You wonder if this nightmare run of home results and performances will ever end as the chilling thought that it could last half a decade or more becomes a realistic prospect. I’m sure I’ve said before that it gets hard to tell one from another as the defeats and the months rack up and this one, a 2-0 lunchtime loss to Middlesbrough, will not last long in the memory unless it proves to be the one that costs Erol Bulut his job.
I’m not expecting that to happen, mainly because, in a move that was treated by certain sectors of the printed and broadcast media and the punters on social media as if it was Jurgen Klopp who was going to be managing us after signing a two year deal, we were desperate for him to stay as the tiresome will he, won’t he debate of the first half of the summer dragged on and on.
I vowed I would wipe the slate clean with Bulut despite having been bored rigid by his style of play as his team lost their way for the last two thirds of the 23/24 campaign and saw little point in calling for the sacking this season of a man who would cost the club so much in compensation now if they decided to get rid of him.
You have to say though, after the stubbornness and I would go as far as saying stupidity of his team selection today, you do wonder if there is any point in things dragging out longer than they need to – I don’t think Bulut’s going to change and while he sticks with a starting eleven that offered absolutely nothing in an attacking sense in the first half today, we can forget about climbing the table, we must show more of a positive mentality, especially at home.
What started off as a jocular remark is now the truth – it’s not just that we look more dangerous with the kids on the pitch, we look far more dangerous. No doubt, Bulut and his apologists will say that that the goals are piling up against us while Colwill, Tanner et al are doing their stuff further up the pitch and they’d have a point, but you look at the first goal today, Sunderland’s first goal, Burnley’s first two goals and think we’re hardly water tight at the back with the old hands who start every week are we!
It was remarked at the end of last season how bad our goals against record was despite our manager being so defensive in his outlook and that has continued into this season. Callum Chambers lost Nathan Clarke to leave the Middlesbrough centre back free to stoop and place a good header from a Finn Azaz corner beyond Ethan Horvarth for the sort of cheap goal that will deflate a team with a record as bad as City’s is becoming. As a result, the worrying trend which saw our goals against record fall away badly in the last months of 23/34 is being continued.
Bulut’s team selection deflated any feel good factor that had built up following a fighting draw at Swansea and an encouraging showing by a very young team in defeat against Southampton. However, the latter was a cup match and our manager has shown throughout the last year and more that whatever happens in a match where there aren’t league points at stake counts for nothing when it comes to selection for the following game.
I greeted the news that the team was the same one that were second best to Swansea for an hour with a resigned shrug – there was a time when I would have been angry with such a decision, but you just know that there are certain players close to the first team who this manager will not pick or, worse than that, there are certain regular starters who he will not drop, no matter how poorly they are playing.
Today, in a first half which was so unbelievably poor for a second tier game in the English pyramid, Middlesbrough did at least have a couple of on target efforts that forced Horvarth into fairly routine saves. For City there were, apparently, two goal attempts, neither of which troubled visiting keeper Dieng – I can remember a shot by Manolis Siopis that flew yards high and wide, but I can’t recall the other one.
The only slight positive to come out of that wretched first half was that Middlesbrough, confidence bruised by a run of three games without a win, were looking like a team that had lost 5-0 at home in midweek, but, in saying that, they still seemed the more likely to break free from the torpor that hung over the game. Strangely, for a game three weeks into a season, much of the first half had the air of a warm up game or an encounter being played as a long season was winding down.
To be fair to City, they did have the sort of ill luck that goes with a bottom of the league standing. Jesper Daland was injured in an accidental collision prompted by Chambers colliding with Boro forward Delano Burgzorg who fell onto Dalman’s heal it seemed. The Norwegian largely confirmed the positive impression he created at Swansea while he was on the pitch, but had to give up the ghost when he went down for a third time just before the interval and was replaced by Dimi Goutas.
I was being serious when I remarked on what I still call Twitter at half time that Bulut was probably congratulating his team on a job well done so far, but it seems the manager was not satisfied with things and Yakou Meite, one of the players whose continued presence in the starting line up is a mystery to me, made way for Ollie Tanner.
The young winger had an immediate impact on Aaron Ramsey for one who burst to life in the five minutes after half time. First, he played a fine cross field ball to Tanner who beat his full back before crossing to where Ramsey beat a defender and got away a shot which went past Dieng, but was diverted on to an upright and out by Boro captain Luke Ayling.
Within seconds, Ramsey was again turning and getting in a fiercely struck shot that forced Dieng into his only serious save of the game as he tipped over for.a corner.
That was as good as things got for City, they did have their attacking moments when Colwill finally came on (he replaced Alex Robertson who I assume is being gradually nursed back after his injury from last season, but there were other stronger candidates for the “hook” than the Australian international).
City had fallen a goal behind by the time Colwill appeared though, Horvarth’s fine save from Azaz’s low shot counting for nothing as Boro scored from the resultant corner, but, although there were flashes of the type of play which opened Swansea up last weekend from Colwill and Tanner, Callum Robinson and Ahmed El-Ghazi offered little when they were brought on and the feeling that the points were Middlesbrough’s became a reality when Ramsey was unlucky for a second time as Aidan Morris’ shot, which was going wide, deflected off him and into the net.
City could not put their defeat down to ill fortune though, just like against Sunderland and Burnley (the margin of victory may well have been freakish, but Burnley were worth their win), the better team won and, despite a transfer window that was not the roaring success many tried to make it out to be (more on that later), I can’t help thinking that, player for player, this squad has more to offer than the manager is getting out of them.
Where I do feel some sympathy with Erol Bulut is that it appears that, for the second successive transfer window, he has been let down by the City transfer committee or whatever they are called now. Yes, he was given many of the players he wanted and he can no longer use the defence that this isn’t his team, the truly bizarre twist at the end of the window when it came to the recruitment of a striker was just so Cardiff City – I had my say on our transfer window on the message board this morning and reproduce it here.
“It’s become popular to rate City’s transfer window out of ten, when it was done on Twitter two or three weeks ago and people were asked to respond with just a number to how we’d done up to then, I responded with “4”. Now, I accept that was a harsh judgment, I like a lot of the business the club has done and they surely must have pushed the boat out further wages wise (and probably in transfer fees as well) than many were expecting.
However, I was judging the club by the standards they had set for themselves, the standards their unofficial spokesmen on social media hinted very heavily we would be pursuing. Wherever you looked back in April and May, you were being told by these spokesmen and others in the media that the priority was a striker or, more accurately, two strikers because the lack of forwards of sufficient quality at the club had become a running sore dating back to the departure of Kiefer Moore (actually, it goes back to pre Moore days as well). I can remember it being said on social media that you would be shocked at the quality of striker City were pursuing.
I shouldn’t forget that we have signed a striker this summer and, you never know, Wilfried Kanga could become a twenty goal a season striker yet – I fully accept that it’s too early yet to judge him, but you look at what he’s done in a City shirt so far, his patchy career record so far, the fact that he cannot get into a Bundesliga 2 mid table side’s first team and that his stay here is only on loan, then it’s hardly a signing that shocks and awes us, it’s certainly not a signing that left us amazed at the club’s level of ambition.
Given the hype from the club’s unofficial social media representatives, I think it was perfectly reasonable for supporters to believe there was more, and better, to come and, in the event, there was and there wasn’t. On Thursday news broke that City had negotiated a move for a striker with Champions League experience at a more than reasonably rated club, a striker who is an under 21 international for a country that reached a World Cup Final six years ago and a striker who, we were told, was a prime target for the team that currently lead the Championship.
When our manager was asked about this new striker, he was light on details, but it’s hard to blame him really because, as he said, this was a “club signing” and he was going to be loaned out to Vincent Tan’s Belgian club for the season! How strange, but it must mean we’ll be announcing a better signing still surely?
Except it didn’t, we were informed that the club that sits at the bottom of the Championship were “relaxed” about the fact that, when you consider that two strikers currently at the club are out with long term injuries, you could reasonably argue that we are now worse off for strikers than we were last season!
I got it wrong when I gave a marking of four – after the Roko Simic farce, it’s a three. Typically, Cardiff City managed to turn what had been a good transfer window into a failure if you judge it by the standards they set for themselves. Not only that, they have, seemingly spent up to two and a half million pounds on a striker who could end up making his debut (if, indeed, he does make a debut for us) in League One.”
As for other City teams, the under 21s made it three straight wins yesterday afternoon as, benefiting from their opponents being reduced to ten men, they won 4-3 at Birmingham – Isaac Jefferies, Morgan Wigley, Trey George and Will Spiers.
The under 18s were 2-0 down at Leckwith to Sheffield United with a quarter of an hour to play, but ended being disappointed not to have won as Leeyon Phelan and Jake Davies brought them level before Mannie Barton had a ninety seventh minute penalty saved.