Maybe people, myself included, got a bit too carried away by Wednesday’s big win over Peterborough. It was a dismal fiftieth birthday for Posh manager Darren Ferguson who was scathing in his assessment of his team after the game as he complained that they could have been four or five down after just twenty minutes.
Usually when a professional league game finishes 4-0, it’s down to a combination of a good day for one of the sides and a well below par one for the other – undoubtedly, we were good on Wednesday and this shouldn’t just be dismissed now that we have lost today, by 2-1 at Millwall, as us just cashing in on dreadful opponents, but, perhaps, the balance between good day for us and bad day for Peterborough was being weighted too much in our favour on Thursday?
Today was just like every game we’ve played at Millwall for the last decade or so, tight, very competitive and no great spectacle. Usually, these games end up as a draw and, certainly, there was little between the sides today, but I thought Millwall just about edged it and were probably deserving winners.
In saying that, I think the outcome would have been different if we had been given a penalty just after half time for a clear hand ball by a defender (think it was Murray Wallace) of a shot by Tommy Doyle from twenty five yards. There was an outstretched arm which definitely made contact with the ball and the only bone of contention for referee Steve Martin, who I thought had a decent game otherwise, should have been whether the offence took place inside or outside the area. For me, the replays showed that ball hit hand inside the area, but the official merely gave a corner, so we still await our first penalty of the season and you really do wonder if we’re ever going to get one.
Steve Morison was of the view that it was a game too far physically for the team after a run of five matches in less than a fortnight and I would agree that some of our more creative and athletic players looked jaded this afternoon.
This raises a couple of questions for me though. First, when you consider that there were eight changes made after the Liverpool game, not too many of today’s team have started
all five games – in fact, off the top of my head, I think only Perry Ng has done, so should we really have been as tired as our manager said we were? My view is that it is probably hard to get a boost in fitness and stamina levels through training work at this stage of a season – the die has been cast to a large extent because the time to do that sort of work is in pre and early season.
City have been trying to press the opposition more in recent matches and, with this not being typical of how we’ve played for most of the time since August, I think it is possible that you can go to that well too often and find that the fitness and stamina levels are “dry”.
The second question this begs is should this have been catered for to some extent by a bit of squad rotation for today’s game? With the benefit of hindsight, the answer is probably yes, but is our squad good and deep enough for that to have been done? I don’t think so and, anyway, what would the reaction have been if Steve Morison had made wholesale changes to the side that many supporters were saying put together the best Cardiff City Stadium performance in ages?
Morison made just the one change, swapping Mark Harris for Isaak Davies up front and, apparently, there was a late change on the bench when Rubin Colwill was replaced by Eli King, presumably because of something that happened in the pre training routines.
City could have definitely done with Colwill to supply some creativity from the bench because players like Doyle, Ralls, Drameh and Harris were subdued and it was not Uche Ikpeazu’s day when he came on for Jordan Hugill for the last twenty minutes or so.
All of the scoring came after the seventy third minute, before that there’d been a quiet and, frankly, dull first half where the only goal attempts worthy of the name were a shot from Oliver Burke after he’d been put through by a neat pass from ex City man Scott Malone and a well struck twenty five yarder by Ralls that home goalkeeper Bartosz Bialkowski decided to punch out despite it being hit straight at him.
City started the second half the brighter of the teams. Besides the penalty that wasn’t, Aden Flint and Hugill had good chances from corners, the former somehow missed a delivery from Doyle (who was erratic with his set piece work today) that looked to be homing in on his head, instead the ball flew past our centre half and was scrambled behind for a corner. Hugill’s opportunity was quite like the chance he headed over from point blank range on Wednesday, but this time he was unable to get sufficiently above the ball to direct his header downwards -if he could have done that, he surely would have scored.
Davies, brought on for Harris after fifty five minutes again made an impact as he was cleverly played into space by Hugill before taking his shot early to force a good save out of Bialkowski with Hugill just unable to reach the ball after the keeper had knocked it out.
City had little to offer as an attacking force after that though until their goal in added time which proved no more than a consolation.
It was the home side who came on the stronger after that with Jed Wallace shooting just wide and Smithies doing well to foil Burke again a rare error by Ryan Wintle, who I thought was one of our best players.
Even though there was not a great deal to get you excited in the first three quarters of the match, City we’re showing the defensive discipline and shape that had been apparent in the bore fest that was Barnsley 0 Cardiff 1. Smithies was looking a confident and capable goalkeeper again, Flint was dominant in the air and untroubled on the deck, MCGuinness the same and Ng was given us poise and an ability to play out from the back.
Outside them, Drameh, while nowhere near the attacking force he was in Wednesday, was comfortable in his defending while Joel Bagan was my City man of the match, with Wintle, sweeping up in front of the back three, not far behind him.
For so long it had looked like a game which was going to be settled by a single goal, but there had been little reason to believe Millwall would be the side to get the all important first goal until City reverted to what has been their normal defensive mode this season by handing a gift wrapped lead to the home team.
Often you can point the finger at one culprit for a wretched goal conceded, but this one was a team effort started by Smithies who came to collect what should have been a simple catch and ended up giving a very cheap corner. It was the sort of thing that often has me muttering that’s going to cost us – usually it doesn’t, but this time the Wallace’s combined as Jed’s cross was headed in by an unmarked Murray, worse than that though it was a diving header to meet a corner that City had allowed to bounce without anyone getting a clearing touch on the ball.
The second goal nine minutes later was equally sloppy as McGuinness, Flint and Drameh were all culpable to varying degrees as a deflected cross fell to sub Mason Bennett who headed past a helpesss Smithies from point blank range.
Bagan raised hopes of one of those dramatic away day fight backs that we’ve seen on a few occasions this season when he volleyed home a Drameh cross from five yards for his first senior goal.
There was still time for an overhead kick by McGuinness that was easily held by Bialkowski which confirmed that we’d had more goal attempts and efforts on target than the home side, but a damning statistic was the thirty nine per cent possession figure.
I think increasingl, it’s becoming clear that you have to look at possession stats in context. For example, on Wednesday, it was lower than today, but clearly, that had something to do with us taking an early lead and being in control of the game and it was similar in the Forest game which we mostly bossed. Forest and Peterborough are both very much possession based sides as well, but Millwall aren’t – their manager Gary Rowett observed that it was unusual for them to have as much as sixty one per cent possession and, for me, this emphasises how poor our figure of thirty nine per cent was – the fact that, unlike against Forest and Peterborough, we were unable to do a great deal with our thirty odd per cent didn’t help matters either.
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