Reaction to the defeat at Bournemouth

Another day, another defeat. The defeat at Bournemouth left us in midtable and after a 3-0 win over Darlington, it certainly exposed our weakness, namely the defence that includes a walkabout, a 6'4 Hungarian who can't deal with anything on the ground and our right back being torn apart.

Well it's not often that you go from one extreme to the other, going from a brilliant display over an extremely dodgy Darlington, to a performance against a brilliant Bournemouth that could best be described as spirited, if still a bit crap. Bournemouth are a side who are heavily capable of thrashing teams that can fight for promotion, such as 4-0 wins over Rochdale and Morecambe last season, so a City side who rarely looking better than midtable would have had to play extremely well to get a result.

All started off well and City were easily the better team early on, but how often over the last few years have the opposition scored with quite literally their first few steps into the City half? The most disappointing aspect is that City effectively gave up after this and it was little surprise when Bournemouth scored two. That's the problem with this City side, go behind and stay behind, infact, the last time City conceded the first goal and didn't win was at Chesterfield on April 7^th.

The defence looks extremely dodgy to say the least, the only one doing their job at the moment is Swaibu. Hughton is fine until he faces a half decent winger, then he just goes missing for most of the game. Kovacs can't deal properly with anything that isn't in the air, and even then he struggles. What's worse was that he was asked to mark Fletcher and kept standing off of him. Fletcher is an extremely dangerous player at this level, and Kovacs barely got anywhere near him.

Then we get onto Aaron Brown, I like Aaron Brown and think he's an excellent attacking player, but he is defensively poor. Look at the third goal for example, the ball was played over Hughton, Swaibu and Kovacs to an area where Brown should be, but he's nowhere to be seen as Igoe brilliant volleys home.

In terms of the midfield, we were just poor with both Clarke and LJL returning to their usually, very poor selves. Richard Butcher continues to be completely anonymous since his return at Scott Kerr puts his heart into every performance, commands reasonably well, but does very little in terms of actually playing football, barely touching the ball. The sooner we get Oakes back, the better.

Up front and Fagan and Howe finally seem to be getting an understanding, with Fagan in particular starting to really find his feet, scoring a fantastic volley on the turn. The only concern is a lack of strength in depth. Yes, we have both Adams and Hutchinson on the bench, but neither ever look like scoring, and Connor is never actually fit.

Overall, a 3-1 defeat against a team I still confidently predict will go up isn't actually shocking, but there are still many things to work on. There are still plenty of players in this team who simply aren't good enough, at least not on a consistent basis, and a new manager will hopefully see this and get rid of them, but oh well, c'est la vie.

At least we'll get to play Southampton next season.