Draws keep mounting up for unconvincing Cardiff.

4 Responses to Draws keep mounting up for unconvincing Cardiff.

1. Blue Bayou says:

   April 6, 2025 at 9:48 am

   “Literally the worst game of football I’ve ever seen”
   Not my words on this occasion.
   I still have occasional painful flashbacks to watching City in the mid to late 1980’s in front of 2,500 fans at Ninian Park.
   It was the only time when one of the people I used to regularly watch the games with turned to me and said – “I don’t know if I can take much more of this. How about we make a monthly trip to Villa Park and start supporting them for a while instead?”
   It wasn’t only the football that was pretty dreadful at that time, but from memory our pitch was pretty awful too.
   This also came to mind as I was sitting in the away stand at Loftus Rd/Prince Kiyan/Matrade before and during the game, when I noticed that the sprinklers on the pitch were only being turned on for the half of the pitch that City would be attacking in.
   Was this an attempt to slow down any possible quick counter attacks from us?
   If so, it worked a treat……
   Back to those opening words. They were actually spoken by a young QPR fan who was being met by someone after the game, in response to the question ‘How did it go?’
   To be fair I thought we started the game really well and for the first 10 minutes were on the front foot, and QPR looked wobbly.
   However after then, QPR came back into it, and we seemed to become more cautious and defensive, probably mindful of our need to stop conceding early goals in away games. This resulted in QPR winning more of the first and second balls in midfield.
   Part way through the first half I got a text saying that our very young and seemingly attacking starting 11 was partly due to Calum Chambers being a late withdrawal due to injury, and so Rubin starting instead.
   Salech had our best chance in the second half and really should have done better with his left foot shot from the edge of the area, which beat the keeper but was just too high.
   I agree that the ref was a ‘homer’ and certainly seemed content to see Salech manhandled all afternoon.
   One other disappointing aspect of the game from our viewpoint was the quality of our set-piece delivery. Without Rambo, Ralls and Robertson, and with Rubin having wasted too many previous, it’s fallen to O’Dowda to take corners and free-kicks.
   This time he either over hit our free-kicks, missing everyone, or when we had an attacking free kick at the death with everyone in their box, he just floated a ball too close to their keeper, making it easy for him to collect.
   Finally back to that opening comment again. I think that fan and others may feel similar emotions again for the final part of the season.
   I see the BBC report for the Swansea v Derby game described it as ‘dire’.
   I don’t have much hope for a high quality game away to Preston this Tuesday either, although a horrible scruffy mid 1980’s style win will do for me this time.
2. Dai Woosnam says:

   April 7, 2025 at 2:24 pm

   Thanks Paul and BB for getting me up to speed with what happened at Loftus Road. I intend to deliberately take a back seat for the rest of the season, as it gives me no pleasure in trying to prove myself right… this being the first season since I joined the MAYA community when I pessimistically predicted relegation within a month of the season starting.

   I will just make these observations…
   The biggest lesson our fans must learn is to NEVER AGAIN put pressure on the Board to make a caretaker manager’s position a permanent one. If Omer Riza was still wondering whether he’d get a year’s contract, I betcha he’d not be making such perverse decisions as persevering with Callum O’Dowda as a left back… when Joel Bagan and Luey Giles are available. Callum will never be a defender.

   I noticed Paul that you gave your blessing very late to Riza getting the job for the rest of the season… and I fell into line with you immediately after… in my case though, because I was genuinely afeard that we were going to appoint Slaven Bili?… and I have always been of the opinion that our Cardiff City should be managed by a chap with some moral substance. (I recall gentle arguments with my late brother Graham, when he laughably admitted that if we could become Champions of Europe, he’d be happy to accept a team managed by Adolf Hitler and with Pol Pot as his fitness coach…!!)

   I decided that City would be destined for relegation this season after seeing the quality of our squad… and especially of our hopeless close season acquisitions.

   And I think of the players we have dispensed with in the past two or three years, like Will Vaulks and Josh Murphy.

   Murphy irritates the heck out of me… playing out of his skin for Oxford and Pompey after leaving us… yet he rarely broke into a sweat for us in his 4 years.

   So I could well see us not wanting to give him a new contract at his fancy wages.

   But Vaulks is a different case. He always struck me as a player with lots of things going for him, but without the vital ingredient of consistency.

   He had the ability to see a pass, and could be lethal within 30 yards of the opposition’s goal with his John Buchanan-like shooting.

   None of the midfielders (like Turnbull, Robertson, etc) we have signed since he left, are quite up to his standard. And vitally, we have lost his long throw.

   Sure, O’Dowda has a longish throw in him, but it is not anything like as potent as the Vaulks weapon.

   And yes, the tiki-taka religious sect might be scornful of the long throw, but if they looked at the EFL highlights on Saturday night, they would count a phenomenal thirteen goals resulting directly from long throws.

   TTFN,
   Dai.
3. Dai Woosnam says:

   April 7, 2025 at 8:06 pm

   Jeez… I forgot that your software does not accept an acute accent on a letter C.
   I should therefore have called him Bilic…
   Apols.
   DW
4. The other Bob Wilson says:

   April 8, 2025 at 9:46 am

   Thanks both for your replies. Starting with Blue Bayou, you set me thinking about really bad City games I’ve seen and, like you, I would go back to games in lower leaguers from thirty and forty years ago as examples of matches that were worse than what we see these days, but I wouldn’t ne able to tell you what the worst game I’ve ever seen is. In saying that, if you’re looking at fairly recent times, you’ll have to go some to beat Cardiff 0 Brighton 0 from 15/16 I think it was (Russell Slade was definitely manager). From memory, it had one on target effort by either side, with City’s being something alik to a back pass by Aron Gunnarsson – I thoughtit was truly awful at the time, but, maybe that was because the norm was for matches to be better than that back then – it was probably no worse than your average first half of games at Cardiff City Stadium these days.
   I don’t think Saturday was ever going to be a classic, too much at stake for us I’d say, but i would have expected to see more urgency from City and it was disappointing ting to see how easily a vewrey out of form QPR side found it to blot Alves, Davies and Asford out of the game. Interesting to read about the sprinklers – I wonder if any one in the Cityy party noticed it? Also, got to agree about the set pieces – I still reckon “old faithful” Joe Ralls is the best we have at the club at delivering them, but I fell his standards havbe slipped a bit this season.
   Dai, credit to you, it must have been September or October when y ou first mentioned the likelihood of us going down and you had recognised our defence for the disaster area that it is, some time before others did. For myself, I was too blinded by what we did when Beating Plymouth and Portsmouth in successive home gamesand it took me until December to recognise the strong possibliity we were going down – Oxford on Boxing Day was one of two low points in the season where it became almost impossible to be confident about our prospects of stating up. Ho0wever, it was the catalyst for an unbeaten run which, for the second time, got close to putting sufficient distance between us and the bottom three, only for us to gradually slide back into danger because of our inability to win the sort of matches City teams had gone on to win 1-0 in recent seasons.
   Luton at home was the other low point I’d say and, although we’ve taken five points from three, unbeaten, games since then, I’d say all of them have failed to dispel that feeling of almost inevitability I’ve had since Luton about our fate. If we go down, then Omer Riza has to go and I think he may will do even if we stay up. For me, he’ll deserve praise if we stay up after we made a club record worst start to a season, but he looks to me to have lopst his way in recent weeks and, of course, there’s been no improvement in our defending since the autumn – in fact, I’d say it’s got worse.

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