Bluebirds have to stop wasting Wilson's huge talent
By Chief Reporter:
Monday 14th December 2020
When Cardiff City announced the summer capture of Wales and Liverpool star Harry Wilson, Bluebirds fans everywhere were rightly smiling.
This was perhaps the club's most exciting signing since Craig Bellamy joined his home-town team a decade earlier.
Most accept Wilson is way too good for the Championship. His goals, creativity and link-up with Wales team-mate Kieffer Moore were to send Neil Harris' Bluebirds soaring towards promotion.
Wilson certainly started well enough, two goals in his first four games. But his best Cardiff City Stadium performance since then was when he shone so brightly for Wales in a 3-1 thumping of Finland.
You have to feel sorry for Wilson at the moment and question whether his manager is getting the best out of his stellar talent.
The dilemma is thus - with his job evidently on the line, following poor results against Bristol City, Millwall and Coventry, Harris opted for the basics of 4-4-2.
What he knows best, some might say?
It resulted in a splendid run of four wins on the trot, albeit performance levels were highly questionable in at least one of them, and it meant Wilson being stuck out on the wing.
Against Swansea, he was either starved of service, or saw the ball just fly over his head in a route one approach.
Football wise, it was a criminal waste of his ability.
You can understand why Harris wants to stick with a system that has brought him results, but it looked terribly antiquated against a side like Swansea who flood the midfield.
For it to work, Cardiff's wide men Wilson and Sheyi Ojo needed to tuck in to help make up numbers, with the full-backs providing the offensive width. But how often did we see Leandro Bacuna or Joe Bennett in the final third?
The approach may have offered short-term relief, but is it really sustainable in the modern game?
Would the Bluebirds not be much better off putting Wilson as their playmaker at 10, as Harris did so effectively with Lee Tomlin last season, and make him the kingpin around which the team revolves?
Young Mark Harris' introduction to the side meant that the Luton and Huddersfield defences, at least, were stretched.
Neil Harris should build his team around Harry Wilson
But moving forward surely the whole team need to move further up the pitch, display the kind of compactness Swansea did, get Wilson to make the play and set Ojo and Josh Murphy flying down the flanks?
At least that way they'd play front foot football and get the kind of consistent penalty box service to Kieffer Moore that he would thrive upon.
When Tomlin comes back, maybe he and Wilson can interchange between 10 and wing, or Harris can devise a tactical tweak that enables the two magicians to play together.
The manager obviously needs to be cut some slack because pre-Swansea he had won those four on the trot.
Luton were swatted aside, Huddersfield bashed even though they dominated possession, Cardiff were highly professional in winning at Watford with another set-piece and somehow managed it magnificently at Stoke although they were actually pretty awful for the most part.
The trouble is that splendid work, which momentarily got the critics off Harris' back, was undone in just one match because of the manner of such an abysmal showing against Cardiff's arch-rivals.
Harris clearly still has work to do and the new year is looming, Bluebirds chairman Mehmet Dalman having stated the club would be "very disappointed if this team isn't in the top six by January."
Wilson's brilliance can definitely drive the Bluebirds there. And keep them there.
But his creative talents and goal threat has to be utilised, not in effect ostracised.
There's a saying in professional football about how a dominant nine and five can provide the basis for your 10 to pick holes.
Cardiff should have that with Kieffer Moore and Sean Morrison.
Harry Wilson is far too good a footballer to be left on the periphery of games, as happened on Saturday.
Cardiff have got to be far more creative from open play, not rely upon set-pieces and Will Vaulks throw-ins.
Harry Wilson being set free at 10, and the team pushed forward around him, is the key to that.
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