There was a recall for forgotten man Andy Campbell to partner Alan Lee up front.
However, the main selection talking point before the game was the axing of
keeper Tony Warner with Neil Alexander coming in for his first league start
in thirteen months. Warner had certainly had his share of critics and
problems since joining City, but the timing of this decision seemed odd -
yes it was a bad mistake he made at Blackburn, but it had been his first in
weeks and , in general, his form had been good before Blackburn.
Neil Alexander later admitted to feeling very nervous before the Burnley
game and a persistent drizzle that made for a slick pitch which could have
caused handling problems for the keepers wouldn’t have helped him, but, as
it turned out, his first serious save came just before the final whistle
with the game comfortably won by then.
Burnley manager Steve Cotterill has a justified reputation as a bright young
manager who had turned his team into a well organised unit that conceded
very few goals (they had only let in nine from thirteen away games at this
time), but quite how he could claim that Burnley were the better team that
day is beyond me! Yes, their 4-5-1 formation gave them the extra man in
midfield and they exploited that by passing the ball about prettily enough
and having a fair share of possession, but they carried hardly any goal
threat whereas City made much more of their possession and could have had more than their two goals - in fact it was like watching some previous home
games in reverse as the team with the possession and neat passing were
caught out by a side making the most of their opportunities!
An early goal can make so much difference when playing as side with Burnley’s defensive record and City got one on 13 minutes when Alan Lee chased an underhit back pass, keeper Jensen couldn’t hold the ball and it ran free to Richard Langley who easily scored his first goal of the season from about eighteen yards out. City could have had further goals most notably when the unlucky Inamoto again hit the crossbar with a fine shot. The Japanese international also played a fine pass early in the second half which set Campbell free with a run on goal with just the keeper to beat. It was the
sort of chance Campbell would have buried when he first came here, but now
he showed his lack of confidence by allowing himself to be caught by the
thirty something John McGreal who was able to rob him with few problems.
Shortly after that, Campbell was replaced by Joe Ledley and you couldn’t
help but think that it was probably the last time he would be seen in the
City first team. Ledley’s arrival had the desired effect because we doubled
our lead within three minutes of him taking the field as Langley, Inamoto
and McAnuff ignored the pleas of the “experts” around me to welly the ball
into the middle, preferring instead to put together a neat passing movement
down the right which presented Kav with the chance to let fly from twenty
five yards - I don’t know whether his shot would have gone in anyway, but
once it got a slight deflection the wrong footed Jensen was helpless as the
ball flew into the net.
City’s win completed a great January with ten points out of a possible
twelve and just one league goal conceded - it was enough to win Lennie
Lawrence a manager of the month award for what I am pretty sure was the
first and last time in his City career. What the three points also did was
lift the team up to nineteenth in the table (their highest position since
November) which, unfortunately, was enough for our manager to proclaim that a win in our next match at West Ham would banish relegation talk for the season (we may as well have just given West Ham the three points and saved on the travel bill!).
Before the team were next in league action though, a very young side made
the trip up to North Wales to face Bangor in the FAW Premier Cup. Sam Hammam has never hidden his scorn for this competition and had twice tried to withdraw from it in the past - City had a history of never taking it very
seriously and so when they bowed out of the competition with a 1-0 defeat
nobody was really that surprised because it was so low down on our list of
priorities. However, when you consider that within a month or so, “cash flow
problems” were preventing wages from being paid, the cavalier attitude
towards a tournament that had a prise of £100,000 to it’s winners beggars
belief!
City’s defeat in the FA Cup meant that they had a free weekend before they
travelled to Upton Park for a game that kicked off on a Sunday lunchtime.
Lennie Lawrence had spent so much of the season under pressure and he must have enjoyed the fact that it was the opposing manager under the spotlight for a change! West Ham’s patchy form (they had lost their last three matches) meant Alan Pardew was under tremendous pressure and it was widely rumoured that nothing less than a win would keep him in his job.
The game never hit any great heights, but City, with Peter Thorne fit again,
were always slightly the better team, yet they were unable to translate that
superiority into goals. Both teams had occasional half chances but the
really meaningful action was reserved for the last couple of minutes when
Alan Lee’s shot from the edge of the box beat Bywater but flew a yard and
then the home side went straight down the pitch for Chris Powell’s fine
cross to be glanced in by Welsh International Carl Fletcher’s head.
It was a sickener to lose the game so late on, and Alan Pardew was generous in his praise of our centre back pairing saying that Gabbidon and Collins
would be the Welsh International central defenders for the next ten years.
Danny Gabbidon’s part in our fine January was recognised when he picked up the divisional Player of the Month award, but a lot of supporters thought
that Collins was, at least, equally deserving of the award as his more
famous colleague - I know I am biased, but if there was a better central
defensive partnership in the Championship over the second half of the season than Gabbidon and Collins they must have been something special!
Next up for City was a home game against Brighton who included our former
player Richard Carpenter in central midfield. Given their squad and
facilities, Brighton were probably over achieving having spent most of the
season hovering around the 16/17th mark in the division - they had become
something of a bogy team for us in recent years and came into the game
unbeaten in four away matches, but in the event, City recorded one of their
most comfortable victories of the season.
To all intents and purposes the game was all over in the first twenty
minutes. After 16 minutes Richard Langley was fouled as he waited to convert an easy chance as Alan Lee’s header rebounded off the crossbar and Peter
Thorne’s penalty technique (patent applied for) made a reappearance with
David Yeldell being the latest keeper to be laying down watching the ball
roll into the opposite side to the one he dived towards!
One of the few criticisms you could level at the Gabbidon/Collins central
defensive partnership was that they didn’t score enough goals, but James
Collins went at least someway to putting matters right when he headed in Kav’s free kick three minutes later.
After that, the game became a bit of a gentle workout for City and there was
no more scoring (although if Jobi McAnuff’s shot around the half hour mark
had gone in instead of rebounding from the woodwork, things may have worked out differently). Three more points hadn’t improved our position in the table, but, more importantly, there were now seven points between us and the drop zone and we had a game in hand over some of our rivals - once again it was time for Lennie Lawrence to say win our next game and we can forget relegation, so you just knew things were going to take a turn for the worse.
The first few weeks of 2005 had been very good for Cardiff City with 13 points taken in the league from a possible 18 and what had been portrayed as the final piece of the new ground jigsaw being put into place. Life (and particularly Cardiff City!) isn’t like that though, there is always a pay back and over the next couple of months, this miserable season reverted to type with a vengeance to such an extent that relegation seemed the least of our worries - the future of the whole football club seemed to be in question!
Before the grim financial news though, there were a couple of grim games to endure. To be honest, there was nothing in Millwall’s form to indicate they would present many problems for City on a cold night which saw many Coty players wearing gloves for one of the few times during a mild winter. They were without a win from seven league games in which they had scored just four goals - however, the clue to the problems City would have was there in the visitor’s goal against record which had seen them concede just the seven goals during this lean spell.
The visitors hadn’t conceded more than two in any league game so far during the season either, so, given City’s poor scoring record, goals were always likely to be at a premium. Millwall set out from the start to frustrate the City and were given their share of help along the way by a woeful set of officials who they “played” very cannily. Having said that, no blame could be attached to referee Jones for the penalty decision that went Millwall’s way in the twenty minute when Dichio’s header struck James Collins’ outstretched hand. City’s defending in since Neil Alexander’s recall to the team had been so good that the keeper had been given a very gentle reintroduction to the team - he had barely had a shot to save in his first three games so it was hard to judge if he had improved as a keeper during his thirteen months out of the team. However, it soon become apparent that one thing hadn’t changed - Alexander still had an uncanny ability to dive the wrong way for penalties as he went left and Dichio’s spot kick went right!
After that, the visitors were content to sit back and soak up City pressure and in Ward and Lawrence they had a pair of centrebacks ideally suited for this purpose. The Millwall central defenders were the best visiting combination I saw during the season and on the night outshone the in form City pairing of Collins and Gabbidon who had their share of problems, particularly in the first half, in handling the experienced Dichio and Hayles combination. Mind you, Ward and Lawrence couldn’t repel the City just by themselves, they needed help from the officials when they disallowed what seemed to be a valid goal by Inamoto for offside and keeper Marshall made a good but lucky save (the ball came off his backside!) from Kav just after the break.
When Marshall punched weakly to McAnuff, Lawrence did tremendously well to get back and clear the resultant shot off the line and it was around then that I realised this was going to be another of those matches where we were destined never to score.
One of my abiding memories of Lennie Lawrence’s spell as our manager will be our inability to score early goals in home matches and another will be the fact that we never seemed to score late goals anywhere that won or drew us games, so I suppose in a way you could understand those spectators who had left before the fourth official indicated that there would be four minutes time added on at the end of the game, however, this time, they missed the most interesting bit of the game!
About a minute into the added time with the City attacking more in hope than expectation, Millwall were awarded a frr kick out on the touchline when Chris Barker fouled Alan Dunne. The Millwall player went down as if he was shot in an obvious bid to waste time and then pushed the City left back as he angrily tried to pick him up. From here all hell broke loose, the referee showed Barker a yellow card and Dunne a straight red one (I thought the Millwall player deserved to go, but for two yellows - one for his play acting and one for his pretty mild push on Barker). The ensuing problems would almost certainly have been avoided if Dunne had left the pitch straight after the red card was shown, but he chose to carry on a conversation with some City players who were telling him to get off the pitch and, predictably, players started jostling each other. James Collins, who had already been booked, pushed into Dunne and this only made the situation worse as players piled in from all directions
One of those players was visiting midfielder David Livermore who shoved Collins to the ground (I don’t think I was the only one who thought he had punched him at the time) and once Mr Jones had managed to restore some sort of order a minute or so, it was pretty obvious that two more players would be joining Mr Dunne for an early bath. Collins was given a second yellow card which he could hardly complain about and Livermore a straight red - now it was a question of whether City’s ten men could find an equaliser against Millwall’s nine, but there was more drama before anyone could find out!
I dare not think what would have happened if the injured trio of Muscat, Morris and Wise had been playing for Millwall that night, but their player/manager was there in the dug out and he, almost inevitably got involved in proceedings when a water bottle he had thrown in frustration at his players being sent off hit the fourth official, this provoked another melee by the tunnel which ended in Wise being sent to the stands and, even then there was another fracas in the tunnel as Wise made his way from the pitch!
Eventually, the game restarted and there was time for Mr Jones to infuriate City fans further by turning down appeals for a penalty after Joe Ledley went down in the box before he ended the game about ninety seconds too early which only gave the harassed official more problems as he was confronted by a few more City players as he was escorted off the pitch at breakneck speed by stewards.
Inevitably, post match talk focussed on the amazing ending to the game and an awful set of officials. At the time, I was adamant that Mr. Jones and his cronies had cost us at least a point, but, looking back, I think I was avoiding the real issue which was that, once again, we had shown we lacked the ingenuity and guile in home games to unlock a massed defence. After a spell of decent home results, normal service had been resumed at Ninian Park - throughout the course of the season it was too easy for pretty ordinary opposing teams to come here with a reasonably well organised defence and keep a clean sheet. Like so many others, the Millwall game was one you could reasonably say we deserved a point, but, in truth, it was all part of a pattern - we didn’t have enough players who could do something that would surprise the opposition (we were too predictable) and, without the departed Earnie, we didn’t have the instinctive finisher who could win you a tight game with a goal out of nothing.
James Collins was banned for one game following his sending off and so had to sit out the trip to Sunderland four days later. In the circumstances Lennie Lawrence had little option bit to name Tony Vidmar in Collins place - Robert Page was injured after captaining Wales to a 2-0 win over Hungary, but there was also the matter that he had been sold to Coventry the day after the Millwall match as well! Apparently, Page had decided to move and take a pay cut for the promise of first team football at Coventry because he, correctly in my view, figured that he stood little or no chance of breaking up the Gabbidon/Collins partnership.
Lennie Lawrence mentioned that Page had been unlucky with injuries during his time at Cardiff and this was certainly true, but it is also true that he was a regular in the team that made defensive cock ups galore in the first few weeks of the season and we only started to tighten up at the back when he dropped out of the side. To be fair to him, I thought Page did have a few decent games for us, but I maintain that his arrival had a negative effect on James Collins (would he have started the season so poorly if he had known that he was our first choice centre half?) and I still can’t figure out why we signed him!
A trip to Sunderland was always going to be awkward but without the centreback partnership that had been doing so well for us it looked an awful lot harder when Gary Breen fired them in front after just four minutes. There was an air of controversy about the goal mind because Rhys Weston was down with a head injury (he had collided with Kav) when it was scored and there was an argument that said referee Leake should have stopped play and called the City physic on soon as it happened.
As it turned out, Weston was unable to continue so Darren Williams came on as sub to a warm round of applause from the supporters of the club he had played for for nine years before moving to City. Like the rest of the team, Williams spent almost the whole of the first half on the back foot as an impressive home side caused the City all sorts of problems. City had to ride their luck a lot of the time, but if they could have got to half time just a goal down they may have had a chance. Sunderland were attacking in waves though and three minutes before the break a neat near post header by veteran Marcus Stewart gave the scoreline a more realistic look.
The second half was better for City, but that was probably more down to Sunderland taking their foot off the gas a bit rather than anything they did and the game was dying a death when , out of the blue, City got a goal back with five minutes left. Most supporters were convinced that Tony Vidmar’s looping side footed volley from Kav’s cross was meant to be a centre aimed to the far post, but the ball nestled in the corner of the net instead - if Vidmar did mean to shoot it was probably our goal of the season!
After that City gave Sunderland the odd dodgy moment, but another red card, this time for substitute Alan Lee for elbowing Caldwell, ended any hopes of a point. A second successive defeat meant that what had been a seven point comfort zone above the relegation places was now down to four - we were being sucked back into the mire again, but any thoughts of on field matters had to be put aside as an absolutely awful week dominated by financial horror stories plunged the club into crisis.
The first inkling that something was wrong at the club came when it was reported that all staff at Ninian Park had not been paid their wages at the end of February. On 1 March David Temme gave what I assume was meant to be the official reaction to this news saying;-
"There was a glitch last Friday with the wages but it was sorted out yesterday. It has happened before and it happens even in the most well-managed companies. But it is now behind us - that is the top and bottom of it. We regret this unfortunate matter but it does happen. We can clarify that there is no problem and everybody will get paid as expected, hopefully today.”
Now I don’t know if Mr Temme said this under orders from above or whether it was his off the cuff reaction to questions from the press, but what happened in the following days could only mean that, at best, he was misinformed and, at worst, he was telling lies. If it was the latter, you have got to wonder what on earth Temme was playing at because, under the circumstances, it was inevitable that these words would come back to haunt him. Whatever the motive for what Temme said, these were perhaps the worst example of the sort of comments made by representatives of Cardiff City that helped to cause a breakdown in trust between the club and many of their supporters over the course of the season - even if the new ground gets built, we get promoted and sort our finances out, I feel it is safe to say that there are City supporters who will never trust Hammam/Temme again after this season.
Things moved quickly after that - it strikes me that the real reason for the financial crisis which engulfed the club was given when it was revealed in the Western Mail the following day (http://tinyurl.co.uk/3pgj) . There were going to be yet more delays to the new stadium starting. It seemed that the club had been hanging on in the hope that the funds the developers would release once the scheme got the final go ahead would be available around this time, but this latest delay meant that there just wasn‘t the money available to pay the wages. The bad news came thick and fast that day, with revelations that the staff wouldn’t be paid until the following week at the earliest, that auditors were being brought in by Sam Hammam to look for ways to reduce a wage bill apparently running at £750,000 per month and that job losses were inevitable.
On that same day the Echo ran a story (http://tinyurl.co.uk/pbid) stating that Sam Hammam had paid the wages for the previous two months, but had decided enough was enough and the crisis had to be faced head on. Again subsequent events proved this version of events not to be the truth - deliberate lies or not? Who knows.
It was getting to the stage where City fans were dreading the arrival of the local papers because it was just worse news on top of bad all the time! On 3 March, the same Echo journalist who had told us Sam Hammam had been paying the wages out of his own pocket was now saying it was vice Chairman Michael Isaac who had paid them (http://tinyurl.co.uk/cqy5)! This story hinted at but denied a boardroom split, but in the following days it seemed to become pretty obvious that there were problems at board level at the club.
We also learned that day that the deepening crisis could see players leave. At his Thursday press conference normally held to discuss that weekend’s game, Lennie Lawrence said that no players would be sold before Saturday’s match with Sheffield United. but he couldn’t rule out moves after that - it later emerged that a deal to sell Graham Kavanagh to Wigan had been arranged that morning, only for it to stall for some reason, However, almost while our manager was telling the assembled hacks no players would be leaving for a few days at least, the deal was being resurrected and Kav would be off within 24 hours!
It had been a very grim week but the worst was yet to come - Friday 4 March has, justifiably, come to be known as “Black Friday” amongst City fans! The day started for me by me reading the revelation on here that Kav was off to Wigan that day - as if that wasn’t bad enough, they were predictions galore as to which players would be following him out of the door at Cardiff City. Sam Hammam tried to explain away Kav’s sale by saying “ I feel as though I have been shot. If we don't fix it now we will lose 10 points - and we are not going to do that. I will never allow this club to go into administration. That is a reason Kav had to be sold. We need to stay solid in tough times. This is where true fans will help us out and stand together as one unit. We have mismanaged on the financial side. We are overspending and we could not continue to be cavalier. If we continued like that we could reach a situation where we are insolvent. That is not going to happen and that is why we are taking the measures we are.". He also addressed some supporters that night at a meeting at Ninian Park and gave an interview to Cardiff City World after that in which he admitted to mistakes and said he was in danger of being seen as a “buffoon”, Significantly, he also said that whether we sold more players or not hinged on the outcome of a meeting being held during the following week with the developers of the new ground - if they were prepared to release funds then, we should be okay, if not then more departures looked likely.
It was a relief for me to finally reach a day where I could go and watch us play and forget about financial worries for a while, but, truth be told, the events of the past week were always in the back of my mind during those 90 minutes. Before the football though there had to be more on the financial crisis with the revelation by Radio Wales just before kick off of the details of the club’s accounts for 2003/04. The accounts revealed that the club’s debts had risen to £29.6 million, but the three things that really stood out for me were the revelation that the total wage bill at £9.8 million was greater than turnover at £9.5 million, the fact that Sam Hammam’s company (Rudgwick) had been paid a total £583,333 for supplying management services in respect of its ordinary activity and the club's new stadium project and finally that, whereas, loans from other directors were being charged at 3% above bank base rate, a loan from Rudgwick that had been “replaced” in September had been charged at 6% above bank base rate.
These figures only served to heap more pressure on Sam Hammam. Supporters already reeling from the events of a truly disastrous week in the club’s history were now being told that our owner was, essentially, the biggest wage earner at the club and that he seemed to be benefiting at the club’s expense at a time when it needed every penny they could lay their hands on!
It was little wonder therefore that the owner was given a rough ride by supporters before and during the game with, for the first time ever as far as I was aware, anti Sam Hammam chants being heard at Ninian Park.
Off the top of my head, I can’t remember being as emotional or as proud of a Cardiff City team as I was after the Sheffield Untied match. Beforehand, many had predicted a thrashing for a team that they thought had become totally deflated by all the off the field problems at the club. I figured differently and put on here that I expected us to win because the game represented a chance for the team to get on with doing what they were best at and, if as seemed very likely at the time, it was going to be the last game in a City shirt for a lot of them, they would want to put on a bit of a performance for the supporters (I also couldn’t help thinking that Neil Warnock’s Sheffield United team were on a hiding to nothing as they were almost just bit part players in the whole drama).
Of course, rumours were rife as to which players were leaving and who they were going to sign for, so when Peter Thorne left the field after just thirteen minutes apparently not injured and applauding all four sides of the ground many, not unreasonably, took it as confirmation that Thorne’s rumoured move to Nottingham Forest for £200,000 was a fact (actually what had happened was that Thorne had tweaked a hamstring chasing a through ball in the third minute and would be out for nearly a month).
Thorne’s injury couldn’t have come at a worse time for City with Alan Lee beginning a three match suspension for his sending off at Sunderland, Paul Parry still out and Andy Campbell having come back from an unsuccessful loan spell at Doncaster with an injury. Stuart Fleetwood was available again and he was on the bench, but it was midfielder Lee Bullock who replaced Thorne. Bullock had been used as a striker during his time with York and he slotted in alongside Cameron Jerome, but City were to spend most of the first half defending as the visitors, with a strong cold wind behind them, dominated territorially. Having said that, City had few problems coping with a pretty feeble United frontline and it was they who carried what little goal threat there was in the first half as Paddy Kenny palmed a Richard Langley cross on to his own crossbar and Bullock almost profited from a Jerome headed flick.
The conditions and the pressure on both teams (Sheffield were chasing a play off place) dictated that the game was never going to be a classic, but, with the wind now behind them, City got more and more on top as the second half progressed. Chances were still at a premium though and when Cameron Jerome saw the best one so far foiled by a good Kenny save after his burst into the box, it looked like the game was going to end scoreless. However with a quarter of an hour to go, City got the goal which saw some of the most frenzied celebrations at Ninian Park in ages! It wasn‘t a great goal, but that didn’t matter - Jobi McAnuff showed great skill in bringing down a high ball and then got the better of his marker to fire in a low cross to the near post, the ball was then half cleared, only for it to fall to a City player who swept it in first time left footed from about eight yards.
Sometimes you watch a game and think things are fated to happen and that is exactly what I felt as Fairwater’s Joe Ledley ran to the Bob Bank side of the ground to celebrate his goal. Ledley was Kav’s replacement in central midfield and, although there were three Welsh Internationals in the team that day, was the only Cardiff born player in the team - he just had to score the goal that won the game!
I wasn‘t the only person to remark on here after the game, that once that goal went in, you just knew City would hold on. In fact if Richard Langley’s shot shortly afterwards, had been a few inches lower those who didn’t share my confidence would have been spared a quarter of an hours fingernail chewing and stomach churning tension! As it was, the final whistle saw players and supporters celebrate a win with much more than the usual fervour - the celebrations went on much longer than usual as well as the team and many supporters almost seemed reluctant to accept the fact that with the game over it was back to the grim reality and appalling thought that there was a chance that we had just seen Cardiff City’s last game before administration or worse.