I think I’m right in saying that when City Chairman Mehmet Dalman was asked at the press conference introducing Erol Bulut as our new manager about three months ago, why him, what made you go for someone who I’m sure 95 per cent of supporters and reporters had never heard of before, his reply was along the lines of he knows how to win games.
Well, after Cardiff threw away their third two goal lead in seven competitive games today in losing 3-2 at Ipswich, my flippant, and somewhat harsh, response is that he clearly knows how to lose them as well.
As I say, that’s a bit harsh, but it does seem this evening that Bulut honeymoon period is coming to an end if some of things I’m reading on social media tonight is a true representation of supporter opinion.
For myself, it is, as it usually is, about shades of grey. On Tuesday as we were putting together our best Cup performance in ages with a shadow team and a no centrebacks, I found myself half wondering if we’d appointed a tactical genius as our manager!
Having had a few days to think about it, it seems pretty obvious that Bulut would not have picked a defensive formation like that in a league game – because it was in the Cup, the game represented something of a free hit for City and their manager.
Nevertheless, the gamble, if it could be called that, turned out to be a spectacular success and I don’t think any other City manager of recent years would have come up with anything remotely similar. This shouldn’t be forgotten in any analysis of how our manager is doing as we reach the end of his first month of competitive football in charge.
Similarly, those concentrating solely on what went wrong in the last half an hour today, cannot just ignore how well we did for two thirds of the game and act as if it had nothing to do with the manager. I write occasionally about how I have derived very little enjoyment in watching City play in recent years, but, having now watched the whole ninety minutes of the Birmingham game, I must say that it was the most enjoyable City game I’ve watched for at least two seasons.
The match today was an enjoyable watch as well for that first hour. It was a classic away performance backed up by attractive and effective counter attacking play, the first goal was a beauty of a type recent City sides would never have scored (a long period of possession ended by a clinical cross and then finish) and, although there was an element of luck to the second one, the finish was a quietly classy one.
So, for me, there is certainly a case for the defence to be had here. I think Erol Bulut has something that could mark him out as a good City manager, but he’ll know that losing two goal leads in around forty per cent of your competitive games is something that he has to stop or he’ll be out of a job quite sharpish (especially with this owner).
There is a recurring issue here then, but, until today, it seemed to me that people were, almost entirely, supportive of our manager, they recognised that it will take time to turn things around here and I believe they were prepared to give him that time – surely they still are as well..
Today though, if we look at things completely from a manager’s perspective and not concentrate on the players (I’ll come to them later), I think it’s fair to say that what was a very good day at the office for Erol Bulut turned into something of a nightmare pretty quickly.
There were questionable decisions made before the game and during the first hour. For example, leaving out Jak Alnwick was a surprise and I can understand why some are saying on the messageboards that it sent out all the wrong signals.
I think it’s fair to say that it was generally accepted that Alex Rúnarsson would become City’s first choice keeper eventually, but Alnwick has been in excellent form so far. Today’s decision made it look like he had no chance whatsoever of keeping his place though, Bulut’s mind was made up. Surely, it would have been better to stick with Alnwick until he gave the manager a reason to leave him out – does anybody seriously think that Alnwick had done that in the first five games of the campaign?
Next, we come to Ollie Tanner. To be honest, I was surprised to see him in the starting line up today, but even more surprised to see him withdrawn for Ike Ugbo at half time. Bulut confirmed that there was no injury to Tanner after the game and went further in expressing his dissatisfaction at the young winger’s display – although he wouldn’t go into detail about what he was unhappy about.
Now, I say on here from time to time that a manager/coach has a deeper knowledge of the game than us supporters – if you like, they look at matches and players from a three dimensional perspective, whereas we have a two dimensional view of things. However, there’s that saying about if it looks like a duck , walks like a duck etc isn’t there and I think most would look at his forty five minutes of play today and conclude Tanner did pretty well – if there were strengths and weaknesses to what he did, then they were ones that apply to most of his performances and yet Bulut was only to willing to pick him from the start..
Okay, we spent most of the first fifteen minutes or so defending and Tanner wasn’t in the game much then, but once we began to get forward a bit, he caused the left side of the OIpswich defence problems and seconds before half time he produced a lovely cross that Yakou Meite really should have scored from instead of head wastefully over.
Of course, Bulut could say just look at the score to anyone who questioned his decision making – or he could do until the hour mark when it all started to go wrong for him at least!
Bulut’s response to Ipswich reducing the arrears to 2-, was to withdraw Meite and Joe Ralls and bring on yesterday’s loan signing Jonathan Panzo and Ryan Wintle, so it was a striker and midfielder off and a defender and midfielder on.
Until they scored, Ipswich had been aggressive in their pressing and got plenty of crosses in, but I must admit I was expecting a bit more quality from them, However, they are a side who have become used to winning over the past year and they reacted to this tactical step back by City’s manager in the manner I feared they would – they sensed a weakness and went for our jugular. So, now you had a team with a winning mentality with half an hour to turn around a one goal deficit against a side that has become used to losing over the past two years – was it really such a shock that they were able to do this once City’s manager had blinked?
Another plus point for Bulut is that he’s given Joe Ralls the freedom to express himself a bit more and we’re seeing signs of our captain looking more like the player he was five or six years ago. His goal today was an example of calm and skilful finishing all done with his right foot, but it seems to be an unwritten law these days that Ralls has to come off around the hour mark – I’d have liked to have seen this new, more creative Ralls stay on during the period when Ipswich were having to leave more gaps at the back as they chased an equaliser.
Bulut switched to three at the back and then back to a four, but to no avail and, having said that he regarded Rubin Colwill as a number ten, not someone to be stuck out wide, he brought the in form youngster on in the dying stages with us 3-2 down and stuck him out wide.
The manager was not wholly responsible for today’s capitulation by any means, but, to put it mildly, there were some dubious decisions made by him and, for me, it didn’t look good how he tried to pin the blame on the players after the game.
That said, if the manager has to be questioned regarding those three two goals leads lost, then so too must the players. City have been easy on the eye at times in their last two games in particular, but there’s a thin line between that and being, to use the word Jason Perry came up with today on Rob Phillips’ phone in, “nice”.
City look a nice team to play against at times this season and I would have thought that’s something professional footballers hate to hear or read about themselves. The defending for all three goals was soft today – whereas we carved Ipswich open beautifully for the first goal scored neatly by Aaron Ramsey, our opponents had help each time with their goals.
Nathan Broadhead was given too much time to get a twenty yard shot away which entered the middle of the net thereby asking a question about the goalkeeper. The second had an element of luck to it but City we’re suckered in by a weakly hit near post corner where questions could be asked about Panzo’s defending and, once again, the goalkeeping. Again, there was a bit of luck to the winner as the ball rebounded into the net off Freddie Ladapo, but City were slow to recognise the danger as they conceded their thirteenth goal in seven games.
Just as at Leicester, City could feel a little hard done by, but sympathy becomes harder to find when the same faults are repeated – defensively in particular, there’s little sign yet that City are learning from their errors.
City also scored two at under 18 and 21 levels over the past thirty six hours as well. The under 18s are still winless after a 4-2 loss to Swansea in what believe was a League Cup game with goals coming from Dan Ola and a Will Spiers penalty.
Spiers was an impressive substitute in yesterday’s game with Barnsley at Cardiff City Stadium as a team with six under 18 qualified players and a first year scholar recorded their first win of the season.
Barnsley had the better of things in the first half and City we’re grateful to Jake Dennis for some fine saves which kept the game goalless,In the first half only for a slick counter attack featuring Cody Twose and Morgan Wigley to set Cian Ashford free three minutes after the break and, fresh from his twenty minutes against Birmingham on Tuesday, he shot across the goalkeeper and into the net.
Barnsley we’re soon back on level terms as City failed to deal with a near post corner, but, by the time Freddie Cook headed in Ashford’s corner five minutes from time City had done enough to be deserved winners in a contest which improved the longer it went on.
There were contrasting fortunes for the two Highadmit South Wales Alliance Premier Division sides this blog follows today, Ton Pentre went down 3-1 at Porthcawl Town Athletic, while, for what it’s worth this early in the season, Treherbert Boys and Girls Club went to the top of the table by wining 3-2 at Caerphilly Athletic.
Finally, the start of the season is the time I ask readers to show their support by making a voluntary donation towards the blog’s running costs and to help towards things like book projects that I’m working on. Back in 2018, the blog would not have survived without the contributions of some of its readers as I just did not have the financial means to pay the web hosting bill I received that summer.
Since then, my finances have improved and, with me now receiving the state pension to go with my works one, I can say that there is no longer any need for anyone to donate towards running costs – touching wood, the blog will never ever be in a position again where it’ll need help from readers to survive.
So, with nothing in the pipeline in terms of new projects this year, I can say to all readers, and especially those who do still donate towards the blog, there is no need to do so this year at a time when many need every last penny to make it through the cost of living crisis.
That is not to say you cannot still make a contribution if you want to – they can be made through cash, bank transfer, cheque and PayPal. Many of you who do contribute will already have my bank details, but anyone wishing to make their first contribution can contact me at paul.evans8153@hotmail.com for more information.
As always a big thank you to all those who have made donations in the past and especially to those who still do (particular thanks go to the Owl Centre for their continued very generous sponsorship), a happier Cardiff City season than last time around to all of you!
Thanks for that, Paul. You zeroed-in on a real problem now becoming apparent: no, not just three games where we have surrendered a two goal lead, but much more disturbingly, you have pinpointed a somewhat warped side to the personality of our new boss.
Having favourites is nothing new… ’twas always so with managers from Herbert Chapman to Alex Ferguson. But dropping players who are performing well, just to ease-in the manager’s blue-eyed boy, just leads to serious disharmony in the dressing room.
And so it is with the goalkeeper. You are right: that selection decision was a shocker… particularly as he did not cover himself in glory yesterday with two of the goals he conceded.
But it was with Ollie Tanner that Bulut showed a side of his personality that is clearly beyond the pale. This boy Tanner is clearly a star in the making. How come Brighton did not snap him up, seeing as he was just up the road at Lewes?*
Look, if Bulut took him off for kicking the ball away and getting a stupid yellow, I might understand… though fining him a week’s wages would be much better and not harm the team’s prospects in the second half.
But for Bulut to dress it up as a decision taken because Tanner was under-performing, well it insults the intelligence of every fan.
Bulut is clearly a man with strong prejudices… like Mourinho was at Man Utd when he instantly showed an irrational displeasure with the gifted Luke Shaw, and was digging him out at every opportunity. Looks like Tanner is to be our Shaw… because Bulut should emphatically not be decrying him in public.
By the same token, Bulut obviously has his favourites, none more so than the man I flagged up as a ‘real player’ (judging by what I had seen him do in the past), but who to date has flopped: Yakou Méïté. If he continues to underwhelm, he must stay on the bench… and so I hope our manager shows the strength of character to take him out of the limelight if he keeps missing gilt-edged chances.
Incidentally, before signing off… what is it about Portman Road… it seems to bring out the best and worst in City managers?
Not long into his reign at City, Neil Warnock had to haul Sol Bamba off the pitch by physically wrestling with him, as Sol had ‘lost it’ and was wanting to fight with the 4th official, his manager, and an Ipswich player… and the referee seeing this amazing apparent mental breakdown, gave Sol the red card.
To Warnock’s credit he smoothed things over, and whilst some of us were wondering whether Sol was going to do our club’s image any good, Warnock clearly saw it as an aberration, and from that day his man-management of Sol was to prove masterful, for Sol made the doomsayers like me look like idiots, and never caused another moment’s trouble.
So that was a case of a City manager shining at Portman Road. But Dave Jones in 2010, publicly hanging out to dry the 17 year old Adam Matthews for a disastrous attempt at a cushioned header back to his keeper turning into an own goal, well… that remains a serious black mark on Dave’s City CV… and the thought occurs that without that public shaming, the very talented Adam would have stayed a Cardiff player and never have gone to Celtic (who by the way were the better side playing my second team today in the Old Firm match, which I have just watched in full).
And I believe the Bulut/Tanner affair yesterday was every bit the equal of Jones/Matthews. Let us fervently hope that Tanner similarly does not end up disenchanted with life at the CCS.
*Mentioning Brighton, you might recall Paul that just when Todd Boehly took over at Chelsea, and started his crazy spending splurge, I wrote in a general mailing to all my ‘football’ address book, that desideratum for Stamford Bridge should be the teenage centre forward sensation at Brighton. I said it was eerie… it was like looking at the reincarnation of the 18 year old boy/man mountain Graham Moore… he ran exactly like the young Graham, and had all the same skills, great with both feet, and powerful aerially in addition. And Graham soon became a target for Tommy Docherty’s Chelsea, and then Matt Busby wooed him away to play in a forward line with Bobby Charlton and Denis Law.
Yet Boehly’s Chelsea have now spent a billion quid, and still have not bought a striker. Extraordinary is that.
Re Ferguson: he is going to be a megastar, and although he is 100% Irish and with a spectacularly unadulterated Irish brogue to boot, I note he has played just three full internationals for his country.
I wonder how the ambitious professional footballer in Evan Ferguson would react if Gareth Southgate offered him the chance of switching country, since Evan has an English mother… and three full caps is the max one is allowed… any more, and you cannot change country.
TTFN,
Dai.
Dear MAYAns…
Those of you who have long suspected I need to go to Specsavers, have been well and truly vindicated. Having watched the game again on the club’s website, it became apparent from the commentary that this smart City strip is PLUM in colour, and not maroon as I suggested earlier.
No doubt Mr Freud was working overtime in my subconscious… (or ‘unconscious’ as he called it) for I so wanted my ‘Heart of Glamorgan’ bit of tame whimsy to work. I guess the boys at Tynecastle would run a mile from something called ‘plum’: methinks they’d see it as effete.
Apols to all for my shocking colour gaffe.
Oh, and one other thing… it is clear that the Arsenal goalkeeping coach who has worked with David Raya before, thinks him a better keeper than Ramsdale. But does Mr. Arteta drop the fans’ favourite? Certainly not. He waits for a dip in form to arrive.
Mr Bulut, please learn from his example.
DW
I just said to my dear wife at supper, “do you think that the colour ‘plum’ existed as a concept, say, before yuppie estate agents in leafy Surrey set their creative minds to work on flogging houses to the gullible?”
I then tell her that when I was a kid getting a paintbox from Father Christmas, it contained all sorts of colours that are now never seemingly so described, like the famous brown one that my mere mention of the shade would today get me arrested by the Language Police… but other shades like ‘burnt orange’, ‘Prussian blue’, Sienna red’ seem to have disappeared from the list of trendy colour names used by Dulux and their ilk.
And I added that “I swear to God that ‘plum’ was never one of them”.
Then we look it up, and blow me if the first recorded use of the word ‘plum’ was as far back as 1805…!!
Well… so much for what I know, eh? And looking at this colour chart below, I reckon the colour most matching our kit seems to be somewhere between ‘magenta’ and ‘purple’.
[“yes Dai,” I can hear fellow MAYAns say, “that shade is called ‘plum’…”]
Oh dear… you’ve got me checkmate.
I am going back to bed to dream – in Technicolor – of kamikaze City defending and Cruyff turns in one’s own box.
Oh, by the way, I wrote ‘Mr Freud’ instead of ‘Dr Freud’ in my last posting, and ‘tame whimsy’ … when I meant ‘lame’. Apols for both.
Not that the latter is of the slightest significance, I guess. I mean to say, dear Will the Quill will hardly be turning in his grave in that lovely Holy Trinity Church by the banks of the Warwickshire Avon.
Right… I said I was going to go ‘low key’… so now I will, and I will stop incurring the wrath of ‘Harry Kirtley’. MAYAns of longstanding will get my reference there.
See you in a few weeks, God willing.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tertiary_color#Tertiary_and_quaternary_color_words
TTFN,
Dai.
Thanks Dai. funnily enough, I mentioned Dave Jones’ pointless chewing out of Adam Matthews after his own goal at Ipswich on a messageboard I think it was yesterday. Now, I’m sure that there are young professional footballers around who react to a public dressing down by the manager in the way desired – something along the lines of “I’ll show the bastard” and everyone gains from it. However, I would suggest that in the large majority of cases it is a completely counter productive move and, certainly in the case of Matthews, it didn’t work. Maybe Ollie Tanner is in that small percentage who will not be hurt by being criticised by his manager (a manager who, to be fair, has got more out of the player so far than Messrs Morison and Hudson did last season) and will be inspired by what was said, but I doubt it.
Returning to Adam Matthews, he was second only to Aaron Ramsey out of the players to have come out of our Academy in my opinion. He was only seventeen when he broke into the first team and immediately started playing just as he did on age group football. What Matthews had was a composure which set him apart, but it was that quality which angered Dave Jones that afternoon at Portman Road as he scored what was quite a funny own goal because he was trying to do what made him exceptional in my eyes.
As I said, Jones’ approach clearly did not work. It would probably be wrong to say that Jones tirade that afternoon was responsible for Matthews going on to have a goodish career which never hit the heights he looked capable of reaching as a teenager. Weaknesses became apparent in his game as time went by and it’s fair to say that he wasn’t really as good as I thought he was, but I’ll never stop believing that Dave Jones did him no favours at all that afternoon and the manager’s attitude towards the player was never quite the same after that.
I hope something similar does not happen with Bulut and Tanner (I’ve still not got any idea what it was that upset the manager about Tanner’s display on Saturday) because, certainly while Josh Bowler is unavailable, Tanner has become an important squad member for us and I for one struggled to see how playing Ugbo out on the right improved us on Saturday (Ugbo has been the only City player to score consistently this season and, if he plays, it surely has to be as the main striker?).
A quick few words on yesterday’s Glasgow derby. After 1967, I’ve always been a Celtic man, but that doesn’t stop me from saying they were lucky to win that game – a game which, in terms of quality, was among the poorest Rangers v Celtic matches I’ve seen. I wanted Beale to become our manager last summer, I get the feeling that he might be heading for a Championship club, or lower, sometime in the next few months.
For what it’s worth, I think our change strip is more marron than plum, but as people have said to me that what I call mauve in that infamous kit in the seventies is nothing of he sort, what do I know!
So Brayley Reynolds has died at 88.
I remember the young Brayley playing very promisingly for Cardiff, but with Derek Tapscott and Joe Bonson becoming first choices at inside forward, and the emergence of the great 18 year old Graham Moore (soon to be signed by Tommy Docherty, and shortly after by Matt Busby, who took him from Chelsea to form a front three with Bobby Charlton and Denis Law), Brayley asked for a transfer and the Swans pounced in the close season before Cardiff’s marvellous 1959-60 promotion campaign.
Brayley was a Cardiff fan from his boyhood in Fleur-de-Lys (very much in the Cardiff City catchment area) but that did not stop him punishing us that first season as a Swan. On 26th of March 1960, I was one of a few thousand Cardiff City fans who made it to the Vetch Field making up a crowd of over 24,000… Swansea Town’s biggest crowd that season. We needed just 5 points from the remaining 7 games to guarantee promotion to Division One (the Premier League of the day).
The first half went divinely well for us… we were 3-0 up at half time. But whatever it was that Trevor Morris said to his team, it certainly worked, for the second half saw a Swansea team rejuvenated. They rocked us with three goals in six minutes… and Brayley scored two of them. And then, if my memory is not playing tricks on me, it was Brayley who hit the bar just before the end. He was that close to a hat-trick… and a Town win.
And on the ‘football special’ steam train back through the Abergwynfi to Blaencwm Tunnel to my home in Porth, all us Rhondda Valleys Bluebirds fans breathed a huge sigh of relief that Swansea Town had not taken both points.
Brayley was a fine player, respected by fans of both clubs. I would go so far as to say that he was a candidate for being the best uncapped Welsh footballer since WW2.
TTFN,
Dai
PS What a pitiful game of football it was last night. The old quip comes to mind…’both sides were lucky to score NIL..’
Oh memories of that season 1959-60. Recently discharged from HM Forces, I stood in the packed Grange end with my fellow former Canton High School pal Roger, both of us 6 feet plus, as we took on Aston Villa in the Spring of 1960. I think we had a single goal victory and it may well have been Graham Moore who scored the goal. But the point I wish to make was the manner in which the crowd where we were initially positioned, moved, swayed, lurched one way and another so much so that at the end of the match we must have been more than 10 yards apart!! Why on earth would supporters want to go back to standing???
And yes – what rubbish was served up last night. Thank goodness we don’t have to watch that every other week.
BJA brings to mind happy memories indeed. I too was there for the Villa game… in the same Grangetown Stand… behind the goal… with a perfect view of Graham Moore’s Exocet, as the net bulged directly in front of me.
I kinda agree with you BJA re the dangers of crushed fans, but here is my problem. My legs have largely gone, and I see no point in going to games if people in the seats in front of me are going to be getting up and down with the frequency of a nymphomaniac’s unmentionables… thus blocking my view, as my knees cannot manage matching their activity.
So as I see it, if ‘safe standing’ returns, and this stops boorish fans acting so selfishly as to block the view of those seated behind, then I won’t object. But I have my doubts whether both things would happen in tandem.
You see we humans lack discipline these days… perfectly exemplified by the decision a few years ago to let the Red Wall sing our national anthem totally ‘a cappella’ (after the opening instrumental intro acting as a musical form of ‘on your marks, get set, go!’). It all stems from the inability of many to follow the orchestral melody… God knows where they’d be following a conductor’s baton?
This way the ‘a cappella version’ avoids the chaos that used to result with the crowd finishing a good seven seconds before the music.
DW
I only got to hear of Brayley Reynolds a couple of years ago Dai when I came across him while looking for questions to set in a Swansea seven decades quiz, so I’m hardly qualified to say anything about him. If you’re willing, I could use the body of your tribute to him in the RIP section of the blog. Would you be alright with that?
That experience of finding yourself so far away from your mate was like my first experience of the Kop in the late eighties when I’d go up to visit my bother for a weekend when he was living in Wrexham. We’d take in a Liverpool or Everton match and when Liverpool played Norwich in a top of the table clash (it ended 0-0 and I can remember Bryan Gunn and Steve Bruce having excellent games for the visitors), I found the Kop an unsettling experience – I was still standing on the terraces at Ninian Park for City matches, but the crowds had grown so small that I was out of practice with what standing on a packed terrace was like. The second time I went there, it was for a game against Wimbledon who were in their first season in the top flight. I was more prepared for what I thought was to come this time, but, maybe because of the fact there were only about fifty away fans or a feeling that Wimbledon didn’t really belong at that level, the atmosphere was much flatter – in fact it struck me that the atmosphere for a lower division game at Ninian Park around that time was often better.
Oh dear… what a chump I am…!!
I refer to the 7th comment above. It is alas from my pen. Go to the 3rd para down. Please amend as follows…
Strike:… fans acting so selflessly.
Insert:… fans acting so SELFISHLY.
D’oh!
Gee… I can’t help but wonder if I’ve now got Alzheimer’s disease… and he’s got mine.
DW
I, too, remember Brayley Reynolds – I like to think he was my first Bluebirds hero, very swiftly to be usurped by Derek Tapscott.
Born in Cardiff, but frog-marched at 10 months to the Colonies (as were), I wasn’t able to discover, and indulge, a passion for the Bluebirds, until ’57/’58, when I returned to the UK…and Brayley was still playing.
With the parents living in Africa, I was sent to boarding school, so I could only get to Ninian Park in the school holidays. (My Uncle Viv helped mitigate the pain by ensuring I received a copy of the Football Echo – the Pink ‘Un? – every Monday by post).
Among the matches I did manage was BJA’s vividly remembered promotion decider against Villa – as I recall, they were already assured of promotion, and we just required a draw. The rest is history, but it was one hell of a day for a callow 12-year-old, trying to stay upright in the shifting sands of a 55,000 crowd.