In his pre-game media briefing for today’s match at Sunderland, Mark Hudson said that he would be meeting with the club’s hierarchy during the coming week to discuss his job situation. The man with the job title interim manager also informed the hacks involved that the club was not actively looking for anyone to come in from outside to replace him.
When you also factor in the appointment of Hudson pick Dean Whitehead as a first team coach, it seems clear that the permanent manager job is Mark’s to lose.
That feeling was only strengthened today with a 1-0 win at the Stadium of Light which reduced the thirty seven thousand plus crowd to near silence at times. For fifty minutes, City we’re as good as they’ve been all season, but, once they had the seriously overdue goal to finally provide some tangible reward for their superiority, the attractive attacking approach was shelved. Deep defence gradually took over, but, to be fair, we performed that aspect of the game well and Ryan Allsop had a quiet afternoon of it.
About six weeks ago, City travelled up to the north east and led 3-0 at Middlesbrough at half time. Today, on the longer trip to Sunderland, it was goalless at the break, but I’d say we had been more dominant in the opening forty five minutes than we had been at the Riverside Stadium.
Of course, like all football fans, I was fearing the worst after having seen my team fail to turn their superiority into goals. However, this time, this goal shy team were able to come up with what was a slightly fortunate goal on one or, possibly, two fronts.
A satisfying victory then that means we have come through Callum Robinson’s three match ban with six points and three goals scored – that’s about three more points and two more goals than I was expecting.
All of this means that we are.in fourteenth place some seven points off sixth. However, if that means we can still entertain optimistic thoughts of a play off place, the crazy nature of the 22/23 Championship means that, realistically, we have to accept that relegation is more likely.
The received wisdom was that you needed fifty points to be safe in the Championship’s forty six game season, but that’s changed in recent years when you’ve tended to be safe with a point a game.
Similarly, eighty points has been the figure to aim for to secure a top six place, but the way things are shaping up this time around, something quite considerably less will be enough to take the final Play Off place.
Tonight’s table shows that only Huddersfield are averaging less than a point a game as we approach the twenty match mark. Therefore, it seems that we could be in for final standings something like those from our title winning season ten years ago. In 12/13, Crystal Palace finished with seventy two points, but that was enough to make sixth place and an eventual promotion that has led to an unbroken decade in the top flight for the south London side.
Furthermore, Wolves and Peterborough were relegated with fifty one and fifty four points respectively. So, you had a situation whereby eighteen points covered teams that were two divisions apart in 13/14. Based upon that and how tight the division is currently, I’d say it’s possible that the gap between sixth and twenty second positions at the end of this season could be something like twenty points, say seventy to fifty.
So, although we currently have six points more than we did after nineteen matches last season, we’re still in a similar position as far as points above the drop zone goes. All of this makes getting the decision about the managerial situation right all the more important, but the truth is that Mark Hudson could be made permanent manager, do reasonably well and we could still end up being relegated if the table stays as tight as it is now.
Returning to today’s game, I was surprised by the starting selection in what was a pretty attacking 4-2-3-1 formation as Jaden Philogene, Sheyi Ojo and Callum O’Dowda lined up behind Mark Harris. This set up placed a lot of emphasis on Ryan Wintle and Joe Ralls as the two “sitters” because it was difficult to see them getting a great deal of defensive help from those in front of them.
I made a messageboard prediction that we could end up being overrun in midfield, but this proved to be a long way wide of the mark. Looking at it now, I think Tony Mowbray’s Sunderland selection helped us as he went in with an inexperienced midfield pairing as Corey Evans and Alex Pritchard were left on the bench and Wintle and Ralls proved to be too streetwise and cute for their direct opponents.
In fact, I’d say this was a scenario repeated in most areas of the pitch. Whatever you may think of our squad, it does have a strong nucleus of players with a lot of Championship experience, Sunderland didn’t have that today in their starting eleven and I thought it showed.
Using an effective high press, City made the Sunderland defence look slow and suspect early on. First Mark Harris robbed Bailey Wright to instigate a counter attack that saw Ojo shoot wide when he should have scored. Soon afterwards, Wright was harried into an errant back pass and Danny Batth held Philogene back as he closed in on the ball to concede what was a clear penalty with just twelve minutes played.
I always used to say that I never had a great deal of confidence in Joe Ralls’ penalty taking, but down the years he’s proved to be pretty reliable from the spot. So, I was pretty confident he’d score.
However, just as with Callum Robinson at Huddersfield, Ralls’ penalty was a poor one which was always going to be saved if Anthony Patterson dived the right way. Robinson went right and Ralls left, but the result was the same and so the Championship’s lowest scoring team has a nought from two penalty record now with no standout candidates to take the next one we get as far as I can see.
City reacted to Robinson’s miss around the twenty minute mark in poor fashion at Huddersfield and never really looked like scoring after that. However, they were impressive here as Cedric Kipre’s low cross flew across the six yard box with no one in blue able to get a decisive touch. Soon afterwards, Neils Nkounkou slid Mark Harris in with one of two very good passes he played in the first half only for the Wales World Cup squad candidate to get his bearings all wrong and shoot well wide from a good position.
All Sunderland could offer in reply was a Jack Clarke shot deflected wide by Perry Ng and the former Crewe man also got in a fine block to deny Amad Diallo.
City were unable to repeat their attacking fluency of the first period after the break, but took the lead four minutes into the second period when Mahlon Romeo hit what looked to be a shot that was heading wide of the far post to me into the path of Harris who calmly steered the ball in from eight yards out.
There was a suspicion of offside about the goal and my immediate reaction was that it was a good job there’s no VAR in the Championship. That said, if the old interpretation of any benefit of the doubt in an offside decision going to the attacker is still appropriate in the Championship (it isn’t any more in the Premier League), it could well be that the linesman got it right.
At Wigan in Mark Hudson other away win as interim manager, we kept a counter attacking threat even after we’d gone ahead and our speed was a threat to the home defence right through to the end of the game. Today was different, Ojo, O’Dowda and Philogene were all withdrawn with the last named being the first to make way along with Harris, for Romaine Sawyers and Max Watters. This was a strange decision as Philogene continued his recent much improved form and had caused the home defence more problems than either Ojo or O’Dowda.
Fifteen minutes later, Ojo and O’Dowda were replaced by Curtis Nelson and Andy Rinomhota and so that pace which inconvenienced the Wigan back line was no longer present. All of which left a disinterested looking Watters with the thankless task of playing as a lone striker with very little support from his team mates. When Watters did not make a success of that role, he was “hooked” after coming on himself to complete another embarrassing substitution for him following his withdrawal in the first half of a game last season.
For the last fifteen to twenty minutes, apart from one or two isolated incidents, play was exclusively in and around the City penalty area. Sunderland had responded by bringing on Evans and Pritchard and there were a few hairy moments for us as we sought to hold on to our lead — notably when Ellis Simms (a summer target of ours allegedly) headed on to the roof of our net and Kipre put in a great tackle to deny Diallo.
The game ended with an off the ball bust up which saw Kipre pick up a fifth booking that means he’ll be suspended for Tuesday’s rearranged game with Hull – a win there and I think Mark Hudson will be able to drop the word “interim” from his job title.