Best result of the season? Cardiff City go back to basics……….again.

4 Responses to Best result of the season? Cardiff City go back to basics……….again.

1. Dai Woosnam says:

   January 5, 2025 at 11:34 pm

   Should I be blushing crimson now, Paul? I ask that question in relation to Callum Chambers suddenly raising his game.

   The answer I think is ‘no’. And here is for why…

   I stand by my view that he is a rank bad centre back. Over the years though, I have seen him perform adequately at right back… and that is where I hoped Omer might play him.
   I had never however seen him as a midfielder… and I confess that he seems a much better player there.

   Two other things to say about yesterday’s football:
   First, a friend emailed me today to say that he had counted the stupid ‘virtual own goals’ that resulted within 20 seconds from ‘playing out from the back’ yesterday… on MotD and ITV (EFL) highlights, and he made it 23. I emailed back asking him how goals down the other end had resulted… and I am still waiting for an answer. I won’t hold my breath.
   And second, Callum O’Dowda should not feel too sorry for himself after being tormented by Ben Doak… I predict that in 24-36 months the Scot will be Liverpool’s first choice, and the wonderful Luis Díaz will be his replacement at the 60 minute mark…!!
   TTFN, Dai.
2. Blue Bayou says:

   January 6, 2025 at 9:00 am

   I was only able to follow the first 20 minutes of the match courtesy of BBC Radio Wales, where I heard former Wales captain Kevin Ratcliffe say before the game that the basis for any side, like Cardiff, to climb the table is to keep clean sheets, and then criticise not only Goutas, but also Daland and Alnwick for us conceding a goal after 12 minutes. It sounded like it was going to be the long and difficult afternoon that I and several others predicted, but Cardiff scored a good goal from some Boro defensive sloppiness, and I was told from someone who saw the rest of the game that we produced the same second half defensive fight and resilience, that had previously restricted Watford to only one good chance second half, despite their superiority of possession.
   In spite the performance and result though, I’m more concerned about our status as a championship club than I was beforehand. That’s not only because our top scorer had his three game ban upheld for the Coventry red card, but several of the clubs around us are picking up wins. Oxford in particular are experiencing a new manager bounce, having won three and drawn one from Gary Rowett’s four games in charge.
   I can’t believe their resurgence will continue, as I thought they were pretty poor against us on Boxing Day, just that we were worse before and after half-time.
   After our worst start to a season in 125 years, it’s possibly not a bad recovery to have reached 23 points after 25 games. However, it means we’ll need to win at least 7 or 8 of our remaining 21 games, plus get several draws, to get to the magic 50 point total which is generally regarded as being definitely safe.
   Even with Robinson, we could do with another goal scorer, which to be honest is likely to be within our own ranks (Etete or Davies) rather than us recruiting a striker. While we’ve had occasional success recently with the likes of Kaba, Hugill, Uche and Grant, we’ve more recently had Ugbo, Diedhou and currently Kanga, who haven’t made the desired impact. At the time of writing there are stories that Kanga is to be returned to Hertha Berlin early, due to interest from some clubs in Belgium.
   The way things look at the moment, I feel that our team are defending well (albeit with the odd lapse that any club can suffer), but it’s whether we can score the goals to win enough games during the remainder of the season that I’m more concerned about!
3. The other Bob Wilson says:

   January 6, 2025 at 9:24 am

   Thanks Dai, I can’t remember if I mentioned in my piece that Chambers had earned some plaudits for his performances as a midfielder when he was at Fulham. As for him playing right back, Omer Riza said in a recent interview that although he and Will Fish can play right back, neither of them like playing there – in Chambers’ case, I wonder if it’s got something to do with when Josh Murphy took him to the cleaners in a Premier League we won 4-2 against Fulham under Neil Warnock, he was substituted at half time that day.
   First time I’d ever seen Doak play a complete game on Saturday and I can see what all of the fuss is about. I heard that he was superb for Scotland when they beat Croatia, but I’d only seen clips of him playing at Liverpool and Middlesbrough. You can definitely see why Leicester and Palace I think it was were trying to sign him on the cheap last week and I can understand why you predict a future for him as a Liverpool first teamer.
   My slight reservation on that is that I’ve thought for a while that individualism is frowned upon by some of the top managers and coaches these days – it’s a lttle bit like cricket where “specialists” are out of fashion and your modern day player has to be able to shine in at least two of the three phases of the game. It seems to me that your mate Pep wants his players to be “all rounders” these days (the Jack Grealish of Manchester City no longer does the sort of things that I would have thought got them interested in him in the first place) and it might be that Doak ends up at Crystal Palace type club in the end because he does not conform to modern day thinking.
   The thing in Doak’s favour is his age, he’s still a teenager and it may well be that modern day fads will have died out by the time he reaches his peak (I would have thought the end of the notion that playing out from the back is the only way to go is reaching the.end of its sell by date by now).
4. The other Bob Wilson says:

   January 7, 2025 at 8:56 am

   Morning and thanks Blue Bayou. Must say that I’m in complete agreement with most og what you say. It’s incredible how many sides found form after beating us during our long winless run. QPR haven’t looked back after winning down here, Preston’s improvement hasn’t been as marked, but there was, Blackburn have become genuine top six contenders and now Oxford (I agree, they were nothing special on Boxing Day, in fact i thought they were there for the taking) are putting together a run that will should see them survive.
   So far, we’re winning around a fifth of our matches and, as you say, we’ll have to win about a third of them from now on to the figure Birmingham got relegated with last season. I suspect that you’re right about strikers – getting one that you could feel confident about them reaching, say, eight goals by season’s end would cost a few million and they’d in all likelihood be someone who attract bids from clubs hiugher up the table than us. There is the loan market of course and I see we’re being linked with Danns of Liverpool, but is he going to be able to transform our season at just eighteen years old?