Well, considering our home record this season, I suppose if our run of three straight wins (with clean sheets in the last two of them) at Cardiff City Stadium had to end, then a 1-1 draw in a game that improved as it went along wasn’t a bad way for it to happen.
Early on, the game had a script straight out of the Cardiff City first half of the season playbook as opponents Blackpool went ahead inside the first quarter of an hour and we spent the rest of the first half huffing and puffing ineffectively in search of an equaliser. Only against Huddersfield did we manage to recover from going a goal behind during our horror run of home form – every other time we were beaten and could have few complaints about it either.
So, I think you can say that it’s a sign of progress made that we were able to come out of the game with a point – I’m fairly sure we wouldn’t have done a month or so ago.
When I learned that the early trains from Treherbert had been cancelled today in the wake of Storm Eunice yesterday and I couldn’t get confirmation that they would be running later on, I decided I wouldn’t bother going and so watched the stream of the game on the club website. In the event, it turned out that I could have got to the game, but then in the last few minutes one of the commentators said there had just been a message displayed on the scoreboard saying that all Valley Line trains had been cancelled for the rest of the day (presumably because of winds that were not a patch on yesterday’s, but were still much stronger than usual?). I’m sure alternate transport has been laid on to cover for this, but when someone living at the top of one of the affected valleys would get home is anyone’s guess, so my sympathy goes out to anyone who used Valley Line trains to get to today’s game and then saw that message.
Anyway, back to the commentators, I was grateful to them for their information on how Blackpool would set up as they explained that they used a pressing 4-4-2 formation with two deep sitting central midfielders.
It’s incredible how the game has changed in recent years, time was it seemed everyone played 4-4-2, but now it is very much the exception – indeed, you wonder how much a Blackpool side that was put together on one of the smallest budgets in the Championship owe what looks pretty certain to be a comfortable first season back at this level following their promotion in the Play Offs to the system they play?
I mentioned in the preamble to the seven decades quiz for this game that Blackpool have drawn at Fulham and Bournemouth and won at Middlesbrough and Sheffield United, so many of the division’s better sides have found them awkward customers in home games and today City we’re clueless in an attacking sense against them during the first forty five minutes – there seemed to be no space on the pitch and on the rare occasions that a City player in possession found some, he was closed down quickly by very effective Blackpool pressing. Watching how powerless we seemed at times, I found myself wondering if the modern player has forgotten how to cope with 4-4 f*cking 2!
In City’s defence, they had played in midweek and Blackpool had not, so this may have explained both why Blackpool were more energetic and why we were caught on the back foot so much.
In addition, the wind that had, seemingly, stopped the trains was a factor – I’d agreed with Steve Morison in his pre game press conference when he said the enclosed nature of Cardiff City Stadium meant that wind doesn’t usually have a big influence on matches played there.
I’ve gone to a few matches at what I still call our new ground expecting the strong wind outside to have an effect in the ground only to find that it all looked pretty normal when the game started, but you only had to see how both goalkeepers were forced to turn over crosses that caught on the wind early on to see that this was not the case this time.
Maybe City players were being caught in possession so much because the ball seemed to take so long to settle and with a team that, still, perhaps has below average technique and passing ability for this level, those little defects became magnified in such conditions.
By and large, Blackpool did not have the problems with the conditions that City did early on. For example, there was a lovely bit of skill by debutante winger Charlie Kirk which provided the assist for their eleventh minute goal as he produced a side foot half volleyed cross, which made it look as if the conditions were as flat as a mill pond, in after a free kick had been half cleared for the scorer to head home from eight yards.
The “look” of the goal had me convinced that Gary Madine had scored on his return to Cardiff for a second or two, but the fact the scorer was black was a fairly obvious give away that it was not the man who never found the net for us in his two years at the club!
Madine had what was probably Blackpool’s best first.half chance to go two up, but he made a mess of another good cross from the left, this time to the far post rather than the centre of the goal, a few minutes after his team had gone ahead. This epitomised what was a quiet day for the ex City man, something that I was not really surprised at considering that he was up against a pair of centrebacks with a combined height of around thirteen foot in McGuinness Flint.
The scorer was Blackpool’s impressive centreback and captain Marvin Ekpitata – on this evidence, Ekpitata, who I would say won his duel with Jordan Hugill, fully justified the opinion of the commentator when he said that he was a player we should look to sign – his contract runs out in the summer, but I think that, on this form, better clubs than us will be in for him.
Ekpitata and co saw the game out for the first half, but credit to Steve Morison, whatever he said at half time worked for the third quarter of the game at least. City were out of the traps quickly after the break and were level on four minutes as the increasingly influential Cody Drameh got to the bye line and sent over a fine low cross which was met by City’s replacement for Keiffer Moore from six yards out to level the scores.
Seeing one wing back provide the assist for the other one to score is so satisfying as it proves that we’re making progress in the procedure whereby we move away from the route one stuff that I think we can say with certainty a majority of City fans are glad to see the back of.
When Joel Bagan scored he held up three fingers in celebration of his third goal in three games – this was more of a Millwall style finish compared to Tuesday’s fine effort against Coventry, but it was another indicator of the confidence of a player who came through his worst forty five minutes since his recall to the side to return to the form we’ve become used to in the last few weeks in the second period.
Incredibly, the man who can’t stop scoring was soon presented with an opportunity to net his fourth goal in. a week when a cross from the right found him unmarked about fifteen yards out, but this time he opted for a left, wrong, footed effort and sent his shot high and wide – it was not a thing of beauty from a player who tends to make the game look easy when in possession.
That was probably as good an opportunity to put us in front as we had, but we were on top now and I really felt a winner was coming. Instead though, that was the signal for a resilient Blackpool to up their game somewhat and when their winger Josh Bowler went down in the penalty area under challenge from a combination of McGuinness and Wintle, I feared the worst as referee Darren Bond immediately blew his whistle, but it was to award City a free kick and show a yellow card to Bowler for diving. Replays showed that the Blackpool player went down pretty easily, but I would have had few complaints if the decision had gone against us.
Maybe it was the conditions, but the referee seemed determined to let a lot of things go and Isaak Davies, who looked sharp and a danger when we could feed him in the right areas, in particular suffered from the interpretations of an official who was erratic for both sides.
The introduction of Uche Ikpeazu for Hugill livened up the crowd and the big loanee won his share of free kicks, but that apart, this time he offered little more than brute force and a series of wrong options as, perhaps, affected by the crowd reaction to him, he often ignored better placed colleagues and once almost appeared to tackle Drameh when the wing back was in a position similar to where he had provided the cross for the goal.
Unfortunately, the main contribution made by the other sub Mark Harris, who replaced Davies, was to block a close range Flint header from Tommy Doyle’s best dead ball delivery of the game by a distance – looking at the replay, it seemed that Blackpool keeper Daniel Grimshaw would have been able to keep out Flint’s effort, but it’s impossible to tell for sure.
So, the game ended 1-1, an outcome which seemed right to me. Steve Morison was again correct in my opinion that wind is the weather condition that disrupts a match most and his side did not come to terms with it in the first forty minutes or their opponents unusual system.
Even though a run of thirteen points out of a possible eighteen speaks for itself, a feature of too many of our recent matches has been a return to our insipid first half form of the first three or four months of this season. It looks like a weakness on the part of the newish managerial and coaching line up that we start games in the wrong manner, but a strength that they often are able to put things right during the half time interval – that was the case today as we now move on to games against an in form Huddersfield side who won at leaders Fulham this lunchtime and then try to keep our unbeaten home run going when we face the Londoners in a week’s time.