Milijas celebrates

By Tom Bason
October 30 2010

Bloody hell. What a performance. What a game. After playing so well against Chelsea last week, we actually upped our game today and thoroughly deserved the three points.

- Having gone eight games without a win, what a time it was to get only our second win of the season. No matter the quality of the performances, it's the getting of points on the board that counts at the end of the season. It must have been eating at the players, they will have been aware of the lack of wins, but today they didn't seem to let it affect them at all.

- Probably my favourite moment of the first half was actually when City won an early corner. Instead of having all eleven men back defending, we left Matt Jarvis and Stephen Hunt forward, causing City to keep three defenders back. We cleared the initial ball, and although James Milner was the player who won the ball on the halfway line, Hunt was able to force him into a mistake and we won the ball back. Compare this to City, who on many occasions brought all their men back, meaning that even when the initial ball was cleared, we were still able to keep up the pressure.

- Actually, scrap that. My favourite moment of the first half is without doubt Milijas sweeping the ball home the edge of the area. I don't think there's another player in the squad I would have wanted the ball to fall to in that position. He took it beautifully, out of reach of the dive of Joe Hart and nestling perfectly in the bottom corner. I don't want to expect too much too soon, but could his introduction back into the first team be the turning point of the season?

- I'd love to see the passing stats of the two teams. We attempted to keep the ball on the ground at all costs, and at some point we will be caught out by this. A stray ball out of the defence will lead to the opposition scoring. It's important we are aware of this, and don't go ballistic when it happened.

- Jarvis for England? If Fabio Capello or one of his entourage were present today, he won't be far off. Quite initially when played down the right (although his crossing does seem far better when on this flank), it was his switch to the left hand side that caused havoc in the City defence. He ripped Micah Richards to shreds. Whether going down the outside of him, or cutting inside he looked like doing something special every time he had the ball. He faded in the second half, especially when switched back to the right hand side but fully deserved the standing ovation when withdrawn towards the end.

- Today was Hunt's full League debut, and while he's clearly not 100% fit yet, I was impressed. Just his presence on the pitch shifted the City defenders attention slightly away from Jarvis, and allowed the future England international to cause all sorts of problems. Previously, we've have to balance whether to play Jelle van Damme or Stephen Fletcher on the opposite flank- one is clearly better going forward while the other is far more defensively sound. Hunt is just the player to mesh the two, giving us an extra dimension going forward while not losing our stability defensively.

- Speaking of van Damme, it was interesting that it was George Elokobi who was introduced rather than the Belgium martial arts expert. Does this mean van Damme is three or four rungs down the pecking order? After arriving as the expected solution to our left back problem, it is clear that Mick McCarthy doesn't see him as the answer. It wouldn't surprise me to see him depart back to Belgium in January.

- 760. That's how many minutes Kevin Doyle has spent on the pitch since he last scored a League goal against Sunderland last season, and it’s 835 minutes since his last goal from open play. And do I care? Hell no. Even when he's not scoring goals, he's more than worth his place in the team. Kolo Toure will rarely have a tougher match than todays; he just couldn't deal with Doyle. I've lost count of the amount of times I've come away from matches feeling sorry for Doyle- today the rest of the team gave a performance that lived up to Doyle's high standards. Have faith, the goals will come for him.

- With last season's Player of the Season again missing, how would we fare defensively? I wrote after the West Ham game that injury to Jody Craddock could be a blessing in disguise, and I'm starting to believe this even more now. Richard Stearman rashly dived in the penalty (it looked clear cut to me), but recovered superbly well to give an outstanding performance in tandem with a personal favourite of mine, Christophe Berra. I had a few quid last season on Berra to win Player of the Season, a gamble for which I took a lot of flak. But he seems to have grown in the games without Craddock, taking on the responsibility of leading the defence and he was immense again today.

- Interestingly (well if you're boring like me) today was a matchup between two conflicting formations- 4-2-3-1 v 4-3-1-2. In the first half, we struggled to deal with Emmanuel Adebayor and Mario Balotelli drifting wide and getting in behind our fullbacks. But, overall, we were able to dominate in midfield, and whereas Jarvis and Hunt were able to stop Richards and Jerome Boateng from influencing City's attacks, Kevin Foley and Stephen Ward had no direct opponents and so were able to push forward at will, giving us extra options in the final third of the pitch.

- Speaking of our midfield, I thought it was wonderfully balanced. I've already mentioned having Jarvis and Hunt on each flank, the middle three each had a role to perform and each did it marvellously. Milijas and the returning Karl Henry acted as a double pivot, both willing to sit deep but with specific instructions to keep the ball. David Edwards played slightly further forward, and was instructed to get closer to Doyle after half an hour in an attempt to put more pressure on City's defence. I don't rate Edwards, but he played well today in a role that suited him down to the ground and he fully deserved his goal.

- A big difference between the teams was the work ethic and team spirit. Compare Adebayor and Vincent Kompany having squabble in the centre of the pitch in the first half to the reaction of Ward, Berra and Elokobi to Michael Mancienne when he successfully tackled Adam Johnson late on and won a goal kick. Each of them came over to pat him on the back- it was wonderful to see.

- Man City are a big side. A very big side. Balotelli and Adebayor are both 6'2" plus, in addition to the likes Yaya Toure, Gareth Barry and all their back four. So, it's for this reason that I'm not going to worry about the number of crosses that Marcus Hahnemann came for and got nowhere near. I think any goalkeeper would struggle against strikers of this size. We should just be thankful that it didn't cost us a goal and move on.

- Today was my first view of Balotelli in a City shirt, and he pretty much reinforced my views of him when he was at Inter. He's like a big kid, who will get incredibly frustrated when it's not going his way. Why Adebayor was withdrawn and not him baffled me. And that substitution was doubly strange, given that he was replaced by Pablo Zabeletta, seemingly to allow Boateng to push further forward. They effectively took off a striker for a defensive midfielder when 1-0 down with 12 minutes to go. Thanks for that Bobby.

- Having already lost 10 points from winning positions this season, it’s nice to see the team come from a goal down to go on and win

- 13 games since the last clean sheet

- Our last four games have produced three yellow cards. One was for deliberate handball, one for a shirt pull. Yup, we're monsters we are

Wolves 2 Man City 1- A Few Random Thoughts

Discussion started by Wolves , 30/10/2010 19:11

Wolves
30/10/2010 19:11

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oldngold
31/10/2010 00:51

Hugely proud of the Wolves today!

Great win!

We are a PL club and we can stay up. let us have bo doubts. I still don't actually think the team is quite where MM wants us to be!

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Stourport Wolf
31/10/2010 00:53

I thought we could have picked up a couple of yellows today for tackles. Nenad in the first half but advantage was played and the ref never came back to book him. Stears could have been booked for the penalty incident for tackling from behind.

Mind you City got off lightly a couple of times too.

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Risca TM
31/10/2010 14:28

Thanks for the match summary. These are invaluable for an exile like me who can't get to games nor watch highlights on MOTD.

Well written too, I may add. Could almost smell the linament!

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Ivybridge Wolf
31/10/2010 15:37

good read. Doyle was back to his best yesterday. would love him to score a few mind!

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ernesto hunt
01/11/2010 00:38

Stearman learns and gets better with each minute he gets on the pitch. Still got a long way to go before he's got the experience of Craddock or the respect of his team mates.

But he does seem to bring a flexibilty to the defence based on added speed. If this is how Craddock is to go this is the way - loosing out to an improving & better player, knowing that his old position is in safe hands - but perhaps not a while yet. MM hurt his pride, and he responded by proving MM wrong - and that must have hurt MM badly (or he's just a wily old fox who knows a bit about motivation).

Wagstaffe had another, oops sorry, Jarvis had another cracking display. His advantage to England is he doesn't have to have the byline on his shoulder to face an opponent.

But for me it's Doyle - I've posted alsewhere on the class of this lad so I'll not repeat it here. Well, that's not strictly true! It's the way this squad (cus it is a squad (ugly name), not a team) is clawing it's way back. I think they are now coming to terms with each other and beginning to realise each others ability and to trust each other. It will come, and has come, in fits and starts.

Some say MM has peaked somewhere above the Championship but below the Prem. I don't see that proved at all! What I see is a manager who doesn't foul mouth his players, who respects them, who stands by them (perhaps after they have proved they want to be part of the Wolves)' and I see players who respect him. They are learning, MM's learning and so am I. I fully understood what he was about last season in the shuffling of players to extract the best possible blend of 11 players to get the most football Wolves could give at any moment in time for the most points possible. It worked!

As for this season, I glimpsed something for a moment at Villa that I thought might be beyond us. This Saturday I more than glimpsed the same thing, and I'm starting to see what MM wants and I think we might be just good enough, with a fair wind, to acheive it.

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