Away improvement only underlining the size of the task facing Cardiff City.

Slowly but surely, it seems that Cardiff City are reverting to type. The pattern in recent seasons has been for us to struggle and usually play very poorly at home and to be more effective on our travels. 

This season, a run of good home results around September/October time distorted this pattern for a while, just as it did last year, but things soon reverted to normal twelve months ago and, one or two memorable victories over promoted teams apart, we were crap at home from November to May.

Early signs are that we’re heading the same way this year – the last two home losses, both against teams which could well be in the relegation battle all season, have been so abject that you wonder where the next home win is coming from.

If you contrast our game at Coventry a fortnight ago and today’s match at Stoke with what we’ve seen in Cardiff against QPR and Preston, you’d have to conclude that City are back in the old routine of playing better away than they do at home.

While four matches is probably too small a sample size to say for certain that our home and away fortunes have flipped, a looming home game next weekend against leaders Sheffield United will, in all likelihood, provide more evidence of the change as we probably lose while not scoring.

However, even if we can maybe start to expect us to look better on our travels, there is one distinctly ominous difference between this and previous seasons – while the City sides from 21/22 to 23/24 all had serious weaknesses, they all would have, in my opinion, found a way to have won at least one of our last two away matches. 

By contrast, the 24/25 side does not win away games. True, they are getting closer to that elusive away three points, but, having been pegged back at Coventry by a controversial late penalty that meant we had to settle for a 2-2 draw, a wholly preventable Stoke equaliser five minutes into added time means it was the same shoreline today.

The unfortunate truth is a defeat next weekend when the league leaders come calling will mean that we will have lost seven times at home with less than half of our twenty three game Cardiff City Stadium programme completed. 

It doesn’t take a genius to work out that is relegation form and, although we’ve now only lost four out of ten away fixtures, a return of six points from a possible thirty on our travels is as well.

A clearly annoyed and frustrated Omer Riza threatened changes after the Preston loss and he was as good as his word as Perry Ng (yet another hamstring victim – his injury is not expected to keep him out long, but the rumour is that David Turnbull’s could be season ending, Omer Riza confirmed he’s had an operation and is a long term absentee), Joel Bagan, Alex Robertson, Rubin Colwill and Callum Robinson all made way for Jesper Daland, Joe Ralls, Manolis Siopis, Chris Willock and Anwar El Ghazi. 

There was also a change of formation with Daland, Dimi Goutas and Callum Chambers operating as a back three, Rinomhota and Callum O’Dowda wing backs, Ralls and Siopis in central midfield and Willock and El Ghazi being notional wingers to add support to Yakou Meite who was leading the line.

Judging by what the commentator on the stream I watched was saying early on in proceedings, Stoke are set up to play in a very modern way with plenty of rotation and movement in their midfield and defence. However, I believe I’m right in saying that the stats show that they’re up near the top of the most shots against table and are heavily reliant on their goalkeeper Viktor Johansson being as good as he used to be at Rotherham for their position towards the top of the bottom third of the table.

Those stats suggest that Stoke aren’t very good at the defensive side of this rotation lark as players “rotate” into more forward areas without someone else dropping back to cover for them. The home team looked eminently beatable throughout today’s match and yet, for all that we got a reaction from Wednesday’s horror show and deserved to win, we didn’t and have no one to blame but ourselves for that.

Maybe it’s because Stoke’s is more open than most new stadiums in that it is not the normal bowl type structure, but, whenever I watch a game there, the pitch always looks bigger than others to me. Certainly, there was plenty of room in front of Stoke’s rotating back four for City in the opening half in particular, while O’Dowda had the freedom of the left hand side as he was often allowed to venture into our attacking third with no one within yards of him.

With Willock impressing early on in what was to become, by some way, his best game for City so far, we were giving as good as we got in first fifteen minutes or so.

Tom Cannon got around Jak Alnwick early on, but the angle was against him and he shot well over. However, although I thought what a defensive looking line up when I first saw it, City were pretty positive and a really well constructed move ended with Rinomhota’s twelve yard shot being beaten away by Johansson – Rinomhota has not let City down when he’s been selected and, just as he did against Norwich when asked to play in an unfamiliar right sided position, I thought he did well, but you really do want chances like this one to fall to someone else.

The miss seemed even more costly a few minutes later when Stoke took the lead as Million Manhoef drifted inside and got a shot away which Alnwick palmed into the path of Andrew Moran who was left with a simple finish from eight yards.

It was a messy goal to concede as Manhoef was not closed down well as neither Siopis or Ralls were able to get near to him. The former, very unusually for him, turned his back on the shot and the latter was too far away to affect the action as he had let Manhoef run away from him. Also, speaking as someone who doesn’t tend to blame goalkeepers as much as others do, I felt Alnwick could have done a better job of pushing the ball out to the side as opposed to in front of him.

The goal threw City off their stride for a while, but Willock was offering some hope with his trickery and he played a part in what was a controversial and, perhaps, lucky equaliser just past the half hour as his cross was headed up rather than out by a defender and Ralls tried an ambitious angled volley from around fifteen yards. Although well struck, Ralls’ shot was going wide, but the ball deflected off a defender into the path of a very offside looking El Ghazi who put the ball into the net from almost point blank range.

I didn’t get excited by the ball hitting the net because I was sure the goal was going to be disallowed, but the home crowd went wild as it became clear that it would stand. There may have been an argument that the touch off the defender played El Ghazi onside, but, in fact, replays showed that it was a far tighter offside decision than it first appeared and, from one angle in particular, it seemed pretty clear that it was a legitimate goal.

Minutes before half time, Rinomhota got away with his one serious mistake of the afternoon when he lost possession on the edge of his own penalty area to Lewis Koumas and the Welsh international on loan from Liverpool put his shpt across Alnwick, but narrowly wide.

City overcame what I thought was a dozy start to the second half to go on and have the better of things – they were particularly unlucky when Chambers put over a cross to the far post which was headed out to Meite stood just inside the penalty area whose volley was hit into the ground and bounced up to smack against the crossbar with Johansson beaten. 

I had a go at Meite in my piece on the Preston game, but, just as at Coventry, he did well here and  if he maybe didn’t win his personal duals with the Stoke centrebacks, they were at least a pair of honourable draws.

Yellow cards for three of Stoke’s back four within five minutes rather told the story of how the game was going and at first I thought it was Meite who had put us ahead with less than twenty minutes left, but, in fact, it was an own goal by home captain Ben Gibson after Johansson pushed out Willock’s shot and the ball hit the defender and flew into the net.

Wilfried Kanga replaced Meite and gave one of his better City performances as he proved to be a handful and set up a shot for Siopis which flew not far wide. With Colwill on to calmly keep possession, City were seeing out the game in a composed fashion just as they had looked to be doing against Coventry, but, for a second time, they came up short and this time there was no perceived blunder by the officials to blame their failure to win on.

For all of the apparent sophistication of Stoke’s early approach, with their crowd becoming increasingly angry, they were reduced to knocking long balls up to Cannon, sub Sam Gallagher and Gibson who had joined the attack in desperation. City had coped fine with this until about a minute of the six added had been played and then all of that poise they were showing just melted away.

It didn’t look to me as if Stoke had upped their game, but now City were losing their men, miskicking, clearing wildly and conceding dead ball situations when they didn’t need to.

A great block by Rinomhota foiled sub Emre Tezgel and then a fine save by Alnwick denied the same player when a close range goal looked inevitable.

That should have been the moment which won the three points for City, but when another sub, Robertson, gave away a needless free kick thirty five yards from goal, the home side had one last chance.

To be fair, the delivery of the free kick by Lyndon Gooch was excellent, right into that awkward area between defenders and keeper, but it still dropped into an area close to the penalty spot so it would have taken a really fine header to beat Alnwick from such a distance if he’d stayed on his line. Instead, Alnwick came charging out towards the ball, just like the Bristol City keeper did about three hours earlier when his headlong charge out to about ten yards inside his own half made a QPR forward’s mind up for him as, having got past the keeper, any sort of decent contact would see him score. So it was here as Gibson knew that all he had to do was get his head on the ball and keep it on goal  and that’s exactly what happened as the ball went into the centre of the goal at no great pace.

City’s point does take them out of the bottom three, but, as mentioned earlier, other recent, pretty ordinary, City sides would have taken four or six points from their last two away games, not two.

Elsewhere, there was a hat trick for Mannie Barton as the under 18s beat Watford 4-1 at Leckwith this lunchtime. Lennon Talbot had put us one up just before half time and then Barton took over after the break.

In local football, there was a very good win for Treherbert Boys and Girls Club in the South West section of the Ardal Leagues as they went to second placed Cefn Cribwr and won 3-2. In the Highadmit South Wales Alliance Premier Division, Ton Pentre’s woes continued with a 2-1 home loss to Tonyrefail and there was defeat as well for Treorchy Boys and Girls Club in the East Section of Division One by 3-2 at Penrhiwfer.

Finally, I should mention that the draw for the Qualifying stages of the 2026 World Cup was completed yesterday with Wales second seeds in a group which also includes Belgium, naturally, North Macedonia, Kazakhstan and Liechtenstein. My initial reaction is it could be a lot worse, Belgium are not the force they once were and while trips to North Macedonia and Kazakhstan are potential banana skins, a more confident Wales under their new head coach can contest for first place and automatic qualification.