Just a quick piece about tonight’s EFL Trophy game at Exeter.
Goals are at a premium when Cardiff City play away this season. After tonight’s game, it’s a total of five goals in five matches, with the good news being that four of them have been scored by us. Stockport’s penalty on Saturday remains the only one we’ve conceded in a match which was something of a goal spree by our away match standards as it finished 1-1.
The other three goals have secured 1-0 wins with Callum Robinson’s second half header tonight adding to the victories at Wimbledon and Luton to go along with the goalless draw at Port Vale.
Now, as someone who has occasionally expressed how 1-0 away wins have their own kind of special satisfaction to them, I’m not going to start moaning about us winning by that score.However, I have to admit that there is a part of me wishing that we could show that we’re capable of scoring more than the 0.8 of a goal per game on our travels that we are at the moment.
Is our lack of goals on our travels a cause for concern? Clearly, while the only goals were conceding are penalties, it’s something we can live with, but, just as with our previous four away matches, there were periods tonight when we rode our luck and so I think the time will come pretty soon when we’re going to need to carry more of a goal threat on our travels.
Perry Ng was the only one out of Saturday’s starting line up to begin tonight’s match, but, with Exeter making eight changes themselves, it was effectively something akin to a Development game tonight.
Gabriel Osho and Omari Kellyman both made their City debuts, but, neither of them completed ninety minutes. Osho seemed to have a groin injury which forced him off about twenty minutes from time, but Kellyman didn’t make it to half an hour played. There was no obvious sign of an injury for him and I suppose the plan may have been to give him just the thirty minutes. However, given his recent struggles with hamstring issues (he’s had to have an operation on one of them), it’s got to be concerning to see him leaving the game so soon.
Turner, Giles, Mafico and Nyakuhwa were all starters for City and there was another debutant when Troy Perrett came on to replace Kellyman – I thought Perrett looked one of our best players on the night as well.
The first half was a little like the one at Wimbledon as City looked very impressive at times with the way they moved the ball, but, apart from a shot by Robinson beaten out by Exter’s debutant keeper seconds before the interval and a scuffed Giles effort that drew a diving save , we barely threatened to score. Isaak Davies was sharp on the left and you felt something might come from his lively running down that flank, but nothing ever did really and he was replaced by Cian Ashford for the second half.
By contrast, Exeter, for all that they spent most of their time keeping their defensive shape, while out of possession, had the better opportunities such as when a long range shot almost squirmed past Turner, a header was cleared off the line by Ng, a one on one was missed and a shot flashed across the face of our goal.
City had the end product to go with their domination of possession in the second half and the goal came when Turnbull and Ashford worked a quick corner routine which enabled the latter to drive in a fierce cross which Robinson glanced in via the underside of the crossbar.
David Turnbull probably came as close as anyone to adding a second with a shot just wide, but there was an element of thinking they’d done enough to win already to City’s approach as the clock wound down. Truth be told they probably were right to think that if it had remained eleven against eleven, but Ashford, having been yellow carded for his part in a dust up with the home captain Sweeney, then received a second one shortly afterwards, apparently for kicking the ball away following the award of a free kick against City.
Ashford’s stupidity almost cost City as, within seconds, what looked a very tight offside call went in our favour as the home team netted with a bullet header.
City now have home games against Newport County and Arsenal’s under 21s to complete their group and, if we make it through, I presume it then becomes a knock out tournament?
There seems to be a lot of days this season when both first team and the under 21s are playing and it was no different today when our youngsters travelled to Huddersfield – no details as to our scorers I’m afraid, but I think we’ll be satisfied wwith a 2-2 draw.
Thanks Paul, as ever,
I thought we were fortunate last night in a game that yet again makes a mockery of possession stats… for the best chances fell to Exeter.
No City player apart from NG and Lawlor impressed: that said though, none of the others had shockers. But lots of negative square passing, and a couple of suicidal crossfield ones from Mafico and Willock.
The keeper looked a bit shaky and his distribution was poor. But apart from that instance when he nearly ‘threw one in’, I guess he did not commit any howlers.
Their keeper apparently took exception to being called a paedophile… as a proud member of the King Herod Appreciation Society, I am fortunate to have no love for small kids, but I have to tell him that there are worse things to be called… like ‘sheep fornicator’ for instance. (Note to Mr.Trott… next time you are called that, complain to the ref re ‘discriminatory language’)
I jest of course re that last bit… we should all wear our sheep Bestiality Badge with pride. Not for nothing do Welsh supermarket sales of cottage pie outsell shepherd’s pie 7 to 1…
We don’t eat the objects of our affection.
TTFN,
Dai.
Your humour is my humour. Nothing else matters.
Cheers Chris… your approval means a lot to me. Honest, boyo.
We both agree that the Book of Genesis should ideally start with…
‘In the beginning God created the joke’…
DW.
Oops, I used the word ‘approval’ when I meant ‘appreciation’. But, that said, I guess the meaning is pretty much the same in the context I used them.
But this ‘mea culpa’ from me gives me the opportunity to mention a joke the referee played on us just around the half hour work by stopping play for drinks… on a coolish evening in mid September…!!
What am I missing here?
I realise Exeter is very close to Torquay and the ‘English Riviera’, but it ain’t the FRENCH Riviera, folks…!! Basil Fawlty’s befuddled thinking must be alive in the head of that referee, methinks.
TTFN,
Dai.
Oh dear… I am watching the Swansea – Forest game… and clearly not fully concentrating … for I have just seen that I wrote… ‘just around the half hour work’
Strike that, and insert… ‘ just around the half hour MARK’…
Apols… please blame it on me, and not on the Jacks… or even on the boogie.
DW
I get the feeling that most readers od this blog rercoil from the very notion of things like xg (expected goals measurement), but I’d be fascinated to know how our away xg figure compared to our home one. My feeling is that the it would be a lot lower because I struggle to recall many chances that we’ve missed in our games at Port Vale, Wimbledon, Luton and Stokport. I know for a fact that we didn’t have a chance worthy of the name at Port Vale and what else did we do in attack at Stockport besides score? We had a few chances at Wimbledon and Luton, but not that many. If you include Tuesday’s match, we’ve won three games away out of five, but have we had the majority of chances in any of them? I think not. However, I would say that, broadly speaking, it felt to me for most of the time we were in charge of those matches
As for a possible explanation for this, I can only come up with something I mentioned earlier in the season – our final ball, the one that leads to the chances with the high xg rating, is not good enough. There was some evidence of this at Stockport where we’d work ourselves a really good crossing position and then, unerringly, pick out a defender with a low pulled back cross (this failing is made worse by the fact that we’re getting more players into the opposition penalty area from open play under BBM than we were used to seeing in recent years).
Yet our goalscoring at home (fourteen in five matches) is very healthy, so the final ball can’t be a problem at Cardiff City Stadium can it? Well, I think it is – our last three home games (Rotherham, Cheltenham and Plymouth) have been won by an aggregate of 10-0, but, apart from Plymouth in the first half an hour or so, the opposition have been very poor and we really should have scored more than we did with players getting greedy when we have a healthy lead being something that can be added to our poor final ball as reasons for our goalscoring rate being lower than it should given how much we’ve been in charge in recent home games. Our failure to create chances is not a problem at the moment, but once we start conceding goals at a more “normal” rate, we will need to become better than we are now at the final ball and taking the right options when we are attacking.
Just heard that BBM has completely frozen out Alnwick… even picking a kid goalie for the bench against Exeter.
Shame on you BBM. Both keepers you took to Exeter are not fit to lace Jak’s boots. (The most accurate boots of all 4 of the keepers incidentally.)
Somehow I have never warmed to BBM, even though I concede he is a vast improvement on Riza. I am unlikely to warm to him now… even if he goes the rest of the season unbeaten. That’s how you treat many fans ‘player of last season’?
(I warned you Jak in these pages that BBM might have a thing about keepers with beards. Methinks I was right.)