Any drawn game will attract some debate as to whether it should be judged as one point gained or two dropped by your team and today’s 1-1 draw for Cardiff City at home to Coventry was, for me, one of the harder ones to make that judgement on.
It was a real game of two halves as City carried on their good work from Watford and then a bit more by producing possibly their best forty five minutes in a home match this season – they were definitely worth more than the single goal lead they gained early on and a dozy and careless Coventry side were booed off by some among their support at the half time whistle.
However, within a minute of the restart, City had conceded a thoroughly avoidable and unlucky equaliser and then, within another minute, they were down to ten men as top scorer Callum Robinson was shown a straight red card by replacement referee James Durkin (any relation to Paul, who I remember as a good ref?).
That mad minute or so turned the game on it’s head and, hardly surprisingly, it became almost like a game of attack v defence after that with play heading almost exclusively towards the City goal apart from a period of about a minute when they had one very good chance and another reasonable one to win it.
There’s no doubt Coventry will be unhappy that they did not cash in on almost a full half of having an extra man. Certainly, a win for the visitors looked inevitable during the third quarter of the game, but they rather ran out of ideas after that although Jak Alnwick still had some saves to make before confirmation of City’s point which at least halts a run of four straight losses on their own ground.
However, with Oxford winning for the third straight game at Millwall and Portsmouth continuing their run of high scoring wins at Fratton Park by by thumping Play Off bound Swansea (at least that’s what a lot in the media have been telling us lately), the teams we’re supposed to finishing above if we are to survive are racking up the wins at home and we aren’t.
Mention of Portsmouth reminds me that Coventry were beaten 4-1 there in their last away match and, on today’s evidence, you can see why. If City could have scored the second goal that they should have done when they were on top, then I could have seen them going on to match the sort of score Pompey did, but our season long affliction of wrong options taken, faulty technique when they get to see the whites of the opposition keeper’s eyes and a failure to use better placed team mates all conspired to keep the score at 1-0 prompting fears that we were not cashing in on our domination.
It’s so rare to see us score early on at home and I’ve often heard supporters say that if we could do it, the whole atmosphere at the ground would be different. Those people were proved about eighty per cent right I’d say, as we took a lot of confidence from the win on Sunday and there seems to be belief in the new system where pairing Callum Chambers and Manolis Siopis as a double pivot in front of a back four seems to have brought about an improvement in both players form.
An unchanged City side scored from their first serious attack in the sixth minute. However, the move originated from the sort of sloppy mistake we saw so much of in the first half from Coventry as Josh Eccles got a cross field pass completely wrong. Callum O’Dowda then counter attacked, burst past a defender down the left and put over a fine, deep cross which Cian Ashford headed back across goal to Alex Robertson who scored easily from six yards.
City have definitely been pressing more effectively in their last two matches and it looked at times as if the visitors didnt fancy it much as they made a habit of presenting the ball to us in our attacking third.
Robinson had the ball in the net again when he turned in O’Dowda’s shot but it was correctly ruled out for offside and attention turned to the officials as referee Geoff Eltringham was forced off with an injury and assistant referee Durkin took over.
City’s task got harder with that change as the replacement ref was not even handed in his decision making or interpretations of the laws. Before coming on to the decision which will be talked about the most, I think we should have had a penalty when Chris Willock was pushed by Joel Latibeaudiere – if Coventry’s late penalty in the first game between the teams was legitimate, then I don’t get why this one wasn’t.
Eltringhsm hsd allowed Coventry left back Jake Bidwell to get away with two fouls on Ashford in the opening minutes and when he did it a third time in the second half, it was as if Durkin had decided the first two didn’t count as he wasn’t in charge then.
If I do moan about refs more on here these days, inconsistency in their decision making is a big reason for it – Coventry didn’t have a player booked, yet Alnwick and Andy Rinomhota saw yellow for offences which were petty compared to Bidwell’s persistent fouling. Apparently, Durkin had never taken charge of a game at this level before and it showed.
Despite the eccentric refereeing, the chances mounted up for City, but Coventry had their moments as Alnwick saved well from Eccles and Jack Rudoni flashed a dangerous ball across the face of goal.
Up the other end, Siopis continues to suggest a very rare goal might be coming as his shot from the edge of the area was foiled by one of a number of good Coventry blocks. However, Willock, Ashford and Robinson were all guilty of wasting very promising positions at times with a combination of the faults in front of goal I mentioned earlier.
Having looked to be on their way to a second straight win at half time though, it was incredible how it took just a couple of minutes to turn an anticipated three points into almost very probable none.
As mentioned earlier, the first blow was self inflicted as a hopeful ball hooked forward as much to prevent a throw in as anything turned into a defence splitting pass when Jesper Daland misjudged the bounce and, for the second successive home game, was outmuscled by the opposing centre forward.
Ellis Simms had done little in the first half as what has been a frustrating second season with the Sky Blues for him continued and his lack of confidence showed as Alnwick was able to save his close range shot, but the ball then bounced off the keeper onto Daland and into the path of Tatsihiro Sakamoto who was left with an open goal.
The frustrating thing was that I thought Daland had a decent game overall, but the brutal truth is that you could make a case for saying he’s been culpable for the last three goals we’ve conceded at home and we simply cannot afford that in our present position.
The game had barely restarted when Robinson raised his arm in what seemed a half hearted fashion to me towards Coventry centreback Bobby Thomas’s head and Durkin immediately produced a red card. It was a decision which had me wondering what the ref considers as a yellow card elbowing offence because this was less deserving of a violent conduct verdict than most yellow card elbowing offences I’ve seen.
If it was an intentional action by Robinson, it was, as mentioned earlier, all very half hearted – having seen the incident a few times now on video, there is contact, but it’s all very mild and accidental looking – Omer Riza said after the game he wants to appeal against the decision in a bid to get the resultant three game ban overturned and I think the club should do that as it seems to me that this was the sort of decision that the appeals procedure was set up for.
City were spirited and whole hearted in their defending after that and gradually belief grew that they could hang on to their point. That belief would have been boosted by confirmation that they could still create chances for themselves as attacking subs Ollie Tanner and Yakou Meite combined to leave the former clean through on goal. I thought Tanner should have taken another touch before shooting, but he decided to hit it early and keeper Oliver Dovin did well to turn the ball around the post.
Within seconds though, the keeper had given up on Meite’s well struck shot from the edge of the penalty area, but the ball flashed less than a yard wide.
So, City drop back to twenty third, but, unlike when they did it after the Oxford game, I’d say the last two matches have increased belief that we can stay up, but we really could do with signing someone with ice in their veins when we have opened up the opposing defence.
Nevertheless, to answer the question I posed at the start, I’d just about rate this as a point gained and I I’d say it’s one we wouldn’t have got through all of our season apart from October.