Cardiff City slumped to a third straight defeat this lunchtime as Swansea’s recent domination of the South Wales derby continued with another conclusive victory – this one was by 2-0, but it could and should have been more.
Last season, Swansea recorded the first league double in the long history of the fixture. That stat alone tells you that this has been a highly competitive and close fought rivalry down the years, so I daresay a non City or Swansea fan would have been shocked that the first double was by an aggregate score of 7-0 – that margin didn’t flatter Swansea in the slightest either.
Supporters of the two sides would tell that neutral fan though that Swansea’s double had been coming as they have generally been so dominant in games since we were relegated in 2019.
A common complaint among City fans has been that their players don’t “get” the rivalry. Time after time, Swansea players and management have looked like they have wanted it more than us and these criticisms rose to a crescendo when City fans had to watch their side go down with barely a whimper at Cardiff City Stadium in April to the tune of 4-0.
City acting manager Mark Hudson was a scorer for us in the derby in 2009 in a 3-2 defeat at the Liberty Stadium back in the days when, by and large, we gave as good as we got in the rivalry. Hudson was adamant in Friday’s media briefing that the current group of players had been made aware of what games with Swansea meant to the club’s support.
To emphasise the point further, club captain and longest serving player Joe Ralls was also presented on Friday to represent the team and, basically, repeat what Hudson said.
The message was that, whatever else happened, the Cardiff attitude would be right. Well, I can confirm that, in the case of one player in particular, the attitude was definitely different from what supporters have become used to seeing when we play the jacks, but the right attitude? Absolutely no way!
Within about fifteen seconds of the kick off, Callum Robinson was challenged heavily out on the touchline and let referee Darren Bond know that he felt he’d been fouled (I did as well).
Maybe this was still playing on Robinson’s mind six minutes later when he gave away a cheap foul on Swansea captain and man of the match, Matt Grimes. Quite why Ben Cabango felt the need to give Robinson a shove after this I don’t know (well, I do actually), but there was no excuse for what happened next as Robinson threw the ball at the Swansea player’s face.
To be fair, “threw” probably makes what happened sound a bit worse than it was because Cabango was no more than a few inches away from Robinson and so the ball travelled no distance at all really.
This makes Cabango’s reaction to being hit by the ball overly dramatic, but, in truth, what he did didn’t merit a yellow card in my opinion – he was out to wind Robinson up and then tried to influence the ref after he was hit by the ball. However, Robinson fell for that wind up hook, line and sinker and it’s hard to see how what he did can be deemed anything but violent conduct.
My reaction when Mr Bond produced the red card was like most City fans I’d guess, – anger and thoughts of “what an idiot”, but there was also a nagging feeling that it was unlike Robinson.
So, I did a little research and found that Robinson had played over three hundred times for his various clubs and his country since making his senior debut nearly nine years ago. In that time, he’s been booked on fifteen occasions and never been sent off until today. The highest number of cautions he’s had in a season is five, so there must have been sometimes when he’s gone through a whole campaign without a yellow card. Furthermore, today was Robinson’s sixteenth appearance in 22/23 and he’d not been shown a card at all in the previous fifteen.
None of this indicates that what we saw today was a typical reaction on Robinson’s part. Mark Hudson was very keen to emphasise after the game how his team kept on fighting after they went down to ten men today, so, I’m going to indulge in a spot of guesswork and say our newest signing fell victim to efforts from within the club in the days before the game to make certain that no charges of the team not caring could be laid against them this time – any other opposition and Robinson doesn’t do what he did..
In saying that, although there was some typical derby skirmishes from time to time, the rest of the City team kept their heads (one brainstorm from Cedric Kipre apart) throughout the ninety minutes and I’m not going to criticise their attitude for the fixture this time. I would say that on the whole Hudson got the approach he wanted from the team, but the fact that there was that one exception to the rule means that the judgement has to be that, yet again, Cardiff’s attitude was wrong for a game against Swansea.
I may be giving City a bit of a get out of jail free card there to some extent by not being too critical of what happened today because I’m very reluctant to have a go at the side for the one hundred and fifty five minutes in their last two matches where they had to play with ten men.
QPR, who beat us on Wednesday, are still top of the table and Swansea are probably the worst team in the Championship to go down to ten men inside the first ten minutes against -as the eighty three/seventeen split in the possession figures today indicates.
I was very critical of our defending in particular in the eighteen minutes before the penalty and red card (as it always was going to be, Jack Simpson’s suspension was overturned on appeal) against QPR. However, for the mere seven minutes when it was eleven against eleven today, there were some promising signs. City’s high pressing and eagerness to get forward gave the jacks some awkward moments before Robinson’s implosion, but, just as on Wednesday, it was no longer a meaningful contest after the red card.
Hudson reacted by switching to a 4-4-1 system with Sheyi Ojo given the thankless task of leading the line – he made little impression and made way for Mark Harris at half time.
For about twenty five minutes, City defended well after going down to ten apart that is from down their left where Neils N’Kounkou was struggling. Indeed, they even managed to put together a very good move which ended with Tom Sang (as good as anyone in blue I thought) showing his solid technique with a volley from twenty yards that goalkeeper Steven Benda turned aside for a corner. Harris also put a second half header not too far over, but that was the extent of our attacking play I’m afraid.
So, it’s two on target efforts in three, goalless, games now for City. Tat’s a woeful stat which I would hope and expect would read at least a little differently if we’d not spent more than half of those three games a man short.
In fact, in some ways, it mirrors the situation Mark Hudson now finds himself in. Rightly or wrongly, my opinion has always been that I would prefer it if we had immediately made looking outside the club for a replacement for Steve Morison a priority. I accept that’s harsh on Hudson, but I’m influenced by what happened the last time the club decided to sit on its hands after sacking a manager – they decided on the easy, and cheap, option and found themselves back at square one a year later.
Yet, you look at what’s happened in the last three matches and think that it would be very, very harsh to say thank you, but goodbye to Hudson. It’s hard to come up with a valid comparison with previous managers, but I’ll try – what would have been the reaction if Vincent Tan had sacked Malky Mackay after him taking seven points from nine had been followed by three defeats where they’d been robbed of a draw by a refereeing error and then two losses where they suffered an awful sending off (which was overturned because of refereeing error) and then a more justified one in the early stages of both matches- it just wouldn’t have been fair would it..
Footballs seldom a fair game though and there will be renewed pressure on Tan and co to act after another derby defeat (let’s not forget our limp loss at Bristol City as well) – reluctantly, because of the implications for Mark Hudson, I believe they need to act as well.
Of course, the truth as I see it is that Tan and co are the real problem. You have to wonder if Messrs Tan, Choo and Dalman ever ponder what makes a successful modern day football club? If they do, how can they ever conclude anything other than “ours is nothing like that”?
As I mentioned in a messageboard post this week, the Tan “project” has become a huge opportunity wasted for a club like Cardiff City. There’s no point going over old ground again, so I’ll just leave it to comparing the hierarchy at our club to a bunch of inept DIY enthusiasts who cobble together their own furniture while everyone else is buying it from the best warehouses.
Anyway, let’s just quickly go through the further details of the game. It was never comfortable, but City we’re doing a decent job of frustrating Swansea until Kipre’s inexplicable punch out of a cross from inside the penalty area. Luckily for the centre half, the ref didn’t see it and a perfectly placed linesman didn’t flag.
However, the sense of injustice Swansea must have felt helped them to up their efforts and they soon scored a rather lucky goal following a poor clearance by N’Kounkou. I say lucky because Luke Cundle completely miscontrolled the ball only for it to roll into the path of Ollie Cooper who finished well via the underside of the bar from fifteen yards.
This was a particularly galling goal for us to concede when you consider that Cooper is the son of ex City winger Kevin who used to work for them as a youth coach. Furthermore, Ollie had several trials with us and was rejected on each occasion – something else then to add to what is a pretty lengthy charge list against a recent Academy employee.
Swansea didn’t really have many chances until City tired in the closing minutes, but the ones they did have tended to fall to Michael Obafemi who missed a great first half chance and a couple of others after the break. Obafemi finished well though midway through the second half when Grimes exploited a huge gap between centrebacks Kipre and Curtis Nelson to send the Irish international through.
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