I suppose when you’re top of the league, have won seven out of your last eight league matches and go ahead in five minutes against a team who struggle to get out of their own half for the first quarter of an hour, there is a chance that you begin to think it is all a bit too easy.
The first word that sprang to mind for me at the end of Cardiff City’s 1-1 draw at Wycombe today was “careless”, but, after thinking a bit more about it, I’d add the word “casual” as well.
I don’t want to be too critical because City again played some lovely football at times, football of a standard that I’ve not seen any other team in this division match. They were also up against a team in the top ten of League One that appeared to be perfectly willing to sit back and let us have the ball while soaking up pressure, this from a team that was playing at home and you would have thought would be looking for a win which make the Play Offs more of a possibility than relegation.
Yet, it seemed to me that Wycombe were happy to settle for a point before the game and they certainly appeared content with the draw at full time. This has to be a tribute of sorts to City, but even though Wycombe defended well for much of the time, as exemplified by Danish centreback Hagelskjaer’s two second half clearances off the line, it seems to me that we really could have won this game pretty easily if we’d knuckled down and played with the intensity we’ve shown in the closing stages of lots of home games lately.
To be fair, Wycombe will point to a possible penalty in the first half and in Fred Onyedimna they had the best forward on the pitch, but the stats do rather tell a story – 66/34 possession, 17/9 in goal attempts, 6/2 on target and 35/15 touches inside the opposition penalty area all in City’s favour.
Yet, those figures could have been even more in City’s favour if the quality of crosses in particular had been better. “Careless” springs to mind when I think of most of the crosses Chris Willock, Omari Kellyman (who offered more evidence that he is more effective in central areas than he is out on the wing) and Ollie Tanner put in – Cian Ashford, who also came on to play on the wing, looked to cut inside and join in with more general play more than cross it.
Still, no real harm done – Lincoln also drew 1-1 at home to Huddersfield, as did Bolton at struggling Doncaster, it was a point as well for Stockport in a goalless draw at Northampton and Stevenage had to settle for a 1-1 at home to Plymouth, while Bradford came a cropper, going down 3-0 at a streaky Mansfield which means the gap between us and third place has grown to five points with our much better goal difference meaning it’s effectively six points.
BBM made six changes this time with three of them in the back four as Ronan Kpakio came in with Perry Ng switching to the left as Joel Bagan, along with Isaak Davies, was given a rest and dropped out of the squad. In the middle Dylan Lawlor and Gabriel Osho replaced Calum Chambers and Will Fish. Alex Robertson and Joel Colwill came into the centre of midfield as David Turnbull and Callum Robinson returned to the bench and Kellyman came in on the right in place of Davies.
For me, it was someone who never seems to miss a game, Ryan Wintle, who was clearly our stand out player (my careless and casual criticisms do not apply to him) and it was his cross which just missed Yousef Salech that found its way to Willock whose fierce angled shot would have caused problems for keeper Will Norris even if it had not got the slight deflection which sent it into the net.
As I mentioned earlier, it all looked pretty comfortable for City after that and you can’t help but think that the outcome would have been very different if Colwill had shown more composure when a lucky rebound fell to him in glorious isolation stood around by the penalty spot. Maybe Joel, understandably, felt he had less time than he actually did and he opted for power over placement as his shot smacked off the crossbar and rebounded to safety.
It felt like it could be a turning point and Wycombe responded by having their best spell so far. They were level on the half hour mark when Caolan Boyd-Munce swung in a much delayed corner after Ng and Hagelskjaer twice indulged in the usual, and boring, pre set piece grappling. To be honest, it was a poor corner which should not have got past the first man, but having mentioned two “C” words in careless and casual, I’ll add a third, “concentration “.
Maybe the long delay in getting the corner affected Kpakio’s concentration, because his air shot as he swung at and missed the cross gave the rest of our defence no chance to adjust as the ball found its way quite gently into the net with no one getting a touch on it. Now, Kpakio has his critics when it comes to his defensive work and he didn’t have his best ninety minutes in that part of the game today, but his technique is good and that corner should not have caused him the problem that it did – again, the word careless springs to mind.
Onyedimna headed another corner over from close range as the pendulum swung in the home side’s favour for the rest of the first half – if it ever was easy for City, it wasn’t any more.
City, who had brought on Turnbull for Robertson early on as the Australian midfielder had picked up a booking and had been committing fouls (at least referee Alan Young, who was a bit of a homer, thought he was), were much improved in the early stages of the second half as they established a dominance that was pretty complete in two thirds of the pitch, but not in the third which counted as crosses and final balls constantly went astray.
That said, there were still opportunities for us to get the decisive goal. City brought on Tanner, Ashford and Robinson for Colwill, Willock and Kellyman and Robbo soon saw his shot from Salech’s knock down beat Norris, but Hagelksjaer was back to knock it off the line.
Tanner’s best cross of the day picked out Salech who, again, beat the keeper with his header only for Hagelskjaer to get the ball away just as it was about to cross the line. Salech was also off target with a decent headed opportunity, but when his clever header found Robinson no more than five yards out, he miscued horribly to send the ball wide – Robinson apologised to supporters on social media after the game for his miss, but, apparently, the linesman had put his flag up for offside, so it wouldn’t have counted anyway.
City’s final substitution saw Chambers replace Osho (who, with Lawlor, had formed an effective central defensive partnership) for the last fifteen minutes and City’s captain almost won it in added time when Norris dived full length for his twenty five yard shot. Just for a split second I was thinking goal as the shot beat the keeper’s dive, but the ball flew a foot or so wide.
All Wycombe had to offer in reply was a header from an unmarked Cauley Woodrow which he couldn’t direct on goal and a shot by Jamie Mullins from a decent position which flew over.
As I say, no real harm done this afternoon, but this game will be remembered come the end of the season if we miss out on promotion or the Play Offs by a margin of less than two points because it really should have been three points, not one, today.
Complacent
As always Paul, thank-you for your considered report of the Wycombe (a) game. As you noted, it was quite a perplexing encounter because there were times when we, “played some lovely football.” However, we were simply incapable of finishing-off what was a mediocre home team. If I was looking for a word to sum up our performance it would be sloppy.
We played some breathtaking football in the opening 20 mins. The opener, a tremendous effort from Willock’s powerful shot, was always going to be a goal inspite of a slight deflection. Seeking to stem the tide Wycombe changed from a back-four to three centre-backs and two wing backs on the half-hour. The equaliser, immediately after their substitution, was the poorest of poor goals to concede. Kpakio, at the near post, made a hash of clearing the in swinging right wing corner and that was it: 1-1.
Though the possession time map shows our ascendancy in the second period, a pleasing change for us when confronting this one-against-three defenders this season, three of our goal attempts were in the last 20 mins, or so, when we were going for it.
For all of that, it strangely never seemed to be a game that we had by the throat. Rather, we were supremely profligate in front of goal.
* On 21 mins … Colwill, from 12 yds with only the keeper to beat, really should have made it 0-2.
* On 55 mins … Turnbull missed a sitter from a Salech pass.
* On 73 mins … Robinson’s effort from 7 yds. Argh! Why didn’t he just lift it?
* On 85 mins … Salech’s header from the back post was cleared off the line.
* On 90 +3 mins … Chambers’ fizzer from 25 yds was about a foot wide.
Any one of those would have done just nicely for this was a match we really should have won. But it sadly wasn’t to be.
So, at the end of 2025 we are top on 48 pts. I’m sure we would all have settled for that in the first week of August. Only the Mackay and Warnock teams (both with 47 pts) & Lawrence and Burrows’ sides (46 pts) come close to that figure on Dec 31st.
BB-M has given us a solid base going forward. Let us hope we gain the ability to kill teams off in the latter half of the season.
Yes, Paul, I agree that Wycombe had the best forward on the field. And surely the very poor quality of crosses into the centre and of the speed and accuracy of passes forward make it very clear that work on improving such contributions must be an important part of training sessions from now on.
The by- line seems to hold some fear to our wide players.
It’s crosses from that position Salech needs. Our wingers rarely swap sides and it becomes too predictable. Being old enough to remember Willie Anderson …. If he wasn’t getting much luck on one wing, he’d try the other.
Funnily enough Ivor, I wrote the piece straight after the game with the word complacent included instead of casual, but changed it just before posting it the following day as I figured I shouldn’t be too critical given how the first half of the season in general. In some ways, casual and complacent are pretty similar, but I think the latter is more damning and I was reluctant to be that.
However, as Steve, Graham and Gerwyn all allude to, the service from the wings was not good enough on Thursday – I’ve been surprised to see quite a few references to Willock playing really well, all I’ll say for now isI was not surprised in the least to see Willock and Kellyman withdrawn as the first named had made a great start to the game, but had not maintained it, while I’ll repeat myself as far as the second named is concerned and say he seems much more influential and effective when he’s playing through the middle. On reflection, I was a bit too critical of Tanner in my piece, his crossing was generally poor, but some allowance can be made for the fact he’s easing his way back into things after what was the worst injury of his Cardiff career and it may well have been his worst one ever.
I’m not sure that the service from out wide is consistently poor though. After all, we’re second top scorers in the division and I reckon while BBM is certainly not averse to crosses being aimed towards Salech’s head in open play, he also likes us to keep the opposition guessing by getting our wingers to come inside and join in the more general play like an Ashford does and I feel Kellyman is also better suited to this type of play.
Steve uses the word “sloppy” to describe the Wycombe game and I think that’s fair enough. I feel our general play was better than it was in the recent wins over Doncaster, Stevenage (twice) and Exeter and with the possible exception of Stevenage away we were more dominant on Thursday than we were in any of those games. Therefore, you have to conclude that we let our standards slip a little ahgainst Wycombe and the reason I homed in on our crossing so much was that it seemed particularly below our recent par to me.
Of course, tiredness could go some of the way towards explaining this – apparently we’ve played more games than any other League One side since 1 December. However, apart from that last twenty minutes or so at Lincoln, I don’t think we’ve looked particularly tired and, in fact, I would say that we’re generally finishing games looking stronger than the opposition. Something wasn’t quite right on Thursday though and between the three words I used, complacent and sloppy, I think we’ve gone some way towards explaining what it was!