A Void of Nothingness – Imps 0-0 Cambridge

City took on Cambridge United today at Sincil Bank and once again came away with a disappointing goalless drawing leaving fans with nothing to cheer about.

Mark Kennedy made a change in system and switched to a 4-2-3-1. Sean Roughan returned to the left hand side to complete back four along with Regan Poole, Paudie O’Connor and Adam Jackson. The midfield duo was Lasse Sorensen and Ted Bishop with Danny Mandroiu playing in the number ten role. Mide Shodipo made his full Imps debut and joined Jack Diamond and Ben House in attack. However, the biggest and most important bit of team news was the return of Lewis Montsma to the bench for the first time in over a year.

I was going to do a traditional match review for the game, but I feel like I will just sit here and aimlessly criticise and while I think it is needed I am going to take a more constructive approach to this piece and break it down into three different things I want to talk about. I want to stay away from saying that ‘x’ is useless so I feel this way I might be able to make some constructive points that are actually valid and not just reactionary.

Style of Play

The first of the three big points I am making is about our style of play. What exactly is our style at the moment? When mark came into the club he promised aggressive attacking football but at the moment we aren’t seeing that at all. I like the fact we are hard to beat but we also can’t win. We are pumping it long with no purpose and that is a big problem. We lack a cutting edge, we have no imagination, no creativity which leads to absolutely no goals or even chances at all. Mark did go bolder yesterday than usual, we started with a four at the back and went with four attackers in the form of Mandroiu, Diamond, House and Shodipo. We had all the tools of the pitch to create chances but for some reason, we didn’t. I’m no tactician but playing long to Ben was never going to work against the Cambridge defenders. We need a style of play, are we a counter-attacking side, a pressing side, a long-ball side or a ‘Pep Guardiola tiki-taka’ side.

Mike Garrity leaving was a massive loss for our style of play too. Our style was clear when Mike was here and we were playing defensive football but we were counter-attacking and breaking very quickly with our wide players. We have no gone away from that and have started playing long in recent weeks. I’m not blaming this all on Mike leaving but it could have played a big part in the change in our fortunes, Mark always use to mention him in press conferences about certain moves that he had worked on that led to goals etc, so it was clear he played a big part and he is a massive loss.

Set Piece Delivery

This may seem like a minor issue after what we saw yesterday but it is something that really annoyed me. We don’t look like scoring goals at all and I can understand that some teams go through them periods, but we have to give ourselves the best chance of scoring goals and set pieces are a massive part of that. I think we have the players that are capable of scoring goals from corners for us such as Regan, Adam and Paudie but the delivery has been poor and has been for a long time.

We had four corners yesterday and I cannot remember a single one of them being a threat. It wasn’t just corners either, I seem to recall a late set piece from about 35 yards, and a ball was put in and was over the heads of everyone. The long throws as well baffle me. Admittedly Sean Roughan has a decent long throw, but Regan doesn’t so why is he being asked to throw the ball in and then we all act surprised when it doesn’t beat the first defender in the box. It’s laughable, we aren’t that sort of side. If we want to be that sort of side why did we let Tom go?

The Midfield

I came away from the game yesterday saying we’d lost the midfield battle but after re-watching the game this morning (I went through the pain twice) I don’t think there was a midfield battle. I’ve seen some people criticising Ted and Lasse after the game, but they hardly had a chance to get the ball to their feet as we spent the whole game going long. We all speak bout how the midfield is weak and I fully believe that too and I’ve said it so many times recently, but I’m going to look at it from a different point of view. How is a midfield meant to impact a game when the players involved struggle to have the ball at their feet?

We need bodies in midfield but I wanted to take the pressure away from them as we can’t sit and put the blame on Lasse and Ted for not creating anything when they weren’t given the chance to.

I’ve kept this short this week. I’m frustrated as I’m sure you are and I just hope I will be bringing you some news that might bring a smile to your face by Tuesday night. Keep the faith.