and will take another season at least to build a team as well-balanced as Blackburn Rovers.
