Cardiff City produced a performance that was far more August and September than October this lunchtime at Sheffield Wednesday, but, at least the run of consecutive losses reached no more than two as they returned from Yorkshire with a 1-1 draw.
There were reasons beforehand why this match was unlikely to be a great watch – for example,the aforementioned losses to Luton and Blackburn and a position back in the bottom three were hardly going to encourage a swashbuckling attitude from Omer Riza’s side. Also, the fact that I’m thinking to myself should I be calling them Omer Riza’s team when the owner so obviously has his doubts about the man who’s still known as our interim manager despite now entering his third month in the position, is bound to spread uncertainty and, I would argue, lead to negative attitudes.
To explain what I mean, Riza tightened things up early in the second half today as he switched to a back three with wing backs, while introducing the more defensively minded Joe Ralls for Alex Robertson and then bringing on Manolis Siopis for David Turnbull for the closing stages of the game.
Given how frail and limited we had looked for much of the first half, it was hard to argue with Riza’s thinking, but it did revive memories of what happened when we were winning and playing well against Bristol City at Ashton Gate in his third match in temporary charge. That day Riza handed the initiative over completely to the wurzels by making defensive substitutions that left us grateful for a point in the end.
Although it looks unlikely on recent evidence, say City are winning and on top at Coventry next weekend going into the last half hour, you have to wonder if Omer Riza will do the same as he did at Bristol? My guess is that he would.
Applying hindsight, although I was critical of the substitutions at Bristol at the time, I can kind of understand them to the extent that Riza would have thought an away win in a local derby so soon after taking the job on could only enhance his chances of getting an offer of a permanent contract.
As it is, I’d say it’s unlikely that it would have made much difference. It’s understandable I suppose that Vincent Tan would need more proof of Riza’s abilities over a longer period than three matches, but he really should have done so over ten of them. Our owner really should be in a position to decide one way or another by now – I think winning more than he’s lost over a period approaching a quarter of a season is good enough for Tan to make a decision to give Riza a contract until the end of the season, but, if he feels differently, he should have the courage of his convictions and bring the uncertainty to an end.
At the moment, you can’t blame Riza for thinking that If all games may not be must win occasions, they could well be must not lose – while City have played like a relegation team too often this season, it’s far too early in the campaign for those sort of labels to be applied to any game (even when bottom of the league QPR come to Cardiff City Stadium on Wednesday).
So, did City look like a relegation team today? I’m afraid that for much of the first half especially, I think they did.
As I mentioned earlier, there were reasons not to expect a classic today and the worst conditions of the season so far only added to them. There has been snow in the Sheffield area since midweek and a further heavy downfall overnight left the game in doubt first thing this morning, but. a rapid rise in temperature in the face of the onset of storm Bert (who thinks these names up!) brought on a thaw and it was torrential rain and a strong wind that were making conditions difficult by kick off time.
Apparently, the ground would have been frozen under the snow and so I suppose that the pitch could have been treacherous. City certainly made it look so in the first half as they gave a passable imitation of what supporters of northern teams have called “southern softies” probably since national football competitions first came into existence.
City looked like a team who just didn’t fancy it in the early minutes – whereas Wednesday players largely remained sure footed and able to apply normal Championship standards to their play, City made the simplest things look fraught with danger early on as they found different ways of presenting the opposition with the ball through a variety of poor touches and misplaced passes.
Ex City loanee, Ike Ugbo is still awaiting his first league goal of the season, but he had the ball in the City net in thirty eight seconds as Wednesday carved their way through a ponderous looking back line only for an offside flag to rule out Ugbo’s shot from the edge of the penalty area.
Dimitrios Goutas came to City rescue a few minutes later by blocking Ugbo’s goal bound shot, as City’s lethargic and slipshod ways kept them on the back foot.
However, despite us being second best for much of the time, one of the game’s ironies was that we tended to work Wednesday’s keeper James Beadle harder than they did Jak Alnwick. The first real evidence that City were recovering from their sloppy start came when a subdued Rubin Colwill found Ollie Tanner whose shot forced the home keeper into a decent save.
City did have one more big scare before the game’s first goal when, once again, Wednesday found it too easy to get through the centre of our defence and Josh Windass lobbed over the advancing Alnwick. I certainly expected the net to bulge given Windass is a good technical player at this level, but, instead, the ball landed on the roof of the netting.
That looked an expensive miss on thirty four minutes when Callum O’Dowda did well to put Callum Robinson into space as City counter attacked following a corner and the Irish international easily beat Shea Charles before crossing towards Colwill. Beadle was able to divert the ball away from its original target, but only into the bath of Tanner who easily scored his first “ordinary” goal for City from six yards.
Unfortunately, City never had the opportunity to get the home team and crowd frustrated because they conceded themselves within two or three minutes. They never dealt with a free kick into their well populated penalty area convincingly and yet when the ball was played into Windass in the inside right channel, not one of our massed tanks of defenders were within yards of him. Despite this, Perry Ng was left trying to look after two attackers on the far post when the low cross came in. First of all, I thought Ng had turned the ball into his own net, but the goal has been awarded to home centreback Di’Shon Barnard who won the race to slide the ball in from about four yards out.
It turned out that the worst thing City could have done was score because going behind roused Wednesday to go on and dominate the rest of the first half as they left a groggy City grateful to get to half time all square.
Wednesday could have scored two or three times during a frantic scramble that saw Alnwick foil Ugbo with a sliding tackle and half time was spent with me thinking that there had to be an improvement for us to avoid the sort of defeat that would lead to the return of the feeling of desolation that permeated through so much of the opening weeks of the season.
Thankfully, things did improve to the extent that Riza’s changes made City cope better defensively (Bagan again pressed his claim for a regular starting place) and it was only in the final minutes when Alnwick had to turn aside a Djeidi Gassama shot and Ralls block a goal bound shot by another ex City man, Callum Paterson, that Wednesday threatened as much as they had done in the first period.
City were unable to get much going in attacking terms over the whole ninety minutes, but Beadle was tested again by a Colwill free kick with the rebound falling very quickly to Goutas who was unable to direct the ball towards the empty net and then, right at the end, when Tanner’s shot from outside the box brought a diving save out of the keeper.
There was a disappointing home defeat for the under 21s who undid much of the good work of their draw with Everton as Ipswich won by 2-0 in the League Cup group stage, despite being reduced to ten men for the last quarter of an hour or so of the game.
As for the under 18s, the club’s Academy Twitter page gave the team for their League Cup game at Portsmouth, but there’s been nothing from them since then, although I’ve read elsewhere that it finished 3-3 with us, seemingly, coming back from a 3-0 half time deficit.