Our Jack unintentionally gave me the collywobbles earlier in the week when he wrote an excellent piece comparing City’s fortunes in the Septembers and Octobers of recent years.
The gist was clear: City can do Septembers fine, they’re very good at Septembers in fact, but give them an October to tackle and the wheels have a nasty habit of departing the vehicle. The evidence was already there for 2018: two fine performances but just a solitary point to show for them.
So, forgive me if I was a little sceptical ahead of yesterday’s visit to the City Ground. It’s never an easy place to go and even though we snatched a 2-1 win there in September 2016, our record there isn’t great.
As is traditional, my dad and I had a Saturday morning chat about the what lies ahead for City and the notoriously unreliable Gowers think-tank could see little but gloom.
‘I can’t see us getting anything this afternoon, boy’.
‘Nope, me neither’.
As you can tell, it wasn’t an especially in-depth analysis 🙂 Just a collective feeling that a buoyant Forest may have just too much for a Pukki-less City.
Oh how gloriously wrong we were, even if after ten minutes it didn’t look or feel like it.
But there is something about this crop that we’re not used to. We’re used to brittleness and fragility. We’re used to seeing them wilt when the pressure gauge is turned up to an eleven.
Instead of that, we’re getting a team who struggled to get out of their own half for the first ten minutes, who struggled to cope with a side that was brimming full of confidence and were playing a scintillating brand of football, but who dug in, cleared their heads, and found a way.
That the winning margin could have been greater speaks volumes for how well adjusted and mentally tough this bunch are, and how Daniel Farke has found a formula that stays true to his footballing beliefs while still being robust enough to cope with all the vagaries of Championship football.
Notable too is how the teenagers in this side are integral to it and not there just to learn. They too are armed with the mental resilience needed to cope with arenas like a full City Ground and rather than require hand-holding, they play their full part in what has now become the epitome of a team effort.
The danger of having to rely on a moment of Maddison magic or a Murphy dropped shoulder for a goal was that if either had an off-day, then City found themselves scratching around for an alternative. And there weren’t too many.
No-one can afford to be without a brilliant player like James Maddison and to say we’re better off without him sounds ridiculous, but as a unit, as a team, everything we’re seeing now suggests that there’s now a better balance to this squad.
Where, 12 months ago, others would have turned to him for said moment of inspiration, now they are owning that responsibility themselves. And I’d argue that applies to both the middle and the attacking thirds of the pitch.
The improved balance to the squad, something that owes as much to the work of Stuart Webber as it does to Farke, is becoming increasingly evident with every injury and every substitution. The player incoming tends not to weaken things one iota but instead offers an alternative capable of changing things for the better.
And there’s a whole group of players there simply itching to be part of it and who, with every passing cameo, are strengthening their chances of getting a start; Mario Vrancic being the most obvious one.
Marco Stiepermann, for example, had an off day yesterday, which included a horrible miscue from six yards out in the first half, and will know, despite being simply brilliant over the last six or seven games, he can’t afford another.
To be fair to Stiepermann, he knew all too well how costly his miss could have been but for dead-eyed Timm Klose and, in his own way, thanked his Swiss team-mate on Instagram last night (right). And right there, in a daft image and caption, are further traits that have helped propel this group to a level few of us predicted: honesty, camaraderie and likability.
Quite how far all of this can take us is very much an unknown right now – and while we’re all cock-a-hoop over yesterday’s win, the Championship is such that a blow to the gonads is only ever a game or two away – but this doesn’t feel like a bubble that’s about to burst.
The old adage about not getting too high over a win and not too low over a defeat is very easy to say but rather harder to put into practice – at least it is for us fans. Human nature tends to kick in. But Team Farke appear very good at getting that very message across to the players, all of which feeds into the point about mental resilience I made earlier.
So, one of the good days – a good day that has taken us into the playoff places – but let’s resist the party poppers and the bunting for the time being. Bolton are just five points behind us and are in 18th!
We just need to follow the current path, keep it humble, and see where it takes us.
What a great result that was. I’m no fan of Karanka but he’s a good manager, no doubt, and at least he didn’t try to blame the referee, the bus driver or bad luck for Forest’s downfall.
The league table is remarkably congested, partly due to the likes of us starting slowly and gradually finding some momentum. We can at least be encouraged by the fact that we’ve played all the teams above us and still have to face 3 of the 6 that have been cut adrift.
A point about strikers. It will be interesting to see if Srbeny gets some game time this week given that Rhodes won’t be available for the Hillsborough match in 2 weeks time, and presumably Pukki won’t be fit by then either. Might we even see Idah or Spyrou on the bench? Or will pragmatism take over and Nelson reappear?
Roll on Tuesday and Saturday – heading east for a few days, not seen a game since the WBA goalfest so very much looking forward to it.
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Timm Klose – four goals in three games. 😉 Who needs Teemu?
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I think Timm would rather forget the one in the Stoke game!
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I hope we can manage to extend Timm Klose’s contract.
Very good player, excellent team man and funny on social media.
He strikes me as being the heart of the club.
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Yes, well said John… me too. Appears Klose is the fulcrum around which the dressing room revolves.
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The Club has a dilemma because Timm will be free to agree a pre-contract agreement with anyone after 31 December unless he’s tied down beforehand. Of course, both sides may opt for a ‘wait and see’ approach, especially if Timm fancies another go at the EPL, rather than returning to Germany.
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Excellent piece G. The bond between players like Klose and Stiepermann is obvious on and off the pitch, but yesterday you could see how good the bond is between the fans, players and manager. Haven’t seen a togetherness like I witnessed yesterday since dare I say… No don’t want to jinx it…
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Cheers Andy, but yeah …. sshhhh
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Spot on Andy!
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Hi Gary
A great read and analysis of the team so far this season.
So we now gave a goal scoring CB and it is good to see other areas of the team coming to the forefront and adding to the tally.
During the summer there were a couple of German clubs looking with great interest at Klose so City will soon have a very big decision to make either – to sell in January or risk losing him in the summer for nothing. Losing him in the next window could really hit City chances of a playoff place, so it really is stick or twist.
Team Farke are reaping the benifit of Stone/Webber and I will hope that the new setup doesn’t alter those dynamics, but after reading the EDP/Pinkun so-called interview last week it struck me as a pre-written scripted interview – no questions, no in-depth talk on how the club will progress under this setup; it was more as if the board were trying to wash SS out of the club at one swift stroke of the pen.
The only personal comment seemed to be more egotistical by saying “people like to work for me due to my management style” – surely that is for others to say?
Back to yesterday, Klose got the goals in an all-round team performance – yes a couple had slight hiccups but that is only to be expected and, as you mentioned Gary, the team worked it out, not hoping one or possibly two individuals would pull the team out of the mire.
Watching EPL last night, it looked as if Villa got lucky against Swansea so let’s hope the curse if the TV cameras don’t come to haunt City.
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Good read as always Gary – I haven’t been convinced Farke is the right man for us until a few games ago. What’s changed? Well the slow tippy-tappy stuff across the back line appears to have morphed into a much quicker forward passing game and also possibly the biggest thing for me personally is the emergence of Lewis,Aarons and Cantwell along with Thompson and Godfrey. These lads have improved the team and the way we play and kind of makes it easier to like and get behind what Farke and Webber are trying to do
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I think were so much better without Maddison and the evidence suggests it ….this is no blight on madders either he was exceptional but that was why we tried to let him do it all maybe .
But what impresses me most this season are the statistics we seem to have more possession more shots and more passes than most teams in the championship this year .
Our passes completed is regularly 84-87 % and that’s the team not just a single player plus we seem to have a lot of depth with the youngsters so the future looks bright too , I myself cant wait to see idah breakthrough too .
All in all happy exciting times but trying to keep grounded 😉
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Great article Gary and of course I agree with you! Always had faith in “Project Farke” and it is interesting to see what we saw in the Germany pre-season tour (remember our German blogs?!!!) coming to fruition. We mentioned Max getting individual direction/training from Farke. We could see how attentive the players were to him, hanging on to his every word. He has total respect for those players and looks every inch a real leader. We also saw/predicted that Stiepermann would come good this season, and that Remi would have to go. Interesting that Felix still hasn’t found his way in the team yet but we could see he wasn’t the finished article even then. The signs were always there. We need to keep on keeping on, and keep the faith even when results don’t go our way.
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