I don’t think anyone saw that coming! In a throwback to early season 4-3s, 3-2s and 1-3s, Cardiff City forgot how to defend today and a good Plymouth Argyle side made them pay the full price as they roared to a 5-2 win at Home Park this lunchtime.
As I start writing this straight after the game, it’s a question of waiting to see if every one else takes advantage of the ending of our twelve game unbeaten run – Wycombe beat Stevenage 3-1 in a battle between two sides that will still entertain thoughts of a top six finish, but more realistic promotion candidates will be sensing a chance to seize a top two finish that they might have been beginning to think was beyond them as they kick off today.
City can have no complaints about the result, maybe something like 4-2 would have been a truer reflection of the ninety minutes, but we never came to terms with as an effective a front two as I’ve seen this season in League One in Lorent Tolaj and Bim Pepple.
Tolaj and Pepple’s success means that questions will be asked of Calum Chambers and Gabriel Osho in central defence and I must say that the former’s inclusion surprised me given his slightly sub par showing on Tuesday against Wimbledon and BBM’s penchant for rotating his Centre backs. As for Osho, his afternoon started poorly with a header against his own crossbar and, generally speaking, this was more pre Christmas than post Christmas Osho.
In fact, only Perry Ng of the back four could feel fairly satisfied with his performance. Joel Bagan was some way off his best in a left side that didn’t function – Chris Willock was quiet against Luton and Wimbledon, but was poor here as, like Osho, he gave an early indication as to what sort of match it would be for him when he wasted a good chance by shooting into the side netting.
In central midfield, we struggled to get to grips with opponents that were playing 4-4-2, so you would have hoped for a numerical advantage in that area, but both Alex Robertson and Joel Colwill fell short of the, very high, standards of recent games. David Turnbull’s inclusion in front of Ryan Wintle was another surprise and it didn’t take long for it to start to look like a rare mistake on our manager’s part as the Scot made little impact against a physical home side.
Even Omari Kellyman was pretty quiet despite his two goals, the second of which was a real beauty. Only Ollie Tanner and Nathan Trott can be said to have played well – even then, Tanner faded in the second half after establishing an almost complete domination on home left back Wes Harding in the first forty five minutes.
It may sound daft to say that a goalkeeper who conceded five had a decent game, but Trott had no chance with any of the goals and he made some good saves including one seconds after Willock’s early miss when some neat Plymouth passing cut us open very easily and Caleb Watts really should have scored from eight yards rather than give Trott the opportunity to make a fine save with his right foot.
I mentioned earlier that Plymouth were physical and the team which, according to WhoScored.com, are the dirtiest in the division in terms of cards received were certainly not averse to putting a foot in as a foul count of 23/10 indicates, yet somehow referee Darren Drysdale saw fit to book only three of their players compared to four of ours.
To be fair to Plymouth, I wouldn’t say any of that multitude of fouls were of the sort that had you questioning whether a red card should have been shown and while I waited for their relentless pressing of us all over the pitch to have an effect, it never did as City had little to offer in the game’s final quarter after the penalty which put them 4-2 down.
On an afternoon when it was City who had the most shots (18/16), it was Plymouth who provided the more that were on target (9/6) and in a game that began in lively fashion with the Willock and Watts misses followed Osho’s near own goal, the home team seized control by having the better of a crazy six minute spell around the half an hour mark which produced four goals.
Speaking as someone who is prepared to acknowledge that sometimes a goal is scored where you cannot find anyone in your team to blame for it, I’d say Plymouth’s first goal fell into that category as Tolaj gave Pepple’s neat flick to him the finish it deserved with a perfectly placed shot from twenty yards beyond Trott.
Unfortunately, the home side’s second goal owed much to poor City play as with Bagan, presumably, in front of him, Willock waited for the ball to reach him and, in doing so, allowed home captain Joe Edward to burst past him and exploit the yawning gap in front of him down our left flank. Having run about fifty yards with the ball, Edwards then did well to pick out Pepple who volleyed in from just outside the six yard box.
Within a minute, City had pulled one back as Tanner beat Harding again and picked out Kellyman who easily beat home keeper Connor Hazard from ten yards.
Unfortunately, it was then straight back up the other end as City wasted a chance to clear and Tanner then got to close to Ng which meant he had too much to do as he attempted to block the cross from Harding when it came in Pepple exploited a statuesque defence to head in on the far post.
Somewhere amid the mayhem, Tanner shot against a post and Kellyman’s follow up hit Hazzard and rebounded over the bar.
Kellyman was not to be denied though and, after a few minutes of relative calm, he placed a delightful left footed effort beyond Hazzard from just outside the penalty area.
Hazard then had to tip a twenty five yarder from Ng over the bar as an amazing first half ended with City looking like the game was far from over.
With Rubin Colwill on for the anonymous Turnbull, City suggested for a while that the second half would be a case of Plymouth doggedly hanging on to their advantage. With the older Colwill adding some calmness, City pressed forward, but there wasn’t as much room for them to exploit now as Plymouth sat back. Nevertheless, Robertson drilled a twenty yarder narrowly wide and Kellyman looked to come even closer with his shot from a similar distance as he chased a hat trick.
That was as good as it got for us though as Osho was beaten out on the right by Pepple and the resultant cross saw Chambers having a penalty awarded against him as he challenged Tolag. It looked a bit harsh to me and it remains an oddity to me that the division’s leading scorers have had just one penalty awarded to them this season while that must be about eight now against us.
That said, there didn’t seem to be any protests from City and Tolaj’s spot kick high into the corner was unsaveable.
BBM brought on Cian Ashford, Callum Robinson, Ronan Kpakio and Callum Scanlon, but, in truth, we got worse as an attacking force and Plymouth’s domination of set pieces at either end of the pitch was emphasised when centreback Mathias Ross headed in a corner.
So, a win for Argyle which has them dreaming of an unlikely Play Off challenge. As for the more likely challengers, for all of the compliments we’re given for the quality of our football, Lincoln have a look of Champions to them as they churn out the wins. Mansfield’s fine form of a month ago has deserted them – perhaps distracted by their FA Cup win, Lincoln took advantage to win 2-0 at whatever Field Mill’s called these days. Bradford are coming a cropper at Wimbledon as I write this, they’re 3-0 down (it finished 3-1), Stockport trailed to lowly Wigan before turning things around to win 4-2. Better news came at Bolton where they were held 2-2 by Blackpool. Among the others, Huddersfield came from 1-0 down to beat Barnsley 2-1, while Reading will have been hoping for more than a 1-1 draw at Port Vale. Therefore, I’d say the results fall into the could have been worse category after our worst result, and possibly performance, of the season.
A poor day for the club was completed by a 1-0 home defeat for the under 18s against Bristol City.
Treherbert Boys and Girls Club couldn’t follow up last week’s win as they went down 2-1 at home to Taff’s Well in the Ardel League South West. At least there was a win in the Highadmit South Wales Alliance Championship for Ton Pentre as they came out on top by 3-0 in a derby against Tonyrefail and in another derby Treorchy Boys and Girls Club were 2-0 home winners against Aberdare Town in Division One (East).
Thanks Paul as ever. Your analysis was fair, and your comments on team selection were pertinent in the extreme.
The two centre backs should have been Fish and Lawlor… but I note that the former was not even on the bench. Was he injured? And as you say, where was the man who should be first midfielder on the team sheet… Ryan Wintle?
As for your two best performers… I am really puzzled as to your choice of Trott… but more later.
It was a sobering day yesterday. A series of games on TV riddled with mistakes, where the two teams I favoured both lost… the City at Plymouth, and Wales at the Principality.
And then the evening highlights were a real black comedy. Watching Villa v Leeds on MotD, I said to my wife as Leeds prepared to take a free kick 30 yards out… ‘Look at the crazy gap the Villa keeper is leaving on his near post… if I were the Leeds player I’d aim to shoot hard there’.
And so it was that the Villa keeper of course failed dismally to get across in time. A child of six could have told us that would happen. When I was a boy/youth, Gordon Banks and Jack Kelsey stood in the middle of their goal… not to do so would get them fired from the Goalkeepers’ Union.
And when you consider that the goalkeeper in question was the guy who most football pundits regarded as the best in the EPL until the arrival of the remarkable Gianluigi Donnarumma, then things are really bleak on the goalkeeping front.
And further evidence of insane coaching ruining the art of goalkeeping came in the ITV highlights, where we had the usual farce of playing out from the back leading to goals… watching this regular nonsense just makes me feel that modern coaching has had a deleterious effect on standards.
Which brings us to our Messiah… BBM. Gosh, some chickens came home to roost yesterday, did they not?
He may be a good coach for tiki-taka, but I genuinely wonder if he is that bright. Only last weekend Paul, I just like you, urged him not to pick Chambers for the trip to Home Park, because I knew he would wilt when faced with a Plymouth attack (assuming the Pilgrims brought their A-game). But what does he go and do? He perversely picks him, and Calum predictably delivered a shocker.
At the start of the season I suggested we buy at least one big strong centre back. We ended up on Aug 29th buying Gabriel Osho from Auxerre and astonishingly giving him a 4 year contract.
At the time I questioned whether he was the answer, even though some of our MAYA fraternity now think he is… and I too almost started to believe that, after a couple of good performances recently. My fear however was that he could be bullied… and yesterday was another example of him and his mate Calum Chambers being taken to the cleaners by the big Plymouth strikers. I forecast at the start of the season that once we came up against a strong pressing side with two strikers who can ‘put it about’ physically… that we would crumble.
Oh if we could have those two big blond central defenders Plymouth had under Muslic… or Nathan Wood/Harry Darling when they played for the Swans, I’d feel so much happier.
You cannot beat a ‘Dolly & Daisy’… (as Fergie called Gary Pallister and Steve Bruce).
Yesterday, I reckon only two City players came out of the game with credit, Kellyman and Tanner. A poor show.
But weirdly I am happy… we were getting far too smug: many fans convinced that BBM was a shoo-in for the Div 1, Manager of the Year. To me, we needed to be brought down a peg or two.
I had to laugh at Cleverley saying of Nathan Trott before the game …’they have a goalkeeper who can stroke a ball 60 yards with the precision of a number six’. Ha! Yesterday Nathan had three number sixes on his back… 666…
Eh, what Nathan Trott did Tom see play? Not the same guy that I see, that’s for sure. His long kicking has been getting worse as the season has progressed and is now pub league standard.
But even that incompetence is better than him suicidally ‘playing out’ from the back against a Plymouth team who shook the daylights out of our defence with their ferocious press.
Let us hope there is no last minute freakish disastrous run of results (of Dave Jones proportions)… for if we only make the playoffs, I do not then fancy our chances.
Other thoughts? Well,
(1) Bagan’s form seems to have dipped since we got Scanlon… it is as if he knows that BBM has to give him playing time as part of the loan.
(2) Oshu was a lucky boy yesterday – after that stupid sneaky assault – just to get a yellow… luckily the ref was not a homer… and when he came over to the linesman to hear what had actually occurred, ignored the crowd who were baying for a red. I can recall so many instances of City players being sent off in similar circumstances down the years… going back to an identical incident on St David’s Day 1964 when the brilliant Gareth Williams was sent off on a linesman’s say-so at Leeds Road, Huddersfield…. an event doubly memorable for me as the great John Charles gave me and my mate Graham Pritchard of 301 Trebanog Road, Porth two grandstand tickets… which King John got from his companion in the next seat on the team coach leaving Huddersfield’s George Hotel for the short journey to the ground. And that teammate was young Gareth…!!
(3) Although Lorent Tolaj has scored with a panenka penalty earlier this season, his shocking tamely-struck miss from the spot before a packed Home Park in the 1-4 defeat to Reading on Boxing Day made him promise his then beleaguered manager to give future penalties all his energy. So when he came to hit it yesterday, one just new from the way he lined up, that the ball was going hard to the keeper’s left. The fact that even if Trott had guessed correctly, no keeper in the world would have saved that, is beside the point. I just felt disappointed that our athletic keeper just weakly dived the other way.
(4) we got 70% possession yesterday yet for all our fancy tiki-taka, Plymouth wonderfully showed that soccer is at its best as a blood and thunder game. God bless them for reminding us.
(5) And if we play like that in the Championship, we will come straight back down.
TTFN,
Dai
I hope BB-M reads these MAYA reports – there are points to be learned, especially about our centre-backs yesterday.
And on Tuesday after we won 4-1 against Wimbledon I wanted to comment, Paul, on your headline about “free-scoring Cardiff” but I was told by some that what matters in football is the result of a game, and I am now prompted to comment on our loss yesterday 5-2 to Plymouth. What matters I think are not only ‘goals scored’ but also ‘goals not scored’, and post-match training sessions, run by BB-M and staff should involve all players looking at everything that happened in a game.
On Tuesday against Wimbledon the half-time score was 1-1 but “free-scoring Cardiff” ended winning 4-1 ignoring that the half-time score should have been 4-1, even 5-1. And I could not help remembering goals seeing scored by Trevor Ford, Gerry Hitchens, Derek Tapscott, Michael Chopra, and especially Rob Earnshaw!
Yesterday we had more shots than Plymouth and Plymouth’s possession was 25% but we lost 5-2! Will BB-M and training staff and players now look at what happened and count ‘goals not scored’ and work out why?
Graham as always is spot-on. To answer his question, methinks alas BBM will never really concentrate on ‘effective shooting’ since the clue is in BBM’s footballing philosophy. A month or two back he berated his players for shooting too early in a move and not continuing it until the opportunity to score became easier.
I am currently on a high. My favourite football vlog has just dropped and I have devoured it like a hungry wolf. Gosh, you can see why Jack ‘pieface’ McDermott has recently been presented with a plaque by YouTube for getting over 100,000 subscribers.
This is great. How he and Sam Down are thrilled to see the away end fuller than any time this season*. The incredulous looks on the faces of their fellow fans in ‘Zoo Corner’ (block 16 of the Lyndhurst Road Stand, where the most vocal local fans congregate) as Plymouth get into a 2-0 lead; their respect for the quality of our second goal; their nervousness at halftime with the game finely poised; their realisation that the successful despatch of the penalty will remove the nerves from the remainder of the game, and thus they express their desire (with hands pressed as in prayer) that Tolaj does not faff about with another panenka, but blasts it… as he predictably did.
We’d be less than human if we did not smile at them at the end when they sing ‘Cheerio, Cheerio’ to City fans leaving early.
It is such a fantastic life-enhancing vlog… and congrats to Jack for getting it to drop so quickly after the game. Loved the French bit, and the (Cornish-Devon?) Riviera Night Sleeper.
Oh, best of all, is how Jack is hailed by fellow fans as he leaves the ground, with kids wanting to touch the hem of his garment… and be in the shot. But please mike up Sam during the game, I cannot hear what he is saying.
* how sad to not hear our fans on the Sky coverage in the second half. Yes I know they had the stuffing pulled out of them by that deserved penalty following that insanely stupid push by Chambers (some captain-like behaviour, eh!), but all the more reason for them to sing to spur on our boys. Why travel all that way and not sing?
https://youtu.be/pzVT-Nw7Www?si=jEOnur4lg4m8CYLh
DW
Thanks Paul for your summing up of the Plymouth A (a) game. Like you stated there can be no complaints over the result. We were strangely lethargic over some aspects of our play. We simply didn’t play against the challenge of a physical team and should have stood up to that far better. This was a throwback to the early season. The Port Vale game comes to mind. Though the possession stats (29% / 71%) were remarkably in our favour, as were our accurate passes in the final third (56 to 104), we lost out on the aerial duels (56 to 44).
I know the early mist did not help but the dark green and royal blue shirts were indistinguishable from each other on my television.
The referee, Darren Drysdale, I remember as being quite a good ref from his Championship days; the last being in 2016. Two questions come to mind regarding his appointment. Why for the last decade has he been trawled around only the bottom two divisions? Secondly, when Cardiff City are top and Lincoln City second, how can there be justification in selecting a ref from Lincolnshire* to officiate at a Bluebirds’ match? I ask readers to offer answers to these two queries.
Having said that, my recollection of Mr Drysdale was borne out in the first hour or so. I thought he was quite good. On reflection though, the 23 to 10 foul count by a physical Plymouth team and their 3 bookings to our 4 meant only 13% of the home team’s tackles were worthy of a booking yet 40% our ours were. But how many refs in the bottom divisions would have shown a red in the Osho / Pebble incident? Looking at it again, I think the term VAR would use is a, ‘coming together,’ yet not for the only time this season the player went down and was motionless. Well done Mr D for not being conned. But was it even a booking?
The only other contentious incident was the, ‘penalty.’ With the ball arriving from the left and a City defender behind Tolaj, the Plymouth striker, in the best theatrical traditions of the Theatre Royal in Plymouth, went to ground. Or to put it another way Tolaj felt the merest of touches and threw himself to the turf. Or to put it a third way, as Arthur would have said (and readers will know this one): “If that was a penalty, they owe us a million!” Simply: Mr D was done on that one.
City have played 2,970 mins football this season (ie 49 hrs 30 mins) and have surreally only been given ONE FOUL in the penalty area. No comment necessary here, gents, from me.
It might seem that I’m laying the fault of our defeat at the door of the officials. I am not. Its a 7 / 10 for Mr D from me. City’s downfall lay four-square in S Wales. Neither am I criticising Kellyman, scorer of two goals, but we really missed Salech’s presence down in the South West.
There is a school of thought that says to a greater or lesser degree all of Plymouth’s goals were preventable. Whatever your view, apart from the penalty, City players were culpable. Looking back over the video will be uncomfortable viewing for some City players.
#1 … City surely would think that the Plymouth attack down City’s left and scorer Tolaj should have been closed down sooner.
#2 … The build up, again down City’s left, resulted in a cross finding Pepple in the box with time and oceans of space to rifle home the ball.
#3 … Pepple headed home from the back post with little real challenge.
#4 … Tolaj’s dive still rankles 24 hours on.
#5 … Probably worst of the lot if you are a City fan. Centre back, Ross heads home from the centre of the 6 yd line. Colwill (R) a yard in front of him doesn’t even jump for the cross.
Three goals came from crosses.
I say the above to re-inforce the reasons for the defeat. It had nothing to do with the ref.
Hindsight is a fine thing but I honestly felt we were lacking in the physical department against physical opponents before the game started. We didn’t have what was required and consequently didn’t stand up to the physical nature of the game. Bagan is going through a dip in form and could probably do with a rest whilst Tanner had a fine first half but didn’t get the ball in the second. For me Fish playing at the back would have allowed Osho to play in midfield with Wintle.
BB-M has clearly shown he has what it takes at this level. In one sense this was a game to forget about but in another one to learn lessons from. I trust BB-M and his coaching staff will do the latter.
*Sky Sports commentary
Steve compadre,
You make a great point about the colour clash. This could have been largely diminished had we chosen to wear blue shorts too… or chosen our mint away strip… which is about as green as the Royal Mint in Llantrisant… more like CREAM to my 78 year old eyes.
Three points of disagreement with you though in your otherwise well-argued contribution.
First what you call Tolaj’s dive. It was nothing of the sort.
If you want to see a ‘dive’ check out Gabriel’s just 4 hours ago. A slight touch in the back and Gabriel springs forward, upwards and then down like he was on wires in a stage production of Peter Pan.
And the ref instantly buys it… to serious protests from Spurs players.
No comparison to Home Park on Saturday. The idiotic much stronger push from Chambers brought no protests, not even from the man himself. Could Tolaj have remained standing? Yes, I think so… but unlike the Gabriel incident tonight, I am far from certain.
But the telling point is the players who gratuitously pushed Gabriel and Tolaj could have avoided decisions going against them, if only they had refrained from cheating…!! It ain’t rocket science folks… don’t do it in the first place… and I should not have to tell a 31 year old man this… a vastly experienced man furthermore given the honour of captaining his club.
If we had a manager with minerals, he would insist that his captain make a financial contribution to the Supporters’ Club in recognition of that stupid push heralding ‘the beginning of the end’ regarding our 3-2 down hopes in that game… and our fans expenditure not getting a happy ending.
Second point: If you think that the crazy use of his elbow by Osho was a ‘coming together’, then one of us needs to go to Specsavers. Perhaps it is me, for I firmly believe that VAR would have seen him given his marching orders.
Methinks Osho was helped not by the referee, but paradoxically by the linesman who clearly told him that he’d seen Osho move toward his opponent then seen the opponent fall to the ground as though poleaxed but without video evidence could not be more emphatic. The ref at this point with a passionate crowd in his ear – listen to them on ‘Zoo Corner’ – baying for a red, decided (on what I suspect was the far from TOTALLY damning evidence of the lino), to adopt the middle course of issuing a yellow. Osho was a lucky boy… when the ref showed him mercy… for when he called the captain and Osho over to get them away from the others, I expected the worst.
And now we come to my third point of disagreement with my esteemed MAYA colleague Steve. Top marks to you Steve here for (and I can’t resist smiling from ear-to-ear) a masterful display of character assassination… worthy of the Dark Arts of the politician’s playbook.
You appear magnanimous by giving Darren Drysdale (who most of us recall from the fact he ‘squared up’ to Ipswich’s Alan Judge about 5 years ago, and got into hot water as a result) a 7 out of 10 for his performance. But you give him that mark only after questioning his impartiality because he is from Lincolnshire…!! Wow… you show some chutzpah there, boyo…
Let me remind you of some salient facts re Lincolnshire…
If you looked at the county map of England that we grew up with (before the political class decided to break up counties to make more roles for otiose parasite politicians to fill) you will find that Lincolnshire is the second biggest county in all England. Fact.
And far from it being a uniform county it has very diverse towns architecturally speaking and is an interesting mix of styles… especially to be seen in the contrast between the Dutch style in the fenland Lincolnshire district of South Holland and the heavily Georgian influence on buildings in the city of Lincoln.
Having been a judge for the BBC for 15 unbroken years in their annual ‘Write A Song For Lincolnshire’ competition until my immobility meant I needed to retire as I could no longer climb the steps on to the stage to help announce and present the prizes, I thus travelled all over this huge county, and know all the towns.
And trust me, Mr Drysdale could be a boyhood fan of any of these teams… Gainsborough Trinity, Sleaford Town, Grantham Town, Spalding United, Brigg Town, Spilsby Town, Boston United, Louth Town, Cleethorpes Town, Barton Town, Scunthorpe United, Horncastle Town, Grimsby Town, Bourne Town, Skegness Town… and probably several more thriving little clubs if I looked them up… just as I haven’t looked up Mr Drysdale’s birthplace… which may indeed not even be in Lincolnshire.
And note that list of 15 clubs does not include Lincoln City… which I take to mean that if Drysdale has any ‘fan loyalty’ it will be far from certain it will be to the Imps. My banker bet will be that it is to blasted Man U… (joke folks!!)
But I did look up two things re Drysdale… one shocked me, and the other might momentarily help quell the ‘refs we get are anti Bluebirds’ conspiracy gene that can flare up in the best of us like Steve* from time to time.
First, I was shocked by the fact that Drysdale seems to be the oldest referee still officiating. He is now 55. And there was me thinking that refs had to retire at 48…!! Not so, because the requirements to comply with the new laws on age discrimination, have put an end to that… yes even in the EPL… I note by the way that he was 55 only last Wednesday… which is the retirement age for sergeants at RAF Waddington where he works… and my hunch is he wanted to reach retirement age to get his handsome full pension… this may explain his disappearance from Championship games as officials there are not allowed other jobs.
And second, I discover that he has already reffed us once this season… and sent off an OPPOSITION player in our 0-2 win. Not behaviour indicative of a homer, or someone anti Cardiff.
And Steve must also remember this: the big three in Lincolnshire have fans who passionately ‘hate’ each other… the Mariners, the Iron and the Imps.
Trust me, if he was a fan of one of the first two, and could be influenced in his judgement for Saturday’s Plymouth game, then it would have worked in our favour as he would not want to help Lincoln City one iota… (I smile at the absurdity of the hypothesis).
And to finally put the bias of a referee thing to bed (and get some well-deserved shuteye myself) let me leave Steve with the case of 47 year old Anthony Taylor.
Although born in Manchester, both of the city’s big two teams are happy that he referees their derbies, as his fan allegiance is to lower league Altrincham.
*he is convinced that Brad Hills is an assassin. Both myself and Paul were struck by three things in that game: (1) that the ref was indeed pretty hopeless, that (2) Hills was their man of the match, and that (3) his falling on Salech was a genuine accident, and not the GBH that dear Steve alleges.
Eyes are closing… too shattered to proofread. Apols for any typos.
TTFN,
Dai.
Dai,
Thank-you for your well argued rebuttal of the points I made in my earlier post. I always value those who will take the time to do that. I read them with interest and rewatched the two saliant incidents repeatedly afterwards. Perhaps I had got them all wrong?
After the rewatching the video of the game some further explanations to be made:
(1) In my post I often wrote that I thought Mr Drysdale had a good afternoon and in no way did I think he compromised the integrity of the game, wherever he was from. In fact I would have given him an above average rating as he was certainly one of the better refs we’ve had this season. The point I was making was that I didn’t think a referee could live in a county if he reffed a game that could affect a team from that county. Clearly I got that wrong. Thank-you for correcting me. Anthony Taylor, though, is a season ticket holder, apparently, of Altricham Town and is not a supporter of either of the Manchester clubs. The following may be of interest:
https://www.sportingnews.com/uk/football/news/premier-league-referees-who-do-they-support/d917d020dfeb65d34a865498
(2) Concerning the Osho / Pepple incident I am at a loss to see any elbow or even forearm being used against the Plymouth player. It was, in old money, a shoulder to shoulder contact.
The issue of whether the incident was, “careless, reckless or excessive,” needs to be looked at. According to the Laws of the Game it was deemed, “reckless,” (punishable by a yellow card) and no, “excessive force,” (red card) was used. Again, based on the Laws, the City player did not, “far exceed the necessary use of force [nor was] in danger of injuring his opponent.” To me it was forceful but no excessive force was used. In seeking the view of the linesman, presumably who was better placed, he felt that excessive force, seeking to injure a player, was not used and so a yellow card was given as it was a, “reckless,” challenge. On the secondary issue had it been an elbow then surely it would have been a straight red (“excessive force that could injure a player”). Under the circumstances I thought a yellow was the correct sanction against Osho as did the linesman who the ref consulted. On the wider matter of whether there was any need for Osho to do what he did the answer is no.
(3) On the contentious penalty, I, too, saw the Arsenal incident and am appalled at the depths to which the game has sunk. The Arsenal player should have been booked for ungentlemanly conduct. In fact football must now be able to censure players after games to eradicate this sort of behaviour. But we live in an age where commentators now often say that a player has, “won a foul,” or, “bought a foul.” In recent decades the game has so far drifted from its lofty ideals. However Dai, are you, the most Corinthian of Corinthians, saying that the validity of a referee’s decision is only to be gauged by the number of players who surround a referee after it is given? I have a number of times on this esteemed blog written about my distaste for surrounding officials. To my knowledge, still only the captain can go to the referee. If others do they are to be cautioned. Why aren’t they? On the secondary issue of whether it was a penalty or not comes the question of threshold. And this is my point that I will state again. If what happened is deemed a penalty, so be it, but it is stretching the realms of credibility if only one thing worse than that has happened against a City player all this season (some 49 hrs 30 mins of football) in the penalty area that has warranted a penalty being awarded to us.
In summing up, I still maintain that Mr Drysdale had a good game. The only major decision that I thought he got wrong was the penalty though, on minor issues he may have given a couple more yellow cards for shirt pulling.
From beginning to end it was a strange game, a sobering experience. In the cold light of day, three of Plymouth’s goals could have been mitigated against had we actually attacked the ball crossed into our box. Tanner, our most potent attacker in the first half was starved of possession in the second; the Robertson / Turnbull defensive partnership was not the one for this game; Fish’s heading ability was needed at the back whilst we certainly missed Salech.
I trust, Dai, the above in some way explains my first post.
Oh while I remember, I meant to agree with you on Rubin Colwill not jumping. Apols for forgetting. Mind you, he has no history of jumping… so I am not sure he can…!!
But to other matters…
I was puzzled by this line of yours Steve… viz…
‘…
Anthony Taylor, though, is a season ticket holder, apparently, of Altricham Town and is not a supporter of either of the Manchester clubs. The following may be of interest:
https://www.sportingnews.com/uk/football/news/premier-league-referees-who-do-they-support/d917d020dfeb65d34a865498
…’
Gee… there was me wondering if I needed to go to SPECSAVERS over the Osho (‘shoulder to shoulder’ be buggered!) and Chambers ‘red flag’ incidents, and you write that above…!! Eh?
Do me the favour Steve of reading my previous post before firing off at the hip. It is basic courtesy.
Had you read it properly you might have spotted this line from me re Mr Taylor…
‘…
Although born in Manchester, both of the city’s big two teams are happy that he referees their derbies, as his fan allegiance is to lower league Altrincham.
…’
What is there to misunderstand about that? After all, the boy went to Altrincham Grammar School. If you had not been skim reading something I put a lot of effort into, you would not have needed to source your link.
I love the ‘apparently’ in the first line of your reference to him in my quote from you above… like you have hit upon some startling ‘find’… (I smile as I say this, Steve)…
On the subject of his season ticket btw, what’s the betting it is hardly used by him? I reckon his schedule is such that he pays less than five visits a year to Moss Lane.
Oh before signing off, what Steve do you reckon was the most telling 25 seconds of the 90 minutes at Home Park. My guess is that you’ll say ‘the Chambers penalty’ because it was at a crucial time in the game and when Tolaj scored it, the finely poised game started to slip away from us.
I might agree with a mention of the name ‘Lorent Tolaj’, but not in that context. To me the most telling moment in the game came with him in an incident in the first half.
We are given a ‘play ball’ bounce in our favour by the ref following a stoppage… but Tolaj is deemed by the ref to be too close to our man and the ref asks him to retreat…
… this Tolaj does very reluctantly, but blow me, before the ref can drop the ball, Tolaj is again bounding forward like an over-eager golden retriever.
And why was that such a telling incident? Ah, that’s easy to answer.
It was indicative of the sense of urgency and passion that Plymouth brought to the game: qualities that Cardiff somehow were ‘second best’ in on the day. Can you imagine a Willock, Turnbull or Robertson as a bounding lapdog in that ‘play the ball’ bounce?
Does BBM’s coaching skills run to preparing a team for the psychological stress of going into the lion’s den, where we know in advance that they have to be really ‘up for the job’ if they are going to survive the emotional test?
I submit to you that on the evidence of Saturday, I think not.
DW
Our defeat at Plymouth was a strange game in so many ways.
TOBW’s report and analysis is of his usual high standard and naturally biased City fans like myself will have our opinions about where we went wrong and what we need to do to get back to winning ways in this enjoyable season.
I think most of us accept that the referees and their assistants are of third division standard and we can expect to suffer accordingly.
The different opinions of Dai and Steve are interesting and possibly based on bias in different directions
Some might think that Dai’s recent love for all things Plymouth has caused the GOAT to protest too much about Steve’s arguments
But on this occasion I think Dai is right and BBM ‘ s chickens have come home to roost notwithstanding that we are top of the league and fans are enjoying going to CCS to watch a winning team.
All 5 of Plymouth’s were scored because of playing out from the back .We have become so good at it that we played through Plymouth’s press but scored only two goals and were then caught on the counter attack because Chambers was playing in our defence.
It was a clear penalty when Chambers assaulted the Plymouth striker.In fact the latter should be congratulated for his sportsmanship in trying to stay on his feet despite being in no position to threaten the Cardiff goal.
Osho should also have been sent off because the Plymouth player looked very upset.
Incidentally if BBM is currently attending to his chickens I hope he might be reflecting on whether rotating his centre backs is a sensible policy
Thanks Mike for your appreciation there… but that said…
…
I have awakened, not happy with myself. And with my last contribution.
In truth I am annoyed that I snapped somewhat at dear Steve, a noble fellow who always leans over backwards to act as defence counsel for our boys in blue when they have sinned.
Steve long ago wrote to me to ask to go on my mailing list for my Daigressings, a primitively non-professionally presented mailing of my thoughts, jokes, YouTube links, newspaper reports, and my barking-mad political views… that I send out at irregular intervals about 18 times a year… and have astonishingly been doing for over a quarter of a century to readers (or rather, recipients!) in 28 countries. My Duracell battery is now getting low, and methinks I will not see my 80th birthday next year… but anyone who wants to witness my ‘last hurrah’ as a Daigressing compiler is free to join my mailing list so long as they don’t have a bt.com email address… as those ‘so and sos’ always reject my mailings. Write me at daigress@hotmail.com if you want to go on my list.
Anyway, what was I saying before that vulgar self-advertisement… ? Oh yes, my less-than-charitable dig at dear Steve there.
Look… he has been on my mailing list – and indeed been sending me regular feedback – for quite a while now, so I had his email address. Thus my obvious disappointment that he needed to tell me something I had already told him in my previous post, should have been expressed in a personal note to him.
After all, he deserves a medal (as he has a bout of the flu right now), for ploughing through my eccentric pronunciation… especially my otiose exclamation marks and my myriad uses of ellipsis.
So I say to myself… c’mon Dai, you have more class than to try to take a cheap shot at a faithful MAYA contributor… especially one who would defend a boy in blue even if the player was on a cut-and-dried murder charge with blood still on his hands.
So my apologies go to Steve.
Oh before signing off… yes I know it was not ‘murder’ exactly, but it was both a vicious and sneaky assault, from one of BBM’s two pitifully wrong selections for centre-back that day…
Watch these wise words at 02.13 here…
https://youtu.be/ueulC075azs?si=8BiYv8ccLSOt8q4B
TTFN,
Dai.
Thanks for all the replies to a Feedback section which I’d say has regained much of its former glories in recent weeks. That said, I honestly don’t think there’s ever been a post match discussion on here where I have disagreed with as much of what was posted as I have this time! Before going into more detail, I thought I’d mention that before we played Plymouth I’d read somewhere that we were 100 to 1 on to be promoted this season with some bookies – think about that, the bookmakers were only willing to pay out one pound for every £100 bet on us going up even though there’s more than two months of the season left to play!
Now, as someone who recalls all too well our pitiful bottle job in. 2009 when we allowed a Preston team that we’d lapped twice during the season to pip us to a Play Off spot in the closing weeks of the campaign, I recognise that there’s still time for a spectacular implosion from City which may see Saturday’s loss having the same sort of effect as our 6-0 hammering at Deepdale did seventeen years ago.
However, I would say that, up to now, I’ve not enjoyed a City season. as much as this one since 2003/04 when Lennie Lawrence’s team played some high quality, attacking football upon City’s return to the second tier after an absence of eighteen years at a time when I had genuine doubts as to whether we would cope at the higher level. For me, BBM has City playing a brand of football which is hard to implement for League One footballers and, if he did anything wrong on Saturday, it was to be too attacking in his attitude (e.g. his preference for Turnbull over Wintle and then the decision to bring on Rubin Colwill, rather than Wintle, at half time).
So, it’s against that backdrop that I say the following. Firstly, Graham disagreed with my use of the term “free scoring” after the Wimbledon game, well I offer in evidence a goals scored per league game record of just under two per match. From the Barnsley match onwards, we’ve scored eighteen times in six games and, even on Saturday, scored twice away from home. To do that and lose is a once or twice a season occurrence I’d say for your average EFL team these days – Saturday may have showed that we still have problems at the other end of the pitch which I hoped had disappeared in the last three months or so, but a failure to put the ball in the opposition net is the least of our worries at the moment.
Then we come to Dai who is so positive and, dare I say it, cheerfully charismatic about many aspects of football and life in general (he is also a prime reason why I have always thought the Feedback section adds so much to the blog), but he struggles week in, week out to find anything good to say about a team which, until Saturday, had the best home and away record in the division, still are League One’s top scorers, until Plymouth, had the best defensive record in the division, still average over two points per game and, as mentioned above, average a little under two goals scored per game.
Despite what I say there, I agree with some of Dai’s post game comments – in particular when it comes to the ref and, especially, his penalty decision. Sorry Steve, the research I’ve done on Darren Drysdale in response to the claim of a possible Lincoln bias on his part, as mentioned by you and some others on social media, included an excerpt which specifically states that no evidence could be found of any bias towards Lincoln City FC from Mr Drysdale despite him living so close to that city. As Dai points out, the county of Lincolnshire has two current EFL teams, another former league side which may be returning next season (those three sides have a pretty fierce rivalry I understand) and a lot of other pretty prominent non league teams. Mr Drysdale has taken charge of City, Bolton, Bradford and Huddersfield this season and all of these sides took at least one point from the game until our heavy defeat on Saturday – indeed, it was Mr Drysdale who gave us our only penalty of the season and what I believe is the only red card an opposing player has received in a league game against us when he took charge of our game at Wigan, more evidence that Mr Drysdale has hardly been helping Lincoln’s cause at the expense of their promotion rivals this season.
When it comes to the penalty (the most important moment of the game for me as I always thought we had a decent chance of getting something out of the match before it, but our attitude after it showed that we had given up the ghost), my thoughts on seeing it for the first time and then in subsequent replays of the TV coverage was that it looked a bit harsh, but not to the extent that I’d argue it wasn’t a penalty. However, I’m grateful to the messageboard contributor who posted this vlog from a Plymouth fan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFSlN_8UR7c
In particular, look at the penalty incident (it’s at around 7.10). Those pictures should end any debate as to whether it was a penalty or not – Dai is right on that, but I disagree with his comment that Chambers’ actions were “vicious and sneaky”. On the contrary, our captain’s response seems to me to be born of panic which prompted him into committing what was, from the angle in that video I posted, an obvious foul.
Before finishing with the ref, I’d point you in the direction of City’s video of the whole game
https://tv.cardiffcityfc.co.uk/videos/9079737b-245d-4b6e-b63c-893ef55fd289
and ask that you look at the aftermath of the early save Trott made from Watts when the Plymouth player should have scored, Is that a deliberate stamp on Joel Colwill by Wiredu? I’ll give the Plymouth man the benefit of the doubt by saying he couldn’t really put his foot anywhere else, but there are other City fans who would disagree with me there and I wouldn’t argue too strongly against them. Mr Drysdale appears to see the incident and decide that the awarding of free kick to us was sufficient punishment for Wiredu.
After all of the discussion of the last few days, I find myself returning to a point I made in my match reaction. piece typed on Saturday afternoon – Plymouth persistently fouled us to the tune of 23 offences committed by them against ten by us. I accept that, with the possible exception of the stamp mentioned above, none of those 23 fouls were particularly nasty, but it just looks wrong that we should have four booked and them three given the general “feel” of the match.
One final point I’d make to Dai is that Tolaj may have been bounding about like a golden retriever on Saturday in a game where too many of our players’ attitude was not quite right, but I’m bound to ask where was that sort of attitude with Tolaj and the rest of his team mates when they were suffering any of the eight home league defeats (some of them by very heavy margins) they’ve suffered this season? They looked very sorry for themselves at Cardiff City Stadium back in August and, having seen Plymouth’s display on Saturday described as their best since the Steve Schumacher days, I can only assume that their attitude against us was very much the exception to the 25/26 rule for Argyle. On the other hand, I’ve not seen many matches this year where you could question our attitude – Port Vale maybe, Blackpool, Peterborough in the FA Cup and Saturday spring to mind, but I’m struggling to come up with many others.
Finally to Mike (great to hear from you again), who I think offers a fair summing up although I would give our team an opportunity or two to show that Saturday was a one off before being too critical of them despite having a nagging doubt in the back of my mind that the defensive improvement which saw us have just twenty one on target goal attempts against us in the eleven games before Wimbledon was some sort of elongated blip and what we saw at times in the autumn, occasionally a week ago against Wimbledon and particularly on Saturday was more akin to our normal selves when it comes to defending.
Paul,
Please tell me that I am living in an alternative universe… for I am still rubbing my eyes in disbelief at what you have just said about me…
How do you arrive at this, for godsake…?
‘…
[Dai] struggles week in, week out to find anything good to say about [CCFC]
…’
Eh? Where do you get that from? For 14 years I have been praising performances on the pages of MAYA. Shame on you for saying that.
Look boyo, the real schism between us is that I cannot STAND ‘playing out from the back’. You are a fully paid-up subscriber to this modish infection. In your case I am sure your motives are pure, but in so many cases it is a house built on the sand of intellectual snobbery: the crazy idea that it is much better to score a goal with 22 passes than it is to score one with say four, including the goal kick.
As Mike in his ever-welcome contribution shrewdly observes, one could attribute all 5 Plymouth goals to our playing out from the back policy proving our undoing…. He is NOT saying there was an immediate breakdown of the tiki-taka, but implying that when we indeed DID manage to break the Plymouth press, our defenders were then out of position and subject to outstandingly quick Plymouth breaks.
I would add the psychological point that a Plymouth team that was pumped up by Cleverley, were thus given a great boost by being able to harass us in our own third as we played our patient build-up. They saw this game as a proper physical battle: we saw it as a game where our STYLE would triumph. We were wrong.
As the great rugby coach Clive Rowlands used to say… ‘there is no substitute for CALON, boys’…
And when I talked about Tolaj’s passion in the game, you cite previous performances of his when he was not quite so boundingly enthusiastic. So what are you trying to prove here?
All I am saying is that Tolaj perfectly demonstrated last Saturday that he was ‘up for the game’… as were his colleagues. They got it drummed into them by their manager. Our manager by his perverse choice of centre backs, told us that he thought his rearguard two would win the day. How wrong could he be?
And I note that you tell us that Plymouth committed 23 fouls to our 10, but got one fewer yellow card issued them. Is that necessarily anomalous? Could it genuinely not be that fewer of their fouls were worthy of a yellow? And is there always a correlation between fouls committed and yellow cards? I respectfully suggest there might not be.
And as for this…
‘…
but I disagree with [Dai’s] comment that Chambers’ actions were “vicious and sneaky”.
…’
I am positively nonplussed at that…
If I took myself more seriously then I’d get my lawyers on to this…!! I jest of course.
But tell me, I know Paul that I am no longer the sharpest knife in a box, but where pray, did I say that?!!
DW
Oh dear, the short piece I wrote yesterday has been misconstrued by Dai.
I was being completely sincere when I referred to him as the GOAT of the MAYA bloggers but the rest of what I wrote (apart from the final sentence) was a failed attempt at irony.
I was trying to convey the bias of most fans— in this case a Plymouth admirer with a distaste for BBM as a manager and Chambers as a centre half.
Dear Mike, puts me right. Thank you Mike.
And there was me saying that I am no longer the sharpest knife in the box. Ha! Get my arrogance…!! Truth is I was NEVER the sharpest knife… indeed I was the one where rust had set in.
So let me explain a few things…
Not for the first time have I misconstrued someone’s comments… and it won’t be my last… though my days are getting short now.
No doubt I have probably done the same with Paul’s references to me in his summing up… ah well… I can take it… give me both barrels when you wake up a few hours from now Paul.
We all need to be taken down a peg or two from time to time… we all take ourselves too seriously.
In my defence here, I confess – on first reading it – to being puzzled by Mike’s initial contribution… as I had always assumed Mike was a subscriber to Paul’s play out from the back philosophy. But hey, I thought, obviously he has finally seen the light, on the (long ball) road to Damascus.
Hence my hopeless attempt to interpret what he was saying… getting myself into a pickle in suggesting that defensive players trying to move the ball in a series of passes to the halfway line, end up not being ideally positioned for a sudden breakaway attack by the opposition.
Which was Grade 1 twaddle from me, as I am not sure it’s true, and more to the point, my principal objection to playing out from the back, is why expend all that energy trying to overcome a press, when if the playing out gets you to the halfway line, the chances are it will break down there? Whereas by contrast – with the remembrance that it is called a goal KICK for a reason – in three seconds a ball can leave a keeper’s foot and be contestable at the edge of the opponents’ third… (assuming the long kicks are more accurate than Trott’s… and their centre back is not having a stormer like Bradley Hills recently). Oh and of course, playing out from the back in a derby – and that’s what it was to Plymouth, for out of the 23 others in Div 1, we were the second closest team to them geographically – just puts pressure on us as the passionate Home Park crowd urge their players to ‘get at em’…
The fact it was Mike’s attempt at satire, obviously escaped me (and I suggest probably some other readers)… though Chambers’ violent assault bit should have set the alarm bells going in the ‘inbuilt bulls**t detector’ in my head… but I took that to read as Mike’s attempt at ‘poetic licence’ having just seen on TV the tiny touch in the back of Arsenal’s Gabriel that projected him into the stratosphere before he fell to the ground… whereas the push on Tolaj was clearly much more forceful.
The real warning bells should have rung in my brain with Mike’s penultimate sentence on Osho deserving to get a red because ‘the Plymouth player looked very upset’.
But I remember thinking… Mike is around my vintage… maybe he (like me) is ‘losing it’ slightly… and then I saw the time of his posting (6.03pm) and thought, perhaps he lives in a Care Home and the 6pm gong has just gone for dinner… and he has rushed his ending not to offend matron… and it has not come out on the MAYA page quite like he wanted !!
(If only you could see me now… I am falling about with mirth at recalling my thought processes…!! That thought about the dinner gong did genuinely enter my head… honest.)
In fairness though to me, he comes out of this satiric ‘Janner persona’ and back into ‘lifetime Bluebird’, with his final sentence on the absurdity of BBM’s centre back rotation policy… and airs a view that many City fans would happily sign up to.
So, what are my final conclusions? Well, I should in future expect an SJ Perelman wannabe to be stalking the pages of MAYA… though Mike will I trust agree that on the evidence of his satirical contribution there, his satirical act perhaps needs a bit of working on… if only for the fact that it was a tad too veiled.
I am greatly touched by the MAYA ‘GOAT’ title he awarded me… though that said, I cannot help but muse on the fact that the last few occasions I attended a Pizza Hut (about 5 years ago) before their crazy prices and unexciting menus drove me away, I partook of their GOAT pizza… the best (only thing any damn good?) item on their menu.
And I recall telling a companion who was unaware of the acronym, that GOAT stood for ‘greatest of all time’… and being taken aback by a response of… ’have you noticed it is made not with mozzarella but with GOATS cheese?’
We both laughed ourselves silly. Ah the little moments of joy between the cradle and the grave…
TTFN,
Dai.
I’ll open with an acknowledgment of an innocent misunderstanding on my part. I didn’t click on the link to the players’ ratings video that Dai posted because I had watched it the previous day and so, with Dai not identifying the player concerned in his text apart from saying it was one of our centrebacks, I wrongly assumed he was talking about Chambers (probably because I’d just spent some time writing about the penalty decision). Therefore, although I’m not sure an apology is really necessary in this case, I will give one.
For what it’s worth now, I’ve no strong opinions either way on the Osho incident as I reckon the TV pictures of it are inconclusive, so, I suppose I believe the ref and the linesman got it right between them when it was decided to go for the middle option of showing a yellow card.
As for my saying Dai struggles to find anything positive to say about us week in, week out, I should clarify that I feel this is a recent development. In particular, I refer to the twelve game unbeaten run which ended on Saturday – I can honestly say that, in my opinion, City achieved the relatively rare double of winning while entertaining in more than a half of those matches and I’m fairly sure that many City fans would agree with me there.
Maybe the best way to illustrate why I said what I did is to go back to our last promotion season in 2017/18 when, despite us playing some great football in the first couple of months of the season (e.g.Villa, Sheffield United, Wolves and Leeds), the injury to Ken Zohore which saw an end to his golden period marked a change to more typical Warnock fare as the football became more pragmatic and attritional and we spent much of the second half of the season grinding our way to results as a result. Now I made the fact that I didn’t particularly enjoy the type of football we were playing then pretty clear at times, but I like to think that I also conveyed my pleasure at the results we were getting because, as City are my team, results have to be more important than entertainment when all’s said and done.
Judging by what he has posted in recent weeks, I’m not sure Dai feels the same way. He clearly is not a fan of the way we play under BBM and there’s nothing wrong with that as we’re all entitled to our opinion. In fact, I find it hard to argue with the logic which says why take, say, ten passes to get into a certain area of the pitch when you can do it in one with the goalkeeper playing it long? However, I would argue that there is bit more to it than that in that I’ve seen Dai say a few times that for them to be consistently effective the long balls have to be passes as opposed to punts in a general direction. For me, BBM’s team makes effective use of long passes at times – under Bulut and Riza our attempts to play more of a passing game were often passing for passing’s sake, whereas I feel there’s a purpose to our passing under BBM and, by going long every now and again, we mix our game up effectively.
Moving on to Mike’s message, it struck me as a bit contradictory in places, but I admit I fell for it like Dai did because I would have addressed his contention that all five of Plymouth’s goals came as a result of us playing out from the back if it were not for the fact that I’d written a very long message already and didn’t want to make it that much longer. In fact, the extent to which I fell for Mike’s irony can be gauged by me watching all five goals again to check that I hadn’t missed something five times! I hadn’t, at least by the criteria I go by.
That said, if you were so minded, you could attribute every goal BBM’s City side concedes to playing out from the back if you go back far enough, as there’ll always be an occasion when an attempt to do that failed in some way and this can then be interpreted as a catalyst for the goal which eventually followed. However, doesn’t it follow that if you look long enough, you’d be able to attribute every goal we scored to playing out from the back as well?
I should add that I don’t subscribe to that view – quite a few of our goals have been down to things like luck, howlers from the opposition and goals scored by putting together nowhere near as many passes as you’d associate with a goal that was a direct result of playing out from the back. However, no matter how they arrive, we’ve scored twenty eight more than we’ve conceded, won twenty one out of thirty three and lost only six while paying the BBM way – just as it did under Warnock in 17/18, don’t the ends justify the means, so far at least, in 25/26?
One final thing as far as Plymouth showing more stomach for the fight on Saturday (which I accept they did) goes. I prefer to look at something like this in the context of a season and the fact of the matter is that if we win six of our remaining thirteen games, Plymouth cannot catch us no matter what they do for the rest of the campaign. I’m not kidding when I say that, if I were a Plymouth fan on Saturday, amidst all of the celebrating, part of me would be saying something like “where was that performance when we were losing at home by 3-1 to Barnsley, by 1-0 to Leyton Orient, by 1-0 to Peterborough, by 2-1 to Wimbledon, by 3-0 to Northampton, by 1-0 to Bradford, by 4-1 to Reading and by 4-1 to Lincoln?”. City have let themselves down a few times this season (Burton at home, Blackpool away and Saturday spring to mind), but, based on results over a six month period, give me them over Plymouth any day of the week.
Thanks for your noble correction, Paul. Much appreciated.
Re Plymouth, btw, last night I watched the whole Vertu quarter final from Kenilworth Road. Not a great game… none of the passion from either side, like we saw last Saturday.
However for a midweek game, a commendable number of Plymouth fans half-filled the away end… and by golly, they kept the singing and chanting up to the final whistle (unlike our fans last Saturday).
How crazy it is that a team already eliminated 2-1 by Swindon, now stand a good chance of lifting the trophy at Wembley. If they can defeat Northampton in the semi, they will play the winner of Donny v Stockport.
It looks like it will be a Hatters v Hatters final… and so, how crazy that a team knocked out 2-1 by Swindon, lived to see another day because the Robins played two ineligible players… one of them was the skipper who was undergoing a 6 game ban at the time for allegedly getting up to some dodgy business indecently assaulting one (or was it two?) of our players?
But Paul, that cannot be right, can it? I mean the fact that a team knocked out can eventually still lift the trophy?
Mad.
I reckon Vertu were praying for a Plymouth win. They might have got one, had they had the wisdom to reverse the cup quarter final draw by making Plymouth the home team. It would have been a fair handicapping of a losing team, for generously giving them (Luton) a second bite of the apple/cherry.
DW
Oops… just realised that Ollie Clarke was banned for SEVEN, not six games.
DW
If Plymouth had made it to the Final, I reckon they would have taken something like 40,000 to Wembley Dai – as proved by their numbers in earlier games in the competition, their away support is always excellent. As for the unfairness of Luton possibly going on to win a tournament in which they were beaten in a one off, winner takes all, tie, I tend to agree that it’s unfair that they are still in the competition, the not very easy question that provokes though is how would the tournament have proceeded if a knock out game where there could only be one winner in fact produced none!
It’s not the same thing, but, as it’s Luton, I’ll just mention the League Cup tie at their ground in 87/88 I think it was that saw us given a bye to the next round because of luton’s ban on away fans – in that case, I’d say it was right that we should proceed because we’d done nothing wrong. However, this time I think I’d favour the simplest answer which seems to me to be that the draw took place without Luton or anything like a lucky loser in it and so the team that was left over (i.e. after seven games in what should have been the last sixteen or three in what should have been the last eight) got a bye through to the next round.
It was two City players Clarke was found guilty of assaulting by the way – I read somewhere that it was Rubin Colwill and Cian Ashford, but that could well have been just social media bull.
Going back to Tuesday’s game, it’s an odd one because although we’re now at the stage where these lower division clubs can see Wembley in their sights and so I would assume they’re picking their strongest teams I would guess that, despite the result, Luton fans are feeling more downbeat than Plymouth ones this morning. Argyle are in the midst of their best league run of the season and, if they could carry their form and intensity from Saturday through to the end of the season, they would have a serious chance of getting to Wembley in the Play Offs come May. On the other hand, Luton’s 1-1 home draw with Burton (which doesn’t look a terrible result in the light of the Brewers’ dismantling of Stockport on Tuesday) last weekend saw the crowd turning very much against the Board at the final whistle with Jack Wilshere, apparently, rowing with a section of the support as well – somehow, I doubt if any feelgood factor beating Plymouth may have generated will last long if Luton turn in what’s become their usual type of away performance at Port Vale (who gave themselves a bit of hope by winning at Northampton) on Saturday!
Paul,
Your thinking was much better than mine, here. Grant Argyle a bye through to the semi finals… BRILLIANT. Why could I not have thought of that?
As I say, I watched the whole game, and have since seen the latest fabulous Pieface vlog to drop. I don’t recommend you do either today, but I do urge MAYA brethren to just watch from 17.00 to about 19.50 here…
https://tinyurl.com/p8892r6d
You get a fleeting glance of a concerned neighbour staring out at the lads kicking a football with wild abandon in the street… alarmed that the ball will be coming through his window, any second… but then keep watching as Jack alights the steps into the Away End at Kenilworth Road, and one gets one of the most special views any British stadium can offer. Jack turns his camera around and it looks into folks’ bathrooms some as close as 15 yards away.
Those folk must be so grateful for their frosted glass.
DW
Another well balanced report Paul – many thanks. Also thanks for all the great comments and banter from everyone. As someone whose nearest team is Argyle I had become very aware of their recent improvements both mentally and physically through watching highlights on local tv. I was a bit fearful for us before the game – but just a bit. Then when I switched on and saw the playing conditions I became more fearful and that was compounded by team selection in central defence. We are missing Salech in defence as well as attack! Virtually all teams are able to utilise one or even two strikers to boost their defence when facing free kicks and corners. Given that Salech is not available might it not be a good idea to field 3 central defenders when we come up against sides with powerful strikers?
Good point about Salech Mike. I think three at the back will become a consideration if we defend as poorly today as we did a week ago – I’d be very surprised if we made that sort of change after a single defeat though.
I should say Dai, that I didn’t favour giving Plymouth a bye, more that they should have been one of only seven sides in the Quarter Final draw with the one left over after the first three ties had been drawn automatically going into the Semi Finals.
I watched the couple of minutes of the video you mentioned and immediately noticed the twitching curtain when that game was being played in the street.I’ve never been to Luton before and so it was an education to see what the away end looks like from behind whatI hesitate to call the stand. I’ve been trying to think of the ground I’ve been to which most resembles the away end at Kenilworth Road – the Manor Ground, Oxford, Somerton Park, Newport, Fratton Park, Portsmouth, Goodison Park, Everton and Griffin Park, Brentford all come to mind for one reason or another, but, truthfully, none of them could match those video shots of Luton and to think it will soon be gone!