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I daresay that there are those who read this blog who feel that my game reviews this season have been overly negative and I admit that the large majority of these pieces have been critical of the team, manager or both.
Indeed, it could be that some may believe I enjoy slagging off City. Let me assure them that nothing could be further from the truth, I did not begin this blog with the intention of of going on about how awful supporting Cardiff City is, I wanted it to reflect my love of the club that I had been supporting for 46 years at the time the blog began.
I derive far more joy from writing about good things happening to Cardiff City than I do reporting on what I see as under achievement by the team this season.
Having got that off my chest, it is only right and proper that, having written so much that is critical in the first four and a half months of the season, I should give due praise after today’s excellent 2-1 victory over Sheffield Wednesday at Hillsborough.
I’ve heard today’s performance and result being described as the best so far by City under Neil Harris’ management, I would go further than that and say that this was the best of the season in terms of performance and, probably, result.
Around a month ago, City went to Nottingham Forest and recorded the first away win of the season against a side that was in good form at the time and challenging strongly for third place. That win was similar in some ways to what happened today because City struck early to get ahead in the game and then had to absorb a lot of pressure before being able to claim the points.
Today, their opponents were in fine home form having gone unbeaten since August. Sheffield, like Forest, are in the top six and would’ve fancied their chances against a Cardiff side that had struggled to a couple of home draws with unimpressive displays over the Christmas period.
Having only managed three goal attempts against Preston and three on target goal attempts against Millwall, the last thing anybody could’ve been expecting was for the notoriously slow starting City team to come out of the blocks so quickly that they were two goals ahead after just eight minutes.
Ironically, the home team started well and City’s goal came under threat a couple of times in the first five minutes. However, there was a confidence and liveliness in Cardiff’s early play which could not have come from anything that had happened in front of their own fans over the past week.
Oddly, it was almost as if City were carrying on from how they had ended their last away game when they had scored three times in the last 25 minutes to earn a very unlikely point against a Leeds United team that were topping the Championship at the time.
Cardiff never showed the sharpness and decisiveness that saw striker Robert Glatzel sprint into space towards a central position inside the Wednesday penalty area as his team were awarded a freekick for a foul on Junior Hoilett in the two home matches that City fans had to suffer through recently.
There had been promising signs of a partnership being formed between Glatzel and Lee Tomlin when the former came on as a substitute at Leeds and here Tomlin showed again that he was on the same wavelength as the German as he immediately put the ball down and played the freekick into Glatzel’s path.
There was still much to do for Glatzel as he had not quite shaken off his marker, Wednesday skipper Tom Lees, and also right back Liam Palmer had come around on the cover. So, the city striker was faced with two defenders in his vicinity before he could think about getting a shot away.
There was a slight bit of luck in the way that the ball bounced for him, but Glatzel earned that good fortune by the way he was able to work himself clear enough of Lee’s and Palmer to guide a firmly struck low shot beyond home keeper Cameron Dawson from about twelve yards out.
It was a good goal, but not a patch on the one which followed just three minutes later. Again, the buildup came down City’s following a searching crossfield pass from captain Marlon Pack to Tomlin who combined with Glatzel and right back jazz Richards who knocked a lovely first time pass into the number ten’s path.
Tomlin was just on side as he took the ball towards the byline and then looked up and delivered the perfect low cross into the path of Hoilett who gave a lovely move the finish it deserved by confidently side footing home from around the penalty spot.
I can’t think of a better goal scored by Cardiff this season and I hope it can be a very significant one which will provide confidence and belief in the side, because they will have scored such a beauty against what is a good Wednesday defence.
I say that mind while acknowledging that Wednesday had been 2-1 up at struggling Stoke City going into added time at the end of the game on Boxing Day and ended up losing 3-2. Therefore, Wednesday had conceded four goals in something like ten minutes and one more for city in the minutes after they had got there quickfire double would surely have put the game beyond the home team with barely a tenth of it played.
As it was, there was always the strong likelihood that City would have to face a strong home fight back. Two nil can be a dangerous lead at any time but particularly when it is gained so quickly in the game as it gives the opponents plenty of time to put things right.
Evidence that the remainder of the match would be anything but straightforward for City soon arrived as Richards made a great bloke to deny Sam Winnall and then Neil Etheridge produced a flying save to turn away a Barry Bannan effort from the follow up.
So, it was ominous to see us concede another soft goal from a set piece within ten minutes of going 2-0 up. This one arrived when Lees got a long way above Curtis Nelson to head in a Bannan’s corner – Nelson has to carry his share of responsibility for this goal I suppose, but it would never have ended up in our net if we had somebody stood guarding the far post.
I’m probably showing my age here, because I would always have two people on the posts when defending corners. Yes, I accept that this has its disadvantages in that a defence cannot push out confidently in the expectation of getting an offside decision if the ball is cleared and then played back into the penalty area because of those two players guarding the posts, but it seems to me that the balance of probabilities says that more goals would be prevented by clearances off the line from an effort like Lees’ today than goals disallowed for offside when not having players covering the posts.
Anyway, the upshot was that today City faced something like 75 minutes with a single goal lead that they would have to defend. As it turned out, that 75 minutes became something like 90 when the time taken up by a couple of injuries which caused much reorganisation in the Cardiff ranks were taken into account.
The first of these came about in very unfortunate circumstances when a clash of heads between Hoilett and Joe Bennett led to the latter being taken off and replaced by Will Vaulks. With Lee Peltier missing through the injury which caused his early withdrawal against Millwall, City were left with just the one specialist full back, so Leandro Bacuna filled in on the right while Richards switched to Bennett’s left back position.
However, this new arrangement was only to last a few minutes because a hamstring injury to Nathanial Mendez-Laing meant a second substitution before half-time. Rather than bring on Josh Murphy as a like for like replacement, Neil Harris opted for a complete change of formation as Sol Bamba was brought into the fray for only his second appearance of the season.
Bamba was accommodated not in the defensive midfield role he has sometimes occupied in his Cardiff career, but as a third centreback alongside Nelson and Aden Flint, with Bacuna and Richards utilised as wingbacks.
Considering that, from memory, this is the first time City had used such a formation this season, I must say that they coped pretty well while absorbing a lot of Wednesday pressure in the second half. In saying that, goalkeeper Neil Ethridge did not really have a great deal to do. True, he did have to decisively fist away a well hit twenty yard effort from Josh’s twin brother, Jacob Murphy and then come off his line a long way to punch clear the threatening cross which followed, but in the main, the home sides shooting was from distance and wayward – substitute Adhte Nuhiu’s effort from what was a decent very late chance epitomizing those failings..
In fact, the best of the efforts from twenty yards or more came from Pack as he fizzed a twenty five yarder about a foot wide in what was a rare second half attack by City,
The early substitutions forced on City meant that the likes of Glatzel, Richards and Hoilett had to play the whole one hundred and four minutes (there were seven minutes added time in each half).
The first two named were among City’s best players with the German striker turning what was, almost certainly, his best performance for the club.
As for Hoilett, he must have thought that he may have had to make an unwanted early departure as the home crowd bayed for him to be shown a red card following a challenge which looked bad, but did not seem malicious to me – luckily for him, referee Tim Robinson deemed a yellow card to be sufficient punishment for the Canadian, because it was the sort of foul that can easily bring about a dismissal these days..
In some ways, this ranks as Cardiff’s most complete display of the season so far, because they combined decisive, inventive and even stylish attacking with the sort of defensive resilience which was a trademark during their promotion season, but had been noticeably absent too often this time around.
I’ve said on a few occasions over the past months that Cardiff had not looked like a top six side in any of the games so far during The 2019/20 season, but I feel that has changed now because today offered hope that there could be more of this sort of performance to come.
Today’s results closes the gap on the six placed team to a couple of points after a short period where it had been growing again because of the four game run without a win following the three successive victories which had seen that gap close to a single point.
City end their holiday period fixtures with a trip to a Queens Park Rangers team that will be set on revenge for their freakish 3-0 loss at Cardiff City Stadium back in September. Rangers looked a promising and dangerous team that night, but their young side has, predictably, struggled for consistency over the intervening period. They are certainly capable of beating us, but although our away record doesn’t look that great, it is only three defeats in our last 11 now on our travels.
Despite not hitting any great heights over the first half of the season, just six losses in 25 matches would have us in the top six if we could have converted two of the 10 draws we’ve had into wins. Today may have offered evidence that we can sustain the top six challenge which looked out of our reach as we laboured against Preston and Millwall.