Sun Mar 22, 2015 9:16 am
Passion and Experimentation
Sunday 22nd March 2015
Blues go into the international break on the back of a poor defeat to Cardiff City, their first reverse in five games. Goals from Eoin Doyle and a penalty from Peter Whittingham secured the points for the hosts who won their first home game since January 10.
As I didn’t make the trip to South Wales I can’t comment on individual performances but I can say that the result isn’t much more than I expected. While Cardiff haven’t been great at home and have some long term injury absentees they are a good side and Blues are unfortunately quite limited. What I think has disappointed people has been the lack of experimentation from Gary Rowett – with increasingly little to play for it would be nice to see some of the younger players in the squad but it appears Rowett still doesn’t rate them highly enough.
I can understand that to a degree – after all, players should be in the team on merit however I also believe that sometimes it takes first team football for the quality in a player to show themselves. Dimmi Gray didn’t seem as promising as Nathan Redmond when he was in the reserves but he has improved so much since he made his first team debut as he has been forced to. As much as there are rumours about the attitude of Reece Brown off the park coupled with his lack of defensive ability he is one of the most naturally talented players I’ve seen play for us for a while and I would like to see him given a chance in the number 10 slot to see if he can show that talent on the bigger stage.
Likewise, with Cotterill looking poor at times on the wing and Lloyd Dyer (for me anyway) just not showing any reason to be picked at all, what harm is there in giving young Viv Solomon a run off the bench and seeing if he could use his electrifying pace against tired defenders? If he doesn’t cut it it’s not going to kill us – if he does it’s another bright young talent Blues can nurture through.
Blues reserves play at home on Monday in the Professional Development League at St Andrew’s which could be an interesting game. Coleshill was a tough one with the pitch being a real leveller and I hope we can see some better play from Blues’ younger talents on a decent pitch. Likewise, with Matt Green and Gavin Gunning given a chance we can see if either of those could be worth another year with the club.
One thing that is disappointing are the rumours of Blue-on-Blue trouble at the Cardiff game. Football violence is deplorable anyway but fighting among our own fans is absolutely shocking – after all we all support the same team don’t we? Hopefully it’s an isolated incident and anyone that deserves a slapped wrist (or more) receives that from the authorities.
So now it’s nearly two weeks off until the next little run of games which make up the last few weeks of the season. Hopefully this will be a time where we can regroup and Rowett can reinstil the passion and desire to play to the best of their abilities.