I dare say an interim/caretaker manager has won a Manager of the Month award before, but I can’t think of one at the moment. I tell you what though, if Cardiff City were to win or draw against West Brom at the Hawthorns on Saturday, Omer Riza would be right in the running for the October prize.
Maybe a 2-0 home win against a team that drops to the bottom of the table tonight doesn’t really look anything to get carried away with. However, City’s victory over a Portsmouth team that has competed well with many of the teams at the top of the league in the early part of the season was, in some ways, as comprehensive as the 5-0 win over Plymouth on Saturday.
Both of the goals came in the first thirteen minutes and there were actually more Cardiff goal attempts tonight than on Saturday (twenty six to twenty five) with the Portsmouth keepers (they had two of them) required to save nine of them. On Saturday, City had an amazing forty three touches of the ball in the opposition penalty area, tonight’s thirty two may suffer by comparison, but it’s still very high by the standards of last season and the first few games of this campaign.
The last twenty odd minutes saw City have to do quite a bit of defending as Pompey mounted attacks knowing that, if they could score one, the atmosphere would change markedly, City were showing signs of tiredness and were having some sloppy moments, so it wasn’t the complete performance Saturday’s was and the replacement of Alex Robertson and David Turnbull with Manolis Siopis and Andy Rinomhota meant that City lost some of their earlier smoothness.
That’s not to say that Siopis and Rinomhota played poorly, but they’re different types of players – this wasn’t a Bristol type handing of the initiative to the opposition, the desire to attack was still there, but some of attacking edge had gone (tiredness on the part of other players had a lot to do with that as well).
So it was that Jak Alnwick had to make a couple of good second half saves to preserve his third straight clean sheet in home games as we’ve suddenly bucked the trend of the last four seasons with nine points and a goal difference of eight for and none against on our home pitch!
City could have been out of sight by the time Siopis and Rinomhota made their appearance and one of the reasons they weren’t was that substitute goalkeeper Jordan Archer made a string of saves to deny them – I’m not going to criticise us for wasteful finishing here because a shot ballooned over by Callum Robinson from a great position late in the first half apart, I can’t recall any examples of that failing.
The fact that we scored three more on Saturday explains why it was the forward players who got the plaudits in the main that day and although the likes of Rubin Colwill, Ollie Tanner, Robinson, Robertson and Turnbull all combined clever play with a great work ethic, I thought the real stars of the night were to be found in the back four – Dimi Goutas was excellent and had a hand in one of the goals, Callum Chambers was mostly untroubled and was able to show off his passing prowess at times, Perry Ng is back in form and had an assist of sorts for one of the goals, but man of the match for me was Callum O’Dowda who set an example right from the start by winning us a free kick in a dangerous position with less than a minute played – earlier in the season, I was remarking that the team looked unfit, but, they are anything but that now and O’Dowda epitomised that more than anyone as he gave a wing back performance while playing at left back in a back four.
City were unchanged in personnel as far as their starting line up went and it soon became clear that their attitude was unchanged as well. Just five minutes had been played when Tanner and Ng combined and the last named whipped over a fast low cross into the sort of area defenders dread. In truth, no City player was going to reach the ball, but it wasn’t a total surprise to see centreback Reagan Poole jab out a foot instinctively to divert the ball into his own net to make it an unhappy return to the club that released him from their Academy when he was sixteen.
City continued to swarm forward in a manner which made you wonder if the last four seasons of home struggles had really happened and they soon doubled their lead when Robertson’s corner was headed on by Goutas towards the far post where Robinson turned the ball home from about three yards out via the underside of the crossbar.
From that time on, City’s level of performance would have had to have drastically declined and Portsmouth’s dramatically improved to have avoided a feeling that the match was already over and although things headed a little in that direction in the game’s final quarter, it was still Cardiff who came much closer to a third goal than Portsmouth did to a first one throughout the remaining eighty odd minutes.
There were so many close misses by City it’s impossible to recall them all, but I do remember a fierce cross shot by Tanner.that flew no more than a foot wide, shots by Turnbull that drew saves from the overworked Archer, Anwar El Ghazi being foiled by an Archer save, Colwill’s close in jabbed effort being blocked by the keeper and right in the final seconds, another save to keep out a Goutas header.
As I mentioned at the start, Omer Riza is I’m sure a candidate for October manager of the month, but, more importantly, he has totally transformed the attitude of this team, there’s a confidence in possession and an effective press out of it that I’ve not seen from a City team in years. To give an example out of many, Rubin Colwill gave the ball away cheaply in the first half allowing Portsmouth to break dangerously – it was the sort of thing I reckon that gets managers against him and yet he then sprinted about fifty yards back to become the last man which allowed him to turn the ball back to Alnwick when it broke to him – that would have got his managerial critics to sit up and take notice.
I’ll finish on tonight’s match by commenting on how that very late header by Goutas came from a corner played into the penalty area with about ten seconds of the game left. Cardiff sides of the last fifteen years or so would have taken it short and kept the ball in the corner even though they were two up with so little time left, but not under Riza it seems, we wanted another goal – I really am enjoying Rizaball at the moment!
The Portsmouth win set the seal on the best four days of the season so far. I say that not just because of the two wins for the first team, but also because the under 21 team made it through to the Semi Finals of the Nathaniel MG Cup in which they compete with, for example, the men’s teams which play in the Welsh Premier with a thrilling 3-2 win over Cardiff Met at Leckwith last night.
The match was played in rainy, windy conditions not best suited for the type of game the youngsters are encouraged to play. I’ve heard it said that age group football is too “nice” with everyone playing in the fashionable play it out from the back style with the result that they don’t get to experience the game as it really is. Well, City had a brush with “real life” last night particularly in a second half in which Cardiff Met gave them a real physical test, by playing in a more direct manner than the youngsters were used to and it’s to their great credit that they came through by showing determination and a will to win.
Considering the conditions, City played some really nice stuff in a first half that I’d say they edged after being put on the back foot initially by a powerful first quarter of an hour or so from Met.
However, for all that City were impressing, there was little in the way of goalmouth action at either end – Isaac Jeffries forced a good save out of the Met keeper Lang and Matt Turner did well to turn over a close range volley, but the interval was reached with any sense of enjoyment coming from the contrast of styles between the sides more than any goalmouth thrills and spills.
The second period was different in many ways, first, it was Met who were taking some control and I’d say they had a right to feel that the eventual outcome was harsh on them, but for twenty minutes or so, City stood up to the pressure and the physical test they were getting well – the game was still a good watch, but the pattern of it being tight in terms of the lack of goalscoring opportunities largely continued.
That all changed once the first goal went in. Met had a free kick which was swung into the penalty area and as City struggled to clear, Thomas Vincent placed his shot from twelve yards across Turner and into the net.
I must admit I thought Met would go on to win quite easily after that, but, not a bit of it. With Ronan Kpakio again showing that he plays the modern inverted full back role more effectively than anyone else at the club, City quickly fashioned a quality goal to bring things level. Kpkaip operated at least as much as a midfielder as he did a full back, giving City an extra man in the middle of the park and he was instrumental in beginning a move that saw Michael Reindorf free Jeffries whose low cross was turned in from close range by Trey George.
There had been a feeling that defences were on top for the first hour or more, but that went out of the window in the closing stages as both sides went for what was generally thought to be a winning second goal.
Jeffries went on a slaloming run past three or four defenders to find himself bearing down on goal, but Lang was quickly off his line to deny him. Generally speaking however, it was still Met who were carrying the greater threat and, with ten minutes left, Eliot Evans put them ahead again with a precise finish from the edge of the penalty area.
After this, an injury delayed proceedings for a while, so although the clock said there were six minutes left when City came up with their second equaliser, in terms of playing time, there was barely a minute between the goals.
As to who scored the equaliser, I’m not too sure. What I do know is that Luey Giles created it with a great dipping cross that drew Lang off his line to try to collect. However, by the time the Keeper got to the ball, it was virtually at ground level, so Lang tried to punch clear only for it to hit someone and rebound into the net. At the time, I was sure Reindorf was the scorer, but I see the club website is saying it was an own goal by Met defender Michael Chubb – the lack of celebration from Reindorf would strongly suggest it was an own goal, but i have to say that it didn’t half look like the ball had struck him in the replays on the stream I was watching.
So, it was all square with four minutes of normal time left and huge credit has to go to the under 21s because, from then on, it was they who pressed forward for the winner as Met were hanging on pretty desperately as the match went into added time.
Captain Freddie Cook saw his header scrambled of the line as City forced a string of corners and sub Nyakuhwa was just about denied as a low cross seemed to be presenting him with a tap in from six yards only to be cleared at the last moment.
The winner came from the resultant corner with luck again playing a part in the goal as Nyakuhwa’s cross got a deflection which threatened to take the ball beyond Lang. The keeper was able to desperately scramble the ball out, but it was never cleared properly and it found it’s way eventually to Reindorf. If there had been a doubt about the other goal I had credited him with, there was no doubt at all about this one as he took a touch to work a bit more space and then shot fiercely into the top of the net from twenty yards to get a winner that was wildly celebrated by him and his team mates.
Just how much further they can go in this competition I don’t know because there are some strong Welsh Premier sides (including TNS) still in it, but the under 21s are currently topping their League Cup group and challenging strongly at the top of their league table.
They have a settled side which includes seven outfield players I believe with experience of playing for the first team and/or being in a first team squad and I feel the likes of Kpakio, Tom Davies (who has played centreback in recent games), Giles and Reindorf could play Championship football, in the short term at least, for City without looking out of place.