We don't move the ball anywhere near quickly enough. Its blatantly obvious for everyone to see. The second Buzsaky and RNL came onto the pitch and started trying to move the ball around with some energy and some urgency, it brought Mellis to life (who clearly wants the ball to be moved around much quicker) and started providing Davies with some space as Cardiff weren't having time to surround him. The opening goal was the Scott Wiseman show. Make a terrible attempt at the offside trap, run back and make the flimsiest of flimsy challenges WHILE showing the attacker TOWARDS goal, and see Steele bail you out. Not satisfied with that, allow your man to score softly from the corner. The cheer when people realised he was being moved to right back was one of the biggest cheers I've heard at Oakwell for a while. The second goal came from the only time they really threatened us after Cranie moved inside. Looked as if Cranie tried to win a goal kick by playing it off the Cardiff player, but it stuck between his legs. It was a great save by Steele but Helguson should never have given him a chance, a very lazy finish that reminded me of Harewood against Leeds, just seemed to think he'd already scored. Sure enough, we then concede another soft goal. RNL and Buzsaky coming on then brought us to life. Took Buzsaky about 5 minutes to get up to speed but once he did, he ticked things over. Wiseman showed why he CAN be an asset as a right back with a quick run and cross that led to Mellis's goal. Following that, Buzsaky whipped in a brilliant cross that got a couple of deflections and hit Cardiff GK Marshall on the knee - he had absolutely no idea where the ball was, remarkably lucky - but yet again nobody there to touch the loose ball home. 2 very good shouts for penalties then turned down. The problem at the moment is that Hill is not getting the selection right. Then again, whoever chose the MOTM clearly likes the glacial pace with which we move the ball, because there should only have been Steele or Davies ANYWHERE NEAR man of the match. When Davies goes in January, we're in serious bother.
I've been on about our speed of passing/moving for weeks and it seems to get slower as games go by. It's the main problem for me.
Apparently thats how football should be played and most on here are quite happy to watch it !!! Me , I like to see the opponents having to work hard to prevent us scoring , I like passing football, but the ball needs to move forwards quicker, not sideways and backwards, then start again! Football is not a difficult game, the object of it is to score more goals than your opponents, Hill seems to forget that bit and he thinks its about who has the ball longest with the most passes. Having the majority of possession does not mean we are dominating the match, if the possession is too far back down the pitch to be of any danger to the opposition goal. We looked far better when we made the substitutions and started to get forwards with more purpose and Davies was not going wide.
I am starting to get very concerned about a few things but if we can keep hold of Davies and Steele I think we have a fighting chance of beating the drop.
