In years to come, people will look at the Championship table for season 22/23, see the asterisk appearing alongside Reading saying they were docked six points for financial irregularities and some of them will then look to see if that penalty of half a dozen points made a difference as to whether they stayed up or not – I know I would! When they see that Cardiff were closest to them with five points more, they will probably think something along the lines of jammy beggars.
When I posted something similar a few days ago on a City messageboard, I was surprised and, to be honest, somewhat baffled to see people disagreeing with this and I can only wonder what they would be saying now if the roles were reversed and it was us with the six point penalty and Reading with only five points more than us?
Today’s 3-0 loss at Champions Burnley means we end the season with forty nine points, one short of what has been the traditional safety mark of fifty – even if its probably true to say something like forty eight points would keep you up most of the time in recent seasons.
As it is, forty five points would have done the trick for City, but, make no mistake about it, we’re something akin to a cat that has lost eight of its lives going into 23/24 in a few months time. There has to be every chance that any decline from where we are now will see us relegated – in fact, it could be that more of the same won’t be enough to save us.
That’s not being overly dramatic. How can it be when we lost exactly half of our forty six league games? Only relegated Blackpool lost more than us. Only relegated Wigan scored less than our miserable forty one goals which is our equal lowest number for a forty six game season – the 95/96 team, which finished ninetieth out of the ninety two Premier League and EFL clubs are the illustrious outfit we share that dubious record with.
Yes, Reading broke the rules and they should be punished, but we were lucky to avoid the drop this season.
In a fortnight or so, it will be twenty years to the day since Andy Campbell’s goal returned us to the second tier after eighteen years away. Since then, I’d say we’ve had three seasons where we were in serious relegation trouble in the Championship – 2004/05, last season and this year.
Actually, I’d say it could be argued that we were never in any great danger of going down last year given we were looking pretty safe towards the end of February, but I will include it, if only to say that, just as in 04/05, it always felt to me like there were three teams, at least, that were worse than us.
Being honest, I always thought we’d stay up this season, but, as I look back at the last ten months now, I find it hard to explain why I felt that way.
We were much the better team in our two games with Blackpool and I felt we’d always end up above them, I wasn’t quite as sure about Wigan, but they found goals even harder to come by than us and, of course, they also had a small points deduction, but, as for the third team we were supposed to be better than – the table never lies they say, but maybe it does this tine because perhaps the third worst team in the Championship stayed up?
Anyway, whatever the truth of the matter, we are in the Championship next season and, given the restrictions we have to operate under, clearly in need of some clever recruitment in terms of both player quality and value for money. Looking at our loan recruitment in recent windows gives you hope that the staff we’re using in that department are an improvement on what we’ve had in the past. Sadly, there’s little or nothing to indicate that the admin side (i.e. Messrs Tan, Dalman and Choo) is good enough and so getting the managerial appointment right becomes even more important.
The signs are that Sabri Lamouchi will be the man to take us into the new season. As he is fond of saying, it was mission accomplished for him because his remit was to keep us up when he was appointed. However, we only stayed up because of Reading’s points deduction and, as far as I can see, Mick McCarthy (brought in when the 20/21 season was showing signs of becoming a struggle) and Steve Morison (appointed in October 2021 after it all went wrong for McCarthy) did a better job in terms of form from January onwards in their first seasons in charge than Lamouchi has – or at least, they were certainly no worse than him..
Yet, both men were soon gone in their second seasons and neither are remembered with any great affection by the majority of supporters now. Based on what Lamouchi has done so far (for me, he’s improved us as an away team and we find goals easier to score, but, if anything, what were already poor home performances have got worse and we’re conceding a lot more goals now than we were under Morison and then Hudson), is there enough there to suggest he can be an improvement on McCarthy and Morison second time around? I’m not convinced there is.
Maybe I’m a bit down on Lamouchi after what he did today in terms of selection and substitutions, but I must say that now and again he bewilders me when it comes to these aspects of the game.
I’m saying this not because I’m annoyed at today’s outcome – we were playing a side which took its points tally past a hundred for the season this afternoon, we only just stayed up and had some important players missing today – there was also nothing to play for. Bearing all of that in mind, 3-0 feels about right if you’d asked me for a prediction before a ball was kicked.
However, having made a point of saying that the likes of Rubin Colwill, Isaak Davies, Joel Bagan and Eli King would be in the squad, it was disappointing to see only Colwill start while a serial under performer like Sheyi Ojo was included yet again. Ojo wasted a promising position for City in the first few minutes by letting a good cross field pass by Perry Ng go out for a throw in and was never seen again until he was substituted at half time. Davies eventually got half a game as playing time, but I’m not sure what King gained from his three minutes on the pitch, while Bagan got to watch a couple of others play left back/wing back (Ng and Joe Ralls) while his manager kept him sat on the bench.
Honestly, I found myself wondering whether Lamouchi realises that King and Bagan have the amount of first team experience that they do, because he treated them like a couple of Academy lads who were brought along for the experience of finding out what a first team away trip entails.
To run quickly through the goals, the first came sometime after Colwill made a mess of a very presentable chance (his season summed up in a second or two for the youngster who has been deemed good enough to be part of Wales Euro and World Cup squads) and was a strange affair. Andy Rinomhota tackled his man and seemingly put the ball out for a corner, but then stumbled under what looked a very gentle contact from his opponent, the ball then hit his hand before it ran out of play which allowed a cross to be rolled across, while City stopped as they waited for a whistle, to Josh Brownhill who tapped in from about a yard out.
If there had been no six point penalty for Reading and City had gone into this game needing at least a draw o stay up, I daresay there would have been ructions after the ref allowed the goal to stand, but, for me, there was nothing wrong with it. While the fact that the match was a meaningless affair offered a partial excuse for City players not playing to the whistle, It was unprofessional and a little typical of this squad I’m afraid.
That was on twenty seven minutes and only three more had been played when Mahlon Romeo provided an assist by chesting a cross from our left into the path of veteran Burnley striker/clogger Ashley Barnes, playing his last game for the club, who put his shot from ten yards away in a crisp and efficient manner which was at odds with what we’ve been used to seeing from City players all season.
The only goal of the second half came just before the hour mark when Scott Twine clipped in a free kick from twenty yards after he’d been brought down by Ralls. Once again, you had to contrast the quality of the Burnley man’s strike with what City have done in this department all season.
City had ten goal opponents today (about seven of them from Jaden Philogene who has, it seems, given up on passing in the last few games of his loan spell with us) and, apart from one Sory Kaba effort that brought a smart save from the keeper, they consisted of the usual collection of poor contacts,daisy cutting dribblers and row Z ers.