|
He hadn’t been back in training long before the ‘Boro game and it showed. He was a bit sluggish but looked keen and not a little frustrated to be off the pace of the game. He limited himself to holding a position in the centre of the pitch but even so, he tired and was eventually replaced after about an hour. As he left the pitch, he received a warm round of applause from the few hundred hardy souls at the game.
A fitter and sharper Cisse turned up for the Baggies game and his dominant performance in midfield was a major factor in setting Blues up for a comfortable win. By now we were beginning to see glimpses of the old Aliou (the one we saw before the Senegal ferry disaster last season). The tackling was looking sharper and he was moving the ball around much better. As a former defender myself, I like the way Aliou tackles – he doesn’t gamble on the spectacular lunging tackle a la Darren Purse or Steven Gerrard, instead he waits until he’s within a foot of his opponent and then snaps in with a crisp, hard, nasty little dig which often takes man and ball together. The analogy would be a boxer like Roberto Duran who gets inside before unleashing a sharp uppercut, as opposed to a Mike Tyson-style haymaker. Pretentious? Moi?
Anyhow, weird poseur analogies aside, by now Aliou was beginning to look a lot more like the player who made such an impact in the games before the ferry tragedy.He was using the ball very frugally, giving nothing away and keeping things ticking over nicely.
Referees don’t seem to like Aliou much. I think the wild hairdos, varying from a Zulu frizz to a drug-dealers dreadlocks, added to a generally sullen and fierce persona tend to make him a bit of a marked man. He got booked very early on against both Boro and Albion. In both cases he was booked for his first foul and in neither case did his opponent require any treatment or seem to have any complaint about the tackle. I heard Mr Pillock of Banbury, the referee for the Boro game, tell him the booking was for ‘repeated fouling’ when in fact it was the first free kick he’d awarded. Strange man, Mr Pillock.
Cisse’s penchant for wearing curious contraptions around his ankles has thankfully not abated. There can be few captains of International sides who play in spats. I’m pleased we have one of them in our squad – we need some characters, now that Frank Worthington, Kevin Francis and Julian Dicks have left the club.
|
The team against Sunderland was a very young one and Aliou shared with Bryan Hughes the responsibility of trying to organise the kids. It was the most verbal I’d ever heard him. On the minus side, he misplaced a lot more passes than usual but then the whole team was doing that and I guess he got dragged into the overall pattern of things.
So, to summarise, Aliou is back. I don’t think he’s yet quite the player we bought but he seems to have reacted very positively and professionally to Brucie’s pre-season rocket, which seems to have shaken him out of the lethargy, lack of interest and air of depression that understandably engulfed him after losing 12 of his family and dozens of his friends in the disaster. With hindsight, Brucie’s hardline and possibly even callous approach seems to have turned the guy around and, I believe, saved his career. This is not yet the Aliou who totally dominated and intimidated Patrick Viera in leading his Senegal Lions to their famous World Cup victory over France or the Aliou who got chosen by FIFA to play in the World XI against Real Madrid for their centenary celebrations – only first team action will give him back that edge. Brucie’s problem will be fitting him into a midfield that has, over the past 18 games, become one of the best in the country. Bruce is always loath to disrupt a winning pattern and, over the last rolling half-season from February, Blues are the sixth best team in the country, with a points record only bettered my Man Utd, Arsenal, Liverpool, Newcastle and Chelsea.
It’ll be hard for Aliou to win his place back in a team getting results like that but he surely will and anyway, who can remember scruffy, unfashionable old Blues having a genuine world-class player (in FIFA’s own eyes) sitting on the bench, waiting for his chance to reclaim his place?