Dele scared the life out of Wolves to earn City a vital point

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Sunday, January 18, 2009
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This is Bristol

At times I have questioned whether Dele Adebola still has it in him but he more than answered that with 45 minutes of awesome old-fashioned centre-forward play against Championship leaders Wolves.

With rain swirling in all directions, the stadium lights flickering and the Atyeo stand roof wobbling, Bristol City put in a second half full of belief and spirit and rightly earned a point.

There is no doubt the weather had an impact on the game and contributed to a pretty poor first-half showing from City. I can't fully appreciate what the conditions were like to play in, so it's perhaps a little unfair to criticise the players. However, it was obvious from early on that playing the ball in the air was not the best tactic.

Wolves came to the Gate after a small blip in their league form but settled quicker than City and, playing into the wind, kept the ball on the ground and used their wingers Michael Kightly and Matt Jarvis.

City, in contrast, struggled to keep hold of the ball in the first half and too often passes went astray. Unfortunately, an error of judgement by Adriano Basso allowed Wolves to open the scoring a minute before the break.

Things went from bad to worse for Adriano when a poor clearance led to Wolves second goal. But it says something about our No 1 that despite two errors the crowd never got on his back and within minutes he made a great save to stop Wolves getting a third.

Our new Slovakian signing, Peter Styvar, struggled to make much of an impact in the first half and needs more time to adjust.

Hopefully, Styvar will be given time by the fans and we will start to see why Gary brought him to the club. Some fans wrote off Nicky Maynard, but Gary kept faith with him and Maynard is starting to look the real deal. He was a young lad with a big price tag and just needed time to settle.

Styvar's indifferent showing saw the 'Big Man' enter the fray and Dele scared the life out of the Wolves defence. City were still too congested down the middle but at least got it down on the ground and Nicky and Dele linked up well together.

I have to mention the performance against Portsmouth on Tuesday night. City played well and very little went our way. Peter Crouch's handball should have been spotted and I'm sure Glen Johnson's tackle on Maynard would have been given as a free-kick anywhere else on the pitch.

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