Booing off / Ironic cheering of Smallwood

Love this, sorry @Rogered Tart

 

I think at the very least Smallwood should be relieved of the armband. Give it to Stubbs, not afraid to bollock players, very vocal, seems like a natural leader.

 

But he plays these bizarre long field passes out of play that annoys the fans!!!! Just give it to Halliday

 

Yeah, Stubbs or Halliday for me.

 

Whenever I hear criticism from people about Smallwood it's that he plays short passes and is generally negative.

It always amuses me that people think that's a valid criticism.

If Roy Keane played for us, our fans would call him shite for non-stop recycling of the ball and not doing anything spectacular.

City fans have never seen a player like that with a high pass percentage, but who just keeps play going by doing small things?

 

If we play a system with zero movement for the midfield to pick out then they will pass sideways or backwards. If we play with one up front, but pick a small mobile striker, then continue to lump aimless ball’s towards him from the centre half, the ball won’t stick. People hung Matt Derbyshire out to dry against Grimsby, I guarantee if Jake Young had played the same roll he’d have been just as useless, Smallwood is playing to a plan formulated by Hughes, I’m not comfortable criticising any of the team, Hughes Is the one who has some awkward questions to answer around his formations tactics and team selections.

 

The same criticism that was aimed towards Watt and a lesser extent Cullen. Some want every pass to be forward even when a pass isn't on then when a player plays it forward and it's intercepted the same people complain. Billy Clarke early on had the opposite issue, he tried the forward high risk passes and as they don't come off as often he got a lot of criticism for losing the ball.

 

You tell me, you are the “loyal” one.. ?

 

The problem with Smallwood is that a lot of the time he doesn't even look over his shoulder to see if a forward ball is on. He pings his pass first time straight back at a defender. Often he does this when he has time and space to turn and see what options are on, which I always thought was the point of a midfielder coming back to take the ball off the defence

 

Not sure about Halliday as captain. I think he's more of a head down grafter than a talker and motivator

 

It seemed to start with Nicky Law.

The fans whipped themselves into a hysteria and called him a crab.

It's another thing that stems from the desperate desire to see us launching 70 yard balls into the area because it's fast and it worked when we had Hanson.

 

But good as we were back then it was still frustrating at times, especially for our strikers who were making runs while Law and Cullen played tippy tappy. Even more frustrating was that both had fast feet and great balance that couls really scare defenders

 

It takes a very good player to constantly pick out great runs.

Even if Law and Cullen weren't the right players for that particular aspect of the game, they were still damn good at other aspects.

 

Fully agree, although I think Cullen did have the ability to play that pass

 

Comparing Smallwood and Keane is absurd. If Smallwood at least tried to look over his shoulder and see if a forward pass was on then he could be forgiven. But on Saturday I commented that he has stopped doing that and just plays the easy ball to the back four and the holds his hands out palms down to "calm things down". Great captaincy? Not in my book.

 

I remember watching a Match of the Day segment explaining why Roy Keane only ever played six yard passes and nothing else all evening.

Obviously Man United won like 4-0 or whatever because they used to be shit hot, but it's literally the exact same 'criticism' people aim at Smallwood. It's disingenuous to pretend it's a bad comparison just because "Keane good, Smallwood bad".

I can't give you a lower league example because they don't fawn over performances in segments on BBC One at prime time very often.

 

I wonder if Smallwood has ever been featured on MOTD in the same vein as Keane? No thought not.

 

So you are comparing Smallwood to Keane!