Blackburn Rovers came to Cardiff City Stadium badly out of form and without a goal in four games I think it was and passed us off the park as they eased to a 3-1 win which played them back into form. We could have gone eight points clear of a Queens Park Rangers team who came here in our next home game stuck at the bottom of the table with just one win all season, they got what looked a lucky goal, but then comfortably held us at arm’s length to record a 2-0 win that played them into form.
Tonight, Preston visited Cardiff City Stadium without an away win and without a win of any kind in nine games and were given an absolute gift of a goal just after half time before confirming their win with what’s becoming a tradition this season whereby an a2ay team winning 1-0 scores a second in added time, just to get the home fans angrier or, more alarmingly, more apathetic and make our already poor goal difference even worse.
Let’s be clear, our last three home games have been ones that most other teams would go into expecting to win. In each of them we’ve entertained an out of form team and yet we’ve ended up with exactly what we’ve deserved on our performance – nothing.
The only goal we’ve managed to score in these matches was from a rebound after a penalty had been saved and I’m afraid that, after an all too brief run where we actually started to look like we were enjoying playing at home, we are back to the usual rubbish that we’ve seen through all but the very start of this decade – the difference this time being that, so far, this team are unable to win away matches.
Remember all of the upbeat talk about what I’ve seen described as our best ever transfer window? How many of our summer signings could be regarded as members of what Omer Riza would consider his strongest eleven? Alex Robertson definitely gets in and Callum Chambers has always started when he was fit. You could argue Anwar El Ghazi would be in it, but he’d been benched for a game before his recent injury.
So, being charitable, I’d say three and one of those is very arguable, while as we only had Dimi Goutas as a centre back left over from last season, it was certain that he’d have a new partner alongside him this time around – after a particularly accident prone showing tonight, you have to say Chambers is a lucky boy to be considered a first choice and you have to wonder how much longer that will last.
Tonight, as usual, we had £4 million’s worth of summer centre back signings on the bench as well as El Ghazi and Chris Willock. £2 million January signing David Turnbull is injured, but was a sub in the Blackburn game, while we have a £2 million striker, also injured who was struggling to get on the pitch for Kortrijk when he was fit.
You might see a bit of a theme developing here – injuries. We have had so many of them since the pre season visit to Central Europe and they just keep on coming – Turnbull went off at Coventry ten days ago and there’s still no confirmation from the club as to what’s wrong with him and the same applies to Ollie Tanner, who was not in tonight’s squad.
Tanner is a pretty inconsistent performer who still has things to learn about being a week in, week out player in this league, but it shows how weak we are that I think we really missed him tonight.
Tanner isn’t a real speed merchant of a winger, but he has a bit of pace about him – that’s especially important after a game where I can’t remember our lack of pace all over the pitch being more obvious.
Callum Robinson is considered fit enough to start, but we’re told he has a chronic Achilles injury and it must be said that he’s been playing like someone who is struggling with a chronic injury lately (especially in the three home matches I’ve mentioned). That’s why I’m reluctant to be too critical of him, but I must say that there’s just not been any burst of acceleration to his game lately.
Just to return to the subject of injuries for a while and the questions as to why we have so many of them,, why so many injured players suffer “relapses” (e.g. Etete, Davies and Ramsey) and why they take so long to regain fitness, I suppose it’s reasonable to assume that a hierarchy which appoints its, interim, managers on the cheap and gets by on a minimal number of coaches to keep expenses down are probably going to rely on a skeleton, cut price, medical staff as well.
Take everything I’ve written up to now, combine it with the self evident ineptitude of those at the top and should we really be surprised that tonight’s was a third straight home performance, along with the lucky draw at Sheffield Wednesday, which had relegation written through it like you get with a stick of rock? I think that, although I allowed myself to get excited about a few performances where we looked like a top half team, I have to also accept that we’ve looked like a team set for the drop in about ten of our games so far.
Im not going to write much about it, but tonight was worse than the QPR game. We did have a couple of efforts cleared off the line, firstly when Jordan Storey got back to scrape clear a shot that an offside looking Yakou Meite did not hit well enough and then when Perry Ng’s header was nodded out by Jack Whatmough just as it was about to cross the line. However, for most of the time, City looked like a side which finds itself in the farcical situation of having a raw novice (Michael Reindorf) as their best option up front. Preston were nothing special, but they had the measure of us and, even if their first goal owed much to luck, they deserved their win.
The deadlock was broken just after half time when City were caught dozing after conceding a foul about thirty five yards out and never regained their shape or defensive discipline after the visitors took the free kick quickly. I’m still not really sure what happened after Mads Frokjaer crossed, but, apparently, the ball deflected off Goutas onto Chambers and from there into the net. You couldn’t blame Chambers for what was an unlucky deflection, but his performance was an error strewn one and with Goutas culpable for the second goal when he presented Milutin Osmajic with a run in on goal, perhaps it’s time that the £4 million pounds worth of central defenders who have been sat on the bench for months got the chance to show what they can do?
So, there’s no “new manager bounce” for Omer Riza second time around it seems, instead he’s a rookie manager of an injury ravaged team on a miserable six game winless run with an understaffed coaching line up and a hierarchy that have presented a challenge that far more experienced managers than him have not been able to overcome.
I’ve just watched the video of Riza’s post match press conference on the club website and at least he’s saying the right things. Presented with a chance to sugercoat things by one of the questioners, he, instead, criticised the application, heart and ability of his players and did not seek to hide. Riza was let down badly by a group of players who were happy to go on the record about how much they wanted him in charge a few weeks ago and yet here, the attitude of many of them was as bad as it was in Erol Bulut’s final games at the club.
As mentioned earlier, Riza is getting no help from the hierarchy at the club and is expected to succeed with a well under strength coaching set up. I find it impossible not to feel some sympathy for someone who has been handed the most poisonous of chalices, but then you come on to his substitutions tonight.
I don’t think I’ve mentioned Meite’s reaction after his goal at Coventry and then on social media after that game have I? Seems he wasn’t happy with how the fans had been treating him lately. Well, all I can say to that if he seriously thinks that a striker who has scored three times in a season and a half, who has yet to score a home goal and whose general level of performance is below the standard expected for this league is being hard done by then it asks serious questions about attitudes within the dressing room – Meite has not been good enough for this level since signing for us nearly eighteen months, it’s as simple as that.
Very early in tonight’s game, Meite had a reasonable chance and, honestly, it’s hard to imagine how, in technical terms, someone being played as a striker/winger at this level could have got it more wrong. Yet, after all that I’ve said in this paragraph and the one before it about Meite, he was contributing more than Robinson was, yet it was he who made way just after Preston took the lead. Similarly, while Joel Bagan and Andy Rinomhota were hardly havinh outstanding matches, there were plenty in blue doing worse than them and yet it was they who came off at the same time as Meite.
In the last two home games especially, Riza has only added to the reasons why a sizeable number of City fans think he is clearly out of his depth and, as someone who thinks of himself as fairly supportive of Riza, I have to admit that it’s hard to mount an argument against them at the moment – there is so much wrong at the club currently that not just relegation, but a bottom of the table finish, looks on the cards based on almost half a season’\s evidence.
Finally, it was pretty laboured, but at least City made it through to the Fourth Round of the FA Youth Cup last night with a 3-2 win at Leckwith over a stubborn Chesterfield team that were the better side in the second half after a first period which looked like they were only intent on damage limitation.
Dan Ola headed City into a deserved lead after about forty minutes and he scored from the spot after what I thought was a harsh decision against the visitors to put us two up at the hour stage. Chesterfield got a goal back, but Mannie Barton looked to have made the game safe when he got our third after Jake Davies’ shot had hit the post. However Chesterfield responded again immediately to ensure that the final minutes were more fraught than they needed to be given how dominant we’d been in the first half.