Championship behaving normally to leave misfiring Cardiff City still in with a chance.

I’m not sure if it was always said or whether it’s a twenty first century thing, but the received wisdom regarding the EFL’s second tier, the Championship. is that it takes around ten to twelve matches for each team for things to “settle down” and allow sides to find what may be called their natural position.

Well, as domestic football heads into its November international break, all sides have played eleven times – this represents just short of a quarter of a season.

For Cardiff City, those eleven matches have to be seen as a disappointment which I suppose could be explained away as a reaction to their Play Off defeat by Fulham back in July. Certainly, the spirit, determination, ruthlessness and, yes, ability which marked out many of their performances post lockdown has been largely missing in 20/21 so far.

Things have looked a little more promising in the two most recent matches which saw us put together what was clearly our most complete showing so far in beating Barnsley 3-0 and play pretty well against local rivals Bristol City in our last match before the latest international break – in fact, it could well have qualified as our second best performance of the campaign so far.

Unfortunately however, the impression left by the Bristol City game is a negative one because we were beaten while playing at a level above what has been seen in the majority of our games so far and usually teams that suffer that fate tend to be headed in one direction only – away from the top end of the table.

Cardiff currently find themselves down in fifteenth place in the Championship table primarily thanks to a poor home record which has them winning one and losing three of their first six matches at Cardiff City Stadium. Much has been made of how football has changed in the Covid era in that the absence of crowds has brought about a change whereby away sides are now favoured, but a look at that table tells you otherwise in this division at least – two thirds of the twenty four sides have gained more points at home than they have done away.

So, Cardiff should definitely be doing better at home than they are and the absence of fans appears to be something of a red herring when it comes to the reason why they aren’t getting better results.

Fortunately, City’s situation is not as concerning as it could be because, in typical Championship style, nobody has got off to a real flyer at the start of the season and so it still wouldn’t take anything too outrageous for a team to rise from the lower reaches to even the top of the table if they were to go on a really good run.

Up until a week or two ago, the division did have a side that came charging out of the starting blocks in Reading, but they’ve conceded nine goals in losing their last three matches and the possibility has to exist that they have done what we did in 2007/08 as we put ourselves five points clear of the rest by the end of October, but then hit a wall in November which saw us falling down the table towards our eventual lower half finish that season.

While the side at the top are, perhaps, on the slide, the fact that the three relegated sides occupy second, third and fourth places has to be a source of concern for a side like Cardiff who will still entertain thoughts of another top six finish.

I don’t think any of Watford, Bournemouth and Norwich are going to drop out of promotion contention in the upcoming months, they’ll still be there or thereabouts come May.

With the Cardiff Board, seemingly, expecting the team to be in the top six or much closer to it than they are currently at least, manager Neil Harris is under some pressure following the Bristol City loss, but will have a good idea of what to expect from our first opponent when fixtures resume on Saturday.

Having played for and managed Millwall, Harris will know exactly what to expect from his old club and, despite a concerning result and performance in their last away match at QPR, will know that his team’s away record lately is among the best in the division.

If Cardiff are to start climbing the league, it is essential that away results continue in the same vein as we’ve seen throughout 2020, but there are two stats which are far from in his side’s favour. First, although they did win at Craven Cottage in their abortive Play Off campaign four months ago, it is now twelve games since City won a match in London during a regular league season. Secondly, while only one of our last fourteen league encounters with Millwall have been lost, ten of them (including the last five meetings between the teams) have finished all square.

Furthermore, Millwall and Cardiff were tied for first and tied for third in draws last year with 17 and 16, respectively. The teams also have nine draws in their first 22 matches this season. Looking ahead to Saturday’s match, while home side Millwall is slightly favored at 29/20 compared to Cardiff at 37/20, the draw at 21/10 is the best value on the board (odds from Sports Betting Dime).

With this in mind, the match odds would appear to be pretty generous if you are a City fan and a win would be a great way of picking up spirits which had slumped after the Bristol game, but the draw look the better bet to me.

The truth is though that Cardiff are one of about ten sides in the division who are looking at their start to the campaign with a feeling of dismay – teams with a school report card which would say “must do better” if they existed.

Much the same applied to City a year ago and, with it being a year to the day on Monday since he was appointed, Neil Harris will know that he was able to get us into the position the Board expect us to be in last time around – also in his favour is that the late start to 20/21 means that fewer matches have been played by early November compared to a “normal” season.

So, there’s no need to panic yet. In my opinion, we spent about three quarters of 19/20 not looking like a top six side and yet that’s what we ended up as – it should be a doddle to do the same in 20/21 he says with fingers tightly crossed!