Cardiff City’s curious and slightly concerning pre season programme continued last night with a comprehensive 4-0 defeat by Premier League side Southampton. The one positive from the night I suppose was that, for the first time in eighteen months, a limited number of supporters were allowed in to watch their team play.
Even that was something of a double edged sword though, because, as Mick McCarthy said in his post game remarks, he wished that the first game back (and the first home match he’d taken charge of at Cardiff in which there had been a crowd) had been against less testing opposition than what was virtually a full strength Saints team.
I mentioned the word “curious” earlier, because, in total contrast to their opponents, Cardiff fielded a starting line up which included a trialist (Marley Watkins) and a number of players who you’d call squad members more than first teamers – when the substitutions, inevitably, came, Cardiff mostly brought on youngsters.
Thus, the feeling, which had grown as City stumbled their way through fixtures against three sides who were in League Two last season, that we’ve not yet seen anything like what McCarthy’s team to face Barnsley in the season opener at Cardiff City Stadium in ten days time will look like, only grew.
However, the manager chose last night to give a resume of where things stand as far as injuries/other absences are concerned.
Perhaps, the first one to mention is Perry Ng who played last night, but is making his way back from a bout of Covid. Speaking of the Pandemic, the return from international duty of Keiffer Moore, Rubin Colwill and Leandro Bacuna has been held up by Covid (it wasn’t 100 per cent clear whether the players had been suffering from the infection themselves or whether they were self isolating).
Of the others, Sean Morrison is still recovering from the dislocated elbow he suffered in the final match of last season against Rotherham, but he could make an appearance in the last warm up game against Newport County on Saturday, Josh Murphy has a hamstring issue which has meant he only returned to training this week. New signing Ryan Wintle has a groin injury, Tom Sang is only recovering slowly from a toe injury from last season and Isaac Vassell has a, hopefully minor, muscle problem.
With others such as Joel Bagan and Curtis Nelson only just returning from dislocated shoulder and hernia absences respectively, it looks likely that it will be something a patched up City side for the big kick off on August 7.
So, what can we expect from the Barnsley game? According to Sports Betting Dime, the Bluebirds are slight favourites to win as their odds opened at 13/10, with Barnsley at 47/20 and the draw at 11/5.
It’s not just all of those injuries and our unconvincing pre season that makes me think an away win or draw looks the more appealing for someone considering a bet on this match. Although they’ve lost their impressive manager Valerien Ismael to West Brom and their best player, Alex Mowatt, has followed him to the Hawthorns, Barnsley were, in a way, the most impressive team in last season’s Championship as they comfortably finished in the top six to gain a Play Off place completely at odds with the size of their budget. They may have suffered important losses then, but the nucleus of a strong squad is still there at Oakwell.
Finally, Cardiff had their poorest home record in years last season as they were beaten nine times on their own patch, while gaining only eight wins. Strangely, those victories brought an imposing combined scoring tally of twenty six for and four against – Cardiff never won at home after conceding the first goal though and only in the 3-2 victory over Birmingham did they come from behind to win at Cardiff City Stadium.
Of course, the Pandemic made 20/21 a unique season and you’d think that the likely ending of crowd restrictions (at present, the Welsh Government are allowing limited attendance, but there are strong hopes that they will follow the UK Government in removing social distancing measures by the time of the Barnsley match) will bring about an improvement in results, but maybe that will have to be postponed for a short while until they got a few of their injured/unavailable players back?
