It was another dreadful derby day performance under Paul Heckingbottom as Preston North End fell to a 95th minute goal that gave Blackburn Rovers the 1-0 win.
Yuki Ohashi’s header was enough to decide the game which lacked quality throughout. It’s now six derby games in the league that Heckingbottom has failed to win. It’s one win in the last seven games, with just four goals being scored in that time and we know exactly where this season is heading.
Failed to show up
A Friday night game against your rivals, with over 6,000 travelling fans and the opportunity to jump into the top six. All the ingredients were there for a great game. But it didn’t deliver and there was never any urgency from Preston to go and win the game. We barely tried to. It was our worst game of the season in terms of XG (expected goals) – 0.12. We only managed three shots all game, the third lowest we have managed all season. The closest we came to scoring was two crosses from Alfie Devine that hit the woodwork.
This felt like a must win game, a point would have been disappointing, a defeat is potentially the beginning of the end in terms of play-off hopes.
What’s the plan?
What do the coaching staff work on in the lead up to a game? Surely they discuss ways to attempt to score goals and ultimately win games of football? There is very rarely a clear way on how we try to make this happen. Alfie Devine and Lewis Dobbin are both capable of moments of individual brilliance. Is that it? Is that the only thing we rely on?
There were no good moments of play on Friday. The crossing from the wing-backs was some of the worst I have seen from this team, with the majority of balls going straight out of play.
The pace of our play is so dull to watch. You can see the pass we’re going to make half an hour before it takes place. So slow. So boring. It gets us nowhere. No urgency from the team. The players with some speed like Thierry Small just run into trouble.
Those who have the majority of possession like Ben Whiteman, Ali McCann and the centre backs cannot make any defence splitting passes. They very rarely pass the ball forward, and when they do it’s hit and hope. There has to be more ideas, and phases of play that they have worked on.
Whiteman and McCann are very limited midfielders. There is some things they are great at, but it’s not enough at this level. McCann has fantastic energy, and makes some superb recoveries. But he very rarely ventures forwards, and assists or scores. Whiteman is too safe. He should be leading by example, carrying us through games. The both of them combined just leaves so much reliance on other players to step up with attacking contributions. 17 goals in 372 appearances between them.
You cannot play five at the back with Whiteman and McCann in front of them and expect to create anything.
Frustrating for strikers
We’re finally in a position where we have some options up front. But this cannot be an enjoyable team to play in. Milutin Osmajic needs balls to run onto or crosses into the box, he got neither on Friday. Daniel Jebbison and Callum Lang are good options to come off the bench but neither got a sniff. We don’t play a formation or use tactics that get them involved. We try and get our wing-backs involved but it’s too easy to defend against. In this formation you’re wing-backs have to be your best players, all four of ours were way off it.
Jamal Lewis
Lost for words on him. He was embarrassing in his last game against Middlesbrough. It was very surprising to see him come on in the 55th minute for Andrija Vukcevic, despite the Montengrin also having a poor game. How can you play at wing-back and be so scared to go forward though? Does Lewis understand the role?
He offers us absolutely nothing. Should not be anywhere near the team.
Same old story
No one expected us to start the season in the fashion we did. Of course you would have taken the offer of being in this position now in February. But the drop off in the last two or three months has been painful to watch. Because of course we got our hopes up. The first half of the season made us believe there was a chance of a top six finish, in a wide open league. But now we face reality.
1 win in 7 and 3 in 12 is nowhere near play-off form. We are effectively playing for sixth place now, with the top five out of reach. A lot of the teams around us have at least one game in hand, some have three. We were overachieving at the start of the season, grinding out narrow wins. Now mistakes are creeping in, and we are struggling to score goals.
The inevitable slide down the table is so obvious, and draws many comparisons to previous seasons. It makes this club so tough to support. Of course we will be there no matter what, but each season that goes by where hope slowly fades is another crushing blow.
There’s still 13 games to play and plenty to play for, and I would love to be proved wrong, but I feel I’ve seen this familiar story one too many times.