Cardiff City fell to a predictable home defeat tonight against third placed Burnley, but not really in the manner they were expected to. Burnley, the team that don’t concede goals are going to miss out on automatic promotion by failing to turn enough of their numerous goalless draws into 1-0 wins if they finish the season in their current position, so the predictions beforehand tended to favour a 1-0 win for the visitors, with City being given a chance of earning a goalless draw.
In the event, it was a much more open game than expected and, although it’s little consolation in defeat, City scored the first league goal against the Lancastrians in a whopping 1,132 minutes, they also hit the woodwork twice and should have scored a late equaliser as they missed badly from inside the six yard box.
For all of that though, Burnley created a lot more chances than they did back in August when they somehow beat us 5-0 and there was a desperation to much of City’s defending in the first hour of the game. It needed some good saves and last ditch blocks to keep the score down before we finished strongly and pegged Burnley back for much of the last twenty five minutes or so.
Burnley’s defending wasn’t as good as I expected it to be, but I’m thinking of what I’ll call traditional defending there because they were very good and organized with their pressing.
It’s to City’s credit therefore that Burnley must have been relieved to hear the final whistle – I wouldn’t deny the visitors their win, they deserved it over the ninety minutes, but it still felt like City could have got a second goal if the match had gone on for another ten minutes and at least, after five feeble defeats to the current top four with an aggregate score of 0-18, we managed to give one of them a decent game at the sixth attempt.
Im sure I wasn’t the only one caught out by Omer Riza’s tactics from the start as what looked for all of the world like a three at the back selection with wing backs became a 4-2-3-1 with Andy Rinomhota and Joel Bagan full backs, Perry Ng partnering Dimi Goutas in central defence, Sivert Mannsverk paired with Calum Chambers in central midfield, Cian Ashford on the right, Alex Robertson playing centrally and Callum O’Dowda given something of a roving commission behind Yousef Salech.
Will Fish and Ruben Colwill were two members of the team that played at Villa Park on Friday with good reason to feel hard done by after their omissions from tonight’s starting line up and the fact Riza introduced them both at half time for Rinomhota and Robertson is something of an admission that he’d got the original selection wrong.
City had defended pretty well in their previous three games, but I’m afraid tonight was a return to their woes at the back which have haunted all season.They were poor defensively in the first forty five minutes during which all of the goals were scored with the one which turned out to be the winner being a shockingly bad one to concede.
Three goals in a first half is almost unheard of at Cardiff City Stadium these days and so it doesn’t take much figuring out to realise this was one of the best first periods seen at the ground in months. City had begun in bright fashion and Ng’s cross was collected by James Trafford with his feet well behind the goal line, but his hands the right side of said line.
Burnley had moved the ball about quite slickly, but when they scored on eighteen minutes it was from their first serious attack as City’s season long problem preventing crosses from their right resurfaced as Hannibal get clear down that side and pulled the ball across for captain Josh Brownhill to score from eight yards out – there was a slight deflection off Ng, but I’m sure the shot would have gone in anyway.
Burnley now took control, but it was City who came closest to scoring in the next twenty minutes or so when O’Dowda clipped a great ball in and Salech, stood close to the penalty spot, stretched to divert the ball on to the outside of the post with Trafford beaten.
Zian Flemming missed a great chance to double the lead as he climbed unmarked to meet another cross from our right, but headed well wide from eight yards.
The Dutchman did better with his head five minutes before the break when he was left totally free on the far post to head across goal to where defender Maxine Estevan, equally unmarked, tapped in from about three yards out – again, the danger came from the right and there was little effort made to try and close Josh Cullen down as he crossed.
Given Burnley’s defensive record, it definitely felt like game over when the ball hit our net for the second time, but within a couple of minutes, O’Dowda did really well to win possession on the edge of the Burnley’s penalty area and Bagan’s cross was headed in at the far post by Salech who was giving his best performance for the club so far as he enjoyed an aerial superiority over the visiting centrebacks throughout.
For a minute or two in the second half, City pushed Burnley back, but they soon recovered their poise and I’m still not sure how we came through the next 15 minutes or so without conceding again – Ethan Horvarth made two good saves and there were a couple of decent looking penalty appeals turned down as our goal led something of a charmed life.
I was disappointed to see Ashford and Bagan withdrawn as I thought they’d both been among our best players, but the introduction of Callum Robinson and Anwar El-Ghazi as well as Aaron Ramsey for Mannsverk saw us improve as a team and we gained an element of control for the first time in the game.
Chances were still hard to come by though – Robinson’s good cross was headed on to the top of the bar and over by the impressive Salech, but the big chance came in the five minutes of added time when Goutas headed on to fellow centreback Fish who screwed his shot from the corner of the six yard box across goal and wide to send City to their first home defeat since the game before Christmas, which also happened to be the last time our opponents had conceded a goal in the Championship.
As I mentioned earlier, I thought the score was just about right, but there are plenty who thought we merited a draw with our stronger finish and, overall, it was a performance that makes me more confident we can stay up, but the obvious caveat is that we cannot afford to keep on giving away such soft goals.
Although the final ball and finishing still isn’t all that it should be, I feel this is the best attacking side we’ve had for three or four seasons, but the accusation that we are as poor in defence as we have been for a generation is a damning one with some merit to it I would say.Ability wise and on an individual basis, I don’t think we’re that bad, but we seem to have problems concentrating and we’re not as organised as most City defences since we were promoted in 2003.
A defeat for Plymouth by 2-0 at Hull sends the Humberside club above us again, but I’d say it wasn’t a bad outcome for us as we remain ahead of twenty second placed Luton by five points which is a handy gap to have over the bottom trio at this stage of the season. Clearly, Luton’s visit to Cardiff next Tuesday could see us taking a huge step towards safety, but, if things take a turn for the worse and we drop back into the bottom three, it’ll be substandard defending, more than anything else, that puts us there.
It was also a 2-1 defeat for the under 21s who played poorly this afternoon at home to a Millwall side who played the second half with ten men following what I thought was a very harsh red card shown to one of their defenders just before half time. Millwall were leading 1-0 at the time with a soft goal scored from a header from a corner, but City were given a lifeline by a penalty award given for a foul on Trey George as he dived to head a Luey Giles cross – the decision looked a correct one, but it was a real surprise to see a red card being shown to the culprit as well.
Mannie Barton’s underhit penalty was saved by the Millwall keeper and the visitors doubled their lead soon after the restart with another simple goal.
City struggled to find any fluency even with a man advantage, George did get a goal back when he took advantage of a mistake to round the keeper and finish well, but, apart from a shot against the post by Raheem Conte, Millwall saw the game out with few alarms.
Thanks as ever Paul.
I predicted at the start if the season we would go down. I see no reason to change my thinking. I cannot think of another Championship squad that player for player is patently weaker than ours.
We so need a right back and a ‘Keegan’ to play off our ‘Toshack’. I genuinely think that Salech is our best buy since Mark McGuinness. Whether Robbo is that man, I have my doubts. I see him as a sub to be brought on in the 6oth minute. What sayest thou, Paul?
Could Davies be that man?
One thing for sure… we need no kamikaze football in our own third… but we want to play the game in theirs. We need O’Dowda and A.N.Other to play the crosses aimed at his head.
Let’s see him give Mark McGuinness a testing time aerially next week.
And mentioning Mark… how Goutas is nowhere near the player he was with him alongside.
So lucky to escape that penalty for his tackle in the first half last night.
TTFN,
Dai.
Out and out strikers have become “luxury” players in the modern game Dai where managers and coaches dictate how a team p;lays moreso than in any other time of my football watching life. The system is everything and every player out there has their full share of defensive responsibilities. The first team I can remember playing with one striker as a matter of course was David Pleat’s Spurs team that was beaten by Coventry in the 1987 Cup Final – they had Clive Allen who from memory scored nearly fifty goals that season, but Pleat, who was considered a progressive manager with an attacking outlook, had some very attack minded players in the midfield five operating behind Allen and Spurs scored plenty of goals that season even if they did not win anything, The problem came when others started to im imitate Spurs’ formation, but did not have the players with the skill set to get the best out of such a system.
It’s the same with “false number nines” – Spain were the first team to play what was essentially 4-6-0 and got away with it because they were the best team in the world at the time, but, not too long after, you had Craig Levein playing it in a vital qualifying game for his Scotland team, which was predictably lost 1-0 to hasten what was eventually Levein’s sacking.
My point is that most genuinely new systems seem to involve less and less specialist strikers. There are some teams around who still play with a genuine front two , but not many and so a Toshack, Keegan type partnership is almost unheard of these days which kind of makes me think someone should try it to see how defences used to having to deal with one striker would cope.
I agree with you that if we were to go down the Toshack/Keegan type route, then Isaak Davies seems the player in our squad to be the Keegan to Salech’s Toshack, but I’d be amazed if it happened – Salech’s arrival has caused something of a conundrum though as, rarely for us, we have a striker who made it into double figures for league goals in January and we are now having trouble getting him into the team! The best cross Salech received on Tuesday from one of our wide attacking players was the one he headed against the crossbar from Callum Robinson, but I’m not sure where you play him if Salech is starting – maybe as a number ten type operating slightly behind the striker, but we tried something like that recently and it didn’t work.
I don’t think Sunderland away is the game to do it on, but maybe we should try an olf fashioned 4-4-2 when we play Luton next week with Salech and Robinson up front and Davies ready to come on for Robbo late on?
Some very thoughtful words from you Paul on tactics.
Just for the record I want to say that I am no advocate for the lone striker, and never will be. Yes, there is the exceptional player who can handle the role, but most forward players are just not up to it… the analogy that springs to mind, is that of a farmer and his sheepdog: individually they cannot herd their sheep, but collectively they are a very effective machine…
Your mentioning the Spurs team of the Clive Allen era makes me think of 20 years previous and the greatest ‘glanced’ header of a football, I have ever seen… the wonderful Alan Gilzean… who alas has been dead six or seven years I reckon… (it is too late in the night to google and I want to count zeds).
And I hope I am not going doolally here Paul, but there is something in this boy’s heading that makes me think of Gilly.
No, he may not have the power header of a Tosh let alone a King John, but when I think of the White Hart Lane ‘G-Men’, I know that Gilly scored a hatful in that partnership with Jimmy… but it was the sheer number of glanced headers he provided for the unforgettable Greavsie to turn into golden goals that lives in my memory.
And when ‘the bottle’ started to get the better of Jimmy*, along came a chap from Southampton to form another splendid up-front partnership… and I remember the crowd chant ‘Jennings kicks, Gilzean flicks, Chivers scores, Park Lane roars’…
Paul, so what if 4-4-2 is ‘old fashioned’…!! What is fashion? As GBS famously said ‘nothing more than an induced epidemic’.
I despise fashion. How we are all currently desperate to emulate Pep and play ‘silly buggers’ passing suicidally around our own third. Well… if thst is ‘new’ fashion, give me the OLD… when football was thrilling and we did not emasculate players like Grealish and make him play square and backwards all the time… and reduce a fantastic talent like Haaland to five touches in a game. And even managers in the National League now adopt this nonsense as they seem to think it is intellectually more stimulating. Snobbery, pure and simple.
As for our City, let’s face it, our central midfielders – Rambo excepted – are pretty ineffective. The best of them – the little Greek terrier – has now gone back home.
Robertson has been a big disappointment, and the boy from Ajax does not convince me. Chambers I accept is better there than in the back 4… where he is a total liability…
So we should not expect the ball going forward through them.. so I suggest our keeper bypasses them and aims the ball at Salech… or failing that, gets it out to O’Dowda and Tanner on the flanks to get up their touchline to cross the ball.
But we need that number 8 alongside Salech at 9. And it ain’t Robbo. Let’s try Davies. Bring on Robbo as sub.
Rambo when fit is our automatic number 10.
Sleep beckons.
*as it is getting the better of Grealish, who is alas going the way of Gazza.
What manager incidentally throws a party to celebrate winning the EPL just a few days before a Wembley final against their cross-city rivals? A party that some of them leave half-cut, and Grealish leaves bleary eyed and nearly legless.
And thus it was that a less than dazzling United fairly easily beat them 2-1.
Call me old fashioned but I reckon that was total irresponsibility from Pep.
TTFN,
Dai.
Salech had done little to invite comparisons with the brilliant header of a ball that was Alan Gilzean before Tuesday Dai and I’m still not sure he has after it. What I would say though is that his work in the air against Burnley was a big improvement on what we’d seen before from him – in different circumstances, I would be looking at the opposition as having been weak aerially, but Burnley had their regular centrebacks in who have been the backbone of a defence that took until early March to concede the same number of league goals we did after four matches! The Burnley centrebacks appear to have coped well with tall strikers up until now, but I really do think that if you asked who was the centre forward who bothered them most this season, Salech would be somewhere near the top of the list.
The question as to why tall target men have almost disappeared from the modern game at the highest level is are they poorer players than they used to be or are thay less effective because they barely ever have a Keegan equivalent to their Toshack playing alongside them? I think it’s more the latter than the former – going back to Salech, he was dominant in the air on Tuesday, but how many of the headers he won were touched next by a Cardiff player? Very few I would say – if playing two out and out forwards is a step too far for Omer Riza, who often talks of “matching up” to the opposition’s formation, then I’d at least like to see the winger on the side that play isn’t on stepping inside to try and play off Salech by giving him a target close by who he can try to direct his headers at. However, if City do try to play long passes, as opposed to booting it uo the middle, then they tend to be diagonal balls, as perfected by Will Fish at times, to the winger on the opposite flank thereby requiring him to stay out wide.
Paul,
I can save my breath to cool my porridge.
My dear friend… you are incorrigible. I love you dearly but you are a ‘lost cause’ as far as I am concerned.
You, like so many others, have been indoctrinated by the football intelligentsia cognoscenti that there is no hope of redemption on this fundamental matter of footballing philosophy.
What am I alluding to…? Simple, your Freudian slip in your second para… viz… ‘if City do try to play long passes, as opposed to booting it uo the middle’
The word that is doing the heavy lifting is – of course – ‘booting’. Such a pejorative usage of the verb.
I am reminded of two people here: such is the workings of my brain that the ghosts of Pete Seeger and Ronald Reagan would assuredly not thank me for linking them together.
I’m referring here to Pete’s immortal song ‘Where Have All The Flowers Gone?’ and its repeated question ‘when will they ever learn?’…
And with ‘The Great Communicator’, I am reminded of Reagan’s famous response to camera in the 1980 Presidential debate when President Carter started to speak…
Reagan said ‘there you go again’…
So don’t be offended if you feel that I am comparing you to Jimmy Carter… because in truth, he has been the only American President I have truly admired in my lifetime.
Going back to Salech, of course it is a huge crazy stretch on my part to compare him to Gilly. Indeed if you check what I wrote, I basically flagged-up the fact that I knew it would be perceived as a stretch too far on my part, by my deliberate use of the word ‘doolally’.
But let me say why I used it. I used it because for several years – on and off – from 1965 to 1971, I lived in London… and saw him several times in the flesh at White Hart Lane. And something about the way Salech jumps, makes me think Gilzean. No more than that… I am not suggesting the boy has a anything LIKE a similar glorious career ahead.
Is there any surprise though that you see no evidence of him working in harmony with a sharp number 8…? Of course there is none to date, because Robbo is not that man. Indeed as you rightly mentioned, the one evidence of the two linking came deep in the second half when Robbo was out on the wing… putting in a lovely cross that Salech nearly scored with.
In a properly trained team it seems to me that the right wing back would have put in that cross… and Robbo as the number 8, would have been on hand to pounce if the Salech leap had been met by stout aerial defence, and the ball had dropped from the aerial ‘coming together’.
I am not sure that I share your view that the guys who play the Greaves role are so rare these days. Some of them are playing for the likes of Peterborough United… which is where Sammie Szmodics was before Blackburn pounced.
And mentioning Blackburn: his star may have faded now, but Bradley Dack in his pomp would have been a perfect partner for Salech.
The thing that really gets my goat is that vital time spent on the training ground down in Hensol is – one assumes – being wasted as Omer teaches ‘tiki taka’ to his defenders… one senses just to show that Riza is a kindred spirit of Guardiola. And we now for the rest of the season have a goalie whose ball control with his feet is dodgy… but can kick a long goal kick reasonably accurately.
That is what we should be practising… with Davies in the Szmodics role.
I rest my case, M’lud.
Lunch beckons. Too rushed to proofread… apols in advance for typos…
TTFN,
Dai.
Oops, hunger got the better of me, and I omitted to say re long goal kicks straight down the middle… that it is a tried and tested tactic in a 4-4-2 formation. I far prefer it to a goal kick aimed at someone standing on the touchline just inside the opposition’s half. These so often go directly out of play.
And I remind you of the first 4 words of the Spurs fans chant I referred to in my second posting above… ‘Jennings kicks/Gilzean flicks’… and almost invariably those kicks went straight down the middle…
Apols for my appetite for food making me forget to say this two hours ago…!!
DW
far from being a Freudian slip Dai, I gave the use of the word “booting” quite a bit of thought before including it, because we’ve had around a decade where Cardiff City booted the ball upfield too often as opposed to playing long passes. I’d like to think I’ve made it clear on here over the years that, although I wouldn’t consider myself a fan of a long ball approach, I accept that it’s part of the game and, as such, it has it’s place. I’ve never had a problem with teams “mixing things up” and playing long passes – in fact, I welcome Will Fish’s ability to hit some seriously good long passes from time to time. Joel Bagsn can pick out accurate long passes with his left foot into the space behind right sided defenders for someone like Isaak Davies, Ollie Tanner etc to run on to and I’m hardly going to advocate we should stop playing them because they could be termed old fashioned.
I’ll also point out that I’ve said in this exchange of views that I wouldn’t be against us playing a 4-4-2 with a Robinson or Davies alongside Salech on Tuesday, but I don’t see much point in it if our defenders and keeper are going to be just booting the ball in the vague direction of our targbet man in the manner that so many City sides have done since Vincent Tan came to the club (and I’m not saying our owner was responsible for the tactics employed since he came here, it’s just that we are a more functional and direct side since he arrived and it’s a convenient thing to use if you want to put a timescale on our tactical approach)..