However, I now feel he is the last sort of midfield player we should be looking at, because, if there is one lesson that should have been learned from this season (and the second half of last season come to think about it) it is that we play our best and most successful football when we are able to get pace and dynamism into our central midfield.
When we didn’t get Gregan at the start of the season, my preference from the players we had available in central midfield was for the old firm of Boland and Kav, but, with the benefit of hindsight, I now see this as a wrong decision because, in my view, the two Irishmen have become too similar as players - have one or the other of them in side by all means (my preference would be Kav) but I think they both need a younger set of legs in there alongside them..
Strangely enough, Gregan’s Leeds side appearance here back in October offered a microcosm of our season in reverse. That day, the thirty something Gregan and the nearly thirty something Jermaine Wright came off distinctly second best to a Gary O’Neil inspired City central midfield that harried their opponents into error and made them look pedestrian in comparison to us and, four weeks later, Leicester’s central midfield pairing of 30 plusses Nallis and Gemmill were run ragged by O’Neil and Kav in a game we totally dominated.
Sadly, such occasions have been few and far between for us this season though as, more often than not, it has been our central midfield that has looked second best and given opposing defences little or nothing to worry about. Our total of five wins this season is a miserable one anyway, but, significantly only one of those has been achieved with Kav and Boland in central midfield - this came at Wolves where, as the away team, we were probably given a bit more time and space in central midfield than we would get at Ninian Park.
When Gary O’Neil was here, we looked a different side, he was able to take the game to the opposition with a mixture of skill, fitness and pace which no one else seems to have been able to match. O’Neil’s ability to commit opposing players and take them out of the game meant that he was able to bring all of our players into the game. Our wide midfield players in particular were able to get the ball in promising and threatening positions and not the usual forty yards from goal with two opposing defenders close to them when we are in “backwards and sideways mode” (surely it isn’t a coincidence that the onset of Jobi McAnuff’s dip in form can be traced precisely to the time O’Neil left the club?).
Unfortunately, for all sorts of reasons, there is no way that Gary O‘Neil will be seen back at Ninian Park for the foreseeable future and with it looking like our bid to sign a Premiership midfield player this week has been put on hold, do we have a player at Ninian Park capable of giving us something close to what O’Neil used to? Perhaps Tony Koskala is that player (although, as we have only given him a six month contract, I doubt it), after his performances against Preston and QPR, I reckon Lee Bullock has shown he isn’t us to that particular job, while Richard Langley is talented, but too inconsistent in my view.
Up until Saturday, I would have said we would have had to look outside the club for such a player, but no I am not quite so sure. I usually agree with most of what Nigel Blues says in his match reports, but I couldn’t agree with his opinion that Joe Ledley was “quiet” against Gillingham. True, Ledley didn’t take the game by the scruff of it’s neck like Gary O’Neil did and he isn’t in the Earnie class when it comes to pace, but, then neither was Gary O’Neil and, anyway, I would hardly call Ledley slow. I thought Ledley gave a very good all round performance in an unfamiliar position on Saturday which, in the way he was able to stick out a long leg and. Cleanly, win a ball he seemed to have lost put my in mind of Patrick Vieira.
Ledley’s ability as a ball winner came as a complete surprise to me, but the fact that he was able to cope with the increased stamina levels required in his new position didn’t at all. However, the sort of player I think we need to get us playing at our beat has to be able to do more than get about the pitch at a good pace, harass the opposition and win his share of tackles, he also has to be able to play and, Ledley, with his instinctive ability to do the right things, can certainly so that (again I ask why was it that Jobi McAnuff had his best game in weeks on Saturday?)..
Of course the fact has to be faced that our opponents on Saturday were certainly nothing special and that it is one thing to have one good game as a stopgap in an unfamiliar position and another thing entirely to be able to do it over a series of games. I would also say that there is a real danger that we are asking Ledley to do too much too soon and that it is an exceptional 17 year old that makes a success of playing in a new position in a team struggling against relegation, but Ledley has coped really well with all of the challenges he has faced so far in his career, so, perhaps, he just may be that exceptional player I was describing?.
Whatever, if we could find a player from somewhere able to operate at something like the level Gary O’Neil did while he was here, then I think we would soon start climbing the table because we would begin to see other players in the team prospering as well, however, if we are unable to do so and we carry on with a one paced and pretty predictable central midfield, then it’s going to be a nail biting five months for us all!