Actually that last bit isn't strictly true, because before they faced
City took an unchanged team to a rain soaked
If Birmingham were meant to have an advantage because they were more used to the pitch than City, then it certainly didn't show in the first half - former City target Rowan Vine did fire just wide a minute or two before half time, but, apart from that, the few chances that were created fell to City with Chopra being unlucky not to get a penalty when he went down under a challenge from home keeper Doyle who also saved well from Scimeca. However, City's best chances fell to Steve Thompson who just failed to make contact with Chopra's cross and then disappointingly headed too close to Doyle when free about five yards out.
Maybe one end of the St Andrews pitch was easier to play on than the other because City were never as dominant after the break and they conceded the all important goal after 55 minutes when an offside looking Larsson scored from close in (television replays confirmed that he was probably just onside). After that another goal for Birmingham seemed more likely than a City equaliser as substitute Jerome hit a post and Alexander produced a couple of fine saves while all City could offer was a spectacular twenty five yard shot by Johnson that was tipped over by Doyle.
We were now at the stage of the season where results were everything and City could take no consolation from the fact that they had given good accounts of themselves at West Brom and Birmingham before slipping to 1-0 defeats, but, at least their next match looked a relatively easy one as under achieving Norwich came to Ninian Park. City were out of the traps very quickly and had already gone close when Paul Parry scored his first goal since September in the third minute as he left ex City keeper Tony Warner helpless with a hooked shot after an effort from Scimeca had rebounded to him.
Norwich manager Peter Grant described his sides first half performance as the worst he had seen since taking over at the club and his side really were there for the taking in the opening forty five minutes, but City weren't good enough to get the second goal which would have made the second half much more comfortable for supporters than it turned out to be. The visitors had to improve after the break and City were indebted to Neil Alexander for a couple of superb saves as he turned over Lappin's free kick and then palmed a close range header by Dion Dublin over the bar. There was one other scare in injury time when Huckerby netted for
City had managed to grind out a 1-0 win from a tired looking display but I don't think many of the supporters leaving the ground that afternoon would have predicted that they had just watched our last win of the campaign and that man of the match Neil Alexander would only play once more at Ninian Park in his City career!
Given the way the season petered out after this game, it is interesting to work out what we would have needed from here on in to have got into the play offs. After beating
Successive games at Southampton and
Dave Jones' City sides have proved very good at holding on to leads when they score first and absolutely awful at getting anything out of matches when they had conceded first, so the notion they could come back from a couple of goals down against one of their promotion rivals seemed like a non starter. However, Southampton were getting edgy after only two wins out of seven had put their play off hopes in jeopardy and when Steve Thompson scored his first goal since Boxing Day two minutes after coming on for Byrne, the complexion of the whole game changed. With their supporters turning against them what confidence
City could have even snatched a late winner but they gladly settled for a draw under the circumstances. This point took City's points haul from their very testing seven game run to seven and one win or a couple of draws from the two remaining matches would represent a very satisfactory return indeed.
However, one event that passed virtually unnoticed at the time would have a very significant affect on the rest of our season as Glenn Loovens left the field in the second half with an injury which brought his campaign to an early end. This was a real blow to the team because you could make a case for saying that Loovens was our most important player - certainly, the contrast between our results with him in the team and those when he doesn't play makes for frightening reading!
City were also missing Ricky Scimeca at Derby with a recurrence of his earlier injury and they tried to make do without him and Loovens by bringing in Simon Walton in central midfield, moving McNaughton to centre back and bringing in Gunter at right back and for most of the first half, it looked like they were doing a good job of it. Although they fell behind after twenty eight minutes when the recalled Thompson handled in the box and Neil Alexander missed out on his last chance to save a "proper" penalty in a City shirt as Steve Howard scored, they equalised four minutes later when Parry took advantage of a slip by McEveley. Within another minute Chopra had rapped the
From that moment on, City were in real trouble - already without, arguably, their two best defenders (Loovens and Purse), as well as, perhaps, their most influential midfielder (Scimeca), they now faced up to virtually an hour without the man who, in recent weeks, had been carrying the attack almost single handedly. All season long, there been concerns about the quality and depth of the squad and it was hardly surprising that
City's lack of attacking impact after losing Chopra could be best summed up by the fact that substitute Jason Byrne only lasted about forty minutes before he was withdrawn for Matt Green - if Chopra's injury was as bad as was feared, it was hard to see where the goals were going to come from. However a break for International football meant that there was a fortnight to get the injured players back before the visit of Roy Keane's Sunderland who were in the midst of a tremendous run which would see them win the league.
With Byrne not looking up to the task, Campbell looking too old, Green looking promising but still too raw and Redan not looking like he cared much, City decided to make a move in the transfer market before the window closed for the season. Although not able to make permanent signings, they could bring in players on loan and so Luton's Warren Feeney arrived for the rest of the season. In fact, Feeney would eventually become a permanent signing because he had made it clear that he had no intentions of signing a new contract at Luton and so City paid £75,000 to take over what was left of his deal with his old club. However, when you consider that Feeney could not get a regular place in a Luton team that were propping up the table and had only scored twice in the league all season, you could understand why this was yet another of a string of new signings that left many supporters feeling distinctly underwhelmed (especially when news broke that Feeney had signed on a three year deal!).
Feeney was widely expected to go straight into the team to play Sunderland, but as it turned out both Scimeca and Chopra were passed fit to play (you had to wonder at the wisdom of both decisions though - Scimeca went off at half time and was not seen again during the season and Chopra looked well short of full fitness - in fact, I don't think he looked right in any of our remaining matches).
A crowd of 19,353 turned up at Ninian Park hoping to see a repeat of those great days earlier in the season when teams with big reputations were put to the sword in front of near full houses, but a fierce gusting wind meant that this was never going to be a football classic. For most of the game Sunderland looked more organised and confident than City, but not to the extent that they deserved a lead - chances for both sides could be counted on the fingers of one hand as Thompson missed City's best two with wayward headers and Ledley forced a good save out of Darren Ward. With eighteen minutes to go, the game was looking all over a 0-0 draw when Sunderland were awarded a free kick on the corner of our penalty area and substitute Wallace hit a shot of no great pace towards Neil Alexander's near post - although it could definitely be argued that the City wall of Chopra and McPhail should have defended the situation much better than they did it still looked like Alexander had the situation under control, but he was too late in going down for the ball and could only turn it into the side of the net.
The goal knocked the stuffing out of the City side - Warren Feeney came on for Paul Parry in a bid to get an equaliser, but it never looked like coming as they slumped to their third home defeat of the season on the day that, I believe, too many of our players decided that our promotion dream had died.
Ten weeks after sustaining his back injury at Wolves, Darren Purse returned to first team action in place of Chris Gunter for the visit of Sheffield Wednesday and Dave Jones also replaced Steve Thompson with Warren Feeney. However, the change that really got fans talking was the axing of Neil Alexander for David Forde. In many ways, this decision didn't come as a surprise - stories during the previous summer that City were looking to bring in Scott Carson on loan for the season and seemed to be willing to let Alexander go elsewhere helped create a feeling that our manager didn't rate our keeper as highly as most supporters did and when contract talks broke down between the two parties amid accusations that City had reneged on a previous verbal offer, the writing looked to be on the wall for him.
When Alexander and his representatives didn't accept City's contract offer by the 31 March deadline set by the club, there always had to be a chance that he would be dropped. Speaking for myself, it was a shame on two counts that Alexander's City career had to end like this - firstly, someone who had served the club so well for six years deserved to leave under better circumstances and secondly, it was sad that his last match for us had seen him let in a very soft goal which had a huge bearing on our season. Without being party to the negotiations that took place between club and player, it is impossible to comment on what happened with any real authority except to say that I can't help thinking that the club could have handled the whole affair a bit more sensitively.
Despite the fact that, with eighteen points to play for, City were still only three short of a play off spot, there was a definite feeling that they were now drinking in the last chance saloon as far as their promotion prospects were concerned and, sadly, when they most needed a bit of luck on their side they didn't get it. A shot tally of 18-9 in their favour told it's own story of a game City dominated for long spells, but Wednesday, who were unbeaten in seven matches were more clinical and confident in their attacking play. The visitors took the lead on 39 minutes when Clarke turned Roger Johnson and scored from eight yards, but City quickly levelled when Johnson headed home a McNaughton cross. City certainly had their chances after the break, but a goal bundled in by Burton after Forde had done well to block his header consigned the team to a third consecutive defeat and the feeling of gloom around Ninian Park was only deepened in the last minute when a shocking lunge by Walton on full back Gilbert brought City yet another red card.
As this was Walton's third red card of the season, the resultant five game suspension meant his season had finished and the fact has to be faced that he was another of the January signings who had just failed to do the business for us - while he was definitely unlucky to get his red card against Leeds, I thought there were quite a few other occasions when he could have been more severely punished by officials as his tendency to lunge into tackles meant that he was always an accident waiting to happen as far as I was concerned.
The Sheffield Wednesday defeat was the one that convinced me we could forget about promotion, but other more optimistic supporters probably clung to the hope that a win at Burnley on Easter Monday could put us right back amongst the contenders. I would guess such thoughts probably disappeared after just four minutes when Steve Jones fired the home side in front. Not for the last time during their abysmal finish to the season, City enjoyed plenty of possession, but, as had become increasingly familiar to supporters, there was no end product to lots of neat but hardly incisive passing. The second half bought another early goal for Burnley when McVeigh scored from close range and, despite a disallowed goal from Gunter, City never looked like mounting a comeback.
A week later, Stoke came to Ninian Park in the middle of a fine run and with genuine play off ambitions. For a while though City made them look very ordinary as they moved the ball about nicely in midfield, but their lack of punch and a killer pass was, again, all too apparent and, once Stoke found a foothold in the game, their more direct approach proved far more of a threat than anything City could come up with. The visitors growing dominance was rewarded on the half hour mark when Hoefkens scored with a fine shot across Forde and there could have been other goals for them before half time.
In the second half I think Stoke made the mistake of sitting on their lead although, to be fair to them, you could understand them deciding on this policy because a City team feeling sorry for themselves with heads down were barely causing them any problems by now. Ten minute from time a candidate for miss of the season by substitute Paterson kept the deficit at one goal, but it barely seemed to matter because you could see no way that we were going to score, but then with just a minute left, Johnson headed down for Chopra to fire home the goal that would eventually cost Stoke their place in the Play Offs.
By now I suppose supporters had to be grateful for small mercies because, after all, this was the only one of our last eight matches that we didn't lose, but, frankly, the fact that the only thing we had to celebrate was the discomfort of a side that now led us by four points having been six adrift of us a few weeks back said it all about how poor a team we had become.
Incredibly, despite taking just one point out of the last fifteen available, City travelled to QPR still in with a chance of making the play offs - true, it was a long shot, but with three games left they found themselves six points behind Wolves in sixth place. You would like to have thought that the team's attitude would have been one of let's win our three games and see where that leaves us, but, instead, once again, they let down their support with a performance that looked like they were, mentally at least, already on their holidays. There was only one goal in it as Dexter Blackstock nodded in after 23 minutes, but that was all the hosts needed again a City team who rarely even threatened to score and it was somehow typical of recent performances that more passion was shown after the final whistle when Chopra picked up a second booking for pushing keeper Camp as he celebrated the win that guaranteed QPR's safety than had been seen throughout the whole ninety minutes!
Chopra's second red card of the campaign meant his season was over. Right from the start of the season there had been talk of the affect injuries and suspensions could have on our small squad and so you would have thought keeping one's discipline would have been a priority for the players and yet we picked up ten red cards during the campaign! Now, to be fair, I don't think City were a dirty side by any means and some of their sendings off were unfortunate ones, but I can think of four that were completely unnecessary and the individuals concerned missed a total of eleven matches between them.
Whereas in the autumn the thought of watching us play on Saturday was one of the things that kept you going through the dull working week, now you could be forgiven for asking if you could work without pay on a Saturday afternoon! Those poor unfortunates who were unable to pull off such a stroke turned up at Ninian Park for the last time during the season to watch us take on a Hull side desperate for points to avoid the drop at the expense of Yorkshire neighbours Leeds United. In the week before this match, some of the many Leeds fans who work in my office asked me if City were likely to do them a favour by winning on Saturday - I told them that we were the ideal type of side for a relegation threatened team to play because we were playing with no commitment or pride and that I couldn't see any other result than a Hull win.
Of course, I went to the game hoping to be proved wrong, but, after a bright start which saw Steve Thompson miss two easy headed chances (Thompson could have easily doubled his tally for the season if he had scored about half of the many decent chances he missed in the last two months of the campaign) and Johnson draw a decent save out of Myhill, City returned to their usual disinterested ways after that though and a poor looking visiting side became the second team in consecutive games to secure their place in next season Championship by beating us when Windass scored from close in after Forde had blocked Forster's shot.
Looking back now, the only things worth recalling from this game were, firstly, the performance of Darcy Blake - frankly, some of the more experienced players in the team should have felt ashamed as they watched the teenager turn in a display which made it clear what playing in the blue shirt meant to him. Unfortunately, the performance of four or five others that day showed all too clearly what playing in the blue shirt meant to them! The other positive sign was the introduction for the last five minutes of the highly rated midfielder Aaron Ramsey who at 16 years and 123 days old beat John Toshack's record to become the youngest player ever to play for the club in a first team game.
The team brought down the curtain on a season which had seen us climb the peaks and plumb the depths with their eighth defeat in nine games at Ipswich. A typical end of season game featuring much half hearted defending saw the home side score early on through Jeffers only for City to score a lovely equaliser when they built up along the left flank and Feeney's fine cross was headed in by Parry (at least this goal proved that City were capable of scoring without Michael Chopra on the pitch, but it had taken them 49 games to do so!). In the second half a City defence featuring Darren Purse (who like Chopra hadn't looked fully fit since coming back after injury) twice parted like the Red Sea to enable substitute Walters to score and, just as against Coventry twelve months earlier, the season ended with a 3-1 away loss.
City finished the campaign in thirteenth position with sixty four points and I rate this as a huge disappointment when you consider that we had twenty nine points from twelve matches and stood six points clear at the top of the league. Perhaps some will remember this season with affection for the marvellous way we played during those opening weeks, but, I'm sorry, as far as I am concerned what we did then was to set the standards by which we would be judged for the rest of the campaign - those first twelve matches proved we were much better than our finishing position indicates.
At the end of a season I sometimes try to rate the performance of the board, manager and team over the previous nine months - if I was to do that this year, I don't any of those parties come out of it too well. Whilst it appears that progress has been made off the pitch under the new board, our results on it under them have been appalling (I happen to think that's a coincidence, but, if it is, it is a coincidence that has lasted an awful long time!) and I believe they failed their main on pitch test in January when they didn't make enough money available to Dave Jones to bring in the sort of players who could have made all the difference at the end of the season. Many people are suspicious as to the motives of the new board with there being a feeling that the wellbeing of the football club rates pretty low on their list of priorities and it has to be said that their actions in the transfer market so far have done little or nothing to disprove such thinking. Can anyone name one player this new board has brought in that has actually improved the team? Until the last six weeks of the season I would have answered that question with the name Peter Whittingham, but I'm not so sure about that any more.
Of course, any criticism about the quality of new signings has to be aimed at the manager just as much as the board and, even though I feel his hands were tied to a large extent, Dave Jones' record in the transfer market since the signing of James Chambers had been poor. Add to that the fact that he seemed completely unable to do anything about the series of awful displays at the end of the season and that many of the "reasons" he gave for our fade out sounded awfully like "excuses" and you can see why, after nearly two years of praise and hero worship from supporters, his stock as Cardiff City manager is now as low as it has ever been. I still rate him as one of the best managers I have seen at the club, but a poor start next season will, surely, see Dave Jones coming under pressure from sections of the media and our support, a situation that would have been considered laughable as little as six weeks ago.
As for the team, I find it hard to remember one that annoyed me as much as this lot did during the last month of the season. It's one thing for a side not to perform because of a lack of ability, but it's another when obviously gifted performers, who had proved themselves earlier in the campaign, look like they are going through the motions (which is what I reckon most of our more creative players did from about the beginning of March onwards). Whilst I think you could always rely on whole hearted performances from most of our defenders and the younger players who came into the team, too many of the front six players went missing when they were most needed and I can't help thinking that we need more steel in those areas next season - by that I don't mean just ball winning hard men, but brave players with ability who would relish the sort of challenge we faced from 1 March onwards.
One last thing, if I could have one wish for next season, it would be that someone tells all at Ninian Park that we aren't in the Premiership yet. Our season lasts forty six matches not thirty eight - based on the last two seasons, I have to say Lord help us if we have less than fifty points going into March next year!