A Jekyll and Hyde like second half showing against Lincoln at Sincil Bank today meant that Cardiff City’s five game winning run in the league came to an end, not only that, it consigned us to a 2-1 defeat which enabled the home side to climb into second place in the table, three points behind us, but we do have a game in hand on them.
After sixty five minutes, it looked like there could only be one winner and it wasn’t Lincoln, but then a break in play as the home side brought on a couple of subs and switched to a back three completely changed the nature of the game. It was as if somebody had flipped a switch and we just stopped playing. Our passing, which had been slick and precise for twenty minutes became clumsy and careless and, despite three substitutions in an attempt to liven up what become a spluttering team, we had nothing at all up front to worry a Lincoln team which held on to the lead they regained within a few minutes of us going into the Mister Hyde stage of our second half display.
I suppose that given that I thought Lincoln had just about deserved their 1-0 half team (albeit courtesy of a fortunate goal) and both sides had a twenty odd minute good spell in the second, you could say Lincoln deserved their win – for me it was one of those matches where a draw would have been fair, albeit, I’d say Lincoln were slightly ahead on points.
However, our fade out from the sixty five minute mark onwards is a bit of a mystery as we tend to finish stronger than most teams we play and, apparently, Lincoln’s record in the last fifteen minutes of matches is one of the worst ones in League One.
I can only come up with one possible reason for our speedy decline from a high where BBM was of the opinion that it was the best we’d played for a while to the pretty abject low where we could barely string two passes together. It seems to me that when a side which has played a midweek game plays on the following weekend against one that hasn’t, the sort of reaction we saw from City late on today becomes a possibility- especially if that midweek game was a Quarter Final Cup tie against the World club champions!
City gave their all against Chelsea and that game came after a period where we’d played three times in a week in League One. So, all things considered, I don’t think it’ s too much of a shock that we suffered late on, but it was that the transformation happened so quickly which was surprising.
It also needs to be said that credit has to be given to Lincoln. In some ways, watching them today was quite similar to watching Stevenage ten days or so ago except that they had a bit more quality than the side we beat 1-0 and they had a bit more energy about them compared to Alex Revell’s team.
Lincoln have the lowest average possession percentage in league One and they only had a third share of the ball today. However, on virtually every attacking stat (e.g. touches in the opposition penalty area, goal attempts, attempts on target and corners) they beat us.
There were a couple of surprises in our squad when it was announced this afternoon. First, BBM explained after the match that Nathan Trott was still suffering from the effects of a hand injury he suffered against Chelsea and had not been able to complete the last training session before today’s match. Therefore, Matt Turner came in for only his second league appearance which meant that, once again, we had no keeper on the bench. The second shock was the return of Ollie Tanner as one of the substitutes, although he was not one of the four we used during the second half.
City lined up with Turner behind a back four of Perry Ng, Will Fish, Dylan Lawlor and Joel Bagan with Alex Robertson and Ryan Wintle in central midfield, Cian Ashford and Chris Willock out wide and Omari Kellyman operating behind striker Yousef Salech.
I must admit to having a differing opinion to BBM about the first half. He said after the game that we’d completely controlled the first forty five minutes, whereas I mentioned above that I thought Lincoln just edged it. BBM knows more about the game than me clearly and we had that two thirds domination of the ball in both halves of the game. However, I based my opinion on the fact that apart from one spell of twenty seconds or so, we did not come anywhere near scoring in the forty five minutes.
Lincoln were hardly peppering our goal to be fair, but Turner had fairly routine saves to make early on and two more good ones in quick succession shortly after we’d fallen a goal behind.
The goal came on forty minutes as Lincoln tried to work a one two on the edge of our penalty area only for a stumbling Robertson to poke the ball beyond the helpless Turner as he was in the process of falling in his attempt to cover.
It was particularly unfortunate for the midfielder who I would put with Ng and Kellyman as candidates for our best player on the day especially because he’d come within inches of scoring a few minutes earlier.
However, Robertson shouldn’t have needed to be having his shot after what at first looked like the miss of the century! Salech was the culprit (or was he?), but he started things off by getting his head to a cross and the ball flew to Ashford, who headed on to Kellyman whose close range shot was half blocked and rolled slowly towards the unguarded goal. It looked like Salech had the formality of putting the ball in from a yard out and I was already celebrating a goal when the next thing I saw was the ball rebounding off the crossbar. At first, it looked like Salech had blasted the ball at goal instead of just tapping it in, but replays showed that a Lincoln player (who deserved the man of the match award for a superb piece of covering) had reached it first and kicked the ball on to Salech’s thigh from where it hit the woodwork. A few seconds later, the ball was worked to Robertson who tried to place a shot into the top corner from the edge of the penalty error – it beat keeper Wickens, but missed the target by millimeters, not the inches I mentioned earlier.
Given our lack of an attacking threat so far, I expected a tight second half as we probed patiently to try to eventually create that one chance which might get us a point. I was wrong about that and I also certainly didn’t see the substation we made at half time coming as Ronan Kpakio came on to replace Joel Bagan at left back (BBM said after the game that the substation wasn’t down to an injury, so I can only assume that might have been down to tiredness 4as well).
It was on the other flank though that attention was focused a couple of minutes into the half though as Ng played delightful one two’s with Kellyman and then Salech before calmly lifting the ball over Wickens and into the net.
It was a superb goal which, as BBM said, was symbolic of how we are trying to play. Previous City teams from the Championship we’ve had couldn’t have scored such a goal and neither could Lincoln, but they stayed in the game as we turned it on for twenty minutes before imposing themselves again using aspects of the game they’re good at.
For a while though, it was just a case of staying in the game for Lincoln as they were in danger of being run ragged by a City team who were moving the ball with what was at times bewildering speed and accuracy.
Robertson tested Wickens from twenty yards and Ashford fired the rebound across goal as City turned the screw and Wintle forced the keeper into an urgent save, but in the aftermath of this incident, there was the break in play which coincided with the complete change in momentum in the game.
Early signs of the shift in emphasis came with Lincoln forcing a few corners and from one of them, Tom Bayliss swung in a wicked delivery to the far post which veteran centreback Sonny Bradley headed in from very close range thereby continuing a worrying trend which has seen opposing players getting first contact on set pieces way too often in recent games. It looked like Ng was charged with marking Bradley, but the Lincoln man is six inches the taller which rather brings home that City are not the tallest of teams and apart from the two centrebacks and Salech it’s hard to see others in the side who could be called commanding in the air.
That was about it as far as City were concerned – Isaak Davies, Callum Robinson and David Turnbull were introduced to no avail and Lincoln were the only side who were going to score in the closing stages.
The manner of City’s defeat was disappointing, but, just as at Blackpool, there were facets of their play which I’m not sure any other team in this division could match, but, also just like Blackpool, the level of our performance varied wildly over the ninety minutes.
I’ll finish on City by having a whinge. If our wingers are to be allowed to take throw ins, can some work be done in training to ensure that they know how to take them legally? I can remember being amused how much trouble former City player James Waite had taking them when he played full back in a youth game I watched, but this season Chris Willock has been pulled up for a foul throw on at least two occasions, I’m pretty sure Ollie Tanner has erred as well and today it was the turn of Cian Ashford – finally, about fifty years too late, I’ve come across a part of the game that I can do better than the professionals!
In local football, there was a second successive 1-1 draw for bottom of the table Treherbert Boys and Girls Club in the Ardals League South West, this one against AFC Llwydcoed at home.
Paul, thanks as ever for a comprehensive report. You probably rightly say that The Imps just about edged it on points, and you slightly part company from our manager in his view that we had completely controlled the first half… and then say…
‘…
But BBM knows more about the game than me clearly
…’
I would not be so sure if I were you… for one thing you would not have gone to Lincoln without a goalie on the bench, because as sure as heck you’d have not needed to exhibit the ‘false hairs on my chest machismo’ that BBM put down as a marker when he took over the reins at the start of the season, by banishing the outstanding Jak Alnwick to ‘footballing Siberia’… (now dressed up as Jak needing to be back in Tyne & Wear for family reasons)…
But there again, had Turner been injured in the first half yesterday, Perry ‘Ung’ would have gone into goal and we would not have seen him score a delightful goal of which you comment
‘…
[the goal] as BBM said, was symbolic of how we are trying to play. Previous City teams from the Championship we’ve had couldn’t have scored such a goal*
…’
Yep, you are right… at least in recent years… though a Dave Jones team might well have reproduced it.
And as for your feeling that we were exhausted from our efforts against what was largely (until late on) the Chelsea second string last Tuesday, I feel what yesterday taught us was not so much to look back on the Chelsea game, but the game 3 days before it, and our fortunate 99th minute winner over Doncaster Rovers.
And yesterday’s astonishing 1-5 home crushing by Argyle, put our 4-3 win over Donny in stark perspective. How did they get three goals at our place?
‘Football is a funny old game’, as they say. Only 3 weeks back, almost every Janner** seemed to be calling for Cleverley’s head.
So yesterday was interesting in what it said about the necessity not to take things for granted, in Division 1. We may be top, but there is a long way to go yet.
There is ‘many a slip twixt cup and lip’…
*and let me add that many a previous Championship City team, would not have let in three goals, against a team now bottom-but-one in our division.
**could not resist using my new addition to my these-days-fading vocabulary…
https://tinyurl.com/yc67avzy
TTFN,
Dai.
Paul, compadre…
Having thought a bit more on my contribution of Sunday lunchtime, I note I was remiss in not acknowledging your sweet witticism about the one thing you can do that is better than some professional players. (Throw-ins. Touché.)
But having thought a bit more about it, I realise there is something else you can do better than some at CCS…
… you can coach a team better.
Is our friend BBM all he is cracked up to be? Look, after recently commenting on how crazy we are to bring all our men back for an opposition corner, and then compound matters by packing them all not just in the penalty area, but between the penalty spot and the goal… lo and behold we did it again at Lincoln. I took this pic of the corner being taken for The Imps winner… note that all eleven City players are between the penalty spot and the goal… and incredibly TEN of them are crammed into the 6 yard box…!! And the eleventh is only two yards outside it.
Unbelievably crass coaching. Note the two Lincoln players patrolling the edge of the otherwise empty penalty area ready to hammer any loose defensive clearances back into the crowded goal area.
Will BBM never learn? I hope somebody tells Vincent of his dereliction of duty.
Oh, and the best thing about that picture…? Well it is the image of Sonny Bradley, the tall chap at the very end, with no City player being next to him. Extraordinary how we managed that, given our whole team bar one, were all jammed into the goal area.
I am no fan of Turner, but that said, I will be the first to admit that he deserves better than 9 teammates in his own goal area…. cramping his style.
https://tinyurl.com/2p4mzaxd
Some 70 years ago, 35% of NHS hospital beds were taken up by patients suffering from psychiatric illnesses… but with Care in the Community becoming the watchword in 1983, we have seen that figure drop considerably to the low teens.
I have a pretty shrewd hunch as to what lots of those folk ‘released’ did for getting work: they applied to become football coaches…!!
The lunatics have held sway in soccer since (coincidentally?) that 1983 release date. Up until then, goalies would stand in the middle of their goals for free kicks, wall or no wall. But since then the decline in goalkeeping standards has been staggering. On Saturday lunchtime, I said to my wife as Chelsea’s James prepared to take his free kick “Look where this idiot Ramsdale is standing… he won’t scamper across in time’.
And so it proved. And to think that Ramsdale is an acclaimed England goalie…!!
And the Sunday game where I so wanted Villa to win (as a dyed in the wool, ABMU* man), but when Matty Cash overplayed instead of clearing the ball upfield, I suddenly wanted United to stuff them for their stupidity.
*Anyone But Man U
TTFN,
Dai.
Dai, regarding Trott, I’ll mention the possibility that, with it being the busiest weekend of the year on the roads, City may well have travelled up to Lincoln on the Friday and so it may may have been that the last training they had done was close to where you live rather than in south Wales. Therefore, it may have been Turner was the only goalkeeper available. Nevertheless, I agree that, with no Academy or Under 21 matches being played, it would have made sense to take another young keeper on the trip knowing that Trott was doubtful with an injury he suffered against Chelsea.
I was against no keepers on the bench back in the days of five subs, so it follows that I see no reason whatsoever to take the risk now we have seven, or nine, of them. Neil Warnock always used to have no keeper among his five subs when he was in charge of Sheffield United and got away with it, although I do have a vague recollection of his goalkeeper once staying on with an injury rather than risk playing with an outfield player between the sticks.
I’m in complete agreement with you about bringing all of our players back for corners and, as I mentioned in my piece on the game, it’s a concern how often opposing players are getting first contact at dead ball situations at either end of the pitch, so, having everyone back for corners doesn’t appear to be helping the situation at all.
However, I believe there’s a bigger picture here. BBM has come in and, so far at least, he’s totally transformed the club from the morose, passionless and losing entity it had become over the period since the relegation in 2019 with the result that the latest one six years later was a classic case of going down without a whimper.
There are things I disagree with BBM on, in particular his continued switching of centrebacks from game to game, and I’m with you on the things I’ve talked about above, but he’s taken us to the top of the table while playing in a way which, granted, has its risks, but it’s left us top of our league, clear as top scorers in the division and fans have got their enthusiasm back. Last Tuesday, we were brave enough to take the game to Chelsea while playing the attacking football we’ve practiced since the day he took over and we did that in front of a capacity crowd. I could not have done any of that if I was in charge and so I say that, yes certainly, BBM knows more about football than me.
Ta, Paul, for your report of the Lincoln fixture. As you state the fade-out in the last quarter of the game was galling, particularly when viewed against the control City had during the first part of that second half. Don’t we need a second striker on the pitch to make the most of our possession?
After the herculean efforts in beating Leeds in the FA Cup [2002] I think we lost tamely 0-2 at home to Peterborough few days later. I was expecting similar from Doncaster after their efforts against us. They, too, succumbed 1-5 at home to Plymouth in their next game. Was the Chelsea game a contributing factor in the Lincoln game? It shouldn’t have after we made the numerous changes to the starting line-up at Lincoln.
What a wonderful goal Ng scored on 49 mins. Memories of Brian Flynn’s goal at the Grangetown End in the 1974-75 British Home Championship against Scotland.
https://youtu.be/rpRMW-4ch2Q?si=povvbmk59my9mmLx
To answer the on-going query about why Dundee Utd are called, ‘The Arabs.’ I came across this on the web this week.
https://www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/sport/football/dundee-united/2543516/the-truth-why-are-dundee-united-supporters-called-arabs/
Let me wish all readers a blessed Christmas and also hope for a good week on the pitch over the Christmas holidays.
Thanks for your considered reply, Paul. As usual, you get me reconsidering my opinions… and that surely is the very raison d’etre for civilised debate.
I have just been enjoying for the best part of an hour what I believe will be unsurpassed in TV entertainment this Christmas… in whatever field of entertainment one puts up against it. The podcast just ‘dropped’ a few hours ago.
I refer of course to the latest from that Merry Band of Men… not in Lincoln Green and in Sherwood Forest, but in BOTTLE Green and striding across Dartmoor. (Incidentally, I recall Plymouth used to play in a much lighter shade of green.)
‘The Life of Pieface23 ’ could well be my specialist subject were I ever stupidly immodest enough to enter Mastermind. Whether it be his finishing 4th in Big Brother, being sacked from McDee’s, his love of F1, or his extraordinary success in gaming of FIFA… and here I quote from his bio…
‘Jack McDermott aka Pieface23 is a gaming YouTuber and Twitch streamer who uploads FC25 content on his main channel and Plymouth Argyle match day vlogs via his second channel @TheLifeofPie23’.
I don’t profess to remotely having the foggiest about the world of ‘Twitch streaming and FC25 content’. Just know that the various centres in the UK where this FIFA game is played, are very opulently furnished buildings with an abundance of high-tech equipment… That’s because I have seen so much of Jack’s whole vlogging oeuvre by now, and he has filmed himself and his fellow Twitch/FC25 enthusiasts at work (play?) in them.
Indeed, the whole thing mystifies me, … but gee, I am convinced this life is but a dream and we will awake when we die… and as Puck says at the end of A Midsummer Night’s Dream…
“If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumber’d here
While these visions did appear…”
Oh how I wish Bluebirds fans had a vlog like this… we have good vodcasts, but not a vlog.
Here (below) is his latest on his team’s amazing 5-1 win at Donny… it is as I say, so wonderfully life-enhancing. I just adore these boys and the way that none of them can carry a tune (even in a suitcase), none of them buy their chocolate bars and bottles of drink in Aldi in advance (and save a fortune on the expensive shop at the BP garage on the M5 at Taunton Deane), but instead choose to spend their money – most appositely, being Janners – like ‘drunken sailors’. And then they always traditionally stop at the same Morrisons (on Cribbs Causeway) for breakfast… then drink themselves almost into oblivion at their destination town, always looking for the best pub in the centre… often leaving it for the stadium, far too late…
And then blow me if they aren’t then even queuing for food in the stadium concourse… often missing the kick-off by a minute or two.
I can never work out how motion sickness and all that food and booze does not see them vomiting in the minibus on these incredibly long journeys they undertake. Their stomachs must be made of cast-iron. I salute these chaps for their constitutions.
And this new episode astounded me when I saw them singing various pop songs all word-perfect. My admiration went off the scale… until – duffer that I am – it was revealed to me much later that it was a karaoke affair… and all the TVs in the big pub ran the words on their screens…!!
D’oh! I should have guessed. When Kipper – the guy nearest my age – starts to sing some esoteric pop ephemera… well the penny should have dropped with me, but no, I just watched open-mouthed in astonishment at them.
Dear MAYA readers… trust me, you will never see a warmer three quarters of an hour telly all Christmas than this…
https://tinyurl.com/8cehmw5d
And here is some fascinating bio on this 35 year old. I wonder did he come from a rich family, but I think not, judging from the fact that he used to be a McDonald’s employee. They sacked him… but now I see (on a recent episode) he has returned to them in triumph, with them sponsoring him to run a concession van at Alexandra Palace and give away free food for a couple of hours at the World Darts Championship,
https://tinyurl.com/5953cwey
TTFN,
Dai.
Steve boyo, how well I remember that one-two between Brian and Tosh that day. It sent us standing on the Bob Bank wild with delight.
As for your other link – that so well-written Dundee Courier piece with such evocative pictures – gosh ‘tis a pity nobody asked me (since it was me who used the nickname in a previous MAYA post)… re the etymology of ‘The Arabs’. Your post was not up on my screen at the time when I had started to write my long piece on Pieface23, and then when I submitted it, mine was held ‘for moderation’. So I did not know that there was any on-going query… had I known, I would have given them the answer in two seconds. And my answer would have been the ‘sand on the pitch’ one… and not this Spider fellow trying to ‘pull rank’ by stressing his length of membership of the Tannadice fandom.
My own version of Hemingway’s bullsh^t detector (he called it that in an interview some 4 years before he put that shotgun in his mouth and pulled the trigger… the exact quote is in my footnote*) tells me that people will always fly kites… just like some wit came up with the For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge acronym canard, and the similar persuasive nonsense on the etymology of the word ‘posh’… so there are always gullible folk who will believe it… like the anonymous ‘The Reporter’ who penned the article here.
I note he claims that ‘the Arabs’ reference goes back to an incident two years to the month before the Big Freeze of 1963.
Clearly, this is ‘Grade 1 balderdash’… this Spider fellow waits 58 years to tell us this… knowing that his ‘Dundee Nasser’ is almost certainly dead… as are many of the Fans Chorus of the day. And let me remind Revisionist Historians out there that I was in my 14th year on this earth back in 1961, and know full well that ‘Nasser fever’ was a thing of the Suez Crisis of 1956… and by 1961, he had been replaced as our bogeyman by the twin ‘evils’ of Khrushchev and Castro. The ‘Nasser’ thing is total hogwash that methinks the anonymous reporter chooses to run with to lengthen his article.
Dundee is my favourite Scottish city: it shades it from the big three… The Granite City, Auld Reekie and The Dear Green Place. And back between March and July in 1981, I used to stay there 2 nights a week every fortnight… selling wine to the locals.
Back in May 2022, I took a nostalgic trip back with my dear wife to stay 4 nights in the city of Desperate Dan and Dennis the Menace giant murals and statues, and on an incredibly windy day had this pic (see below) taken of fatso me with a much slimmer Larissa. We are on top of the Lawns, the highest point in Dundee, and it is blowing what Orkney folk call ‘a hooley’… so much so that I have to wedge my Dai-cap down right to my eyebrows to avoid it being blown hundreds of feet down the mountain.
Left of pic you see the Tay Road Bridge, and on the other side of the pic, the rail bridge built to replace the one made famous by William McGonagle’s poem… remnants of the old bridge can still be seen just yards from the new one.
What a city…!! The nearest thing we have to a Lisbon.
https://tinyurl.com/yb9n8h63
And then I took a photo of the 2 stadia in the distance to the east… so famously just a long goal kick away from each other. It came out fine… but not as fine as this one which I found online…
https://tinyurl.com/3yvx53rs
I was always a Dens Park man myself… how could I not be, when two of my favourite players of all time wore the blue of Dundee with pride… viz… Danny Malloy and Alan Gilzean… and my favourite football writer also was a Dundee fan… Patrick Barclay…
*”The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shockproof, sh it detector. This is the writer’s radar and all great writers have had it”.
(I deliberately left a gap in Hemingway’s 4 letter word there, just to avoid the MAYA blog software spotting the word and rejecting my posting.)
TTFN,
Dai.
Just a quick response to those pushing for us to play two up front by asking a question I don’t have the answer to – Steve asks “Don’t we need a second striker on the pitch to make the most of our possession?”, my question is, if we had two strikers at the top of the pitch waiting for the ball to be played to them, that would leave us a man down in defence and midfield compared to now, so would the amount of possession we get fall accordingly?
Paul,
I am probably stating the obvious but the answer to your question is ‘of course it would…!!’
And I might add… ‘And a good thing too’.
The question you should ask is ‘would our goals scored INCREASE accordingly?’
And the answer is an emphatic YES.
As things are now, we may as well sell Salech in the January window. For all his qualities, he is not a man who can lead a line on his own.
DW
We’re the too scorers in the division Dai, if we maintain our current scoring rate over the course of the season we’ll end up with something like eighty five goals scored and our goal difference is +6 better than any one else in League One – the term if it ain’t broke don’t fix it springs to mind.
A very good point you make there Paul.
But please remember that we have the second highest wage bill in the Division and should indeed be scoring with abandon in what is really the THIRD division.
However, you and I both know that we would be struggling with this attacking set-up in the Championship.
But anyway, I am with you in your hope that we can end up with 85 goals scored… but I know that neither of us want to count our chickens.
DW