Okay, referee James Linington was, like so many of his EFL colleagues, crap, but Cardiff City we’re not good enough on Saturday when the officials were offered up as an excuse for defeat and they weren’t good enough tonight in losing 3-0 at QPR in a totally one sided encounter.
True, City had to play for more than seventy minutes with ten men as a consequence of more woeful officiating. However, the eighteen or so minutes when it was eleven against eleven saw City performing as poorly as at any time this season with the possible exception of the League Cup loss to Portsmouth.
The match was not much more than fifteen seconds old when Perry Ng, under no great pressure, carelessly miscontrolled a throw in and ended up having to give away a free kick on the edge of the penalty area. Ng became one of six Cardiff players to be shown a card by the fussy Mr Linington and his team were able to survive that early scare with no damage done.
In fact, for a very short while, it looked like City had recovered well from their sloppy start as Neils Nkounkou flashed a twenty five yard shot narrowly over and Ryan Wintle was not far away with an effort from a similar distance a few minutes later.
However, all that had happened was that City had condensed the sum total of their worthwhile attacking play into the opening ten minutes because there was nothing after that Wintle effort worth recording. The team which specialises in nil’s is really back on track after scoring in three successive games with a total of no goals and one effort on target in their last two games.
That on target figure should be two of course, but Bobby Madley ensured that it isn’t.The refereeing howler this time came at the other end of the pitch with a dubious penalty award and a ridiculous red card which I’ll come to later, but you couldn’t blame tonight’s ref for the panicky and error prone defending in those first twenty minutes or so.
QPR could easily have scored three during that time against a City side that, despite looking the same sort of soft touch as they were at Bristol City, Millwall and Huddersfield, were picking up cards at an alarming rate.
Jack Simpson was shown a red one for a foul which led to the penalty from which Rangers went ahead on eighteen minutes. Young forward Sinclair Armstrong burst between Cedric Kipre and Simpson and fell to the ground as the latter moved across to put in a tackle. There was some contact, but only from Simpson’s arm as far as I could see and it did not appear to be forceful enough to merit the sort of fall we saw from Armstrong.
However, I thought there was enough in it to merit an “I’ve seen them given” possible penalty ranking and so, although it looked soft to me, I wasn’t altogether surprised to see the spot kick. awarded.
Once I’d seen a replay though, I was convinced that the referee had got the red card decision wrong. I’d also say that I thought the laws of the game had been changed recently so that there is not the “double jeopardy” of a red card and the likely concession of a goal these days – the penalty is considered sufficient punishment with only a possible yellow card for the offender.
This was definitely yellow card territory at worst for me under the new interpretation I mentioned earlier. As Lyndon Dykes placed his penalty well enough to just beat Ryan Allsop’s dive to his right though,plans were already being made in the City dug out as to how we could go about trying to make up for Simpson’s absence.
As happens so often when a team goes down to ten men following the dismissal of a defender, Mark Hudson opted to shore up an under manned defence with the introduction of Curtis Nelson – Romaine Sawyers made way for him. I would have taken Sheyi Ojo off myself because we needed to keep it three against three in midfield as we were struggling to cope when there were equal numbers in the middle of the park before the sending off.
Instead, we went with two against a good Rangers midfield trio and, in doing so, we consigned ourselves to an evening of very little possession and keeping our defensive shape as damage limitation became the order of the day.
It could be said that the match was over as a meaningful contest once Dykes scored his second in the thirty third minute with a simple close range finish as Manchester United loanee Ethan Laird featured prominently down the right. Laird won his attack v defence dual with Nkounkou who was his usual mixture of defensive liability and exciting ball carrier.
N’Kounkou’s best attacking moment in the first half was when he went on a long run past four or five opponents and slipped a good ball through to Ojo I think it was. It looked a promising situation for City, but Linington brought play back to award us a worthless free kick and issue a yellow card to the QPR offender. This was one of sixteen fouls committed by the home side compared to our eleven and yet Mr Linington saw fit to give us five yellow cards and one red one compared to the home side’s two yellows.
There’s not much I want to say about the rest of the game. All City had to offer through the second half was dogged defence and they did this to pretty good effect (certainly better than they did while it was eleven v eleven).
Rangers scored once more when Ken Paal guided a header from beyond the far post over Allsop and into the corner of the net. I thought there was a slight element of luck to it, but, truthfully, it seemed to me that Rangers could have scored five or six if they’d wanted to.
Away from the first team, there were a couple of 1-0 wins over the past few days. The first came when the women’s team beat Aberystwyth Town 1-0 thanks to a first half goal by Rhianne Oakley, thereby maintaining their 100 per cent record at the top of the table. The Under 21s were 1-0 winners at Watford thanks to Raheem Conte’s late goal and they are now third in their league after three consecutive wins – although, just as with the other two, it was hardly the most convincing of performances. Still, what would the first team and their caretaker manager give for an unconvincing 1-0 win at the moment?
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