I’ll start with the positives from Cardiff City’s 0-0 home draw with Preston North End this lunchtime. Jazz Richards replaced a presumably injured Joe Bennett and looked like he’d never been away, if you take Neil Etheridge’s poor kicking as read, he did well with two good saves and I thought Leandro Bacuna played quite well. Finally, City got something out of a game where they played poorly (to put it mildly!).
Right, that’s that out of the way in just three sentences, now I can get on with the negatives and, at the risk of sounding stupid, I’ll start with the last of those positives I mentioned.
To have a successful side over the course of a Championship season needs more than just two qualities, but without these two, I would say it is impossible to be successful.
I’m talking about the aforesaid ability to get something from matches where you don’t play well and then there’s also the ability to win whenever you do play well.
Today marked the half way point of the season and Cardiff City have spent it proving that they have mastered the first of those things. Indeed, I would suggest that, over our first twenty three matches, we’ve picked up thirty three points while not playing well and now the challenge for the second half of the season is to pick up the first of those wins when playing well and then keep on adding to them!
Okay, that’s a bit flippant, but is it unreasonable to say the following?
We have played twenty three games, facing each team in the division once. Therefore, every other club in the Championship has had first hand experience of us and, with that in mind, do you seriously think there is a supporter of another Championship side this season who would think “they’re good, I can see them making the top six this season” after having watched their side take us on?
What matches have we played well in this season so far? I thought we did well up to a point at Hull and Millwall, but we didn’t fulfil the second of the two criteria I mentioned because we only drew 2-2 in both of them. Of the matches we’ve won, I’d say Birmingham was impressive in its way because we were a man short for a significant period of the game and yet I’m sure Birmingham fans would have come out of the ground afterwards wondering how on earth they managed to lose a match they had completely dominated in the first half an hour.
Likewise, our sole away win, at Forest, had a lot to be admired to it, but, essentially, it was something of a smash and grab whereby we got a goal early on and then hung on to it for about eighty minutes,
I’m afraid that, when you consider our general standard of performance over the first half of the season, out points total really does flatter us and this from a squad which our former manager says is top two in terms of quality!
That remark was just Neil Warnock being Neil Warnock in my opinion, but, if he genuinely does believe that, then I’m afraid he is being delusional.
Take today’s game for example. despite missing the likes of Morrison, Bogle, Cunningham, Vassell and Connolly, who cost in the region of £15 million between them, for various reasons, we put out a squad today which cost £47.5 million – that figure may not be quite correct because I’m going by “reported” fees, but I wouldn’t say it is that far off the mark.
On the other hand, our opponents, who were better than us all over the park except for goalkeeper, have a squad which I’ve seen it said cost no more than £3 million to assemble. I’d say that is too low by some way and it may be that we are talking about a net spend there, but I’d still maintain that Preston’s squad cost about a fifth of what we paid for ours.
Yet, despite this seeming disadvantage, the distance we were so far behind our opponents today was just plain embarrassing at times.
I see little point going into a blow by blow account of proceedings because most of you reading this will have either seen the match live or watched it on Sky live, so you don’t need anything like that.
However, I watched with interest at half time when the first half “highlights” were shown on the big screens at the ground. For those who don’t go to home games, these always consist of highlights entirely from a Cardiff perspective – our opponents could be 5-0 up after forty five minutes, but you’d still only get to see only action which had taken place in their penalty area!
What we got today, was a much longer shot than normal of the teams coming on to the pitch to pad things out a bit, followed by them shaking hands and then we moved on to a effort from Lee Tomlin which flashed no more than a yard wide and a shott by Bacuna which finished about halfway up the Family Enclosure as it flew harmlessly over the bar.
After forty five minutes of the second half, that highlights video would have looked exactly the same as it did at half time, because, forget about goal attempts on target, City had not had a goal attempt full stop during the whole of the second period.
Those efforts by Tomlin and Bacuna of widely varying quality were the only goal attempts Cardiff had mustered as the clock ticked by the ninety minute mark and we not been able to force a single corner. However, a minute into added time, the man between the sticks for Preston, who we were told was called Declan Rudd, but could easily have been their coach driver masquerading as him for all he had to do, was finally called into action.
Preston manager Alex Neil claimed Tomlin’s shot was going over anyway when Rudd decided to take a no risks policy and touch it over his crossbar and he was probably right, but City had finally registered on an target effort, according to the stats people at the BBC at least, to take their total goal attempts score up to three and they’d also gained that elusive corner!
Mind you, I say “shot” when describing Tomlin’s effort, but I do so merely because it was him who had it. If it had been any of the other nine outfield players on the pitch at the time (or the three who had been replaced by then) who had been responsible for it, I would have said it was the sliced centre that it looked like, but as it was Tomlin, you could not be sure.
In my opinion, Tomlin’s shot in the first half which went just wide as Rudd dived full length for it represented the only time in the entire match when Preston would have been genuinely concerned about conceding a goal and even this incident told you something about the nature of City’s miserable performance.
I say that because it came about entirely through a driving midfield run from the energetic Bacuna of some thirty yards which saw the ball break to Tomlin when the Dutchman was tackled, What made this relevant was that it came about because it was an individual burst, nothing to do with team play.
There were the occasional instances of something similar happening as the likes of Tomlin, Nathaniel Mendez-Laing and, say, Marlon Pack produced something which would get the crowd (whose enthusiasm levels throughout were way above what was justified by the “action” on the pitch) going, but it would fizzle out as soon as the player tried something to get others involved – that is, attempt a pass.
When I think about it, that sums up the Warnock attitude towards attacking play in a trice – rely entirely on moments of individual brilliance, rather than anything approaching team work, and, if that fails, welly the ball up the pitch to “the big man”.
Before the game today, the announcement of the team was mainly greeted with enthusiasm by those I was with – they liked the recall of Robert Glatzel (as did I), were pleased to see Bacuna back and were agreed that Neil Harris was trying to play more football than Neil Warnock’s did.
Come kick off, Glatzel, who we keep on hearing does better with balls played into his feet and would prosper with passes played through to him that he could run on to, was having to survive on a diet of long aerial balls from our defenders or goalkeeper that he had little success with months ago and had little success with here.
Just as they have done way too often this season, City started very slowly as a Preston team that had way more pace, energy and physicality about them pressed Cardiff into mistakes. Surprise, surprise the visitors passed the ball far better than us and made very effective use of the somewhat derided long, diagonal pass which caused City problems all game long.
Before the game was a quarter of an hour old, Preston had shots which hit the side netting on both sides and another one which rippled the top of the net as it flew just over. There was an near post effort not far wide and a stabbed shot which brought the save of the game out of Etheridge shortly after that as the visitors completely controlled the first half an hour.
After that, City dragged Preston down to their level somewhat, but they still looked the more likely scorers with Republic of Ireland international Allan Browne wasting their best chance in the second half presented to him by Curtis Nelson in another example of the poor passing and judgement which blighted City’s day. Paul Gallagher also bent a shot about as far wide as Tomlin’s went and Etheridge made a sprawling save to keep out another shot.
As for us, if we are supposed to be introducing more of a passing style, I saw little evidence of that today. In fact, Neil Harris’s substitutions, Gary Madine for Glatzel, Danny Ward for the anonymous Josh Murphy and Callum Paterson for the endlessly frustrating Mendez-Laing, bore the hallmark of someone who had given up on trying to get anything like a passing style out of this group of players and had just gone for a route one or bust approach.
This was as bad as Warnockball at it’s worst and I’m sure many, if not all, of the new faces I saw sat around by me in what I thought was a good crowd given the proximity to Christmas and the fact the match was being televised won’t be back anytime soon.
Of course, we should really have known what was coming given City’s woeful record in terms of results and performance in matches screened live on Sky this season. The only possible exception to this came at Charlton where we recovered from a two goal deficit, but were wide open defensively for most of the time.
Our home record when it comes to televised games is extraordinary – we have won every single non televised match and none of the televised ones!
I’m afraid I cannot report anything better from the under 18s in their lunchtime match with Crystal Palace at Leckwith yesterday as they were well beaten by 3-1.
In fact, the margin of defeat could have been a lot worse than that. Maybe things would have turned out differently if Harry Pinchard’s early shot had gone in instead of coming out off a post, but I doubt it, because, rather like Preston a day later, a bigger and stronger visiting team pressed us into errors in our defensive third – the only difference being that Palace were two up inside twenty minutes through goals by their right sided attacker Addy.
City’s only other chance of the first half came when a wayward pass by a Palace defender let Isaak Davies in on goal, but, unusually for him, he dragged his shot some way wide.
City made a couple of substitutions at half time and this livened them up for a while, but Palace soon reestablished their superiority and made the game safe with a header from a corner with about a quarter of an hour left.
There was a consolation for City courtesy of a beautifully struck Sam Parsons shot from distance in added time, but they ended a well beaten team as their league season continues on a course which is disappointing in terms of points and position after their title win last season.
Lastly, can I wish all readers of this blog a very merry Christmas.