Mark Hudson sacked following bleak, mid winter draw with bottom of the table Wigan.

All City fans know what happened in 1927 and I would guess that a fair number of them also know what happened two years later. For those who don’t, we were relegated, but it wasn’t just any old relegation, this was going down with the best defensive record in the top flight!

Goals were more common place in football in the late twenties than they are now, so, although fifty-nine goals conceded from forty-two matches doesn’t sound anything special, no one in the old First Division could better it – not even Champions Sheffield Wednesday (they were called The Wednesday in those days apparently) who let in sixty-two.

It won’t come as a surprise then that goals were hard to come by for the 28/29 team. Their total of forty-three scored was nineteen fewer than the Bury team which went down with them and thirteen less than Portsmouth, the side with the next worse scoring record.

Is any of this beginning to sound familiar – could it be that ninety-four years later, we are going to see a Cardiff City side relegated with the best defensive in the league again? Let me say straight away that my answer to that question is categoric no, but, sadly, it’s only because I believe there be a few teams with a better goals against record than us come the end of the season.

Today’s 1-1 home draw with bottom of the table Wigan means that we’ve conceded just thirty goals in twenty-seven games – Coventry with twenty-seven are the only side in the bottom half of the table to have let in less than us.

Furthermore, it’s only two goals conceded in our last four league games and yet I maintain that we’ve looked like a relegation side in all of those matches. Yes, the goalless draw at Coventry was a decent result, but I watched it thinking that it was just a question of seeing whether we could hang on for point, because we were never going to score.

A lot of people were upbeat after last week’s Cup game with Leeds, but I couldn’t really share that mood. On a messageboard (and possibly on here), i likened the reaction to when a political party talks down their chances in a by election or worries out loud about how their leader will do in a head to head debate so that when things don’t go disastrously they can say that they’d defied expectations. Last Sunday, we scored from our only two worthwhile opportunities and then were overrun in the second half by a side with a shocking recent FA Cup record.

That said, I did hope that scoring twice against a Premier League side (albeit one some way short of using its strongest eleven) would give our  players a renewed sense of confidence in front of goal, but not a bit of it I’m afraid. This was a turgid and dull on the attacking front as the QPR, Coventry and Blackburn matches were, even if we did manage to score a goal and a good one at that.

However, Callum O’Dowda’s opener, a first time left footed finish from around the penalty spot following a mazy run and cross by Jaden Philogene, was one of just two on target efforts we had in the ninety minutes – I think the other one might have been a half hit Mark Harris effort early in the game which goalkeeper Ben Amos saved easily after he had made a mess of a cross.

So, that’s a miserable six attempts on goal in our last four league games. By comparison, Wigan, who looked very ordinary and gave the impression that they would be perfectly happy with a 0-0 draw, still managed to get four on target efforts in. Ryan Allsop was forced into three saves in the second half (two he made something of a meal of, but the third was a good one to deny sub, Ashley Fletcher) and another sub, Miguel Azeez, shot over from a very promising position on one of a few occasions after the break when City looked anything but a side with that decent goals against record.

So, on chances alone, Wigan were well worth their point, but, for much of the time, especially in the second half, after Andy Rinomhota came on to add some oomph to a pedestrian midfield, it felt like City had the edge – I suppose in that respect, it was a bit like a few games we’ve seen at Cardiff City Stadium in particular this season.

Whether the ground has staged a worse half of football in 22/23 than the first one today must be open to doubt though. City were slow and cumbersome in their attempts to move the ball – time was this midfield looked decent to good by Championship standards, but Ryan Wintle has slipped from the standards he had set for himself lately and Joe Ralls is struggling this season in comparison to what he’s given us in the past.

It was the same front four as started the game with Leeds, but where they had all had their moments that day, none of them hit any heights here. Philogene was the best of them I suppose, but he always wants too many touches – to be fair, his skill sometimes means he gets away with it, but it’s still something he needs to work on. Isaak Davies was clogged a few times by Curtis Tilt without the defender even being punished by having a foul given against him, but he kept on coming back for more. However, things never really went for him – he wasted City’s best first half chance as he failed to get a clean headed contact on a Sheyi Ojo cross and had an audacious lobbed effort that just cleared the bar (although ref Jeremy Simpson gave a corner, so maybe that was our second on target effort?). As for Mark Harris and Ojo, there’s not much to say really, they weren’t terrible, but I barely noticed them – the former was one of three players withdrawn at half time (Ralls and cut head victim Jack Simpson were the others) and the latter made way for Callum Robinson around the hour mark.

O’Dowda’s goal came in the eighty second minute. Before that it had been a dead cert for one of those games where one goal was going to win it – but, this is a City side which is currently giving the impression that they couldn’t hold on to our lead even if it came in the ninety second minute and, so, for a second successive game, they were denied that elusive victory well into “injury” time.

Four minutes added time had been signaled and yet six had been played when Will Keane scored from about six yards out after ex City man Josh Magennis headed down a deep cross. However, I don’t think the ref can be blamed for playing on too long. Firstly, a City fan thought he was being clever by delaying the game by keeping hold of the ball when it flew into the crowd in the Grandstand/Canton Stand corner and then there was a fracas/outbreak of handbags between Perry Ng, who was on the floor holding his face, and Magennis which saw the Wigan man booked. Magennis was definitely not happy with that outcome and it may have fired him up sufficiently to make sure he won that header above Curtis Nelson that led to the goal.

City should never have let Wigan get into a crossing position though. They wasted a two on two break and then lost possession well up the pitch twice and the second time the visitors were able to work the ball seventy or eighty yards forward with barely a challenge put in by City.

Mark Hudson called City’s play in those closing minutes naive and it turned out that Keane’s late, late goal signaled the end of the road for our manager because it’s emerged as I write this that he has been sacked with the recently appointed first team coach Dean Whitehead taking temporary charge.

I’m sure Hudson would still be in charge if Keane’s goal didn’t go in – watch someone come along in the next few days to prove me wrong, but no one gets sacked hours after their team has won do they?

Yet, I can’t help thinking that if it hadn’t happened today, the sacking would have happened soon. As always, I’ll preface what I say about Hudson by stating that I like him and wanted him to succeed, but, whereas with Steve Morison it was clear that there was a plan and, for better or worse, we were sticking to it, I never got that feeling with Hudson.

It all came to a head for me once we went 1-0 down at Blackburn – after that, goal, we looked like a bunch of kids having a game in the playground during the lunch break!

As the winless weeks went by, we just seemed to get more and more ragged and shapeless and you could almost see the confidence draining out of the team.

I called the decision to sack Steve Morison ludicrous, but that was entirely down to what I thought was its ridiculous timing as he was only given a fortnight with the squad he had put together. I’m not going to be as critical about this sacking, but what I will say is that, having got it wrong by appointing Morison from within, it takes a special kind of ineptitude to then go and do exactly the same thing again – one of the funniest things I’ve read during this miserable season was City being likened to Liverpool with the way they used to appoint managers from within their famous boot room in the eighties!

Surely even this lot won’t offer the job to Whitehead if we go up to Leeds and win on Wednesday will they? If he has any sense, he’ll turn it down if they do. While I’m joking there, it has to be true that the Cardiff job must be seen as a poisoned chalice given what’s happened since Neil Warnock left hasn’t it? Rightly or wrongly, I’ve always felt that the quality of applicant we get when the manager’s job is vacant has been at least partially limited by how the people in charge of Cardiff City are perceived within the game. Maybe I’ve got that wrong, but, surely, if it ever is going to be true, now is the time for it to be so.

Let’s not forget that although the full transfer embargoes imposed by FIFA and the EFL have been overturned after the payment of the first installment of the Emiliano Sala transfer fee, we still can’t pay a fee for players in this window (or the next two of them as things stand). So, it’s just free transfers and loans for us until the summer of 2024 and why is that? Because we needed to pay the first instalment of the Sala fee to Nantes within thirty days of the EFL embargo being imposed on us – our failure to do that means that, effectively, we paid up too late.

Why should this be? The cynic in me can’t help thinking that the plan was never to spend much in the January window and the continuation of part of the embargo on a “technicality” enables us to “blame” the football authorities for our lack of spending. If I’m wrong there, doesn’t it mean that if the plan always was to pay up when it came to the Sala first instalment, hasn’t someone cocked up, because now we’re still under sanctions when we didn’t need to be?

Maybe it’s best if I don’t speculate too much, but as they survey the wreckage of this season tonight and contemplate the serious prospect of us going down come May, can the people in charge of the financial control of the club and the hiring and firing of its managers look in the mirror and seriously think they’ve done a good job of running Cardiff City in the last decade or so?

As for other football, the Academy team responded to their midweek Youth Cup defeat at Oxford United with a 4-1 win over Watford at Leckwith. A couple of Lewys Ware goals had us 2-0 up at half time and, after Watford had reduced the deficit, Tanatswa Nyakhuwa scored twice to confirm the win. At local non-league level, the recent wet weather meant plenty of postponements, but Treherbert Boys and Girls Club returned to winnings ways in the First Division of the Highadmit South Wales Alliance League by trashing Cwm Welfare 6-0 to stay top of the table.

Anyway, on to happier times, a further reminder that my book on our 1975/76 promotion is on sale now in paperback form or as an e book – it’s called Tony Evans Walks on Water and can be bought from Amazon at