A spineless performance, a failed formation, Mr Nice’s nasty side, not putting it in the mixer, succession planning? – Notes on Birmingham away

I try and write these articles a day or two after the match so I’ve had time to think on the match, calm down and it’s not one long rant. But I’m still wound up about how abject Town were in that first half having slept twice after the game. There have been some really bad Town performances in the last four or five years to compare that 45 minutes to and I don’t think it was the worst I’ve seen them but it wasn’t far off Jan Siewert-era Town. 

Thankfully a hairdryer treatment team talk and a few teacups getting flung around the changing rooms seemed to shake some sense into the bunch of wasters that had turned out in the first half and I didn’t feel embarrassed to support the team that played in the second half even if it was far from perfect. 

You can read my player ratings article if you want to read what I thought of each individual player but here are a few of my more general thoughts on the match. 

Not bad tactics, just rubbish

Schofield’s assessment after the game was that the first half failure wasn’t really an issue of tactics and more to do with the basics of football. I think I agree with him. I thought Birmingham looked like a well below average Championship team that wanted to play for their fans and we looked like we’d turned up to have a nice evening out, get some exercise and maybe see if we could repeat a few of the moves that worked in training (but no pressure if they don’t lads). The issues Town had were more fundamental than tactics. If you can’t complete a simple pass, mark a player or make a tackle stick then there isn’t a tactical system in the world that will save you. 

It was a spineless performance from Town where they lost battles all over the pitch against players that are no better than them. This wasn’t a nice footballing team like Burnley were last week. It was a team tipped for relegation that we allowed to carve us open, mostly because we didn’t take any care of the ball in possession or show any desire to defend with any commitment. 

Schofield talks about how he thinks the group of players he has is a great group of lads but the performance he got in the opening 45 was more like you see from a team playing for a manager who has “lost the dressing room” and his players are actively trying to get him sacked. That’s obviously not the case here, we were just so inept that they allowed Birmingham to stroll to a comfortable 2-0 lead by half-time. 

Formation tweak doesn’t pay off

I’ve said that it wasn’t tactics that cost us in this game but there was one big tactical switch which is worth talking about. Rather than the standard 4-2-3-1 we used against Burnley we switched to a hybrid formation where we played the same shape as last week when we defended but when we had the ball Hogg dropped into central defence and the two fullbacks pushed up, making it a sort of 3-3-3-1. 

I can see what Schofield was trying to do as it meant he could try to play Hogg and Russell together without having the problem of having them both playing alongside each other in midfield when we’re on the ball and slowing down the attacks. It just didn’t really work as we still looked very open and lightweight in midfield. Hogg wasn’t able to influence the game enough, his passing from deep wasn’t accurate or incisive enough, Jon Russell was too lethargic and turned into trouble too often and the gap between midfield and attack was too big. 

I’m not sure how to fix it but the midfield area is a huge problem for this Town team. Short of bringing back a short, red headed boy who has recently moved to Nottingham who I’m trying to avoid talking about, I’m not sure what the answer is to this problem. 

But then, suddenly, it did actually click into place for around ten minutes in the second half and I think I could see what the plan was all along. Five minutes before and after Town’s goal there were a few lovely passages of flowing, passing football that showed we actually can play decent football when we get going. But it was pretty painful stuff before and after that nice little island of free-flowing attacking football. I’ve also no real concept of what changed to suddenly make our midfield work and the ball suddenly start getting out of defence and into attack more easily, other than Birmingham taking their foot off the pedal for a little while. 

The second half was better but not really good 

I don’t want to be too much of a sad sack in this article but the second half was only better than the first half in the same way that a sandwich that’s been dropped on the floor is better than a sandwich that’s been dropped down the toilet. Neither was good, it’s just one was awful. 

There were definitely glimmers of hope in the second half of the game but I thought our good patch was too short and even then we didn’t move the ball quickly enough in Birmingham’s final third. It was a bit too pedestrian and laboured to create decent opportunities and the only time we moved the ball with menace was when we scored our only goal. 

I’m also pretty disappointed with the way the second half was managed from the bench. I can understand that substitutes were held back until fairly late in the game as the eleven on the pitch were actually on top and doing pretty well from 50 to 70 minutes, so better to not upset things. However, it was disappointing that all the changes were like for like instead of taking off a defender for an attacker and trying to put Birmingham under pressure. When they took their winger off and brought a fullback on, did we still need all our defenders? 

Put it in the mixer – why can’t Town chase games properly? 

The Examiner podcast has touched on how Carlos Corberán’s philosophy when chasing games was that Plan B was to do Plan A better. The same thing happened on Friday night, we were 2-1 down in the dying stages of the game and continued to play out from the back and tapped the ball around, probing and messing around while Birmingham sat back and smoked a metaphorical cigar while watching our ineffectual build up play. 

There’s a place for pretty football and I admire the fact that we have ambitions towards playing football “the right way” (whatever that might mean). But if you’re losing away to a team that could ultimately end up being a relegation rival at the end of the season then I really don’t see why you shouldn’t chuck a centre back up front and lump it up to the big man. 

We had 90 minutes to try and win the game while sticking to our footballing ideals, so I’d like to see us throw philosophy out of the window in the late stages and boot the ball into the box when the clock is ticking down and try to create a bit of chaos. In fact, I’d have liked us to have kept out giant centre forward, Kyle Hudlin, for just those situations rather than loan him to Wimbledon. He’d have been just the man to throw on for the last five minutes on Friday night when we needed something a bit different. He wouldn’t even need to score, just create a bit of panic and have the rest of the team looking to win knock downs and second balls in the box. 

Schofield needs to show a nasty side

Apparently the half time team talk involved the sharing of some home truths, which is one of those phrases that gets used to politely say there was a screaming argument. Another is a “frank exchange of views”. Whatever you want to call it, the lovely man we see in the media had to show his less lovely side to get a bit more out of his side in the second half. Good. 

Carlos sometimes looked like he was on the verge of getting sectioned he would be flapping his arms and screaming so much on the sidelines. Schofield isn’t that kind of person and that’s fine to an extent but he can’t be a pushover. There’s more than one way to show you have authority but Schofield HAS to show these players he has authority. If his players think they can play as poorly as they did for him in that first half and get away with it then it shows a complete lack of respect, so I think Schofield was right to fire into them. 

Leaders soon lose respect of their employees if they’re constantly going crazy at them but occasionally showing that you won’t accept sloppy work can help to drive standards. I hope that Schofield did that in this game. I worry that he might be a bit too nice and his previous role as a more junior coach may make the players think he’s soft. If that’s the case then he should get tough with them pretty quickly or he risks letting the players take advantage of his good nature. 

Are the new coaches extra support or succession planning? 

I found it interesting that the club brought in some extra coaches this week but they weren’t Schofield’s appointments, they were people recruited by the club. I’d have thought Danny Schofield would be allowed to choose trusted lieutenants for his coaches but instead the club have brought in Paul Harsley, who isn’t connected to Schofield and it seems got the job purely on merit rather than any personal connection to Schofield, Bromby or anyone else at the club. 

Harsley holds the UEFA Pro Licence, which makes him a better qualified coach than Schofield. A paranoid part of me wonders if he’s been brought in as a backup option in case it doesn’t work out with Danny Schofield. 

Similarly, Michael Hefele has also taken his first steps into coaching, as he’s now a defensive coach in the academy. While that puts him a long way from the first team action it also puts him in the coaching set up and close enough to step up if a caretaker is needed at short notice. Hefele may seem like a bit of a joker on the surface but my impression is that he’s a very clever man and I think he could have a good future as a manager or director of football depending on what direction he goes. On the other hand, the trousers he wore on the TV the other night were shocking! 

League Cup game offers a big chance to the fringe players to impress 

Back to matters on the pitch, the League Cup game on Tuesday should be interesting. Like every head coach for the last ten years, expect Danny Schofield to hold a press conference where he says how much respect he has for the competition and then he’ll completely contradict that by making ten or eleven changes for the game. 

I don’t think wholesale changes are such a bad thing though. We’re playing so poorly that every single position is up for grabs. That would be my team talk on Tuesday night. Play the backup player for every position and tell them to go out and prove they deserve to start against Stoke on Saturday. And then let everyone that plays anything like decent keep their place. 

We’ve a fairly decent squad and not a huge injury list so there should be a fair few players that are capable of making an impression against Preston North End on Tuesday night. They’ll have to play better than the first team regulars though and not wait until the second half to start to look bothered. Any that manage that should be given a go in our next league match.