The 'awkward' patterns is what I meant by "hard to read". Combine them with the low AR that most of them have, and most modern players just cringe at the sight of the maps.
Mappers back then didn't have the advanced tools that we have today, so they had to seek other ways of adding difficulty to their maps. And the "bad timing" that everyone seems to complain about is just the AR and patterns making them difficult to read, as well as the higher hitcircle-to-slider ratio, causing the player to be less accurate even if the map is timed well.
There are badly timed maps though, don't get me wrong. I'm just saying that a lot of the maps (take DJPop's and James' maps, for example) can be timed well and still give the player troubles with accuracy.