“It was as if we had not been away”

Apologies to him for not remembering his name, but the first caller on Rob Phillips’ phone in tonight to discuss this afternoon’s season opener against Barnsley at Cardiff City Stadium got it exactly right with his opening remark.

Having not been to a City game for eighteen months and only travelled to Cardiff once in over a year, today was my first experience of the new congestion creation scheme at Radyr Cheyne on Llantrisant Road (it added half an hour to my driving time to the game), I was at least able to listen to the phone in for my second encounter on my way home with something that would drive me bananas if I still lived in Pentrebane.

The caller I referred to above summed the game up in eight words with “it was as if we had not been away” and in doing so exactly captured my feelings as I left the ground at five o clock.

He was talking mainly about the subject I admit I spend too much time talking about on here (our method of play or what I’m increasingly calling the Cardiff Way) and I’m going to have a few words on that later, but I thought his remark could also apply to the subject of frustrating drawn games which, these days, don’t tend to do either of the participants much good.

We signed off at Cardiff City Stadium for the best part of a year and a half with a 2-2 draw with Brentford in February 2020 and, if you count the FA Cup loss on penalties to Reading as a draw, we had a run of eight of them in the ten home matches prior to lockdown ( the other two were a win over West Brom and a defeat by Forest).

So, I’m sorry, but although there was a very poignant two minute silence beforehand which featured images of City fans who had lost their lives to Covid and a reminder of the magnificent Peter Whittingham’s best City goal in my opinion (ironically against Barnsley) as what I hope is part of a series of events the club have lined up to commemorate City’s best player of this century and one of the best in our entire history, the football, as in this 1-1 draw, left me feeling pretty flat I’m afraid.

The strong suspicion that the summer months had not been spent by Mick McCarthy and his coaching team putting together the finishing touches to their plan to introduce something like the old “Cardiff Way” as envisaged by Ken Choo following the appointment of Paul Trollope five years ago, hardened somewhat when the ball was played back to Aden Flint from the kick off and he delivered City’s first aimless hoof of the campaign straight into touch forty or fifty yards upfield with five seconds showing on the stadium clock.

Before I talk too much about us though, can I say a few words about Barnsley while making an observation on their playing style. Last season as Barnsley made their unlikely, but thoroughly deserved, way into the Play Offs, they were generally reckoned to have a playing style that was, if anything, more physical and direct than ours.

However, Barnsley popped the ball about at times today (notably in a smooth build up that ended in a disallowed goal for offside early in the second half) in a manner which is quite foreign to us, so, if Barnsley, who have lost their best player, Alex Mowatt to West Brom over the summer, can transform themselves over a few months, why can’t we?

I’d answer that by going back to November of last year when Neil Harris effectively gave up on his half hearted attempt to introduce more of a passing style at Cardiff. By doing that, I would argue that our former manager was as good as admitting that our squad could not adapt their game enough to play in a more entertaining manner.

Therefore, leaving aside the real possibility that Mick McCarthy is perfectly happy to continue playing in my version of the Cardiff Way for now, that leaves three possibilities. First, Vincent Tan could have splashed more serious cash in an attempt to bring in players who would offer us more than the restricted way of performing typified by the current squad, but, for reasons I can entirely understand, our owner appears to have said enough is enough when it comes to transfer spending of a type we had grown used to seeing from him.

Second, the funds needed for rebuilding could have been raised by the sale of existing squad members (many of whom are into the final year of their contracts). Truthfully though, there couldn’t be a worse time than the present to embark on such a scheme because, apart from those poor unfortunates at the top of the game that were having to think in terms of forming a league of their own in the spring, hardly any one is spending big these days.

The third possibility is that we use young players already on the books to play in a manner which could see us presenting opponents with some different problems to the ones they are used to when playing Cardiff.

Clearly, if this method were to succeed, it would be likely to be a gradual process over months and even years, but there was a player on the bench today in Sam Bowen who, on his best days at age group level for club and country, has looked like exactly the sort of playmaker/continuity player we lack in the senior squad.

It barely needs to be said that Bowen wasn’t used off the bench today and the likelihood is that he’ll disappear back to the under 23s once Will Vaulks has served his suspension and, an eye catching first few months at Cardiff from new man Ryan Wintle apart, we can have the same midfield options of grafters and not a great deal more that we’ve become used to since Neil Warnock’s last summer with us.

So, realistically, I fear that City fans who feel as I do, are going to have to accept that there is going to be little change from what we’ve seen since Russell Slade’s time in charge and, in particular, from the sort of thing we’ve been watching since our last relegation.

That said, the modern Cardiff Way is not all bad by any means, City fans love battlers and we’ve got a team of them, Keiffer Moore is great to watch, I’m not sure we’re going to see much of Lee Tomlin from now on, so all the more reason to appreciate him while we can and today Ryan Giles reaffirmed the positive impression he made in pre season matches.

Not only that, Giles and Joel Bagan combined nicely down the left at times and the same could be said regarding Perry Ng when the Wolves man switched flanks.

This was the thing more than any other which offered me most hope for the coming months – we did look a bit more threatening down the wings and I know it’s early days yet, but Giles looks to be the best crosser of a ball we’ve had in a while.

Some of Giles’ crossing is Whittinghamesque, but on a day when a great City number seven was remembered, you could not help but contrast a past wearer of that shirt with the current one.

The positive thing to say about Leandro Bacuna is that his athleticism gets himself into positions that others (eg Tomlin) can only dream about, but having missed a sitter from a Giles cross against  Newport last week, a lack of composure with his finishing from another two Giles passes cost City dear today.

Twenty eight career goals in three hundred and seventy nine league appearances rather tells a story (as does three in ninety five games for City) – how many goals would Bacuna score over the course of a full season playing in the advanced position he is currently occupying? Based on the evidence of those figures above, you have to say no more than four or five.

I think most people would have expected the same starting line up as last weekend from Mick McCartjy, but Dillon Phillips was back instead of Alex Smithies and there was a debut for Mark McGuiness at centre back after Sean Morrison was presumably deemed not ready to start a competitive game yet, while Keiffer Moore and Rubin Colwill were on the bench.

City were grateful to Phillips for a fine sprawling save from Cauley Woodrow around the half an hour mark, while they had a goal ruled out for offside when the hard working James Collins touched in a Curtis Nelson header from a free kick to go alongside the first of Bacuna’s misses and a cross from Collins which was desperately cleared before Bagan could apply a finishing touch.

The first few minutes of the second half saw the other Bacuna miss and the Barnsley disallowed goal I mentioned earlier (must say it looked onside on the video I’ve just watched) before Marlon Pack headed us in front from a Giles corner which Bacuna had won with an example of that athleticism I mentioned before. It was a good header by Pack from around the penalty spot, but the most classy thing the midfielder did all day came after the match when he talked about having the fans back in the ground and the pre match tributes to Covid victims and Whitts.

Like so many goals Barnsley’s equaliser some fifteen minutes or so after we’d gone ahead, could be put down to incisive finishing from a fine pass or defensive errors depending on your perspective.

Barnsley will point to a long pass by sub Joel Benson’s which sent Tony Sibbick galloping into a yawning gap down City’s left before a crisp finish across Phillips and into the net from the corner of the penalty area. However, in a post match interview, Mick McCarthy spoke of as many as eight small errors by his team which all contributed to the goal from his point of view as what had initially looked like an effective high press by City was transformed into the ball hitting the back of our net within a few seconds.

It was an indictment of City that they never really looked like regaining their lead once Barnsley had equalised despite the introduction of Moore, Wintle and Mark Harris for Bacuna, Ralls (I really do wonder how much his injury from last season is still a factor for him) and Collins.

New Barnsley coach Markus Schopp thought “Cardiff also had chances but, over the 90 minutes, we had a bit more.”, but I’d say this was a day when the post match stats were an accurate reflection of things – the BBC’s figures show Barnsley with fifty five per cent possession, both sides with ten goal attempts with us having six on target compared to the visitors three, while we scored from one of only two corners we gained, compared to Barnsley’s four.

Those figures capture the essence of what I’d say was an even contest which got the result it deserved on an afternoon where I would have thought that those who are of the opinion that the Championship is a league of no great quality this season will feel vindicated – albeit on very limited evidence so far.

One other thing, there was a notable win for the Under 23s in midweek in their latest warm up match where they came back from 2-0 down at half time against West Brom to win 4-2 thanks to a couple of goals from Isaac Vassell and one each from Keiron Evans (making his first appearance of an injury disrupted pre season) and Chanka Zimba.

It’s the time of year again when I ask readers of Mauve and Yellow Army to make a contribution towards its running costs. Before I go into detail about this, I should, once again, offer my sincere thanks to all of you who have helped ensure the future of the blog over the past three years through a mixture of monthly payments via Patreon, monthly Standing Orders into my bank account and once a year payments via bank transfer, PayPal, cheque and cash.

The first time I made this request for assistance, it was prompted by a need for funds to pay for three yearly web hosting costs which, frankly, I was in no position to meet following my move of house a few months earlier. However, I’m pleased to say that, this time around, the web hosting bill was settled back in June with none of the problems there were back in 2018.

Therefore, any monies received this year will go towards other running costs and, although it’s too early yet to make any formal commitments despite so many of the pandemic restrictions in Wales being lifted yesterday, I am minded to do another review of a season from the past book to follow on from “Real Madrid and all that” which looked back on the 1970/71 campaign. At the moment 1975/76, the first promotion season I experienced, looks to be favourite for the book treatment, which would mean a lot more trips back and forth to Cardiff than my finances have become used to over the past year and a half – hopefully, the majority of them will not have to be made via Radyr Cheyne!

As always, the blog will still be free to read for anyone who chooses not to make a donation towards its running costs and, apart from the one in the top right hand corner which is to do with Google Ads, you will never have to bother about installing an ad blocker to read this site because there will never be any.

Finally, as mentioned earlier, donations can be made through Patreon, PayPal, by bank transfer, cheque, Standing Order/Direct Debit and cash, e-mail me at paul.evans8153@hotmail.com for further payment details.