Starting Lineup 5–2–2–1/3–1–4–1
GK Will Norris
RCB Will Aimson
MCB Dan Scarr
LCB Taylor Allen
RWB Luke Molyneux
LWB Abraham Odoh
CM Elliot Bonds
CM Brendan Sarpong-Wiredu
AM Jorge Grant
AM Ryan Graydon
CF Macaulay Langstaff
Team Selection
Not a massive amount of change here since our last League match, but I think there’s enough of interest for me to explore a few themes within this segment.
The goalkeeper and back three stayed the same, but there was an interesting switch around in our midfield that I’m going to delve into.
Against Fleetwood, our deeper midfielders were Grant and Wiredu, and the two number tens were Powell and Nmai.
With Powell and Nmai (and also Woodburn, I’m told) out injured, some kind of reshuffle was always going to be on the cards.
So, in came Elliott Bonds and Ryan Graydon.
Bonds took up the deep role alongside Wiredu, and Grant was pushed further forward to pair up with Graydon.
With so many injuries to the CM/AM part of our team, it’s hard to read too much into this starting eleven, as due to a lack of availability, it kind of picked itself.
But the Bonds/Wiredu partnership is something I have to admit irks me a little when I see it on the teamsheet. As we’re a team with aspirations of winning the title, or an automatic promotion spot at the very least, Brendan and Elliott seem an overly defensive pairing to use against a fairly mediocre opposition.
But, as I said, not many options were available to Cklamovski here, but I was pleased to see he decided to keep Cesay and Butcher on the bench at least to start the game.
Matty B seems to be well and truly on Peter’s naughty step, which is not a moment too soon in my view. As I suggested in a piece I published several months ago (see link below), Butcher’s physical profile didn’t at all match the Ange P model of what’s required from a midfielder. And anything that Ange was looking to do, Cklamovski won’t be too far off it either.
Now despite these two Aussies both being fans of technical midfielders with a low centre of gravity, I did expect Kallum Cesay to be given short shrift by the new manager quite early on. But to this point, that’s proved not to be the case.
I can only speculate here, but as Kallum was clearly fit enough to name amongst the substitutes, I saw his omission from the starting lineup as being something of a statement by PK. As always, I could be way off base here, but Cesay’s performances of late had been getting progressively worse. So I was reassured to see Cklamovski appeared to be picking his team on merit rather than just sticking by his favourites come hell or high water.
Whether that’s the precise reason Kallum was on the bench, I, of course, can’t confirm. But as I’ll cover later, we still saw a lot of him in the game due to him replacing Ryan Graydon after the half-time interval.
As Cesay’s regular position under Peter tends to be as one of the attacking midfielder/number ten’s, the gaffer had a perfect opportunity to bring him back into the fold rather than Jorge Grant, who’s struggled for game time so far this season.
But he didn’t choose to take this option.
Instead, as I’ve mentioned above, Jorge was drafted into the pair of AM’s who were upfield supporting Macauley Langstaff.
Apart from what I see as Cesay’s recent run of poor form, I think it’s possible Cklamovski may be establishing a different set of priorities for his team in away matches than he does for the home fixtures.
Props to Phil Derbyshire for the inspiration behind this theory, as it came about after some chats we’ve had at recent games.
My first inkling for this was when I’d seen him pick Bonds and Wiredu as a partnership in a few games during this campaign. Now, while that hasn’t exclusively been at home, I sense it’s been in games where he thinks we’ll come under more pressure, and might need more defensive cover to solidify the back end of the pitch.
For me, this plan makes a lot of sense, particularly during away games, as the expectation is that the home side will play on the front foot and try to get their fans involved as early as possible.
By us beefing up the centre of the pitch with two defensive-minded midfielders, that should generally increase the likelihood of keeping the match a stalemate by not conceding an early goal.
Now, when it comes to Cesay, my theory for why he was surplus to requirements yesterday was as follows.
Across the twelve months or more he’s been a Salford City player, I have yet to see much progress when it comes to his first touch or his ability to deal with the ball effectively in tight spaces.
In a home game, this flaw would seem less concerning than it could be when playing away. As part of a front three in certain phases of play, it would really hurt our ability to build up attacks if one of that trio is proving unable to control the ball, leading to us losing possession more often than not.
Looking beyond how this might stifle our ability to create scoring chances, it can also invite additional pressure onto our defensive line that could lead to issues there too.
Make of it what you will, but I do wonder if the self-interest of needing to maintain a promotion push this season may be weaning Cklamovski off Cesay as a regular option in his starting eleven.
The next few games may make a complete fool of me, just as parts of Kallum’s cameo appearance against Cheltenham yesterday seemed to. But the trend I see with our new manager is that he doesn’t suffer fools for long. And once you find yourself outside his group of trusted lieutenants, it looks a very long way back to be able to get back into his good graces.
And if you don’t believe me, just ask
- Garbutt
- Turton
- Cooper
- Grant
- Graydon
- Butcher
- Long
- Woodburn
- Austerfield
- Longelo
- Bird, and maybe even
- Oluwo
as they’ve all felt the PK pinch in the last few months to some degree or other.
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Righty ho, enough of the context, let’s get the ball out!
Flow Of The Game
In the spirit of credit where it’s due, I’ll give a well-deserved shout-out here to John Bradbury for prompting me (in a nice way, of course) to include a little more about how Salford City’s overall performance in a game, rather than just focusing on individuals in microscopic detail.
As with anything I do, my content goes wherever the creative winds take me, but I must admit I’m liking the challenge of covering the game in slightly broader strokes for the time being.
Now, like most football matches, this one ended up being a game of two halves. I found myself very impressed by both the fluency of our passing and the high tempo we managed to maintain during the opening period.
So far so good, I thought.
Now I have to say I don’t really think those positive vibes transferred immediately into the second half, as we had a rejig before the restart when Cesay was brought on for Graydon. I think I might be able to save myself a lot of words by suggesting that this change was injury-related rather than performance-related.
My only reason for saying this is because later in the game I noticed Graydon wincing while stretching out his left leg on the sub’s bench. I also spied that he had no sock on his right foot, which indicates he might have had an ice pack on there at some point to relieve some swelling.
How’s that for microscopic detail?
So, despite preferring to start the game with Ryan, Peter ushered Kallum onto the field and, for whatever reason, this led to what I think was Cesay’s most impressive display of the season.
First of all, his pressing efforts in the 78th minute led directly to Cheltenham’s keeper misplacing a pass that saw Ben Stevenson red-carded for fouling Brendan Sarpong-Wiredu.
No matter what I might say about Cesay’s flaws on the technical side, forcing the opposition into mistakes like this is just as helpful to the team as contributing to our attacking play.
And I won’t stop there, as I see Kallum as being directly responsible for helping create both of Grant’s goals on the day.
For the first, by energetically carrying the ball across the pitch before linking up for a give-and-go with Luke Molyneux, Kallum was able to cut the ball back into the box where it eventually landed at the feet of Jorge Grant.
Now, while he won’t be credited with a direct assist for this goal, without Cesay’s movement both with and without the ball here, that goal simply does not happen.
And in the same vein, Kallum was also instrumental in Grant’s second. He made another successful carry from right to left before laying the ball into Jorge’s path to dispatch the final flourish.
I will add that though Cesay’s control of the ball during both of these contributions never looked particularly secure; it certainly proved effective.
As one of the lad’s most vocal critics in recent months (closely rivalled by JW, you know who you are), I just want to be absolutely clear that I do my very best to just “say what I see”.
We all have our biases that at times we’re not even aware of, but despite not seeing Cesay as a major factor in Cklamovski’s future plans, I wouldn’t feel I’m being honest if I didn’t highlight the positives I see as well as the negatives.
Talking of negatives, let’s get onto a bit of player analysis starting with:
Elliot Bonds
First of all, I’ll admit I’ve already taken a little flak online this season due to what’s seen as my targeting of players, unnecessarily, in some fans’ view, with criticism of their performances.
Bonds is most definitely one of those who I feel I’ve barely been able to write a good word about yet. And I’m afraid this is going to be more of the same due to his display in yesterday’s match against Cheltenham.
Before I get into all that, I just want to acknowledge that I know what it’s like to have a favourite player who can seemingly do no wrong in my eyes.
The earliest Ammie to tick this box was the Glasgow Rangers loanee, Stephen Kelly, who was brought in during the Gary Bowyer era.
Overall, there wasn’t a great deal of talent in that team from what I can remember. But Kelly stood out a mile for me by always trying to make a progressive pass, rather than just taking the easy option all the time.
I still put down his goal against Scunthorpe in a 5–1 win as the favourite of any I’ve seen so far at Moor Lane. Pure quality in my book.
Anyway, there’ve been others such as Ethan Ingram and Matt Young who I’ve tended to take a rosier view of than most, and I can own that as I’ve probably erred on the positive side when I maybe should’ve played things right down the line.
So, back to Bonds.
It’s a free country, and I’m sure there are Salford fans out there for whom he might already be their favourite player. And, of course, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.
I genuinely don’t see it the same way, but then again, there is no rule that says I have to either.
But I can assure anyone reading my blog that there’s no personal vendetta against any of our players at all.
I see what I see. And over time this builds up a sample size of their abilities, and this becomes the baseline as to how I view them as a player.
Sometimes I’m right, and sometimes I’m not.
But I’d say evaluating the talent of footballers is always more of an art than a science. Or at least that’s how I find it to be.
As far as Bonds’ performances for Salford go, I have been far from impressed to this point. It’s clearly a small sample size with only four starts under his belt, but my worry is that I’m seeing the same issues with him again and again in each of the games he plays.
It all boils down to what I see as a lack of awareness about what his teammates are doing around him. I’m sure I’ve pointed this out in a few recent articles, but he really does seem to suffer from a tunnel vision where he misses runs being made into space, and also doesn’t spot passes being made to him that he’s not expecting.
At first I thought he was operating in panic mode, and the high stress of performing for a new team was getting the better of him. And maybe there’s truth to that, but maybe there isn’t.
He also hasn’t had much opportunity to form any chemistry with his teammates yet, so there may be some growth from him that we haven’t seen yet.
I will just add that, in the same way Cklamovski has stripped back Scarr’s role in our build-up play, I feel the same could be true when it comes to the role Bonds has in the team.
As Dan doesn’t appear to be the most gifted player in possession, Aussie Pete seems happy to limit his ambition on the ball to ten-yard passes to the wider centre backs, and nothing more.
I see Bonds’ role being similarly niche, as he doesn’t seem to take any risks on the ball if he can avoid it. Instead, his main aim looks to be as a connector between the defence and midfield, rather than being expected to be a creative influence of any kind.
And if he is in the team as Wiredu’s backup, it’s surely not the end of the world that he’s given more straightforward tasks to complete that still help the team be successful.
The screenshot below shows how close our two central midfielders tend to operate to each other, which allows Bonds (16) to make short passes into Wiredu (44) to get us facing towards the opposition’s goal.
But with all that being said, he’s still able to feature in a team that’s winning games and beginning to look more cohesive as an overall unit. Next up….
Brendan Sarpong-Wiredu
Rather than dealing with specifics, I think my analysis of Wiredu’s performance is going to be a little more general than Bonds’ was.
My nickname for Brendan after yesterday’s game is the “Duel Thief”.
The number of times I saw him win a 40/60 or 30/70 situation, which he had no right to be successful in, became too numerous to count.
As I know I’ve written recently, Brendan is exactly the type of player we needed against Barnet to prevent us getting bullied throughout the ninety minutes.
That specific game showed that Butcher and Powell are not a partnership that we can put too much faith in. And I think the same could be said for if Grant and Powell were to line up next to each other in midfield.
Lacking physicality in that area against most teams in League Two is going to cause problems. And that’s why the heavy mob of Wiredu and Bonds are around to make sure we don’t get pushed aside by teams that can’t match us purely on the talent front.
Again, it’s a bit early to say for certain that Wiredu will be able to sustain this high level of play, but his graft and physicality can be so easy to miss when compared with the shinier toys of Odoh, Molyneux and Langstaff.
In my view, I’d expect that a partnership of Powell and Wiredu as our deeper central midfielders will be the one, health permitting, we see most frequently.
And I see that pairing being more than a match for any team we face this season, so I cross my fingers that Brendan and Joe can each steer clear of the treatment table in the coming months as their future looks bright.
Some might even say Orange.
And PS — Aimson is a proper hothead.
As always, I hope you enjoyed this article, and many thanks for taking the time to read it.
