Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, Cardiff City fell a goal behind at home today around the fifteen minute mark and then spent the rest of the game huffing and puffing away to little effect – I can only think of one good chance they created in that last seventy five minutes and it felt like they could have played until midnight without scoring.
You almost certainly will have told me to stop by now, because it’s a story everyone has become used to since about the time football restarted after COVID – the scenario outlined in that first paragraph could have come from any season going back to 20/21.
Every team has a few matches a season where they toil away at home, lose and barely look like scoring, but whereas for most it seems to be about two or three times a season it feels as if it’s about half of the games we play at Cardiff City Stadium for a few years now..
Therefore, it’s sobering, to put it mildly, to see City begin a new season, after an encouraging set of warm up fixtures, with exactly the sort of result and performance that sees any kind of pre season optimism fading quickly.
By the standards of recent summers, it felt like City had been pretty shrewd with their recruitment and it may be that they have been. Although today was very deflating, it’s fair to say that even if the first match of the season goes poorly for a side, the next forty five often provide a season that turns out to be nowhere near as bad as the opening fixture suggested.
It’s also true to say that only two of those five “shrewd” summer recruits started today. Another one of them came on for the last twenty minutes or so, one was an unused sub and the other is probably two or three weeks away yet from being at a stage where he can be considered ready for serious first team action.
Nevertheless, after the first half of the summer break was taken up with a will he, won’t he soap opera about our manager staying at the club and then a very positive reaction when it became clear he was committing to City, this sort of afternoon will serve as a reminder of how limited and useless we looked in losing heavily to Middlesbrough and then a very poor Rotherham team in our final two matches of 23/24.
If you were reading this blog through the second half of last season, you will know I became very disillusioned with Erol Bulut and this meant I was in what seemed a tiny minority at times through May and early June who really wasn’t bothered whether Bulut stayed or went.
Now he is staying, and has a two year contract to boot, it seems perverse to want him to fail, so my attitude is that he gets a fresh start as if that deal he signed until 2026 was his first with us and, to be fair, I thought we were a lot more attack minded and enterprising in our pre season friendlies than we had been through most of 23/24 – I enjoyed watching some of those friendly games.
Indeed, for fifteen minutes or so today, this looked like a different team to the turgid and cautious one that would show little or no attacking intent in home games against modest opposition last season.
City pressed effectively and well early on and pushed a nervous looking Sunderland back as they moved the ball briskly and rotated positions. The only down side was that this good play was not leading to much in the way of goalmouth action – our manager spoke of chances created and wasted after the game and I can only say in reply that he must have been watching a different match to me..
I think a reason the pundits have tended to place us lower than many City fans, myself included, thought they would in their predicted tables is that stat about us being the worst team in the Championship at creating chances from open play last season and, on today’s evidence, maybe those pundits do have a point.
All City had to show in the way of meaningful efforts on goal in the period when they were on top today was a header from Dimitrios Goutas that keeper Anthony Patterson turned aside and that came from last season’s strong point in attacking terms, a set piece.
Sunderland began as they went on when it came to defending, they got their blocks in and gave City little room in attack. This was in direct contrast to City who fell apart the first time they were put under any pressure and conceded a truly shocking goal from a set piece.
On an afternoon when City’s crossing from set pieces and open play was disappointing, Patrick Roberts’ clipped ball to the far post from a free kick awarded for a soft foul by Ollie Tanner was a quality delivery, but it probably didn’t need to be that good as Dennis Cirkin was stood in glorious isolation as he headed across goal for fellow defender Luke O’Nien, again completely unmarked, to nod in from no more than two yards out.
Normally, when any team concedes from a set piece, it’s pretty easy to identify players who have lost their man and so allocating blame is pretty simple, but, this time, the two Sunderland players involved got in completely uncontested headers – I honestly couldn’t tell you who was supposed to be marking Cirkin in particular, it could have been any one out of about five!
The man who I’d rate as our best defender, Mark McGuinness, was absent again today with an injury, but my suspicious side has me thinking that his absence has more to do with the reported interest in him by teams like Luton – four of our five signings are free transfers, but they’re all going to be on a very decent wage and, Ebou Adams’ sale to Derby apart, we’ve done nothing yet to balance the books.
For a side that placed so much emphasis on defence last season, our goals against record (I can’t remember if it was the third or fourth worst in the division) was poor and we got worse when McGuinness was absent through injury for much of the second half of the campaign – if he was to be sold, then, even though we’ve signed Calum Chambers, bringing in a good quality Championship defender would become a priority.
There’s not a great deal to report really after that. We became more and more frustrated as a Sunderland team that deserved their win, but had me thinking that we’ll face some much better sides than them down here this season, held us at arm’s length with barely a problem.
Callum Robinson got in a scuffed shot from twelve yards that Patterson dived to hold easily and Ollie Tanner nodded our best chance of the afternoon wide from about eight yards just before half time. After that, it was back to slow, slow, slightly less slow stuff straight from the 23/24 season as we retained possession (67 per cent apparently), but, frankly, looked tired as the ball was worked across the defence, into midfield and then back again to no purpose.
It sounds daft saying we looked tired, but we were very laborious in moving the ball around and I found myself thinking back to those pre season games where I noted that the pace was upped and we looked more purposeful when we brought the youngsters on for the established first teamers..
Now, I’m not naive enough to advocate packing the side with kids, but I can’t help thinking that Isaak Davies will be a big miss and the selection seemed typically Bulut today. In particular, why was someone like Eli King not there instead of Andy Rinomhota who would seem to have no future here and, although Cian Ashford didn’t have a great pre season, his absence from the squad was a disappointment.
That being said, the two younger players who did feature didn’t really make the case for the inclusion of more vibrant youth – Tanner was sluggish and wasteful and Yakou Meite, brought on to replace him, looked far more lively and effective. Rubin Colwill was brought on very late and barely featured apart from when he, first, did well to wriggle clear of a marker, but then lacked a burst of acceleration to get clear of another one. Was Colwill then fouled? I’m not sure he was really – Sunderland then gained possession and broke clear to score a second goal as we entered added time which they didn’t really need through the highly regarded Jack Clarke.
Another thought which occurs to me is that any team that goes in with a midfield three who are all over thirty is asking for trouble – I thought the youngest of the three, Manolis Siopis, was our best player, but I can’t help thinking that Alex Robertson is going to be a very busy young man once he establishes himself here.
On that score, Joel Colwill may not be ready yet to be included every week by City, but he has the mobility in the middle of the park that was so painfully missing today and he scored two good goals on his debut on loan for Cheltenham as they beat Newport 3-2. The younger Colwill’s winning goal came in the ninety sixth minute with the sort of forward run into the penalty area from a number six or eight position that you just don’t see in City home games, especially deep into added time.
At least the under 18s started their league campaign off with a win as they came out on top by 3-1 at Fleetwood – Dan Ola, Mannie Barton and Jake Davies getting the goals.
Thanks Paul for putting down a marker here with your first report of the season proper… by that I mean that you have set a very high bar for us mere MAYA mortals to try to match.
What a sparkling opening sentence…!! And your level never dropped. ‘Hats off’ to you. Agreed with almost every word. Only your praise for Siopsis made me splutter in my cornflakes. I thought him hopeless… misdirecting his few forward passes, and then losing confidence and passing back to Goutas/Chambers… who passed the ball square to each other.
So sad for Vincent that he allowed Mehmet to persuade him to go against his better judgment and give this clueless bounder Bulut a new contract. Furthermore, this manager does not play the two jewels in our crown – Macca and Jak – having replaced them with a journeyman who pulled up no trees with Arsenal and Villa, and a keeper who is Jak’s inferior in every department, and was – one very good save acknowledged – partly responsible for both Sunderland goals today. He has bought the wrong Willock brother, and is hellbent on selling Macca for less than £10m… when Palace are holding out for £65m for the vastly overrated Marc Guehi. No City player yesterday deserved more than a 6, and Ramsey, Siopsis, Tanner were lucky to get a 4.
With this ‘play square, play backwards’ manager, we will be fortunate come May to avoid the recent fate of another team who couldn’t go down: Birmingham City. Did you see the Blackburn game on Sky last Friday night? How refreshing to see a team playing the ball forward, to attackers running at speed into space they create themselves. All the result of good coaching on the training field. God alone knows what Mr Bulut coaches? This manager makes Russell Slade seem like he had the positivity of a Jürgen Klopp.
TTFN,
Dai
Good Morning, Paul
“A ball clipped to the far post from a free kick” seems to be the regular anathema to Cardiff. To be charitable, our central defenders might have been new to each other but even so, I found myself calling out for McGuiness to be there. Incidentally, I hope he stays and is given the captain’s shirt in spite of his past injuries — which reminds me, it was good to see O’Dowda in action yesterday. In fact, to me he was our best performer.
On the other hand, I think Colwell was too easily pushed away from the ball in what might have been an important development, and Rall’s corner kicks from the left hand side are too looped to be effective because they give defenders time to respond. A lower faster projectory might be worthwhile.
On the whole, however, I think the Cardiff team today is already better than the tip-tap display of last season.
was there, so optimistic, same shite different day, it was awful, have been supporter
since around 1960, to say 62% of ball and 12 shots on or near , what effing match was i watching, was going to click on season ticket for me and my mate, thanks cardiff that wont be happening
Oops…
Meant to add two other comments…
I note Paul you talk of a number 8…
Oh… how modern football reporting has be a bit flummoxed…
Hope to God you never go down the xG road. I confess that every time I see a football writer using this performance metric in their reporting, I lose interest and quit the article.
But I am less dogmatic when it comes to writers who talk about a number 10 and a number 6 (the two most popular numbers used to describe a modern day position in a team). But a bit puzzled. The number 6…. does that mean a Bobby Moore/Norman Hunter type role in the team? Primarily defensive, but occasionally surging forward like a ‘Crazy Horse’ Emlyn Hughes? I guess it must. It is in contrast to a number 4, which is an attacking midfielder in the spirit of Billy Bonds, Billy Bremner, Patrick Vieira.
But a ‘number ten’ has changed has it not in the common parlance?
It seems to mean nowadays an attacker who ‘plays in the hole’. Yes it used to mean that too in the old days… but back then it meant a bit more. The ‘number ten’ was regarded as the ‘schemer’… the brainbox who had carte blanche to roam the entire top two thirds of the pitch to make it happen. Examples being a Glenn Hoddle and before him, an Ivor Allchurch. But nowadays it seems to mean in some people’s minds a much more attacking role behind the centre forward.
But isn’t that the number 8…? Please clear up my confusion Paul.
And one other thing re these numbers: surely, the formations dictate a different role for that number? I mean to say a number ten in a 4-4-2 has a different role to one in a 4-2-4.
Maybe this is why I find formation numbers a similar minefield to avoid like the plague.
And finally before I forget… has the City crowd for an opening home game of the season EVER been so flat as yesterday? I think not. I hope it is not the instant ‘buyers remorse’ re the new contract for the manager I suspect it to be.
DW.
Apols… typos abound… the fourth line in my last should be ‘has ME a bit flummoxed’. Too embarrassed to read on. My standards have alas dropped now I have passed my 77th birthday.
DW
How can you win a game with two holding midfielders? No creativity in midfield our build up play slow and ponderous no change from last year. I got no faith in Erol Bulut he is a one trick pony. He played Colwill on the wing he is a number ten. Only player who stood out yesterday was Chris Willock.
After so many depressing visits to Cardiff city Stadium last season I lost all confidence in Erol Bulut as a Championship coach.
Nevertheless I found myself as optimistic as any other City fan as he returned with a new contract.
I liked the fact that he seemed to have rejuvenated the enthusiasm and confidence of Callum Robinson and had signed some players who I thought would improve us as a team likely to score goals.
As an added bonus l particularly liked that he had signed a talented player who had the principles to jeopardise his financial future to help people facing unimaginable suffering.
This is not the forum to dwell on this,certainly Not on Yahoo!
I liked the team,if not the substitutes,selected for the Sunderland game and with attacking players like Chris Willocks,a fit Ramsey and a ‘new’Robinson we now had the potential to score goals from open play.
My optimism continued as we kicked off and unlike last season we attacked and at no time dropped into away team mode to silence our supporters.
Then Sunderland scored and not immediately but pretty soon afterwards Paul’s brilliant article headline came into force and l was back in last season’s despair.
Unfortunately this feeling was exacerbated by the substitutions and Bulut’s post match comments.
To cheer myself up I am treating Saturday as one step forward and one step back so with 45 games still to go and better players to become available this will still be a season to enjoy more than suffer.
Hi Paul.
Thanks for the report and welcome back to another season – Deja vu indeed! All set up nicely for a morale boosting start to the campaign and then it all went the same way as last season.
Sunderland mugged us again – as they did a few short months ago. They, along with many others, have worked out how to play against us and to capitalise on our inevitable errors. If we keep giving away sloppy fouls and possession cheaply then better teams have the pace and ability to take maximum advantage.
Agree with your summary in that we started promisingly, with slightly more positive passing forward – not always backwards – but that familiar feeling set in once we gave the first goal away.
On a positive note, I thought Willock looked good and Chambers looked comfortable – notwithstanding the general poor defending which led to the goals. Worryingly, however, others looked off the pace and our old problem of playing through the lines/ final ball/ shots at goal all very disappointing.
We clearly now have a large squad and, on paper, numerous options and skilful players. I just hope the manager can quickly find the right balance and combination in midfield and forward positions to justify our pre-season optimism. Agree that one or two of the youngsters who brought some much needed energy and positivity to games at the end of last season could have been given an opportunity in the second half.
Sure he will be exploring such options in the next game v Rovers.
Anyway, good to be back in the usual routine, even though, as all those round me in the Ninian Stand agreed, we must be mad to put ourselves through this again!
Cheers.
As I said Paul, I was struck by your superb opening words of ‘stop me if you’ve heard this one before’. (With a gorgeous conversational start like that, you have instantly won your reader over, and got them hanging on your next words.) As for your ‘Deja Vu’ title which Huw refers to: I recall driving my wife Larissa half mad in the 1990s with my constant playing of a recording of a poem that I adored, but whose integral joke wore pretty thin for Larissa by the third or fourth play, but just got better and better for me, caught up in the delicious unhinged quality of it all.
Go to 13 minutes in here, and watch Les Barker from 14 years ago delivering his masterpiece. Keep watching till 17.25 to make sure you catch his ‘pillock’ anecdote that follows the poem.
https://youtu.be/XA3LsyhidCM?si=cvIB3rQNNWu86zAn
DW
Did you see that thrilling Burnley performance last night? Scott Parker has been in the job for slightly less than 6 weeks (not 54 weeks like our Turk), yet has immediately implemented a vital change.
He has knocked on the head Vincent Kompany’s bizarre obsession with ‘playing out from the back’, and had James Trafford kicking long… much to the relief of fans at Turf Moor, who last season were thoroughly depressed with the number of times their club gave away kamikaze goals as a result.
Now Trafford is no Jak Alnwick when it comes to the accuracy of the long pass, and invariably his ball found the head of a Luton defender. But here’s the thing, that defender equally invariably headed it to an oncoming Burnley midfielder… so the Clarets got possession in the centre circle, and thus avoided the Luton press, instantly taking 4 Luton players out of the equation.
Sky Sports commented on this like it was a revelation. Eh? I have been banging on about this for years… and the great POMO man – Charles Hughes himself – is still alive, in his nineties.
Well done Scott… I never thought you had it in you.
Oh how I remember Scott in that McDonalds 1994 World Cup television advertisement. He as ‘Jimmy’ is on the cusp of his 13th birthday when filming this in 1993… https://youtu.be/lCrGHPX_Hik?si=9so89xGeuHLzaUjW
DW.
Thanks all for your replies. Dai, you might be surprised to learn that I started a thread on the messageboard I use entitled “What is a number 8?”. I was being, fairly, serious when I asked the question because, although I thought I knew what it was, I wasn’t sure about it.
I think ther number 6 role is an easy one to understand – it’s what I started off calling a wing half and over time it has developed into things like ‘defensive midfielder” or the “Makelele position”. Just as you got used to calling it by it’s current fashionable name, it would change to something even more trendy and you’d have to change again! These days, I just stick to defensive midfielder.
Strangely enough, when I started playing a form of “proper’ football just over sixty years ago, I fancied myself as a number 8, but what I thought of as a number 8 (inside right) back then is, in modern parlance, a number 10 (the old fashioned inside left).
It was interesting to see the replies my thread got, because I don’t think anyone came up with what I’d call a definitive answer as to what the role was – the consensus was that my theory that a number 8 was a “box to box” midfielder (a term you rarely hear these days) was as good an answer as any.
So, leaving number 8s to one side for now, I’ll say that what City have lacked for years is a good box to box midfielder who, to use another trendy term I try not to use, is capable of “breaking the lines”.
There was a time when Joe Ralls could play that role to a decent standard and Ryan Wintle can do it, but not that well. To my miod, we haven’t had a really effective box to box midfielder since Jordon Mutch – Alex Robertson sounds like he could be an effective replacement for Mutch over a decade after he left, but with his likely midfield partners all being over 30, he’s going to need some help as the season goes on (I’d like to see Eli King in the squad, but the best qualified player to fill the role before Robertson arrived is now on loan at Cheltenham). Hopefully, Robertson will give us a better balanced midfield which includes a 6, an 8 and a 10 because, for too long we’ve played with either two 6s and a 10 or three 6s!
Good to hear from you again Anthony, agree about McGuinness – the term ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ occurs to me regarding him, but I fear that, having spent a lot in wages this summer, we’re in a position where we have to sell and the truth of the matter is that we don’t have anyone else who a club would be willing to spend the sort of sum we need to balance the books on.
Agree with you about Colwill and Ralls – as for our squad, we’ve signed three players (Willock, El Ghazi and Chambers) who I think have it in them to be good players at this level, but all of their careers have been on a downward spiral in recent years, I’d say we need at least two of them to reverse that situation (plus we need Robertson to hit the ground running) if we are to build positively on last season. One reason I’m not overly positive about the coming season is that we haven’t signed the sort of striker I was expecting us to sign yet.
Bleddyn, to go back to that messageboard, I was just reading someone saying that a group of men who used to sit close to where he is, have not renewed their season tickets this year because they’ve just been ground down by how bad we’ve been at home over a period of years. Saturday’s gate was a poor one by modern City standards and I think there’s every chance we’ll see crowds often dipping below 20,000 this season.
I’ve heard we’ve only sold around 12,000 season tickets and if I’m surprised by anything, it’s that it has taken this long for the figure to drop that low, given how you’ve only had real value for money about four or five times a season in home games in recent years.
Jonathan, I agree completely about the midfield, Aaron Ramsey is one of my favourite ever players and while it was good in a way to see him. stay on for the ninety minutes (I’d prefer us to use him for no more than an hour these days), the truth is that his performance on Saturday didnt merit him staying on that long. Thought Ralls did alright apart from. his dead ball delivery and, as for Siopis, I had him as our man of the match because he did the job he was selected fot pretty well, but once he tried to take things a bit further, his limitations began to show. It feels like I’ve been banging on for years about our midfield lacking balance, it still does, but it was also too old on Saturday.
I think you’ve summed up how many City fans felt before kick off on Saturday there Mike and, as you say, despite the lack of an end product, the opening quarter of an hour or so offered hope that the optimism could be justified, but then there was the early goal from the opposition that we’ve become so used to in home games and the response to it was something else we’ve become all too used to.
Agree about both the choice of substitutes and the wisdom of them when. they were introduced – once again, it all felt so last season. It’ll be interesting to see what the team looks like for tonight’s game, I suspect that quite a few youngsters will be involved, but, even of they shine, the evidence of last season suggests that it won’t be enough to get them in the squad for Saturday – don’t forget that Bulut only started introducing the young players into the team once there was nothing to play for last season.
Hello again Huw, I described that Sunderland game last season as our worst performance of 23/24 up to then. We were better than that on Saturday, but, in essence, it was still all so familiar wasn’t it and the two games were prett similar.
Your comment about our poor final ball brings me on to what Bulut said about us not taking our chances – I’ve noticed before that he says we had chances in games where it seems to me that we didn’t. Maybe it all comes down to what you define as a chance, I don’t see a move ended by a poor cross or final ball as a chance, for me it has to be something that gets to a forward player and they’re able to get a shot or a header away at goal from a position where there is a reasonable chance of scoring from and I maintain that only happened on two or three occasions, at most, all through the game.
Finally, I come to “deja vu”, I had a look at the poem Dai and was laughing at it throughout – a funny and intelligent man who I’m ashamed to say I knew nothing about until today.
The “it’s like deja vu all over again” line is one I’ve heard quite a few times before, so I cannot claim that it was my invention or anything like that – I did look it up though and it seems it was first said by the legendary baseballer Yogi Barer, who had quite a bit of form for such things.
https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/yogi-berra-quotes