A defeat that had been coming.

5 Responses to A defeat that had been coming.

1. Graham says:

   September 14, 2014 at 9:42 am

   Yes – a miserable nightmare experience more difficult to cope with because it came after a very good first 30 minutes .. we simply disintegrated as a team and football is essentially a team game. We watched as a collection of good and very good individual players failed to work together and for each other. Teams need leaders on and off the pitch to organise, encourage, and inspire, in the way that Hudson, and especially Bellamy, always did. Marshall is a superb goalkeeper but he can’t leave his area and do that in the way they could. No doubt he’ll be an excellent Club captain but we have to have someone else leading on the pitch. But the main problem lies off the pitch : those around me in the Ninian Stand yesterday, both those who left early because they couldn’t bear any more and those who stayed to the bitter end because they didn’t want to desert those of our players who kept trying, all seemed agreed that our manager may be a very pleasant young man but he may not even keep us in the Championship, let alone lead us to promotion. So to Tuesday against Middlesborough – please no more careless passes and, most of all, whoever from our collection of midfielders gets selected, let them think and act positively and creatively and see possession as a means of attacking – as they did early on yesterday. A final thought : all managers behave differently but those who are seen getting really involved on the touchline jumping up and down in sometimes frustration but always encouragement infect not only players but supporters with their enthusiasm – and we supporters will need to show that support more and more not less and less as the weeks go by.
2. Matt N says:

   September 14, 2014 at 9:56 am

   Hi Paul
   Thanks for interpreting the sparse updates of Wales Online into a cohesive picture. I think your penultimate paragraph is very incisive. Ole’s team mates were such a talented group ( I watched class of 92 last week, which is a cracking documentary) that they could do whatever asked of them. To me, playing young, less talented players out of position is asking for trouble, and when it doesn’t and isn’t working, the risk of losing the dressing room is probably very high. I can’t imagine Macheda (nor ALF) would be very Impressed being asked to forego their goal bonuses and do the donkey work.
   I wonder if a 3 5 2 is on the cards once Manga is ready to play? I would imagine that Brayford and Fabio/john would get a lot out of such a system, with Dikgakoi, Whitts and AN other patrolling the middle.
   I’ll be at the Boro game, so hope to see some reaction…braced for disappointment though!!!
3. Harry says:

   September 14, 2014 at 10:10 am

   No idea why anyone is saying Cardiff have a really good squad anyway. Norwich’s is far superior when you look at the players, who are all recognisable (unlike most of Cardiff’s for starters), and what became obvious in the 2nd half was signs of a team more than capable of winning the league. Genuinely, looking at Norwich’s squad, I’d be amazed if they aren’t top of the pile comfortably come May.

   It had nothing to do with Cardiff capitulating either, Norwich simply arrived in the 2nd half and had way too much to cope with. If Hooper was fit and involved as well as it could have got really dirty. Their squad it scary when you look at the players injured who are due to return.
4. Dai Woosnam says:

   September 14, 2014 at 12:04 pm

   Splendid report, as ever, Paul.
   I am probably unique amongst contributors to the Comments section of CCMaYA, in that whether Cardiff City actually win or lose is not the vital aspect to sustain my lifelong interest in the club.
   What I want above all is for the SOUL of the club to be right. I do not want surly/paranoid managers like DJ, or managers who are not what they seem like MM. I want supporters to cheer on Mr Tan: the finest owner that the club has had in modern times…indeed maybe in the club’s whole long history. Not ungrateful people who naively think SUPPORTERS own their clubs. (Sorry chums, they don’t…unless you support FC Manchester and the like.)
   I often tease my eldest brother in Pontyclun – who has had a City season ticket since the current Pope was an altar boy – by saying that he would be perfectly happy if the club was managed by Adolf Hitler and trained by Pol Pot, as long as in return City could win the European Champions League Trophy. And I suspect that deep down he agrees. Victory to most City fans is almost everything: whereas to me, I would sooner they ply their trade in the Welsh Premier League than lose their soul.
   So I am unsurprised that already the fans are sharpening their knives in comments on Walesonline and looking to “see off” the Baby Faced Assassin. I forecasted as much in a comment of mine on Walesonline, just a month after City were relegated. I had seen what Ole could do as a manager, and knew he was WAY out of his depth.
   I predicted that City would be about 15th by late October and 18th coming up to Christmas, and that Mr Tan would reluctantly sack our smiling friend, and replace him with DJ to the widespread cheers of City fans (although were that last-mentioned to happen, people close to me should go on immediate “suicide watch”.)
   That forecast of mine drew a massive number of thumbs down/minuses: I am rather proud of it. A possible record for Walesonline.
   It has never bothered me to be in a “minority of one”: only dead fish swim with the stream.
   So, Paul, as you might expect of me, I am perversely indeed not going to join others in the call for Ole to go. I rather like the chap, even if I do think that there is something of Mr Bean in him.
   Again yesterday our Mr Tinkerman messed about again.
   Look…Swansea have been unchanged every game (and won them all) until yesterday …when they lost.
   Villa have been unchanged in four games …and win at Anfield yesterday.
   Surely that should tell him something?
   I believe part of Cardiff’s problem is this: they have too many players to choose from. Several of these players should be loaned out to get regular games. (Justin Edinburgh should get on the phone when the chance arises.)
   And teams CAN have too many players to choose from. Between 1977 and 1984, Wales beat the mighty England THREE times in the Home internationals. How come?
   I submit it was because England could have fielded a dozen teams that would have won that Home International title most years, whereas Wales would have been hard pressed to turn out even a SECOND side that would have been able to give one of those dozen England sides a decent game.
   But England had an embarrassment of riches vis-a-vis Wales, and that was their undoing.
   However people say “oh you need a massive squad cos there are 46 league games. The demands are relentess: the games come thick and fast, every Saturday then Tuesday then Saturday, almost ad infinitum”.
   It is modish rubbish, is it not?
   It makes me laugh when I think of how few players the best City team I ever saw used to get promotion to the top flight in 1960. And that team of greats like Danny Malloy and Graham Moore used to play on pitches that were often mudheaps or sandtraps. And play with a monstrous football that was as close to a medicine ball when wet, as our modern football is as close to a beach ball.
   And then I recall that a few seasons later in 1965-66, Liverpool won the League Title from Man Utd the previous holders, remarkably using only 14 squad players ALL SEASON.
   And if your readers say, “the game is so much faster now” and “ah this is old Dai on his nostalgia kick again”, I say to your readers, no forget it! Nostalgia it emphatically ain’t.
   Take last season.
   I believe Burnley used only 18 different players to START their games all season …and they were promoted with ease.
   Ole’s problem is he is a very nice man who has bought far too many players. And precisely BECAUSE he is a mensch, he wants to give them all a game!
   It is a recipe for perfect disaster.
   I have just gone to the excellent ESPN site and laboriously counted the number of players that Ole has STARTED Championship games with this season.
   http://www.espn.co.uk/football/sport/match/index.html?event=9;team=264
   Forget that amazing 14 that Liverpool used ALL SEASON and still ended up 10 points clear of a Man Utd with a forward line of the Holy Trinity of Best/Law/Charlton. Cardiff have flown past that total in just 5 minutes, so-to-speak!
   My research has led me to this: in just 6 games, Ole has started (forget the additional substitutes, I am talking players STARTING the games here) with …wait for it …are you sitting down?
   …
   already an incredible EIGHTEEN different players! The same total as Burnley started with in 46 games last season!
   Frankly, were he a general in the army and selecting key troops for battle this headless-chicken way, Ole would possibly be facing court-martial.
   So where are we now?
   I note that the drumbeats are starting, to get Tony Pulis in: the man I was calling for way back, when he was warring with Paul Scully at Gillingham in 1999.
   But after three managers have wasted Mr Tan’s money, can he really face a fourth in such a short time?
   I guess he will keep Ole, and tell him to pull himself together and act like a man, and not try and please everyone…for it is impossible.
   Will sign off now. Again, thanks as ever Paul for a fine report.
   Kindest,
   Dai.
5. The other Bob Wilson says:

   September 14, 2014 at 12:56 pm

   Thanks for your replies.

   Harry, I agree with you about the Norwich squad – it was, marginally, better than ours last season, despite us, somehow, getting four points off them last season, they were much the better team in both matches between the clubs and they look stronger than us this season.

   Matt, I think you sum the Manchester United situation up nicely in your first paragraph and, although I originally saw 3-5-2 as a system to use more away from home, I’m gradually coming around to thinking that we should try it at Cardiff City Stadium as well – enjoy the game on Tuesday, I expect to see a reaction to what happened yesterday, but can the team sustain it for ninety minutes?

   Graham, we had no one playing well in the last hour – Kenwyne Jones still looked like he could maybe do something, but was starved of service and I thought Aron Gunnarsson did quite will until he was moved out to the right wing, but they only turned in 6 out of 10 performances. Agree entirely about the lack of leaders – Gunnarsson captains his country, so I suppose he’d offer something, Morrison was captain of Reading for a while I believe, but there’s no one obvious to take the job off Marshall (I agree with those say goalkeepers are too far away from the action most of the time to make good captains. Even at 2-0 up, the atmosphere was still flat I thought. The club needs something to galvanise it and, for a while it looked like we might get the excellent display and result Ole and the fanbase desperately need, but, instead, the wait for our manager to do something which gets a good proportion of supporters thinking he can make a good City manager drags on.

   Dai, I don’t want Ole to be sacked and, as a rule, I give managers far more time than he’s had before I get twitchy about them, but it’s the lack of virtually anything to point to and say “right, that gives us some promise for this season” which makes it tougher to do with Ole. Your eighteen players used already point only confirms what many suspect and, as so many are now saying, it’s become too easy to say “Ole, nice man, but……………”. As for Tony Pulis, he might come here given his Pill roots, but him and Vincent Tan does not strike me as a marriage made in heaven – far from it actually! Also, I don’t see many Pulis type midfield players in this squad – not sure there’s many striker’s he’d fancy either!

Comments are closed.