Paul Evans offers his thoughts as City are beaten at home for the second week running.
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My attitude during Cardiff City’s previous three matches when they had been beaten by increasingly large margins by members of the Premier League’s so called big six had always been to try and stay quite positive because we weren’t the only ones in the bottom fourteen who would be beaten by scores like 5-0 and 4-1 against the likes of Man City and Chelsea – in fact, other top six teams may be when they get to face them as well.
The time to make judgments on our survival chances was when we faced the sides outside of the top six, particularly at home, who, without doubt, will contain the three sides needed to finish below us if we are to survive.
Burnley at home, particularly given their poor start to the season, was exactly the sort of game we need to be winning if we are to avoid a relegation which it now seems everyone who isn’t a Cardiff City supporter (and quite a few who are!) is telling us is inevitable.
Some say that football stats are irrelevant, but I disagree – there are some from yesterday’s match which show, with stark clarity, just what the outcome should have been.
When the efforts on goal figures for a game show team A having nineteen attempts (five on target) against team B’s three (two on target), then there is a natural assumption that it would be team A which has come out on top. That’s what happened yesterday – Cardiff were team A and Burnley team B and yet it was the Lancashire side which scored from both of their on target efforts to come away with a 2-1 win.
It wasn’t just in terms of goal attempts that Cardiff had the better of things. They spent more time on the front foot than in any of their previous games this season and were generally more dynamic and pacey than their opponents – they were the better team in so many ways and yet, while I had sympathy with the side to some extent because it certainly wasn’t a game they deserved to lose, it was tempered to a degree by a definite feeling that they had brought on their defeat themselves.
Both of the goals conceded were shockers from our point of view and I couldn’t help but think as I left the ground that there was no way Burnley would have let in such simple goals.
To start with Sam Vokes’ winner first, perhaps Burnley would have been as wide open as we were if they had been a goal down and chasing the game, but at 1-1? There is no way that would have happened.
I have a tinge of sympathy with City for the concession of this goal mind because there was a definite feeling within the ground that the team could go on to win the game and the support they were getting was reflecting that – the team were responding and it was understandable in some ways that thinking seemed wholly attuned to attack, not defence, but it was only 1-1 at the time and yet we were playing as if it was 1-2.
As mentioned before, Burnley would not have reacted like we did in such a position, neither would virtually every other side in this division. It needed some cool heads in an atmosphere where it was easy to lose that ability to look at the match situation coldly and we didn’t have them – a harsh criticism maybe, but a realistic one I believe given the competition we are now in.
So, the winning goal could be forgiven by someone of a very generous disposition I suppose, but, for me at least, there was no excuse whatsoever for the first one.
Late in the game, Burnley’s right back Matthew Lowton blasted a clearance high up into the Grandstand from about fifteen yards from the touchline. It looked clumsy and amateurish in some ways, but he was just doing one of the basics of defending – he was buying his side time to get themselves organised for the defensive task to come while the ball was being retrieved from crowd.
Lowton was showing that although “sticking the ball in Row Z” evokes thoughts of matches played many levels below yesterday’s, there is still a place for such play on the grandest of stages as well.
No doubt, Greg Cunningham would have done the same around the fifty minute mark if he had been able to as well, but he had been forced to come across into the middle of the pitch as, not for the first time in the fledgling second half (Sean Morrison could easily have conceded a penalty moments earlier when he grabbed at Vokes as the centre forward got clear of him while chasing a long ball over the top), City offered Burnley hope by getting caught square by a fairly simple pass.
The reason why Cunningham had to react to danger was that a Morrison long throw down the line from inside his own half had not been competed for well enough by City and so a Burnley player was allowed to simply knock a pass into the central area which City’s skipper had vacated. Why this gap was not filled by someone else while Morrison was out of position is a mystery, but Matej Vydra’s pace allowed a position whereby City had the ball in a deal ball situation to develop into a threat on their goal within a couple of seconds.
City’s left back clearly expected his keeper Neil Etheridge to be better positioned to deal with the situation and with him having to slide across to intercept, his clearance to touch was never going to have the strength that Lowton’s did. Consequently, there wasn’t that few seconds to reorganise while the ball was being retrieved and so the last thing a defence should do in such circumstances is switch off for a while. However, that was precisely what City did as they were, hopelessly, caught out by a routine quick throw in as Ashley Westwood was given plenty of time to cross to the far post.
With all of this taking place on City’s right hand side, first thoughts as to culpability are probably directed at Bruno Manga, once again playing at right back to allow for the return of Sol Bamba, as a “reward” for a generally good display in his favoured central defensive position against Man City, but where was the support he was entitled to expect from team mates?
Victor Camarasa, playing on the right of our midfield, was still trying to get back when the throw in was taken and so was of little use defensively, but it was Joe Ralls, who was caught flat footed by Westwood’s run into space, who could be accused of switching off the most as he never got near his midfield rival once the throw in had been taken.
Even then, the goal could still have been prevented. Cunningham is a couple of inches taller than Jóhann Berg Guðmundsson, but the Icelander was allowed to tower above him to get in his scoring header which, while delivered from very close range, may have been dealt with a little better by Etheridge as he was beaten at his near post.
So, there you have it, an absolute catalogue of errors from City which allowed the visitors to score the opening goal from their first serious attack in a match which they had been second best in up to then.
While there had been some pretty good build up play involved in the second one, I wouldn’t say there was anything Premier Leagueish involved in either of Burnley’s goals. My belief is that City would have dealt with such threats last season had they been posed in the Championship when we were confident and resolute in our defending. However, what was the strongest part of our game is coming apart at the seams now and, at a time when concentration and getting the basics right are absolutely paramount, it’s just not happening.
With our back four as disorganised as it is currently, simple balls over the top are causing us problems and there were one or two more instances of last ditch defending from us, but, essentially, that was it as far as Burnley were concerned as an attacking threat on an afternoon where they were concerned far more with defending than they were with going forward.
Credit to the visitors, they mostly did that defending well as City played into their hands somewhat by overdoing the aerial bombardment stuff. You never know, some sides in this league may buckle under such as assault, but Burnley, the team held up as the example to follow for a side like, were never likely to be one of them.
If City have to persist with the long throw in every time they get one within thirty yards of the opposition goal, doesn’t it make more sense to have Morrison, their main aerial threat, in the middle contesting for them when you have someone like Callum Paterson on the pitch for the whole ninety minutes to take them?
Instead Morrison was left hurling them in all game and, on an afternoon when City were caught out by their use of him taking long defensive throws, it was noticeable how often Burnley clearances found their way back out to him so he was stuck out on the touchline expected to perform a winger role which he was completely unsuited for – Burnley were allowed to launch one of their intermittent dangerous breaks after robbing Morrison out on City’s left hand touchline.
I thought it was very significant that City’s goal of the season so far (okay, I know the competition for that award isn’t great!) came when they kept the ball on the deck as Camarasa and Manga combined effectively down the right. The latter has, rightly, been criticised for his inability to deliver quality crosses when playing as a full back, but he got it just right this time as he picked out Josh Murphy with a low ball in which the winger finished conclusively from around the penalty spot.
Joe Hart was given the Man of the Match award by the television pundits and the two saves which I feel were mostly responsible for that came from a stabbed Kenneth Zohore effort which he turned aside on his near post in the first half and a tip over of a Murphy shot from twenty yards which was the closest City came to a second goal (the winger also hit the post in the first half) – once again, these three efforts came when a more thoughtful approach than route one was used.
Murphy may do a lot of those winger type things which can be frustrating, but, once again he was our liveliest attacker and I’d say he was the player who most inconvenienced the Burnley defence. As for Zohore, he and Murphy were brought in for Danny Ward and Bobby Decordova-Reid, I thought he did slightly better than in his other Premier League games this season, but, once again, it was not enough from the target man.
Zohore’s rivals for the attack leader spot both got a run out as subs, with Danny Ward again doing his cause no harm by looking more lively than his two rivals. Gary Madine can, rightly, argue that he needs more time than the quarter of an hour he was given to make an impression, but, I still have to say that I’ve not seen anything from him yet to remotely suggest he can influence a game at this level.
Ward and Madine were the only subs used by City on an afternoon when I think it was the more nippy players which caused Burnley most problems, so it was disappointing not to see Decordova-Reid introduced, but, in truth, football is, yet again, proving me wrong in that it’s things I was taking for granted that are providing the biggest problems for us.
My attitude at the start of the season was that, although there were a few concerns at right back, our belief, nous and organisation defensively would stand us in good stead, but yesterday it was defensive naivety, indiscipline and inadequacies which cost us – what looked to be our greatest asset is, instead, our biggest problem currently.
Also, I wasn’t able to get to Saturday’s Under 18 game at Leckwith on Saturday when Craig Bellamy’s team returned to winning ways with a 3-2 win over Watford. Isaak Davies scored twice and Trystan Jones got the other one in a match which was goalless going into it’s last twenty minutes. The win wasn’t enough to keep City at the top of the table though because Ipswich’s goal difference of plus ten is one better than ours and City’s chances of changing that situation cannot be helped now by a weird fixture list which sees them play away from home in five consecutive matches until they return to play in Cardiff next on December 1!
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