Cardiff City kept their first away clean sheet in close to six months at Queens Park Rangers today and, given that they had only failed to score in one league match in 2025, you would have hoped that this would have signalled one of the two or three wins they will probably need to secure their Championship future.
Instead, we got only our second goalless draw of the season and with Plymouth, Hull and Oxford all winning while Luton and Stoke picked up decent draws, it has to be true to say that if you thought we were going down before today’s game, you surely feel a bit more certain about our fate after today – put it this way, I can’t see how anyone has become more convinced that we’re staying up after watching today’s match.
Last week i said that our draw with Sheffield Wednesday was a pretty good game of football made frustrating by our failure to react to Wednesday’s half time substitutions quickly or effectively enough and our poor defending for their equaliser. This time around, you could make no positive claims about the quality of the game, it was poor fare throughout and, for a team that now appears to have a range of decent options up front, our finishing was pretty awful.
The positive aspect of the afternoon was that rare clean sheet and, although Ethan Horvarth had one of his periodic nervy games and was unconvincing in dealing with set pieces, the outfield players helped ensure that he was never seriously troubled by them as we dealt well with free kicks and corners by and large.
The fact that City’s better players were defenders like Andy Rinomhota, who came through the ordeal of playing so soon after the tragic death of his brother last weekend with flying colours, and Will Fish showed what kind of game it was. It’s so typical of a struggling side that they cannot perform well at both ends of the pitch in the same match as the front four who did well last weekend all struggled to get close to their standard of seven days ago – two of them didn’t make it past half time.
Omer Riza’s team selection got people excited pre game as last week’s front four of Alves, Ashford, Davies and Salech were joined by Rubin Colwill playing in the deeper midfield role he filled in the FA Cup tie at Villa Park.
Truth was though, that Colwill almost certainly wouldn’t have started were it not for a pre match injury to Calum Chambers which meant that we were only able to field eight substitutes. That said, I would have thought one of David Turnbull or Alex Robertson would have been a more likely replacement for Chambers, so it was a show of faith in Colwill by the manager to see him start.
Indeed, with Fish and Joel Bagan paired at centreback, it was probably the youngest starting eleven fielded by City in a league game this season. Unfortunately for those of us who advocate more trust being shown in younger players, three changes made at half time tells you that the original selection did not work.
QPR, as you would expect from a team with eight losses in their last eleven games, were no great shakes themselves, but they were winning most of the fifty/fifties and while it would be harsh to say City were playing as if they were on the beach already, you wouldn’t have thought they were the side in the bottom three who were supposed to be fighting for their lives.
Rangers looked the sharper and if they were hardly peppering our goal with shots, they would have definitely gone in at the break thinking they should have been ahead. Winger Paul Smyth, who gave Callum O’Dowda an awkward afternoon, came closest to scoring when he burst past weak tackles from Mannsverk and Colwill to fire a shot from twenty yards that Horvarth made a bit of a meal of as the ball seemed to swerve just before it reached him.
Rangers also claimed a penalty when Alfie Lloyd went down under a challenge by Mannsverk which I thought fell into the “I’ve seen them given “ category, but there was an offside flag up at the time, so it may have been that this accounted for a penalty not being given. Lloyd also shot across goal with no one able to get a touch, while all City had to offer in return was a shot from twenty yards by Colwill that flew narrowly wide.
Riza clearly wasn’t happy with what his team had produced and Davies, Alvez and Bagan, who didn’t seem fully fit to me, made way for Callum Robinson, Ollie Tanner and Jesper Daland.
Three half time changes for Cardiff City wasn’t as effective as Wednesday’s last week, but they did improve us a little and I would say we shaded the second period. Nevertheless, it was probably Smyth who came closest to breaking the deadlock again as Horvarth made the best save of the game to turn his fifteen yard effort aside for a corner. Apart from Horvarth’s worries from corners though, there wasn’t much else from the home side to suggest they could break the deadlock.
In truth, there wasn’t much from City either, but you couldn’t help thinking there should have been. Too often though, players chose to shoot from unlikely angles and positions when they had team mates better placed. Salech was guilty of this, but he also hit a shot just over from a promising position and also might have won a penalty when he went down as he appeared to be grabbed by Ronnie Edwards, but referee Dean Whitestone was a bit of a homer all afternoon and it was no surprise to see him wave play on.
However, City’s best chances were from a couple of late headers, the first of which fell to Robinson from a good cross by Fish and the second to Yakou Meite, on for Ashford, from an O’Dowda corner, but on both occasions they could only head over.
So, yet another draw then and I can’t help feeling that our failure to turn some of them into wins is going to cost us (only Plymouth have won less games than us now). 0-0 was a fair outcome today, but some pretty ordinary City sides of the recent past would have found a way to win it 1-0 – frustratingly, two single goal wins in forty attempts tells me that this team finds such victories almost impossible.
Jack Sykes is a name I wasn’t familiar with among City’s army of youth players, but I will be from now on after his trick secured a 3-3 draw for our under 18s at Leckwith this morning against Wigan.
