There were three seasons in the late sixties running into 1970 that dictated what sort of Cardiff City fan I became. The outlandish run to the Semi Finals of the European Cup Winners Cup in 1967/68 started the process and then there were the two seasons which followed when, for the first times in my City supporting life, promotion to the top division seemed a realistic prospect.
Before those three seasons, I was a supporter of the club, but not what I’d call a diehard supporter – for example, I found the 9-0 defeat at, appropriately enough, Preston North End in the last game of the 65/66 season for from the disaster that got adult fans so annoyed, in fact, it made the ten year old me laugh.
City losing wasn’t too hard to take for me in those early years – it happened quite a bit more than us winning, but after those three seasons, my mood for the weekend was shaped by what happened to us on a Saturday afternoon and that continued into adulthood until I reached a stage somewhere in between those two extremes which I maintain to this day.
Anyway, to go back to the point I’m, laboriously, trying to make, although I was more committed to the Cardiff City cause in 68/69 and 69/70, I learned something at the back end of those two seasons that has held true for the next half a century and more.
In both of the seasons I mention, our promotion bid ran out of steam in the final few matches and so we had one or two home games with nothing riding on them. From memory, nothing games against Huddersfield in 68/69 resulted in a 0-2 loss and a year later, Oxford United and Millwall were the opposition for a couple of goalless stalemates, the second one in front of a crowd of under nine thousand – City just weren’t the side they’d been for most of the season in those matches and, eventually the penny dropped with me as to why that attendance was so much lower than normal.
The fourteen year old me cottoned on to the fact that if your side has nothing to play for and they are up against opponents in the same position, the football classic that some insist will result as sides can fully express themselves with no real pressure on them is far rarer than the snooze fest which tends to result when the intensity and pressure drops in a professional game.
In some ways, I should have seen today’s boring (to use Steve Morison’s word to describe it) 0-0 stalemate between the 2022 versions of Cardiff City and Preston North End coming, but I fell into the trap that I described earlier in that I looked at an encounter between two in form sides that had an outside chance of a top six finish in Preston’s case and a very small chance of going down in ours and was thinking in terms of an entertaining tussle. After all, Preston had lost just once in ten Championship games and our nineteen points from the same number of matches was almost top two form.
The mistake I made was in thinking that, with all of the nothing to play for, half hearted, miserable messes I’d seen down the years taking place in April and May, it would be different in early March with ten matches of the season still to go.
I was wrong though. Looking at it from a City viewpoint, that was a performance today of a team that is no longer thinking about the possibility of relegation. I used the term “half hearted” earlier, but I’d be wrong to apply it today’s display, the effort was there, but there was a carelessness with basics of the game suffering because of a slight drop in mental intensity.
Now, I can imagine some regular readers thinking what’s he talking about, he’s always saying that Cardiff are worse at the basics like control and passing than most of the sides they play. I’ll plead guilty to that, but I think what I’m trying to say is that it wasn’t “the usual suspects” who were the culprits today, it was players such as Cody Drameh, Ryan Wintle and Tommy Doyle (the last named was unusually slipshod with his passing and crossing).
I find it hard to be too critical though because this team has put an awful lot into the last ten matches and, in a way, have earned their right to an off day like today because they’re well ahead of schedule in how most of us thought a successful relegation battle would pan out – Steve Morison said that he wanted to avoid “testimonial” type performances between now and the end of the season, well he got one today and I think he and his staff will be drumming into the players that there is still much to play for -contract offers for a start in some cases.
It wasn’t all bad, Alex Smithies made a fine close range stop to deny Daniel Johnson, the best player on the pitch in my view, from close range and all of the back three had strong matches as we again showed how much we’ve improved in that area in recent weeks. A word too about Uche Ikpeazu who was almost entirely responsible for our worthwhile attacking play – we’d shown absolutely nothing as an attacking force going into the last ten minutes and then, almost by sheer force of will, he got us playing a bit by forcing Preston keeper Daniel Iversen into two smart saves. The first came from a placed effort from twenty yards and the second was more of a thump from fifteen – they were both saves that Iversen would have expected to make, but they were still good saves, especially when concentration levels might not be as high as they couldt have been having had so little to do.
As someone who has been quite critical of Uche in the past, I must say I was very impressed by him today, although, ironically, he became the villain of the piece late in added time when Jordan Hugill volleyed home Mark McGuiness’ headed flick on only for us to be denied a win we wouldn’t have deserved for a foul by Ikpeazu as the ball came in.
It was a little annoying though that referee James Linington put the whistle to his lips this time when he had been so reluctant to do so during the ninety minutes plus beforehand. Usually a referee who “lets the game flow” gets a thumbs up from me, but Mr Linington let too many clear fouls go on both sides and it goes without saying that Uche’s offence would never have been penalised if he had done the same thing in the City penalty area while defending a corner.
There’s not really much else to say about a game which I thought Preston edged from about the midway point of the first half onwards until the last few minutes – I just hope that we don’t have to go through nine similar such “wind downs” as our season runs out.
Bizarrely, the Under 18s went from 2-0 up at half time to a 5-3 defeat his lunchtime against Millwall at Leckwith this lunchtime as their losing run goes on – Morgan Wigley got the two goals that had us ahead at half time and Cole Fleming scored the other one.
Better news for the Under 23s though whose long spell without a win, that had stretched to almost three months, won 2-0 at Watford yesterday – James Crole and Jack Leahy were the scorers.
First Round W John Owen Cup (a League Cup for Highadmit South Wales Alliance League clubs I believe) ties today for Blaenrhondda FC and Treherbert Boys and Girls club with mixed fortunes against sides from their own division – the first named, who won the tournament in 17/18 as a Second Division team, bowed out with a single goal defeat at Cwmaman who sit one place below them in the Premier League table, while Division Two leaders Treherbert were 3-1 winners at Llantwit Fadre who are last but two in their division.
THE CULT FIGURE
The technicalities of the game are comprehensively covered by Paul’s superb reports and the knowledgeable comments of the other contributors. For the moment all I can add is to remark that properly weighted passes for a wide man to run onto are almost as rare as a kind word from Putin. Yesterday was no exception. Recipients of the bass are normally facing their own goal and on receiving the pass to their feet have to control the ball and then turn to start a run towards goal. Instead, they stick to the easier option of passing the ball back or at best sideways. Is it possible, I wonder, to see more killing forward passes from our beloved team?
On a slightly similar theme, there is the element of the cult. In a typical self-deprecating way in his autobiography Bob Monkhouse said he knew he was a cult figure because everywhere he went people would shout “Cult! Cult! Cult!” after him.
The genuine expression as we heard yesterday was “Olé! O!e¦ Olé” a term which Spaniards shouted when the Matador made the final pass into the bull. It was a term which fans of Pontypridd Rugby made popular (rather than the old term “Bravo”). The point of all this whimsicality is that Cardiff City now have their own Matador (originally in this country used for an armoured weapon-carrier). When Ikpeazu came onto the field the call went up which sounded like Olé.
Yet it is rather ironic that the new cult figure was someone in the style that Cardiff City centre-forwards have used for years and which demand a certain type of play — a big man up front who has to fight for balls thumped up the middle of the field. Curiously, that is something I can appreciate, but does it mean that the Cardiff way is still dependent on Thumpball? I accept that the Cardiff way is now much better but it would be pleasant on occasions to have a different style of forward play.
Good morning Paul and others – Thank you for your usual excellence, but I fear for once I must disagree on just one item, your assessment of Wintle. I thought he was our stand out performer yesterday, patrolling in front of the back five with a calmness and assuredness that many of the others wearing blue did not match. I genuinely believe that his introduction into the side since returning from the seaside resort has had much to do with our improved performances. His acquisition last summer clearly demonstrates that there are some nuggets in the lower reaches of the EFL and that it is not necessary to spend fortunes to obtain “quality”.
The game itself was not for the connoisseur, and whether the freezing cold and windy conditions contributed to make the spectacle “boring” as described by our Manager is debatable, but the fact that there were so few fouls committed by either side suggests a lack of desire by many. Perhaps the referee did let a few incidents that on another day might well have produced a different outcome, but to this observer that was not the reason why the game is instantly forgettable. It is once again our inability to attack the opponent with some form of cohesive flair. Much of the basics pass our lot by!
I have been critical in recent times of the style of play that Ikpeazu brings to the team, but I confess that his appearance just on the hour mark brought some excitement to the last third of the match and he managed two fierce efforts that required saving with more effort than any previously. But I understand that it was his clumsiness that brought about the foul which ultimately disallowed Hugill’s strike. Incidentally, I thought Hugill took that chance very well having been starved of anything for most of the preceding ninety minutes. I do not recall if this is the first time that both of our loan strikers have appeared together, and am not sure if this combination is the way forward, but with both being strong physical players, it would not surprise me if they were to start a game in the not too distant future.
When I saw the team sheet, I believed that this was probably our best team with the possible exception of left wing back. I still do, but with only the Stoke match on Wednesday before the Jacks arrive in town, I suspect there’ll be some different faces at kick off on Wednesday. Was it ever thus.
Thanks both for your replies. Anthony, I think I have made clear on here over a long period my dislike of the type of football for which the club have gained a reputation, but I thought Saturday showed that going all out in the direction I would prefer us to is just a problematic. The way we play has changed under Steve Morison – when our goalkeeper has the ball, our centrebacks split in the modern manner to give us the option of trying to play out from the back and, for much of the game, we do that. This is something I don’t think we would have seen under our three previous managers and we spent an hour or more on Saturday trying to be the passing team we’re supposed to be in the process of becoming, but, I still don’t think we’re very good at it and this is one of the reasons that we are currently a pretty negative team who tend to play like an away side no matter where the game is being played.
On Saturday, it was a game between two sides playing in similar fashions, using the same system and cancelling each other out because neither had the ability to come up with either a killer pass or produce a passage of play where they passed their way through the opposition to create a good scoring chance. Unquestionably, City looked more dangerous when Ikpeazu came on. Although I would not want to see us go down the two target men route we saw on Saturday, I’ve no problem with playing a big man up front, in fact there are target men who are able to fit in with a passing approach (e.g Keiffer Moore at Wigan), but I don’t think Ikpeazu is one of them – although I’m not blaming him for this because he did well overall, the truth is that Ikpeazu’s instinct to turn everything into a physical battle cost us on Saturday because his foul which caused our late goal to be ruled out had no direct bearing on McGuinness’ header of Hugill’s finish. So, I’m okay with us having a target man next season, I’m just not convinced that it should be Hugill or Ikpeazu.
BJA, regarding Wintle – I didn’t explain myself well enough, I thought he and the other two players mentioned slipped below the high standards they’ve set for themselves over the past few weeks (Doyle by quite a bit) – they are players that I don’t think are going to pass the ball straight to the opposition when they have it like so many of our team over the past few seasons have been inclined to do, but it was there to a degree on Saturday. As I mentioned, I put this down to a feeling that we’re safe now and so intensity and concentration levels, understandably I suppose, dropped somewhat.
I agree about the left wing back/;eft back situation – Doughty has done pretty well for us overall, but he’s not been at his best in his last two matches – for me, Bagan made us stronger in that position when he came on against QPR and Preston and it’ll be interesting to see who starts on Wednesday. The possibility that Stoke insisted on a clause that Doughty had to play if fit for the loan to go ahead was mentioned to me yesterday, which may explain recent selections, but I doubt if that is something the side getting the player would agree to in a deal involving two Championship clubs, as opposed to a Premier League side agreeing to lend one of their players to a team in the second tier.