By and large, Cardiff City home games in the last five seasons have been occasions to be endured rather than enjoyed. Results have been very poor and my distinct impression over that period is that wins have been as rare as they’ve ever been in my sixty one a half years of supporting the club. Additionally, quite a few of the wins we have managed have been 1-0 borefests (ironically the rarity of such games this season, because we find it close to impossible to keep a clean sheet, will be one of many reasons for our relegation, if it comes to that).
Wins have been thin on the ground then and so has entertainment, so it’ll sound churlish of me to describe today’s 1-1 draw with Sheffield Wednesday as a good game of football with quite a bit to commend it, yet it has left me frustrated, somewhat annoyed, fearing the worst and losing faith in our manager.
Omer Riza is being criticised from all sides on social media tonight. I’d like to say that’s harsh and, to a degree, I think it is, because there is a tendency with this manager from some to pile into him while letting a squad of under performing players with a dubious collective mentality off Scot free. However, there are questions to be asked of Riza tonight when it comes to his non reaction to the three substitutions made by Wednesday at half time.
It’s funny though, Omer Riza has been portrayed as someone who is learning on the job, is under constant scrutiny from both the fans and Board and I think it’s fair to say that there’s a general feeling about that he’s not going to be at Cardiff next season whatever division we’re in.
Strangely enough, the Wednesday manager Danny Rohl came into his job around the same stage of the campaign as Omer Riza did this time around and, from memory, his team had only gained a single point when he took over as well. It’s history now that Rohl kept Wednesday up, and with a bit of style as well, and he’s regarded by some within the game as an elite level manager in the making. Indeed, such things were being said about him some time before Wednesday’s safety was confirmed in 23/24.
No one has ever said Omer Riza is an elite level manager in the making as far as Im aware and I’d think they were joking if they did. However, one thing was obvious through the first half today – Riza was winning the battle of the managers hands down.
There were a couple of reasons for this. First, Riza had made a bold selection with the youth and pace of Will Alvez, Cian Ashford and Isaak Davies presenting Wednesday with problems they were struggling to cope with. Behind them, Calum Chambers and Sivert Mannsverk were outplaying their counterparts with Cardiff players winning battles for second balls all over the park and at the back, the youthful centrebacks Will Fish and Joel Bagan were in control.
The second reason for Cardiff being in the ascendancy was that the highly regarded Rohl had got his selection totally wrong, as he conceded himself by making those three half time substitutions.
For a club that could still make the Play Offs, Wednesday were just not at the races in the first forty five minutes and City were worth more than their 1-0 lead.
I wasn’t expecting as many as three changes from Rohl at half time, but I could certainly see him making one or two and I’m certain I wasn’t alone in thinking that. Omer Riza must surely have expected his rival manager to shake up his tactics or personnel and that probably it would be both of them he’d alter.
I’m doing something now that I don’t do normally in my reaction pieces and that’s give a link to our manager’s post game comments.
The first thing I want to say about the linked story is that I can understand why Riza didn’t make changes to his team at half time – they were playing well and they deserved the chance to continue the good work. However, what I feel fans will be annoyed at is the fact that Wednesday’s equaliser was scored in the sixty first minute and it felt like it had been coming for at least five minutes before it arrived. Riza correctly identifies the introduction of Shea Charles as the main reason for the change in the balance of the game and also mentions that Wednesday now had two in an area where previously they’d had one, but he did nothing about it – or, at least, he reacted too slowly to the changed circumstances.
With a three behind Yousef Salech who were very much attack minded, Wednesday’s extra midfield numbers gave Mannsverk and Chambers a bigger workload than they could cope with, but, even when our manager decided to make changes, you had to question them.
Mannsverk would not have been at the top of my list of players to be withdrawn – David Turnbull for him was like for like and the damage had already been done by the time the Scot came on I suppose because it was now 1-1, but I would have far preferred Alvez, withdrawn at the same time as Mannsverk, to be the man Turnbull replaced as this would have shored up the middle of the park while giving us the option of having Turnbull push forward if need be.
Mystifyingly, it was Anwar El Ghazi who came on for Alvez. This sounds brutal, but, although there have been occasional flickers from the Dutch international, we’re now going into the final month of the season and he’s done barely anything yet to justify his one year contract – nothing happened today to change that view either.
Ollie Tanner came on, for Davies, after more than two months out injured, but was switched to right back soon after, where he struggled. However, at least that seemingly baffling decision was explained afterwards. The final changes saw Yakou Meite on for Salech and Rubin Colwill for cramp victim Ng.
To get back to the game itself. For all that Davies, Alvez and Ashford (why on earth has he featured so little in recent weeks?) excited to again demonstrate that, in some aspects of the game, we’re better than a relegation team (sadly, we’re clearly a bottom three team in others) there weren’t many opportunities to turn City’s first half domination into goals.
The one we did get came when Alvez drove in from the left, picked out Davies moving in from the opposite flank and he finished cleverly just inside the post from the edge of the penalty area with his left foot – making it look like the Wednesday keeper and defence had been ‘given the eyes” in the process.
This takes me on to set pieces, corners in particular. We had nine of them today to Wednesday’s one and it’s a measure of how ineffective we’ve been from them that Callum O’Dowda today became the latest in a long line of City players to be given the responsibility of taking them.
To be fair to the City captain, he took some bad ones, took some good ones (two of which maybe should have been headed in by Salech, who was also just wide with a very good second half header), but I’d say a majority of them were, more or less, over before they began as City were penalised for a foul.
Now maybe there might have been an error or two made by referee Sam Allison who fell some way short of the standard I’d seen from him previously today, but this happens week after week with this team and one of the reasons for our lower set piece goal rate this season must be that we’re always fouling the opposition (must of them are fouls as well) – doesn’t this get noticed by the analytical and coaching staff and why isn’t something being done about it?
By contrast, on an afternoon where City generally defended pretty well, they came up hopelessly short as the only corner they had to face saw Wednesday equalise. Wednesday lined up with all of their big men well beyond the far post, so it was obvious what was going to happen and yet it seemed like every one of them had the run on their so called marker and it was centreback Michael Iheikwe who scored from Barry Bannan’s delivery with a simple header.
Watching that equaliser, the word “naive” sprang to mind. There are times when our manager seems naive – going into a game in a relegation fight with such a young front four could be called naive because young players can give you an awful lot, but they’re, you know, naive aren’t they. The trouble is, City have been naive throughout a season when they’ve often had a nucleus of thirty year old plus players in the spine of their team – if this season ends in relegation, then the word naive should be there prominently displayed on it’s tombstone.
In the first of the day’s City v Wednesday encounters, it was the Yorkshire side’s under 18s who came out on top with Lennon Talbot scoring our goal in a 4-1 away defeat.
In local football, Treherbert Boys and Girls Club drew 1-1 at home to Pontyclun FC in their latest Ardal South West League match.
