As February began, Cardiff City had an encouraging win and performance against Nottingham Forest to send them into successive league games at Barnsley and then home to Peterborough which would greatly shape their season because those two were part of very small group that found themselves below us in the table.
There was another game that looked all important as well coming up quite soon after – a St David’s day visit from Derby County, the team that had been thought of as all but relegated before a ball was kicked because of the massive twenty one points deduction for various financial irregularities committed over a long period.
The problem for City and the other sides down near the bottom was that Derby were refusing to stick to the script and we’re doing well enough to make the other strugglers think that it was no longer a case of Derby and two others going down – the prospect that the relegated three would not include Derby was a very real one and, despite things looking pretty bad for the Rams tonight, remains the case.
The two early February matches were won – City turned in a complete performance against Peterborough and were not flattered at all by the 4-0 winning margin. This followed on from a victory at Barnsley that was a different animal entirely from the Peterborough one, it was an awful game, a real battle that was decided by a single goal as substitute Uche Ikpeazu overpowered a couple of defenders and steered the ball home to give us a win that we didn’t really deserve on the balance of play.
When City we’re able to add a good win over Coventry to their February points haul, it became clear that their relegation worries were all but over, especially if they could add another victory over Derby which would leave them a point short of the forty point figure manager Steve Morrison had mentioned as a target which would enable everyone at the club to start breathing a bit more easily.
Well, City duly added that win tonight and it was far more of a repeat of the Barnsley game than the Peterborough one, right down to the 1-0 score line courtesy of another goal by sub Ikpeazu which owed much to his strength and determination – a slight difference this time though being that I thought we just about deserved the three points.
Just as up in Yorkshire, it was a pretty horrible game of football. It was one of those matches where for much of the time you found yourself wondering about the City side’s basic level of skill as the ball barely ever seemed to be under a blue shirted player’s control and, if it was, it would soon be returned to Derby because of a misplacement of a simple pass.
Oddly though, in amongst all of the examples of poor technique, City came up with a couple of moments of Premier League quality that left Derby fortunate to still be on terms.
The first came early on when a Joe Ralls corner was half cleared to Tommy Doyle who controlled the ball instantly and tried an audacious volleyed shot from twenty five yards which beat Ryan Allsop in the Derby goal and rebounded down off the crossbar to safety.
That was City’s only worthwhile goal attempt of a first half that Derby shaded without really threatening too much. The second half was an improvement on what had gone before, but not much of one.
Derby had shown why they’ve been the lowest scorers in the division for most of the season until a miskick by the otherwise impressive Perry Ng presented the visitors with a scoring opportunity they really should have taken as ex City loanee Ravel Morrison headed Festy Ebesole’s cross towards what seemed a gaping goal only for the falling Alex Smithies to stick out a hand and divert the ball on to an upright from where it rebounded to half time sub Colin Kazim Richards whose hooked effort from six yards flew across the face of goal and out.
Derby really should have taken the lead there from either of those efforts, but the fact was that header by Morrison remained their only on target effort on a frustrating night for them and their fans who travelled in decent numbers to the game.
The paucity of creativity meant that it was looking pretty clear that a single goal would win the game and Ralls almost provided it when Derby again failed to deal with a corner and the ball was recycled to our captain, who had taken the original kick, who, cutting in from the right hit a shot from the outside edge of the penalty area similar to the one which led to our second goal against Forest. This one beat Allsop all ends up only to hit the crossbar and bounce over.
Like Doyle’s earlier effort against the woodwork, Ralls’ shot was completely out of keeping with what his team was coming up with most of the time and I was resigned to our first goalless draw of the season after that.
By now, Uche Ikpeazu had replaced Hugill and in just about the first piece of action he was involved in was so concerned with backing into his opponent that he never had the ball under control because he never touched it as it failed to reach him!
What I said at that point was unrepeatable on a family blog, but this was a night when Ikpeazu was to partially justify Sean Morrison’s high opinion of him as an opponent he hates to face. A good chase back to the half way line to rob a Derby player of the ball was the signal of better things to come from Uche and five minutes from time he provided the goal that sent us a couple of places up the table some sixteen points clear of the bottom three.
Derby were furious about the goal with manager Wayne Rooney appearing to suggest after the game that there was some sort of referee’s agenda against his team because of their various financial misdemeanours. The annoyance was understandable, but, although I accept I’m not the best person to deliver a truly neutral opinion, it was unjustified in my view.
First of all, Derby weren’t happy with the challenge by Alfie Doughty, on for Joel Bagan, on the edge of our penalty area at the start of the move which led to the goal, but, for me, Ebesole went down in a manner which suggested far more substantial contact than Doughty provided. Indeed, the conclusion I reached was that if the sort of “tackle” Doughty provided was ever deemed a foul, then football truly had become a non contact sport.
From there, the ball was worked up field and Derby sub Malcolm Ebiowei’s effort to keep the ball from crossing the touchline for a City throw in only presented us with it half way inside the Derby half from where it was worked to Ng. City were lucky in that the recently converted centreback is one of too few players in their side (Wintle, Doyle, Ralls and Bagan are others) who can be relied upon to produce a quality pass if given the time and the former Crewe man delivered with a cross into a dangerous area that dropped towards the feet of Ikpeazu and Derby’s vastly experienced defender Curtis Davies some eight yards from the middle of their goal.
From here, it became a typical Ikpeazu scrap for the ball with both players laying hands on each other as they competed for it. This is where Ikpeazu comes in to his own and he ended up winning the battle of strength by working himself the room to guide his shot beyond Allsop and into the corner of the net.
Rather like his goal at Barnsley, there is some debate about whether the ball went where Uche meant it to (for what it’s worth, I thought the Barnsley goal was a good finish, but I’m not so sure about this one), but that’s not really important is it.
Again, you could understand why Derby claimed Ikpeazu had fouled Davies, but, while referees are prepared to allow far worse to go unpunished at virtually every dead ball situation that goes into a penalty area, I have to say that referee Andy Davies was well within his rights not to disallow the goal – that’s not to say that some officials would not have disallowed it mind and Lord only knows what VAR would have made of it!
City saw out the five minutes left and the five more added on after the ninety pretty comfortably to record a fourth home win in six to follow on from the horror run of Cardiff City Stadium form from late August to late January thanks to Ikpeazu showing what he can bring to a team. However, I’ll repeat what I said after the Blackpool match that Uche’s is not a version of the game I enjoy watching and while the recent upturn in results has been heartening, the improved, more attractive, style of football we kept hearing about in Steve Morison’s early days in charge has all but disappeared – we’re seeing more of the sort of stuff that Messrs Slade, Warnock, Harris and McCarthy served up.
Even in the impressive performances against Forest and Peterborough, we were happy to sit deep behind the ball and let the opposition have it in a home game – it’s pretty negative stuff.
The City Board are convinced by Morison though because it was announced after the game that he had signed a contract until the end of the 22/23 season.
The first thing to say about that is that the decision is understandable, I’m having a moan about how we’ve been playing, but we have been in a relegation scrap and it would have been a huge task for a more experienced and capable manager than ours to successfully implement a completely new playing style while winning a relegation fight with a very limited budget.
So, I think Morison has earned his contract extension. This time last year, Mick McCarthy was signing his two year contract with me hoping he would make the changes needed to make us into a more watchable team during his first summer in charge, but never really believing deep down that he would.
In the event, McCarthy made us even harder on the eye, but I’m more hopeful that Steve Morison will change things for the better on the entertainment front.
I say that for a few reasons. First, it is very likely that there is going to be a very high turnover of playing staff this summer with so many senior players out of contract – he’ll need Boardroom backing, but the opportunity is there for Morison to implement a complete revamp if he is so minded. Second, while they were also very content to let the opposition have the ball, Morison’s under 23 side played far more watchable brand of football when they had the ball than the senior team does. Third, although results were mixed and the twin bugbears of not being able to keep a clean sheet or win at home continued, I thought there was an attempt to play more football when Morison first took over the senior team.
I suppose the fact that we’re still signing a player like Ikpeazu is suggestive of things not changing too much, but looking at the largely deserted stands last night, the announced crowd (just over 18,000) once again bore little resemblance to the numbers actually there. It seems a number of season ticket holders are not making it to home games despite the upturn in results and it’s reasonable enough to at least ask the question as to whether this is because they don’t feel they’re being entertained enough?