One To Watch: Matthew Connolly

Birmingham City play Cardiff City in what should be a very entertaining tie. The Blues’ will be hoping for 3 points after such a good display on Tuesday night and Gary Rowett will hope that fatigue doesn’t play a huge part.

The opposition will come in full of confidence, sitting one place above Birmingham City in the table. A win for us however, would draw us level on points with Cardiff. All to play for.

In my opinion, the player we most have to look out for is Matthew Connolly. I have admired him for a while now especially in the season in which he played for Watford. He can play as either a defender or a defensive midfielder which is good to have in the squad and he is perfectly capable of both roles.

The thing about Connolly is definitely his awareness of the game. Despite not looking like the quickest player or even the strongest, he is always there and in the right position to either clear the ball or sweep things up. So far he has played 21 games and had 103 clearances. I like to call the ability to read play, the ninja style aspect of football. He silently goes about his business but is a real pain for any forward.

Another aspect of Matthew’s game which may damage us is actually his attacking. In terms of set pieces, he again drifts into position stealth-like and often can get a header on target. This is very dangerous and I fear that we may put a weaker marker on him as he isn’t the tallest but this would be fatal. We need a strong defender to pick him up and if this happens, then I’m sure it can be dealt with.

He also likes to make late runs into the box which often catches defenders out. I would hope that Rowett plays a holding midfielder such as Davis in order to try and cut out this ball back to Connolly and to mask his late show.

Overall, he isn’t the best player in terms of skill or pace so it will be easy to prevent him. But it is also easy to forget about him and focus on the likes of Jones and Pilkington when actually I think that Matthew Connolly will be the secret assassin.