As it turned out, Watford did get their win but, for the third successive league match at Ninian Park, City could argue that they deserved a share of the spoils at least. The visitors had spent the first quarter of an hour on the back foot, but when Turnbull failed to deal adequately with a cross, Darius Henderson was able to bundle the ball home to give Watford an undeserved lead. The game continued along the same path though with most of the play headed towards the visiting goal where the experienced Mart Poom was becoming the latest opposing goalkeeper to defy City with some fine saves.
To get back in the game City had to do something that they hadn't managed so far and that was score a league goal at home and it was no more than they deserved when they finally did so after 61 minutes when Hasselbaink curled a fine shot in from twenty yards to record his first goal for the club. If City had been confident and winning home games, you would have backed them to go on and get all three points from here, but they had become so brittle on their own pitch that there was a sense of inevitability about Watford's winner with thirteen minutes left as City half cleared a ball that was then played back into the danger area where Henderson, looking suspiciously offside (television pictures later showed that this wasn't the case), scored easily.
City finished the game on the attack just as they had done for most of the ninety minutes, but ended up with nothing from a match that Watford manager Adie Boothroyd conceded that his side were lucky to win. The team were getting no luck on their own patch, but, to be honest, no home league wins in since March 10 and just one point and three goals in the seven matches played since then told it's own story - we were a soft touch at Ninian Park and we couldn't keep on relying on away results to keep us away from the danger zone.
A visit from a struggling Preston team with a 100% losing away record so far surely represented a great chance for City to finally get things right in front of their own fans in a game which kicked off at lunchtime to accommodate Sky television coverage. Joe Ledley (who had just signed a contract extension) had been an unused substitute for the Watford game, but he returned from his strange three match banishment to the bench to replace Chris Gunter with Trevor Sinclair switching to right back.
However, the really significant change for this match occurred in goal where Ross Turnbull was replaced by Michael Oakes. Turnbull had paid for a shaky run of form that had seen him blamed for at least two of the goals conceded by the team in their last three games, but, truth be told, he had never really convinced before that. Within a fortnight, he had returned to Middlesbrough, ostensibly to cover an injury to reserve keeper Brad Jones, but you got the feeling that City were not too bothered to see him go - Dave Jones' first attempt to replace Neil Alexander had failed and City supporters got used to the goalkeeping position becoming something resembling a revolving door as the season progressed!
A crowd of just 11,772 saw a low key start to a game which sprang to life when visiting keeper Lonergan made a superb save from a Ledley header, but, shortly afterwards, good work down the right by Sinclair enabled Ledley to knock in a lovely cross that just cried out to be headed in and Robbie Fowler obliged to record his first goal for the club.
That goal was enough to ensure a half time lead over opponents who had hardly posed a threat until then. However, an injury to Paul Parry saw a half time change to the team as Gunter replaced him with Sinclair moving back into midfield and perhaps City were still coming to terms with these alterations when Preston left back Aiden Davidson fired a low drive past Oakes after they had failed to deal with a cross into the penalty area. Preston were certainly in the game more than they had been in the first forty five minutes, but City restored their lead with half an hour to go when Fowler's clever movement enabled him to head in Ledley's corner.
Despite one or two scares along the way, it looked as if City had done enough to secure a long awaited home win as the match went into added time, but then a cleverly worked free kick routine by Preston ended with Davidson blasting a tremendous shot past Oakes to level things up. If that wasn't bad enough, Roger Johnson had seemingly picked up a serious injury as he tried to block Davidson's shot and had to be stretchered off. With Loovens and Purse still missing, this meant that City had to end the game with a central defensive pairing of McNaughton and Rae and the match almost ended in yet another defeat as Preston came very close to a winner as the game stretched into around eight minutes of added time caused mostly by the delay for Johnson's injury.
Given City's home form, it was tempting to take a thank God for small mercies attitude - we had not lost after all and we were at least now scoring goals at home, but, however you looked at it, dropping two points to an ordinary Preston team who only turned up in the second half was a poor result - City were now in seventeenth position and all of the optimism caused by the big name signings was fading fast.
Given the way the season was going, a run of three successive away matches was probably no bad thing and it was during these games that there was growing evidence that, after a slow start, the Fowler/Hasselbaink was beginning to deliver the goods. Three goals between them in the previous two matches had suggested that our high profile strikers were starting to make the impact that had been expected of them, but it was in the midweek League Cup tie at West Brom that they really began to suggest that they could become a partnership that would more than make up for the loss of Michael Chopra's goals.
Now, it needs to be said at the outset that City were facing what was very much a second string West Brom back four that night, but, even so, their devastating opening burst of four goals in the first thirty minutes against a team who had won all four of their home matches up until then without conceding a goal was still impressive stuff. Fowler got things under way in the third minute with a fine finish from twelve yards and Hasselbaink thundered a second past Kiely from outside the penalty box twenty minutes later. Joe Ledley was then brought down in the area to enable Fowler to show that he was still one pf the best penalty takers around and it was 3-0 after just twenty seven minutes.
City were playing some lovely pass and move football and while the makeshift nature of the home defence certainly helped their cause, the Albion side still contained five or six first team regulars. However, they were being absolutely ripped apart down their right hand side at times and another fluent passing movement ended with Trevor Sinclair firing in a fourth goal which proved too much for some baggies fans who decided they had seen enough and headed for the exits!
Those "supporters" probably missed Ishmael Miller's goal after thirty three minutes and after that the home side enjoyed a huge territorial advantage as City sat back on their laurels correctly thinking their job was done. That said though, there were times when City were grateful that Roger Johnson had made a miraculous recovery from what had looked like a very serious injury against Preston and that Glenn Loovens was back after a three game absence and, by the time Miller scored again, from the penalty spot after substitute Gunter had brought him down there was only three minutes left with no way back for the home team.
City were through to the Fourth Round of the League Cup for the second time in four seasons and this time the draw gave them their first game of any description with Liverpool in forty right years as they were drawn to play at Anfield on Halloween night.
City were at Oakwell next to face a Barnsley team that had been almost completely revamped by manager Simon Davey who, in complete contrast to Dave Jones, had largely looked to the foreign market for his new recruits. The early signs were that it had been a successful policy as well as Barnsley spent much of the first half of the season revelling in the title of "best team in Yorkshire" as they mounted an unlikely challenge for not just a play off, but an automatic promotion spot.
City played well up at Barnsley (later on Simon Davey said City were the best footballing side they had faced at Oakwell) and Dave Jones got into trouble later for comments about Premiership ref Phil Dowd's decision making as he saw a likely three points turned into just the one in the dying minutes. Despite generally having the better of things, it took City seventy two minutes to get the lead they deserved as Hasselbaink's header from Parry's cross squeezed past Muller the impressive home keeper, but they were never able to get the second goal that would kill Barnsley off and six minutes from time captain Brian Howard equalised with a fine header from a cross by Foster to rescue a point for his team.
City were still unbeaten away from home, but, before a ball was kicked back in August, you would have thought that they faced a huge challenge three days later when they faced pre season promotion favourites Sheffield United at Brammall Lane. United had spent big in the summer as they tried to regain the Premiership spot they had lost a few months earlier with James Beattie at £5 million being the most expensive signing made by a Championship team during the close season. However, the natives were restless at Brammall Lane because their team was struggling to overcome the self inflicted wound of appointing Bryan Robson as boss! Robson had spent his managerial career disproving the theory that great players turn into great managers and he was certainly adding to his less than impressive managerial CV at Sheffield United! Beattie was getting the goals expected of him, but £2.5 million co striker Billy Sharp would not score a league goal until March (Robson had long gone by then!). It was at the back however that United were really struggling with eleven goals conceded in their past five matches - they were to concede three more that night, but City still had to be content with just a point.
There was little in the opening exchanges to suggest the goal fest that was to come, and Beattie's goal after eighteen minutes with a close range header from a corner came out of the blue. It was a soft goal for City to let in and they were lucky not to concede again in similar fashion soon afterwards when Oakes made a mess of another corner. City had shown little or no threat going forward in the first half hour but must have taken great heart from the way the home defence buckled the first time they were put under pressure as Fowler crossed for Parry to head down to Ledley who scored from around the penalty spot.
Buoyed by the equaliser, City started to force the home side back and in added time in the first half, referee Andy D'urso awarded them a penalty when Roger Johnson was fouled by Chris Morgan. Fowler easily knocked in the spot kick and City went in at the break 2-1up. If City had been expecting an onslaught on their goal in the early stages of the second half, then it never materialised and on the hour mark they doubled their lead when Gavin Rae burst impressively into the penalty box to fire past Kenny.
With the home team feeling sorry for themselves as the crowd got on their back, that really should have been an end to the game, but there was a fragility to the City team at this stage of the season and in the last five minutes they slipped up again to allow the home team a share of the points that they didn't really deserve. Left back Chris Armstrong's low shot from twenty five yards that reduced the arrears was a good one, but you had to wonder whether he should have been closed down more quickly by a City side that was defending very deep and then in added time with the home side now being roared on by a crowd that had as good as given the game up a few minutes earlier centre back Chris Morgan headed in as City again conceded from a corner.
City had emerged from their run of three consecutive away matches unbeaten but it was hard to avoid the feeling that they had still underachieved. They were in fifteenth position with ten points from nine matches, but it could and should have been so much better. For example, although Ishmael Miller's meaningless late strike in the League Cup tie had no bearing on the outcome, City had conceded goals in the dying minutes in their last four games and the four goals they had shipped late on in their last three league games had seen them drop six points - if they had clung on to their leads in those three matches, they would have been level on points with West Brom in third place.
Dave Jones seemed to be of the opinion that City were not getting the results that their performances deserved and, by and large, the media tended to agree with him. Supporters tended to be more critical, but, at this time, I was tending to don my anorak and rely on stats to show that we weren't getting the rub of the green. I thought that the stats so far for efforts on goal and efforts on target proved that City were dominating games and being undone by carelessness at either end of the pitch, but I tended to rely less on this line over time because I, perhaps mistakenly, believed that it became less relevant as we dropped further down the table in the coming weeks.
Anyway, whether relevant or not, those stats I referred to made interesting reading at this time. Including League Cup matches, we had played twelve times and our total efforts on goal figure following the Sheffield United match read 171 for whereas there had only been 108 efforts against us, while, in terms of efforts on target, they read 104 for and 59 against. West Brom were the only side to have beaten City so far in a match in both categories - of the rest, only Norwich had more efforts at goal than us on the day and QPR more on target. Now, I haven't missed the fact that the three sides I have just mentioned all lost to us, so I suppose the figures I have given could be dismissed as a case of stats proving whatever you want them to. However, it's worth bearing in mind that twelve months earlier, City had been carrying all before them as they strode ahead at the top of the league and yet their figures in terms of efforts at goal and on target were not as impressive as the 2007/08 sides - believe me I checked!
Later on in the season Steve McPhail would give a very honest assessment of his early season form when he said that he blamed himself for City's stuttering start to the campaign and it's fair to say that he was one of a group of about three or four players who were getting particular stick on this message board around this time. Therefore, the McPhail critics seized upon what happened in the home game with Burnley four days later as evidence that City would be a better side without him in it. McPhail dropped out of the side with an injury just before the kick off and Joe Ledley moved infield to replace him with Peter Whittingham coming into the team and I think it's fair to say that Ledley turned in a man of the match performance that afternoon.
City had generally had the better of the opening 35 minutes against opponents who had only lost once in the league so far when Joe bulleted a great header past Kiraly from a cross by Darren Purse (who had come on as a sub early on to replace the injured Loovens) of all people and a few minutes later only a superb tip over by the keeper stopped him getting a getting a second from about twenty five yards out. The team went in at half time a goal up, but during the interval Steve Cotterill indicated his dissatisfaction with the Burnley performance by using all three of his substitutes and it was one of the new players Ade Akinbiyi who headed an equaliser five minutes into the second half. Given City's awful home form, there wasn't too much confidence around that they could get in front again, but as it turned out, it only took them a further five minutes to regain the lead as Paul Parry finished off an incisive break with a lovely placed shot from twenty yards.
Although the half time changes had livened Burnley up somewhat, City were able to hold on to their lead pretty comfortably, but, with no home league win for seven months and the late goals that had been conceded in their last three league matches, it was no surprise that things got pretty fraught on and off the pitch in the closing stages. It was into this atmosphere that 16 year old Aaron Ramsey was brought on after eighty six minutes and, in a cameo of what was to come later in the campaign, he proceeded to look the calmest person in Ninian Park! On one occasion, Ramsey got the ball about thirty yards from his own goal and with opposing players closing down on him and supporters imploring him to do what all ten of his team mates would have done (that is welly the ball up the park or into ROW Z!), Ramsey showed great composure in jinking clear of trouble and playing the ball calmly to a team mate.
Apart from a couple of minutes right at the end of the Brighton League Cup tie, this was all City fans were to see of Ramsey before the FA Cup match at Chasetown in the New Year. Dave Jones explained away this sparing use of the youngster who had already been the subject of seven figure bids from Premiership clubs by saying that he wasn't ready physically for more concerted Championship action, but there were times in the next few weeks when City's midfield laboured away in a losing cause that you couldn't help thinking that Ramsey's ability would have been a handy option to have on the bench.
Anyway, amid much tension, City managed to see things through and hold on for that elusive Ninian Park win and the hope was that the side could kick on from here at home while retaining their impressive away form. However, the early stages of a Championship season always consist of spells where the games come thick and fast which are punctuated by long breaks for International football and it was now going to be another fifteen days before City were next in action. Often these International breaks can be frustrating things, but, this time around, it was probably to City's benefit because they had just played seven matches in a twenty two day period and City's veteran strikers in particular didn't seem to have much gas left in the tank against Burnley.
TBC