A moments rashness by Gabriel Osho cost Cardiff City at least two points tonight as his lunge on Ewan Henderson saw him given a straight red card and this rime there was to be no repeat of their stroll to victory at Rotherham with ten men as they went down to a second successive 2-0 home defeat against Wycombe Wanderers.
If Osho stays on I don’t see us losing the game, maybe we end up with a 0-0 because Wycombe had defended pretty well for the first forty minutes and we didn’t have our shooting boots on, but that one act by a player who I’m afraid has shown himself to be prone to occasional lapses of judgment which have a habit of costing us changed the game completely.
Was it a justified red card? Looking at the message boards, opinions are mixed, but, for me, the key phrase here in the way that the modern game is officiated is “out of control”. Having now seen a replay of the tackle, it doesn’t look as bad as it did at the first time of asking. Seeing it live, I thought it was a definite sending off, but a second, closer look makes me understand why some are saying a yellow card would have been sufficient punishment.
However, I come back to the words out of control and I’m afraid that Osho was definitely that when he launched into his tackle and that’s why, if City are tempted to appeal the decision, I think they’ll probably lose.
For me, referee Carl Brook was inconsistent in his decision making – not for the first time, I find myself baffled as to how City end up with more cards than opponents who committed at least as many cynical fouls as we did and yet too often the ref decided that no offense had been taken place when the perpetrator was wearing Wycombe’s yellow..
That being said, to borrow the term which VAR was supposed to be restricted to, did Mr Brook make a clear and obvious error when he showed the red card to Osho? The answer has to be no – to use pundit speak for a while, Osho gave the ref the chance to get his red card out and he duly took it.
The next obvious question is was BBM’s response to having to play for close to an hour with ten men the right one? With the Rotherham example to go by, it didn’t come as a shock that our manager kept on attacking by moving Ryan Wintle back to play as a kind of centreback cum sitting midfielder which meant that the four attacking players were allowed to stay in the roles they were fulfilling when it was eleven v eleven even if they probably dropped a few yards deeper.
I must say I liked and admired the attacking attitude and it so nearly worked as City spent pretty long periods of the second half pinning the opposition back in the manner supporters have become used to this season.
However, when you look at how the all important first goal was scored with just over ten minutes to go, you do have to question how it was that the makeshift defender Wintle was faced with having responsibility for defending the red side of the pitch with Perry Ng miles up the park in pursuit of the breakthrough goal.
Given that Wycombe’s opener was a typical counter attack strike with a long ball into space which stretched an undermanned defence, you could be forgiven for thinking they were the team with ten men looking for some relief from the pressure they’d been under by playing a long ball into space for a forward to run on to.
Wycombe’s second goal was irrelevant really, it owed quite a bit to luck and to another dubious decision by Mr Brook to award a free kick against Joel Colwill and then, mystifyingly, showing him a yellow card. However, the goal that really counted could probably be put down to us looking for the three points late in the game having not made the type of substitution that nine managers out of ten would have done (i.e. bring on Calum Chambers or Will Fish within minutes of the red card being shown).
Therefore, the honest answer is yes, BBM got it wrong by reacting to going down to ten men like he did, but I’m not going to be too critical of him because I’m liking so much the type of team we are under him and it stands to reason that there are going to be mistakes made when playing in such a bold manner – if BBM was responsible for tonight’s defeat, then there are plenty of wins and goals scored which can be put down to his attacking approach..
Perhaps uniquely for this season, BBM named the same starting eleven and seven subs as the previous game and, in many ways, City played the first half in the same way as they did for most of the Exeter match. The difference was that, although Rubin Colwill, fresh from signing his new contract, was largely bright and accurate with his passing, the other attacking players were not quite as sharp as they’d been three days earlier.
The clearest example of this came when Omari Kellyman, who hasn’t looked quite right since returning from his groin injury, couldn’t sort his feet out when presented with a great opportunity within the six yard box. Colwill forced goalkeeper Will Norris into a diving save and Ollie Tanner was not too far wide with his shot after a lovely quick passing movement, but too many promising situations were wasted by an errant final pass or wayward shooting.
Wycombe had posed some threat on the break, but it was mainly a holding operation until the sending off – in fact that didn’t change much until about the hour mark when Wycombe began to show the first signs that they could cash in on their one man advantage as Nathan Trott was called upon to make some good saves with sub Junior Quitrina also firing narrowly wide.
However, Cian Ashford’s searing break which gave a lie to those who say he lacks pace, led to the best chance of the second period as he closed in on goal. The fact he was running with the ball so quickly made the chance that bit more difficult, but after his shot flew across goal and the wrong side of the post you couldn’t help thinking that he’d done the hardest bit already.
City had plenty of pressure after that and Wycombe definitely rode their luck at times, but, for the first time, it began to look as if the visitors might get the decisive first goal and it arrived when a long pass by Morley freed the sub Andre Vidigal who held off Wintle and calmly steered in his first goal in almost two years.
The second goal soon arrived as the harshly awarded free kick against the younger Colwill mentioned earlier was crossed in and after a couple of rebounds favoured the visitors, another sub, Cauley Woodrow headed in from close range.
Elsewhere, it looked like Lincoln’s long unbeaten run was coming to an end when they went down 2-0 early on at Huddersfield, but a goal in added time allowed them to salvage a 2-2 draw. City’s slip was hardly taken advantage of though by the only two teams who, realistically, could still catch us as they both could only draw at home – Bolton had a goalless stalemate with Doncaster and Bradford were held 1-1 by Mansfield.
A few hours earlier, the under 21s made it four games unbeaten as they came through a scrappy encounter at Leckwith against Fleetwood with a 2-1 win. After falling behind early on, headed goals by Alyas Debono and Charlie O’Brien from corners either side of half time gave us the points, but a fairly strong wind and what seemed like a lively pitch made for little in the way of quality football.
