Picture the scene, a football team and its manager are embarrassingly turned over by local rivals in their biggest derby game of the season and have just short of a fortnight to work on getting the bad memories out of their system as they prepare for a home fixture against a team that have just ended a run of six straight defeats with a dismal goalless draw at home to a side that has been in the bottom three for most of the season.
Yes, the season is over in terms of promotion or relegation, but this is a chance to get fans onside again. After all, before their no show for the derby game, hadn’t they put together four wins on the trot with the last of them being hailed as their best performance of the season?
Indeed, there were rumours that the players were being fed raw meat in the days leading up to the game which was going to put right the wrongs of the derby day humiliation.
Sunderland, for it was they who were the unfortunates cowering in wait for caged animals to be unleashed on them at three o clock on the day of a religious festival, must have been shaking in their boots as the minutes ticked by………………
Sorry, I can’t keep this up any longer, it was, of course, Erol Bulut and his Cardiff City side that were the “caged animals”, so anyone who has followed what’s been going on at City since the end of October will have a fair idea of what happened (the caged animals turned out to be a mixture of timid kittens and clumsy puppies), but, for any City watchers who, for whatever reason, did not get to watch today’s action, I have to tell you that it was definitely worse than you can possibly imagine.
Anyone attempting to list, say, City’s five worst performances of this season has a difficult task because, to my mind, there is so much competition for a place in the hallowed quintet. Without thinking about it too much, I can come up with QPR home, West Brom home, Hull away, Millwall, Birmingham, Leicester and Leeds home, Plymouth away, Preston home, Norwich away, Blackburn and Huddersfield home and Swansea away, but today things moved on to a new level and Sunderland at home has to be installed at number one.
It wasn’t quite breaking the habits of a lifetime, but City’s positive start three weeks ago against the team that leads the Championship as I type this was highly unusual and, as far as this season goes, I can only think of the start we made to our biggest win, at Huddersfield, to rival it.
We couldn’t match the start we made against Ipswich today, but the opening ten minutes was clearly our best period of the game as we made Sunderland look like a team with such an awful recent record by pushing them back with some well constructed attacks, one of which ended with Josh Bowler shooting into the side netting.
The game changed in the twelfth minute though when Dimitrios Goutas made the first of what were many mistakes in what was his worst display in a City shirt by a distance. Goutas was immense in our win at Sunderland back in September and I’d rate him as a realistic contender for our Player of the Season award, but, today he was an accident waiting to happen and it was his concession of the ball in a dangerous area which eventually ended with a penalty being given against him for a push on Jobe Bellingham.
In Goutas’ defence, it was a very poor decision by referee Jeremy Simpson. While Goutas did make a pushing movement towards Bellingham and there was some contact made, it was very faint. I suppose it was a correct decision by the strictest interpretation of the laws, but the whole thing becomes farcical when Simpson, just like any other modern day referee, lets far more obvious fouls by defenders and attackers alike at set pieces go unpunished – Goutas was clearly grabbed by Sunderland captain Luke O’Nien at two of City’s first three corners and these days it’s obvious that there are two completely contrasting interpretations being followed in the same penalty area depending on whether any incident happens in open play or during a set piece.
Goutas was hard done by then, but it was difficult to be that sympathetic towards him because it was his blunder that led to the concession of the penalty.
I should really know this, but I believe Nat Phillips has been playing left centreback since his arrival on loan from Liverpool, but today it was definitely Goutas on the left as I was reminded that he’d made an uncomfortable start to his City career and it was only when Mark McGuinness switched to the left and Goutas to the right that the Greek international began to improve.
So, If I am right in thinking that our centre backs switched positions today, I’m at a loss to even attempt to suggest why they did. Suffice it to say that the left hand side of our defence was a shambles in the first half especially. Josh Wilson-Esbrand had been doing well at left back during our winning run, but he was one of those who wilted at Swansea and he struggled today before being one of two players to be taken off at half time.
Adil Aouchiche shot high up into the same net that Dan James failed to find with his penalty on Tuesday and from there, the match became like a repeat of the game with Preston about six weeks ago, but worse. On that day, City had made what might well have been their second best start to a home league game this season, but then fell apart completely as soon as they went 1-0 down – Preston got a second before half time and spent the rest of the game holding on to their lead ever so comfortably as we failed to mount a worthwhile response in the last sixty minutes.
At least against Preston it looked like the players were trying, but after today’s match Bulut had to answer questions about whether City were, to use the cliché, “already on the beach”? Sunderland winning what seemed like six or seven consecutive fifty/fifty balls during a particularly scrappy phase of first half play probably prompted such questions – the truth was that, while they were more than two goals better than us, Sunderland were hardly brilliant themselves, but then opponents don’t need to be to comfortably beat Bulut’s Cardiff on one of their increasingly frequent bad days..
Sunderland soon added a second as Joe Ralls, a player who’s had a better season this time around, but the new contract he recently signed looked like a mistake on this evidence, missed a through pass and Aouchiche crossed for Bellingham to score easily from six yards out.
Actually, the second goal was overdue as Sunderland, getting in down our left at will, had already forced saves out of Ethan Horvarth through the sixteen year old Chris Rigg and Abdoullah Ba.
Readers of this blog will know that I champion the causes of City’s younger players, so you’d expect me to be all in favour of Sunderland’s approach which saw them field the Championship’s youngest ever team at Southampton recently, but I think they’ve got it all wrong and have paid with a season that has been well below their capabilities. You need a balance between youth and experience and while City have a manager who sets the balance far too much in favour of experience, Sunderland have got it wrong by going to the other extreme.
Nevertheless, I’m sure if I’d have been a neutral I would have enjoyed Sunderland’s quicksilver youngsters exposing the limitations of Bulut’s plodding twenty nine year olds (I know all of our team aren’t that age, but I think it’s our manager’s dream to have ten outfield players of that vintage who all work terribly hard when we’re not in possession – as for what they do when they have the ball, he can sort that out later). As it was, for the second consecutive match, I felt embarrassed watching my team play.
Talking of working hard without the ball, there’s no prizes for guessing who also made way at half time with Wilson-Esbrand. Yes, it was Rubin Colwill of course. Now, I should say that Colwill was poor today, but, apart from Horvarth and, maybe, Callum O’Dowda, he was no worse than anyone else – it was just typical Bulut that it was the two youngest players in his team of limited huff and puff merchants who had to be sacrificed (completely predictably, there was no sign of the youngsters who were supposed to be getting their chance once we’d reached the nothing to play for stage either).
Aaron Ramsey and Famara Diedhiou were brought on for the second half and if anything, City got worse. There were cries for a penalty when Karlan Grant went down as Sunderland got in a mess while trying to play out from the back (I didn’t think it was one) and Goutas had a header from a corner that glanced off the top of the crossbar, but that was as nothing compared to the string of chances Sunderland had. In truth, we should have suffered our heaviest defeat of the season, but a combination of some good saves by Horvarth and Sunderland getting careless because it was all so easy for them, kept the score at 2-0.
Therefore, Sunderland probably become the latest of what I suspect is quite a large number of teams saying Cardiff are the worst side we have faced this season after an encounter with us, yet, at the same time, I’ve watched a stream this week which nominated City as the Championship’s biggest over achievers.
How do you reconcile those two things? I’ve not a clue, but I think they’re both probably true. What I’m more sure of mind, is that we’re no better than the poor City teams of the previous two seasons when it comes to the things that got all of us interested in the game when we were children. You know, the things we saw footballers do with the ball to get us up out of our seats, Bulut’s Cardiff are a really hard watch and they’re the latest of many City teams of the Tan era that don’t seem to know any other way to win than ugly.
Morning all. I really don’t know what to think after yesterday. I thought Bulut was an Innovative appointment initially and despite patchy results, I thought he was definitely worth persevering with simply because things have improved on the last year or two. He was also handed something of a bum steer with the transfer embargo and the ongoing maladministration at the club. However, I have become increasingly concerned over the stodgy selection and tactics which we seem to revert to repeatedly. More specifically, I agree with you about the continuing selection of loan players over players such as Ashford now we are safe. Even more specifically, I remember wondering why last summer that negotiations seemed to go on and on with Joe Ralls who has been a great club servant but no more than a decent Championship player – a take it or leave offer should have been made early on and yet another new contract now is hardly forward thinking. In view of all this, who on earth of any quality out there would be interested in managing us? I’ve seen Steve Cooper mentioned and I would be delighted with him but just can’t see him coming here with the only thing that might attract him being the family’s affinity to us. There could well be interesting times ahead but as usual, but I suspect they won’t be on the field!
Thanks for this, Paul…a brilliant report, the pain and thwarted passion almost palpable.
It’s the old story – you do it, so that we don’t have to, and that makes you a mighty strong individual.
We Bluebirds fans are living through one of those eras when it’s less painful just to ignore the team/club/entity – but, we all know that’s not possible; irrational as it may be, we can’t stop caring.
I yield to no-one in my admiration and affection for Sol Bamba – so you can imagine my alarm at his declaration that our boys were “playing for the Manager”. Well, the last time I looked, our Manager was one Erol Bulut, and they’re certainly not playing for him.
An absolute shower, Paul.
Led by a man who must under no circumstances get his contract renewed.
I would far sooner us get relegated in season 24/25 under a manager who plays attacking football, with Mark McGuinness as our captain.
DW
Hi Paul,
Summed it up perfectly- and don’t forget also a bank holiday fixture so always likely to not turn up for that fact alone! And the recent update on season tickets for next year. Perfect timing for the worst performance of the season??.
Like you and everyone else, how could we be so poor only a few weeks after our Ipswich performance and other good wins? Just don’t understand it and online comments seem to veer between Bulut out ( all his fault) to the players fault ( get rid of named individuals) . Guess the truth lies, as ever, somewhere in between. Yes, too many poor performances and poor selection/ substitutions but boy do we make hard work of things.
Sunderland played simple pass and go and had an identity, with Bellingham the younger strolling around at will – very impressive.
By contrast we reverted to passing across the back line and inching forward to the half way line in the hope of creating an opportunity through some nifty footwork by an individual. Didn’t look joined up and – again – our pressing was poor to non- existent.
I am sure that a few times I counted about 39 sideways and incrementally forward passes from the keeper through and across the back four and then midfielders- just to get to the halfway line – where it all broke down.
We seem incapable of breaking at pace and Sunderland were so comfortable it was embarrassing. You are right, just like the Preston game where we started well but then all then went flat as a pancake after conceding a goal.
Yes, some poor refereeing decisions but no excuses for us I am afraid.
Feels like a stumbling end to the season with the only relief being we Santa get relegated. But we do need something to inspire us long suffering fans.
Cheers
I agree that until Sunderland scored their softly awarded penalty, we looked pretty good. While he may not have been the worst ref we’ve seen this season, he gave nothing for a much more blatant two-handed push on NG at their corner flag later in the first half. I think the reason that Sunderland got more of the rub of the decisions from then on may have been partly down to the fact that we were playing so poorly, we were frequently trying to recover from mistakes we’d made.
Is the fact that we fell apart after going a goal down to do with there not being any leaders on the pitch to react after adversity? Our heads certainly seemed to drop and no-one on the pitch looked to be trying to get the team playing again!
I know the stated wisdom is to not panic if you concede early, and carry on playing your normal game to get back, but we didn’t do that and became very passive instead. The home fans then started murmuring and booing, which normally causes players not to look for the ball because they don’t want to get booed, so without any options to pass to, the ball keeps getting passed back, which leads to more boos from the fans, and so it continued.
It’s more than a little puzzling why we reacted so badly to going 1-0 behind against Sunderland, whereas it was only a few weeks ago that we reacted so positively to going a goal behind to Ipswich!
I’m afraid a worse result could happen if we concede early to free scoring Coventry on Easter Monday. At least if that happens we’re likely to see minutes given to some of our younger players, like Cian Ashford and Joel Colwill in our remaining games, at the expense of some of the loan players that we’re unlikely to see next season.
There is the old saying about learning from your mistakes but the match day squad against Sunderland contained the same old names who sometimes play well (vs Ipswich) and more often than not this season don’t turn up (away at Swansea). This season we have been let down many times and I am puzzled as to why Bulut persists with the same old players who have so often let him down. After the last 2 performances I would be very surprised if the board extend his contract but will Bulut be willing to try to see what the youngsters can do in the remaining games. I would like to think so but somehow I doubt it. I remember one year when we were safe with games left when Slade was the manager and he did not give any of the youngsters a run out. It is so frustrating but we are talking about Cardiff City here.
Hi all – I guess I was one of the lucky ones, only managed to see second half on the City’s TV channel so can’t comment on first 45 minutes. Just where do we go from here after that debacle. Ah yes it’s Coventry and goodness knows what awaits us there. Thank the Lord I don’t have to spend £10 watching us on our channel to be humiliated because that really is on the cards if we manage a repeat performance.
Based upon what I saw over the last period, Sunderland could have, should have tripled their score. But as for us, we were lucky to get “nil”. My thoughts on what I watched was do we have someone advising us on the players we sign, permanently or on loan. Whoever it is, he, she or even “it” needs to leave. And if that means the Manager departs, so be it.
I think Bulut’s after match comments give a clue to our weakness under his management and coaching?
He said that he was surprised by our poor performance because the team had looked so good in training during the international break.
This is because both in and out of possession we can only function when the opposition allows us time and space on the ball—-and probably the only time we get this is when we play against ourselves in training!
Sunderland started slowly but as soon as they scored against the run of play they were inspired to increase the tempo we looked a bedraggled team.
I have seen this happen so many times at CCS this season and unless Bulut can produce a team with the fitness and ability to play with more pace and intensity in attack and defence he surely has no future in the Champlonship
Thanks all for the replies, I’ve got to tell you that I woke up this morning and immediately remembered it was a bank holiday so my mood lifted as I thought of the nice, comfortable and restful day I would have only for the City game to pop into my head a few seconds later to deflate things. That said, I will be interested to find out what the team is, but, if I strongly suspect, it’s the same old, same old, the way I feel at the moment, I might gave the match a miss. After all, if I’m being truthful, in about six out of every seven games we play, I could have a template of a match report on hand and then just fill in minor details like the score and scorers afterwards.
BigBillIrwinFan mentions that season under Russell Slade where he kept on picking so many of the players who had bored us throughout the season for our run in despte the fact that we were safe with about eight games left to play and this has had the same sort of feel as that season (14/15 I think it was). As someone who stopped believing in the fantasy of a top six finish some time during November, I find myself almost pining for the excitement of last season – the football may have been crap, but there was the suspense of the will they, won’t they when it came to relegation!
Somehow, being stuck with a really negative manager who carries on in the same manner even though there is nothing riding on the last half a dozen or so games of the season is about as bad as you can get – it’s strange, Bulut has been quite the Cavalier in our cup games this season and yet he always reverted to his Roundhead instincts for the next league match, is there any chance that he’ll tell his team to go out and play like we did against Birmingham, Blackburn and Sheffield Wednesday even if we did end up conceding nine in the last two? It’s as if he picked those daft, undermanned, backlines full of out of position defenders and midfielders who’d never played at the back before so that he could say “look what happens when I sent them out to play with freedom”.