The first thing to say of course is that my sympathy goes out to the families, friends and acquaintances of the five victims of the tragic helicopter crash at the King Power stadium last weekend following the match between Leicester City and West Ham.
Completely understandably, Leicester’s midweek League Cup tie with Southampton was postponed which meant that the eyes of the football world were on Cardiff City Stadium yesterday as Leicester returned to action with a Premier League encounter against City.
There was a time when a game taking place under such circumstances involving Cardiff City would have been faced with some trepidation by the football authorities, but I hope there was no surprise felt by those running the sport at the reaction of both club and supporters during what was a testing week for them in some ways – it was commendable.
Really, there was no reason to expect anything less from the modern day Cardiff City. From the signals sent out by the hierarchy at the club that they were happy to go along with whatever Leicester and their players wanted regarding whether the game should go ahead or not to the way the, potentially, very sensitive pre game programme was conducted, culminating in an impeccably observed minute’s silence, Cardiff were excellent hosts – unfortunately, that situation was maintained once the football began!
After an awkward start, Leicester were able to ease to a 1-0 win with the margin of victory not flattering them in the slightest.
On my way to the ground, I listened to a reporter from the Leicester Mercury I think it was being interviewed on Radio Five who finished his chat by saying that it didn’t matter if Leicester got thrashed 6-0 today because the result was immaterial.
I hope this doesn’t sound callous, because, obviously, it’s not meant to be, but my thoughts on hearing that were along the lines of “the result might not matter to you, but, emotional and fraught occasion or not, it is very important for Cardiff City and it’s vital that our performance is not effected by the occasion”. We needed to make the game as “normal” as possible once the paying of respects to the dead had been completed and, sadly, we failed to do this – in it’s way, this was as poor a performance as City have come up with in the Premier League this season.
I think if City fans are honest with themselves, they would not have been too upset if the occasion had got to Leicester to the extent that their side ended up winners, but I suspect most, like me, were expecting Leicester to raise their game – this was likely to be a slightly harder match than it looked like being ten days ago.
In the event, the sizable visiting contingent saw their side forced on to the back foot early on as City started quite confidently, but once Leicester emerged from the first quarter unscathed, the character of the game changed completely.
The thing about playing all of the top sides in our first ten games was that, although we weren’t getting anything from them in terms of points, there were positives which could be taken out of all of them, apart from Manchester City, which led you to think that City would get their reward when their run of easier looking matches, starting with Leicester at home, got under way.
We may only have got three points from them, but the four matches preceding yesterday’s had all, in differing ways, offered hope of better days ahead and there was definitely a feeling abroad that we were improving and getting more acclimatised to the higher level.
Bearing this in mind, and I really don’t like to say this, honestly, I thought we were rubbish after the first twenty five minutes or so yesterday.
In the nine years of this blog’s existence, I don’t think that’s a word I’ve used too often to describe a performance of ours. I’d say it’s no more than a once a year occurrence and, to be fair, it is a somewhat harsh way of viewing how we played – there have been performances worse than yesterday’s that I’ve been a lot less critical of.
However, if you think of it in terms of the level we are now playing at and of how we went about trying to get back on terms once we had fallen behind to Demarai Gray’s fifty fifth minute goal (it had been coming since the latter stages of the first half) then, yes, I think we were rubbish.
As I drove home listening to the Radio Wales phone in, I was very surprised to hear something of a theme developing whereby callers were bemoaning our bad luck. Looking at things in general, I can only think of the Burnley game really where we could be said to be victims of bad luck and, even then I’d argue our defeat had more to do with very sloppy goals conceded than misfortune.
Looking at yesterday, yes we did have bad luck when Victor Camarasa’s free kick came back off the crossbar during the period when we were on top, but that was more than matched by referee Lee Probert’s decision not to award Leicester a penalty for hand ball by Sol Bamba as he diverted Jamie Vardy’s shot on to the bar. I’ve not seen television pictures of this incident yet, but I understand Vardy may have been offside when he shot – whether he was or not though does not alter my opinion that putting this latest defeat down to bad luck is missing the obvious point that we just weren’t good enough.
That Camarasa effort apart, it was hard to come up with many occasions when a City goal looked on the cards. For me, the reasons why this was the case were twofold. First, once they had stemmed the early flow against them, Leicester always had too much Premier League know how for us and, second, rather like we did against Burnley, we went for an attacking approach which played right into our opponent’s hands.
Leicester were no Manchester City, but as the game went on, they grew to dominate it in a manner which was not reflected in the scoreline.
As Leicester grew more assured, we found it harder and harder to retain possession – we did a decent job of impersonating us on a bad day during the second half of last season when we occasionally looked clumsy, one dimensional and very route oneish.
As we struggled to keep the ball for more than a couple of passes, so our manager seemed to rely more and more on a long ball to our big men plan – I hope it wasn’t the case in reality, but there appeared to be an element of “we’re getting nowhere playing long balls to three big men, so let’s start playing long balls to four big men” to our thinking!
The irony was that early on, makeshift striker Callum Paterson was giving England’s Harry Maguire some problems before he had to go off injured – thinking about it, Leicester’s recovery could probably be traced back to when their World Cup hero was replaced.
With Maguire off, Wes Morgan and sub Jonny Evans had an easy time of it as City relied more and more on an attacking approach which I heard described as parks football on two separate occasions on my way out of the ground.
Morgan and Evans, with a combined age of sixty five plus, needed to be turned with balls played behind them, but instead we kept it in front of them and, worse still, ended up with front men who were not capable of exploiting any lack of pace in the Leicester central defence as more mobile players were replaced by static ones.
This latest defeat, probably more than any other we’ve suffered, highlighted the folly of our summer recruitment or, more accurately, the lack of it when it comes to the target man type strikers which this manager nearly always uses.
Paterson does a job as a target man and has mobility, a bit of pace and some ability as a finisher, but, apart from, perhaps, Huddersfield is there any other team in this league he would get into as a striker? Yet, based on what we’ve seen this season, I’d rate him our best in the position currently.
Danny Ward didn’t do too badly earlier in the season, but in him and Gary Maxine we have a couple of players who have been playing first team football in the pro game for a combined total of twenty years – with due respect to both of them, wouldn’t they have played more top flight football before now if they were really Premier League quality?
Ward and Madine came on yesterday and I thought the latter did one or two good things in the time he was there, but their presence only emphasised further the decline of Kenneth Zohore – I suppose it might be that he was injured, but based on what’s been seen of him so far, the notion that Neil Warnock now rates him as his fourth choice striker and, therefore not worthy of a place on the bench is not a fanciful one.
The rise and fall of Zohore reflects poorly on the player and, to a lesser degree, on a manager who, deservedly, got praise for the way he inspired a transformation in the Dane’s fortunes two years ago. Now it appears as if Neil Warnock has given up on the player who I believe, out of the four I’ve mentioned, has the best chance of becoming the sort of front man we desperately need. To be fair to our manager, he says he has done all he can think of to get Zohore playing to the levels he was showing when he was interesting other Premier League clubs, but we need an awful lot more to our attacking play than what we were reduced to late on yesterday and I think he has to keep on trying to discover what is needed to flick the switch so to speak with Zohore.
Of course, we do have someone who scored more than twenty times for a Championship side last season, but Bobby Decordova-Reid was used in a withdrawn midfield role against Leicester and there were times when he seemed to be playing behind Harry Arter (booked again yesterday, so he now misses next weekend’s match with Brighton). Decordova-Reid, once again, looked like a fish out of water in a team playing in a manner which is never going to get the best out of him and could not have any complaints really when he was withdrawn in favour of Junior Hoilett with twenty five minutes to go.
I’d say Decordova-Reid or someone like Josh Murphy (also, strangely, taken off yesterday – it’s as if Warnock does not think he has it in him to play a full ninety minutes) might be better striker options than the three target men approach we saw in the dying minutes- we’d surely have to offer them better service than the punt upfield which Murphy managed to turn into just about our only worthwhile goal attempt of the second half mind.
With Newcastle finally winning (1-0 against Watford), we dropped into the bottom three and with Huddersfield and Fulham playing each other on Monday, there is the opportunity for the latter to go above us by avoiding defeat, while a home win would also see us drop another place – all in all a sobering day which represented a big step backwards following the tentative shuffles forward during October.
Reading this back, it does strike me that I have not quite got the balance between being sympathiser with the Leicester camp following their terrible losses and a Cardiff City supporter right. Perhaps I’m being too critical of my team in a game which must have been an awkward one for them as well?
However, once the due respects had been paid, I cannot deny what I am first and foremost and that is a Cardiff City fan who wants my team to win. If they cannot do that, then let’s at least lose with a bit of pride – again, sorry for being harsh here, but I was proud of my club in many ways yesterday, but what we saw during the game left me very disappointed.
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Spot on.
Charity should have ended at the first whistle. It was sad but people lose their lives everyday. Next Sunday is the time for remembrance. Therefore the Brighton game should have all the marks of respect, and more, that this game had. Young men died for our freedom they did not have a choice, they were sent to their deaths. They were not rich people who made a choice to fly in a helicopter.
I agree on Paterson, I was concerned about him facing Morgan and Maguire, he has not got the strikers tricks up his sleeve to master them. He was also too isolated. We need to get players closer to him.
A bad loss and one we must learn from, fast. It was a professional job done on us by an experienced premier team.
I think when people day bad luck I too saw some of that.
Ie. Some of the decisions. The bounce always favouring them. Rebounds not falling to a city player. Then again you make your own luck. That was a lack lustre performance. The tactic of always aiming for Morrison is not working, change it. Mix things up.
Good morning Paul – Once again a thoughtful report on proceedings from all aspects. An emotional afternoon.
I believe NW stated earlier in the season that we were going to fight to stay in a division of some fourteen clubs as the top six were better than us. After yesterday, I have news for him – there are more than six that are better than us. We have now played seven of the the top ten in the division and have lost the lot. And quite truthfully, we never really looked like beating the “Foxes”. You described our performance as ‘rubbish’ – an apt comment. I accept our squad is somewhat limited in ability, but my oh my, they demonstrated it yesterday.
One example. Second half kick off. after two abortive attempts and 17 seconds having elapsed, we restart by passing the ball back to Gunnarson who launched the ball somewhere in the direction of the right wing in the hope that it will find the head of Paterson. It does not and goes out of play. Goal kick to Leicester and some 30 seconds later Leicester have a very dangerous assault on our goal. Our kick off tactics are dire. We have now had over thirty this season and I doubt if we have retained the ball in any one of them!! Shameful. Management take note.
So it is Brighton next. No Arter, nor Ralls if he has not recovered from the knock he took at Spurs. My glass is emptying rapidly
On the way to the ground yesterday a black cat crossed the road in front of us. Correctly or not, I’ve always taken that as a sign of good luck. Ditto for when a seagull crapped on the back of my coat as I walked towards the turnstile, Even at half-time I felt my luck was in — I didn’t win the Domino’s pizza! And yet, almost subconsciously I felt that a Cardiff win (which, incidentally I wanted desperately) would not have been appropriate in some strange way. At the end of the game, however, I felt totally deflated — not just because Cardiff lost but more because of the way they lost, especially in the second half.
Lack of speed at the back is one obvious problem. Mere proletarian skill in a league bountiful with aristocrats is another. It was embarrassing to see how Leicester for much of the game could toy with us. A further problem is our lack of variety, not just in our obsession with the long throw, which normally is a waste of time. The lack of football intelligence for me was highlighted in the way we started the second half. Three times having to start and each time doing exactly what had been done in the first instance — hoofing the ball high and wide for someone to head (probably Paterson} and typically on the third time overhitting the ball. It’s almost s if we hold up a signpost as to what our next move will be! And that is for virtually every aspect of the Cardiff game.
Mentioning Paterson, I’m impressed by his courage and willingness to attack the ball, but a centre-forward he is not. And that brings me to someone else who is not a centre-forward, and never has been. You won’t be surprised when I say “Kenneth Zohore”.
Even when he had a goal-scoring purple patch last season, I saw it as a the action of a one-track pony who would soon be found out by any competent centre-half, I think it was the Derby centre-half who made the point that Zohore was effectively easy meat. It is with some trepidation that I make this point, because it is diametrically at odds with Paul’s assessment, and for Paul’s assessments I have the greatest respect on virtually every comment he makes. He genuinely knows football.
Even so, I think that, unlike the Roman Empire, there is no “rise and fall” with Zohore. He has always been easy meat, and will always remain so, without the stomach to rise. (Deliberate ambiguity here). His purple patch always had a yellow tinge which Neil Warnock painted over with some fulsome praise, probably calculated to boost his confidence. In consequence, Zohore was often selected when his contribution to the team did not justify it.
The other side of the coin is that Madine appears to have been frozen out and never given a genuine chance to show his worth. He may be merely of Championship standard, but he did produce the goods for Bolton. Surely he at least deserves a run of games to restore what must be shattered confidence. Five or ten minutes in desperation as a game grinds to a halt is simply unfair and unproductive. And yet in his five or ten minutes yesterday he revealed flashes of what a genuine and experienced centre-forward can bring to a team.
Finally, to return to the question of luck. How lucky are we that Grujic. a very good player whom Cardiff wanted, chose not to return to Cardiff on loan. It cleared the way for us to sign Camarasa who, in my opinion, is already showing his worth and, as I mentioned here some time ago, could well prove to be Cardiff’s best signing this season.
Now is the test of character and now we all know what has to be done. Onwards and upwards!!
Thanks for the report, Paul.
All too predictable wasn’t it.
I think we have to accept that our squad isn’t good enough for the Premier League.
Will we ever be a side that can exist relatively comfortably at the top level?
How was gamed travel, Paul? How long did it take you to get back to Tynewydd?
It was to be expected. As soon as they said it was “game on”, we would fold like a deck of cards and they would play their ace in the pack just one goal would do it. By the time the subs came on it was a lost cause (too late Mr Warnock not sure if his management skills at this level are working out) After the Fulham game I was gutted by this performance. Please stop the long balls they are taking us nowhere.
Come January if we are in a better position or not we need an experienced premier league centre back and centre forward. Or move MANGA to centre back and by a decent right back. Why Warnock bought a left back re Cunningham is beyond me. Brighton look out they must be shaking in their boots come next Saturday. Got that off my chest .
Thanks Paul.
Not easy to get the balance right in the report but, as ever, you are spot on.
Not easy either for both teams – obviously Leicester- but we seemed to be overwhelmed by the slightly surreal atmosphere when the game got going.
Agree with fellow correspondents re Patterson doing his best, lumping it forward, overworking long throws, poor control and Manga definitely not a right back!
Leicester looked every inch the experienced Premier League team – totally bossing midfield where they found acres of space as the game wore on.
As noted, Camarasa our shining light and Murphy was lively but needed to stay on as we are so pedestrian otherwise.
We can only hope that Mr W and the boys just needed to get that one out of the system but we are now in the dreaded drop zone and need to deliver in this “ easy” run of games.
Saturday was a surreal occasion totally unlike a normal match with traditional rivalries.
Off the field I was proud of the dignity and respect shown by our club and fans.
The helicopter crash was horrific and my heart goes out to the family and friends of the five people who lost their lives.
However,at a time when our TV screens regularly show the suffering of children in Yemen and elsewhere, I find it difficult to feel much sympathy for millionaire footballers who are distraught at the loss of their club’s owner.
Perhaps one or two of the Leicester players spent enough time in the chairman’s company to regard him as a friend and so now miss him on a personal level.
Possibly, these are the same players who allegedly(strongly denied at the time) undermined the authority of Claudio Ranieri and convinced the chairman that Ranieri should be sacked less than 12 months after they won the Premier League.
As far as their fans are concerned, there is always hypocrisy when someone dies and I have no reason to think that Leicester fans are more fickle than their counterparts elsewhere.However, my recollection is that when their chairman sacked the much loved Ranieri about 20 months ago,they regarded him more as the pantomime villain rather than the saint he has since become.
Only the Leicester fans who came to Saturday’s game will know why they thought it a good idea to reciprocate the compassion we had shown to their club in their tragic loss by giving us a few salvos of ‘God save the Queen’.
The behaviour of their players also belied the theory that the result was unimportant on such an occasion.Schmeicel,who was 100 yards away from the incident, was still berating the referee about not giving a penalty as they left the field at half time.
Bamba did ‘ save ‘ Vardy’s shot but Vardy was ahead of the diving Etheridge with only Bamba in front of him as the ball was hit by Madison and therefore offside.
I would sum up Saturday by saying that all the dignity came from Cardiff but unfortunately all the football skills came from Leicester.
I would have preferred it the other way around!
Such a thoughtful and thorough report, Paul – thanks.
I would only disagree at your critical reference to “an attacking approach”.
I WANT us to have that approach – but, not bone-headedly or ineptly, as is so often the case. The alternative seems to be playing one up front, and hoping to ‘contain’ the opposition…an approach that sits just this side of defeatism.
Speaking of ‘defeatism’, that’s what our summer transfer (non-) activity smacked of (to me).
We fought so hard for promotion, then we seem to give up like a bunch of sad sacks – for the second time in a few years.
That’s not true of your contributors, who have been on particularly perceptive and empathetic form with this post-Leicester blog…unlike me, Mr Moan!
I have to say that, heart-breaking and tragic as they were, the events of the previous Saturday seem to have been somewhat over-blown (from the outset, on that evening’s news), but I’m so proud that our Club and followers reacted with such dignity and sophistication.
Thanks for your replies everyone. P R, no one is saying that City were not put in quite an awkward position for this match through no fault of their own, but I would like to think that they could have coped with things better – we looked like a relegation side on Saturday and possibly one which would end up with as few points as many of our critics have predicted for us.
Nice to meet you on Saturday Brian, you know, I’ve often thought that we think quite similarly on many things! I say that because, just as with Anthony, you refer to the incident which I was going to mention if I had not taken up so much time with other things. “Depressing” is too strong a word to use for how we started the second half, but it did manage to kill so much of the surge of optimism you always feel at the start of a second half in which your team are playing and, as you rightly point out, within seconds our goal was under pressure and the feeling which I had at the end of the first half about Leicester getting right on top had returned. That one incident was suggestive of a very regimented approach by the team and also of an inability to think on their feet – I would have taken great heart from it if I had been an opposing player/manager/coach/supporter etc.
Anthony, we aren’t ever going to agree entirely on Zohore, but I accept that a lot of the criticisms you have made of him over some considerable time are being proved accurate at the moment. However I’m going to talk about this manager’s insistence on having a target man type centre forward in the starting line in virtually every game. Having such a player in our side dictates so much of what we do – I’ve mentioned before about the baffling tactic of outfield being so keen to get the ball back to a goalkeeper, whose kicking our manager has been critical of, who then launches it upfield to an, often isolated, target man. Invariably the ball is lost – now I know our manager vales possession of he footballer less highly than many of his counterparts, but, if we really want to get the ball forward in the air to our centre forward wouldn’t it be better if it was done so by players with better footballing skills (i.e. our outfield players!)?
However, I would argue that the “aerial assault” approach which, granted, worked well for us in the Championship is proving to be something of a flop this season. Look at how our goals have been scored this season – none from a long throw in, our only goal from a corner was scored by Manga against Norwich and two (Ward against Arsenal and Bamba against Chelsea) from free kicks. That’s three out of ten goals from headers and dead ball situations in three months of football and yet that is so much of what our attacking play is based on. On the other hand, we have scored eight goals from open play, all of which have come from someone’s foot. Yes, Camarasa’s goal came from a high cross by Joe Bennett, but Murphy’s goal against Burnley (our best of the season in my view) came from a low cross played to feet, as did Paterson’s against Fulham, Harris’ against Fulham and Paterson’s at Liverpool. So, most of our recent goals have come from low crosses or a good ball played into space for a wide player to attack in the case of Murphy’s goal against Fulham, while Reid’s goal in the same game came, fortunately from a botched free kick, but involved one of our players getting beyond a flat footed defender.
Our over reliance on aerial attacking play is not producing the results it once did and so I wonder if we need the big centre forward that has been a prerequisite for so many of the Cardiff teams I’ve seen, because we seem top be getting more success by moving big centrebacks around and getting them to defend in areas they’re not comfortable with.
Colin, s it turned out, the traffic to and from Cardiff City Stadium was not the issue I thought it would be on Saturday. I left early and was at the ground an hour before kick off, while the about a quarter of the time it took me to get home after the match was down to the walk to my car, the drive home was as quick as any I have done so far following a game.