Now I know what it feels like to watch your side play with a lack of hope.
In a strange game at Elwood Park this lunchtime in which the size of the crisis at Cardiff City Stadium become even clearer, City were deservedly beaten by a one goal margin by a Blackburn Rovers side whose third place standing in the current table is as much evidence as you need that, the runaway top two apart, it’s a very, very ordinary Championship this season.
I mentioned a one goal margin, but you don’t need to be a genius to work out what the score was from that. It goes without saying of course that it was1-0. The goal had more than an element of luck to it and City had a go once they fell behind early in the second half, but all that did is offer even more evidence of how powder puff we are in front of goal.
For a second successive game, City used five subs, but I didn’t have a clue what they were trying to do by the end. I’m always prefacing anything I say about Mark Hudson with things like I want him to do well because he was such a good player for us, but, watching these last four games especially, he’s taking us backwards – we’re as clueless as we’ve ever been in attack and so we seem to have become reduced to playing for 0-0s
I’m certainly not denying Hudson’s facing a huge task. He’s having to deal with what I believe is a flawed off field management structure because the man at the top does not favour the introduction of something like a Director of Football/CEO with a footballing background (Chairman Mehmet Dalman has said he’s in favour of City making such an appointment).
Furthermore, there is a transfer embargo at the club for the next three windows as things stand and while there was clearly a large element of coincidence and bad luck from their viewpoint regarding the tragic event responsible for the sanctions against the club, the Emiliano Sala transfer itself hardly seems to have been handled in a professional manner by the club.
Hudson, and every recent manager going back to Neil Harris, have had to operate within the confines caused by the disastrous recruitment of the summer of 2019. Recruitment which the manager at the time is blamed for by people like me, but we’re told that Neil Warnock was part of a four man transfer committee where you’d guess the other three members could, and should, have made their reservations clear if they were not happy with what the manager was planning.
Vincent Tan always quotes the Andreas Cornelius transfer when he wants to be critical of transfer policy at the club (he also mentioned Josh Murphy when he was interviewed after he watched our defeat by Hull a couple of months ago). However, although there has been the odd exception, transfer recruitment has largely been very poor in the twelve years Vincent Tan has been associated with the club.
While most other clubs in the Championship have proper recruiting departments and football savvy CEOs these days, Cardiff seem content to muddle on as they’ve always done under this owner. To be fair, I have to mention that we’ve been promoted to the Premier League twice under Vincent Tan’s, but even this has only led to City creating the record of being the only club to have failed to avoid relegation in their first two seasons of Premier League football.
City have handled Premier League football, and the parachute payments that relegated clubs receive, so poorly and all of these things only make the job of managing the club currently all the more testing.
Clearly, Vincent Tan has not been happy with the managers at the club since Warnock left because he keeps on sacking them, but, then again, what can you expect when the appointments are generally viewed as being cheap options?
All of what I’ve been saying shows how much the odds have been stacked against Hudson and you have to say that it was always pushing things to expect that you could just pluck the quality of manager needed to make a good job of running Cardiff out of the club’s coaching staff – that’s what we did with Steve Morison and what we have done with Mark Hudson.
Unfortunately, it’s looking increasingly likely that Hudson is not capable of turning things around. His post game comments today read like the thoughts of an exasperated man and I can understand why as we’ve looked as toothless as we have done all season in our last three matches.
Now, all sides have spells in a season where they find it difficult to score, but, at the risk of sounding flippant, ours has been going on since late July! Nevertheless, it’s been particularly bad against QPR, Coventry and Blackburn – that’s what I meant when I said that we were only getting worse under Hudson.
Today’s game was played on what was an unusual poor pitch for a modern day match, so, some allowances need to be made for that because the current professionals aren’t used to such things, but I wonder what any gnarled old player from forty or fifty years ago would have made of such a pitch in mid season January – it would have been like a bowling green compared to what they were used to!
Being serious, the pitch probably played a part in some of the opportunities City made a mess of today, but, increasingly, you have to believe that it’s problems between the ears that are playing a bigger part now than a lack of ability as the lack of goals becomes a bigger issue with every passing game.
Callum O’Dowda was our best player again for me, but what if he had really attacked Ryan Wintle’s superb cross in the opening minutes? Callum Robinson had what was our best on target effort by a mile in our last three games following a swift and incisive break, but it was still a routine save for Thomas Kaminski to make when Mark Harris was unmarked inside Robinson. Harris was to the fore when Blackburn gave the ball away in a dangerous position and he fed Gavin Whyte who was foiled by a covering tackle by Jake Garrett, but he wouldn’t have been able to make it without Whyte’s dodgy first touch. Tom Sang also had a chance to get away a shot from a good position as the ball dropped invitingly for him, but, as Andy Hinchcliffe righty said on Sky’s commentary, he waited far too long and his shot was easily blocked when it eventually came.
Continuing the theme, Harris shot weakly in the second half with Isaak Davies in a better position and Andy Rinomhota ducked out of a header from six yards when he was unmarked from a Rubin Colwill corner – Colwill’s quality deliveries from corners was a slight plus point and Perry Ng was not far away from meeting another one.
Not all, but most of these opportunities were made harder by poor decision making or faulty technique, but the lack of confidence is there in how extra touches by defenders and midfielders slow movement of the ball down – this is one of the factors in the lack of chances being created, but then, when they are, the forward players are too eager to get shots away so they are never as effective as they are when hit calmly and with confidence.
At the other end of the pitch, Hudson opted for a back three which were often troubled by direct balls into the channels in a first half when Blackburn looked like they coped with the conditions better and wanted it more.
I thought we were somewhat lucky to get to half time at 0-0 and we started the second period in really limp fashion as we lost fifty/fifties all over the pitch as typified by Harris being robbed too easily on half way in the build up to the goal. Blackburn took advantage when Ben Brereton-Diaz rolled a pass into Bradley Dack’s path and the man who has had so much bad luck with injuries in recent years hit a first time shot from eighteen yards that took a huge deflection off Jack Simpson (fortunate to still be on the pitch after a nasty first half foul) and rolled past the wrong footed Ryan Allsop.
Sam Gallagher made a mess of a headed chance to quickly double the lead and Bremerton-Diaz twice worked Allsop, but as plenty of sides who have visited Cardiff City Stadium in the last two seasons have discovered, 1-0 is often more than enough to comfortably see us off.
Just to mention as well about the title I’ve given this piece. I thought hard about using it because I didn’t want to be too critical, but I’m afraid it is how I feel and it’s a double edged sword really because I’m surely not the only City fan watching us with a lack of hope these days and, certainly in the last three games, you feel the side are playing with a lack of hope.