Lots of talk about tonight’s game with Queens Park Rangers being a must win one for Cardiff City and in particular for Omer Riza (is there a job title for an interim manager who stays in charge for months despite the hierarchy at the club not wanting him there?) whose six game unbeaten run, which had City as the form team in the Championship for a short while. However, the pressure has ratcheted up on Riza falling three poor performances from his team which yielded just one point and now there must be a good chance that his days will be numbered following a poor 2-0 home loss against a team that had won just once before tonight.
My thoughts for what they’re worth are that Riza, having got City playing the most watchable football I’ve seen from us for years, has been let down by Vincent Tan and co and the air has leaked almost completely from the balloon that lifted all of those who support the club. Riza may or may not be the man to lead us for the rest of the season, but those who first gave him the job have given no indication that they want him as a medium or long term appointment (quite the opposite in fact).
Consequently, Riza has been in a state of limbo while he was meant to be managing us. Okay, I accept that, to an extent, that goes with the territory when you’re a caretaker/interim boss, but you would think that being nominated for Championship manager of the month within five or six weeks of him taking on the temporary managership would have earned him some brownie points with the Board, but that’s clearly not the case.
Senior professionals like Callum Robinson, Callum O’Dowda and Perry Ng all spoke in favour of Riza before he was summoned over to Malaysia, but it made no difference and two weeks after the event, apart from the little Riza has said about it, we’re none the wiser as to what happened.
That said, what can we deduce apart from the fact that Riza has been left to go on from one game to the next while not knowing where he stands? I find it impossible to believe anything other than such a situation would have a negative effect in the dressing room. It would be daft to think that the players would carry on in the same frame of mind they had a month ago while the current uncertainty continues.
That is not to exonerate the team of blame for the current mess. They have been playing very poorly and looking like a relegation side for much longer than their good spell lasted, but I firmly believe that the current lack of enthusiasm (the attendance was barely over 16,000 tonight) and sense of failure that hangs over the club at the moment is rooted in the ineptitude of those at the top.
As for the game itself, it offers more proof that football statistics can be very misleading.The BBC stats show City having sixty eight per cent possession and twenty four goal attempts to QPRs ten, we had seven on target efforts to their five and more than twice as many touches in the opposition penalty area as them.
Yet, it didn’t feel like that. The only way you may be able to claim City were unlucky was in how Perry Ng’s shot from inside the six yard box in the opening minutes was kept out by the ball hitting goalkeeper Paul Nardi in the face and then in the way the keeper just about kept out Robinson’s second half header as it was about to cross the line.
Even then, that wasn’t really bad luck, it was a goalkeeper doing what he is paid for and, perhaps, City players not doing well enough with their finishing.
Games like tonight’s really bring out the absurdity of the situation we find ourselves in with strikers or, more precisely, the almost complete lack of them. Again, someone could look at our injury list and say that we’ve had bad luck in that two forwards who would have been in and around the first team squad have been missing all season with injuries. However, the reality is that Isaak Davies and Kion Etete picked up those injuries over a month before the transfer window closed and it was known before a ball was kicked in competitive action that they would be out for months not weeks.
Despite this, all City did was bring in the dud that is Wilfried Kanga (left out of the squad completely tonight for young Michael Reindorf) on loan and a Croatian, viewed as a “project”, who was promptly loaned out to Kortrijk where he struggled for game time before picking up an injury that is going to keep him out for some time.
The fact that Yakou Meite is still awaiting his first goal at Cardiff City Stadium despite him being almost halfway through his second season with the club rather tells its own story and so you’re left with Robinson who does possess some of what may be a good striker’s most important asset, finding space in a crowded penalty area, but he seems happier dropping into number ten type areas to help in the build up play.
Even when we had a few strikers to pick from last season, it was noticeable how few times they would get on the end of things or really attack the ball from crosses and those faults were there in abundance tonight. For example, the standard of crossing wasn’t great in the first half, but there were two or three that were played to the far post in good areas, and yet there was no City “attacker” within yards of them.
Early in the second half, Joe Ralls knocked in a free kick that was crying out to be attacked as it had whip, pace and accuracy – it should have been an awful ball to defend, but no City player was busting a gut to get on the end of it and it flew harmlessly out of play for a goal kick. There was also a clever dummy by Robinson from a dangerous low cross by Rubin Colwill, but, in reality, Robinson should have known there would not be anyone in blue there to take advantage because there barely ever is with this team.
Up the other end, Paul Smyth forced Jak Alnwick into a save in the first fifteen seconds, but that proved to be very much an isolated incident as the visitors, hardly surprisingly given their record, concentrated on defence, but when a routine long throw by Smyth was not defended well enough, Zan Celar got his first goal for QPR with a shot which looked like it may have had an element of a miskick to it as it rather looped over Alnwick from fifteen yards.
Smyth forced another save out of Alnwick after the break, but the visitors, no doubt aware that they barely ever lose at our ground these days (they’ve only conceded one goal in their last five visits to Cardiff City Stadium now) were generally happy to sit back and defend their lead which they did with few alarms despite those stats which suggest otherwise.
QPR are a club whose likely finishing position in the Championship is nearer the bottom of the table than the top of it these days and yet, rather like teams such as Hull, Preston and Blackburn, they come here and avoid defeat as a matter of course lately – our consistent failure to beat sides such as these on our own pitch is one of the surer signs of our decline in the past five years especially.
After the game, Omer Riza said City could have gone on playing until the cows came home and still wouldn’t have scored. Seems to me he’s not wrong there, but all his comment does is beg the question under what circumstances does Reindorf actually get on the pitch? I’m not saying he could have transformed the game to the extent that we won, but wouldn’t a bit of youthful enthusiasm have shaken things up a bit?
Celar sealed a deserved win in added time with a goal which rather summed up City’s night – he would have been offside without Callum Chambers’ mistimed header which played him on and left him free to neatly chip Alnwick for the goal which probably confirmed that the hierarchy at the club are going to get the, probably losing, relegation fight that, judging by their actions (or should that be inaction?), they appear to want.