Over the line or not, City were poor
CHRIS COLEMAN WASN'T interested whether the ball had crossed the line or not for Leicester's second goal this afternoon. During his post-match interview he was far more pre-occupied with how badly his team played for the first half hour of this derby match.
You can make excuses. Firstly, the timing (after just three minutes) and nature (a poor clearence-cum-assist by James McPake) of the first goal must have left the team a little shell shocked. Secondly, Leicester made the most of their advantage, backing it up with slick passing and harrying the Sky Blues' players off the ball every time they got it.
The third excuse for City's early slump could be that it is debatable whether Leicester's second goal should have been allowed at all. For Coleman, however, that was irrelevent in the face of such a poor performance.
Thank goodness the team bucked up its collective ideas and made a show of it in the second otherwise we could have been embarrassed out there today. But for the second time in a week City fans were treated to a peek at the gap of quality their team must bridge in order to be considered play-off standard.
What we've learned from today, and from the last two months, is that City do have the key ingredient: a toughness and togetherness that makes them hard to beat. And huge credit must go to the players for the way they battled back today. Unfortunately, though, we witnessed the soft underbelly our team's hard shell, and, like the accidental opening of mother's nightdress, that is something we don't like to see.
What we do see from time to time is real glimpses of quality from a number of our players, but getting them to perform consistently is the next step, and for that we might have to wait a wee while longer.
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bSpot on Ian, we were pretty poor in the first half, so slow out of the traps so to speak,which in a local derby and top six game, was really strange.
But second half we were so much better, like another team had come out,so Colemans wrath, or team talk, did the job, because we looked really good at times, and deserved the draw.
Dodgy decisions have been against us in the last two games, but as you say, Coleman hasn't focused on them as much as we thought he might, probably because he knows the team hasn't performed as well as they should have.
But the fighting qualities are there,so let's hope they carry that on till the end of the season,and finish as high as they can, and continue it on next season, we are not quite there yet, but not too far away either.
nice contribution again Ian.As a City fan you have to ask why we so often fail to start well away from home on the basis of the first half performance.However the fighting qualities we showed to get a point were something we are not used to seeing and are very welcome.
We need to put in a consistent ninety minutes against West Brom and we can all be proud of the team whatever the score