Blackburn Rovers came to Cardiff City Stadium badly out of form and without a goal in four games I think it was and passed us off the park as they eased to a 3-1 win which played them back into form. We could have gone eight points clear of a Queens Park Rangers team who came here in our next home game stuck at the bottom of the table with just one win all season, they got what looked a lucky goal, but then comfortably held us at arm’s length to record a 2-0 win that played them into form.
Tonight, Preston visited Cardiff City Stadium without an away win and without a win of any kind in nine games and were given an absolute gift of a goal just after half time before confirming their win with what’s becoming a tradition this season whereby an a2ay team winning 1-0 scores a second in added time, just to get the home fans angrier or, more alarmingly, more apathetic and make our already poor goal difference even worse.
Let’s be clear, our last three home games have been ones that most other teams would go into expecting to win. In each of them we’ve entertained an out of form team and yet we’ve ended up with exactly what we’ve deserved on our performance – nothing.
The only goal we’ve managed to score in these matches was from a rebound after a penalty had been saved and I’m afraid that, after an all too brief run where we actually started to look like we were enjoying playing at home, we are back to the usual rubbish that we’ve seen through all but the very start of this decade – the difference this time being that, so far, this team are unable to win away matches.
Remember all of the upbeat talk about what I’ve seen described as our best ever transfer window? How many of our summer signings could be regarded as members of what Omer Riza would consider his strongest eleven? Alex Robertson definitely gets in and Callum Chambers has always started when he was fit. You could argue Anwar El Ghazi would be in it, but he’d been benched for a game before his recent injury.
So, being charitable, I’d say three and one of those is very arguable, while as we only had Dimi Goutas as a centre back left over from last season, it was certain that he’d have a new partner alongside him this time around – after a particularly accident prone showing tonight, you have to say Chambers is a lucky boy to be considered a first choice and you have to wonder how much longer that will last.
Tonight, as usual, we had £4 million’s worth of summer centre back signings on the bench as well as El Ghazi and Chris Willock. £2 million January signing David Turnbull is injured, but was a sub in the Blackburn game, while we have a £2 million striker, also injured who was struggling to get on the pitch for Kortrijk when he was fit.
You might see a bit of a theme developing here – injuries. We have had so many of them since the pre season visit to Central Europe and they just keep on coming – Turnbull went off at Coventry ten days ago and there’s still no confirmation from the club as to what’s wrong with him and the same applies to Ollie Tanner, who was not in tonight’s squad.
Tanner is a pretty inconsistent performer who still has things to learn about being a week in, week out player in this league, but it shows how weak we are that I think we really missed him tonight.
Tanner isn’t a real speed merchant of a winger, but he has a bit of pace about him – that’s especially important after a game where I can’t remember our lack of pace all over the pitch being more obvious.
Callum Robinson is considered fit enough to start, but we’re told he has a chronic Achilles injury and it must be said that he’s been playing like someone who is struggling with a chronic injury lately (especially in the three home matches I’ve mentioned). That’s why I’m reluctant to be too critical of him, but I must say that there’s just not been any burst of acceleration to his game lately.
Just to return to the subject of injuries for a while and the questions as to why we have so many of them,, why so many injured players suffer “relapses” (e.g. Etete, Davies and Ramsey) and why they take so long to regain fitness, I suppose it’s reasonable to assume that a hierarchy which appoints its, interim, managers on the cheap and gets by on a minimal number of coaches to keep expenses down are probably going to rely on a skeleton, cut price, medical staff as well.
Take everything I’ve written up to now, combine it with the self evident ineptitude of those at the top and should we really be surprised that tonight’s was a third straight home performance, along with the lucky draw at Sheffield Wednesday, which had relegation written through it like you get with a stick of rock? I think that, although I allowed myself to get excited about a few performances where we looked like a top half team, I have to also accept that we’ve looked like a team set for the drop in about ten of our games so far.
Im not going to write much about it, but tonight was worse than the QPR game. We did have a couple of efforts cleared off the line, firstly when Jordan Storey got back to scrape clear a shot that an offside looking Yakou Meite did not hit well enough and then when Perry Ng’s header was nodded out by Jack Whatmough just as it was about to cross the line. However, for most of the time, City looked like a side which finds itself in the farcical situation of having a raw novice (Michael Reindorf) as their best option up front. Preston were nothing special, but they had the measure of us and, even if their first goal owed much to luck, they deserved their win.
The deadlock was broken just after half time when City were caught dozing after conceding a foul about thirty five yards out and never regained their shape or defensive discipline after the visitors took the free kick quickly. I’m still not really sure what happened after Mads Frokjaer crossed, but, apparently, the ball deflected off Goutas onto Chambers and from there into the net. You couldn’t blame Chambers for what was an unlucky deflection, but his performance was an error strewn one and with Goutas culpable for the second goal when he presented Milutin Osmajic with a run in on goal, perhaps it’s time that the £4 million pounds worth of central defenders who have been sat on the bench for months got the chance to show what they can do?
So, there’s no “new manager bounce” for Omer Riza second time around it seems, instead he’s a rookie manager of an injury ravaged team on a miserable six game winless run with an understaffed coaching line up and a hierarchy that have presented a challenge that far more experienced managers than him have not been able to overcome.
I’ve just watched the video of Riza’s post match press conference on the club website and at least he’s saying the right things. Presented with a chance to sugercoat things by one of the questioners, he, instead, criticised the application, heart and ability of his players and did not seek to hide. Riza was let down badly by a group of players who were happy to go on the record about how much they wanted him in charge a few weeks ago and yet here, the attitude of many of them was as bad as it was in Erol Bulut’s final games at the club.
As mentioned earlier, Riza is getting no help from the hierarchy at the club and is expected to succeed with a well under strength coaching set up. I find it impossible not to feel some sympathy for someone who has been handed the most poisonous of chalices, but then you come on to his substitutions tonight.
I don’t think I’ve mentioned Meite’s reaction after his goal at Coventry and then on social media after that game have I? Seems he wasn’t happy with how the fans had been treating him lately. Well, all I can say to that if he seriously thinks that a striker who has scored three times in a season and a half, who has yet to score a home goal and whose general level of performance is below the standard expected for this league is being hard done by then it asks serious questions about attitudes within the dressing room – Meite has not been good enough for this level since signing for us nearly eighteen months, it’s as simple as that.
Very early in tonight’s game, Meite had a reasonable chance and, honestly, it’s hard to imagine how, in technical terms, someone being played as a striker/winger at this level could have got it more wrong. Yet, after all that I’ve said in this paragraph and the one before it about Meite, he was contributing more than Robinson was, yet it was he who made way just after Preston took the lead. Similarly, while Joel Bagan and Andy Rinomhota were hardly havinh outstanding matches, there were plenty in blue doing worse than them and yet it was they who came off at the same time as Meite.
In the last two home games especially, Riza has only added to the reasons why a sizeable number of City fans think he is clearly out of his depth and, as someone who thinks of himself as fairly supportive of Riza, I have to admit that it’s hard to mount an argument against them at the moment – there is so much wrong at the club currently that not just relegation, but a bottom of the table finish, looks on the cards based on almost half a season’\s evidence.
Finally, it was pretty laboured, but at least City made it through to the Fourth Round of the FA Youth Cup last night with a 3-2 win at Leckwith over a stubborn Chesterfield team that were the better side in the second half after a first period which looked like they were only intent on damage limitation.
Dan Ola headed City into a deserved lead after about forty minutes and he scored from the spot after what I thought was a harsh decision against the visitors to put us two up at the hour stage. Chesterfield got a goal back, but Mannie Barton looked to have made the game safe when he got our third after Jake Davies’ shot had hit the post. However Chesterfield responded again immediately to ensure that the final minutes were more fraught than they needed to be given how dominant we’d been in the first half.
Thank you, Paul, for stressing that after last night’s disastrous performance we really are already in a relegation struggle … although struggle is a positive way of performing and there was little or nothing at all about last night’s effort that could be seen as positive. And at half-time did Riza tell the players to stop passing again and again across and back and to start looking always for attacking play going forward? If he did they paid no attention, apart from O’Dowda who alone seemed to know where the Preston goal was. Well done and thank you to the supporters who stayed to the end but there will be fewer and fewer bothering to turn up from now on.
Absolutely spot on. Relegation looms even larger with a group of players that have a very limited profile in terms of skill aptitude and attitude.The problem now is that even the good players will start to be affected by the ‘virus’ of ineptitude that exists in the majority. If the lack of a finishing forward of any quality is not addressed soon then Cardiff will definitely become a League 1 outfit next year. Relegation may in the end become a salvation allowing a new broom a clean sweep. Let’s face it we were very lucky by default to escape relegation last year. I feel sorry for Omer and any future manager inheriting this situation …….poisoned chalice?
Thanks Paul, for a fine detailed report of last night’s farce. It was men against boys was it not? In some ways literally… because they looked such a bigger team than us.
Reading the player ratings in WOL, whilst in favour of freedom of expression, I am now reluctantly of the opinion that Glen Williams should be sacked: there is a limit to his repeated bizarre ratings. Last night’s were his craziest… and his choice for ‘City man of the match award’ can only be seen as some sort of ‘black comedy’ joke. A player whose political stance on Gaza greatly impressed me… but nothing he has done for us with his feet has. I recall him when he was a decent player at Villa, but now alas he has lost all motivation.
No player was worthy of a 6… and only O’Dowda and possibly Alnwick and Bagan worthy of a 5. There were several only just scraping a 3… the (as usual) too easily brushed aside and surprisingly slow Robinson, Rubin (stop playing backwards) Colwill, Goutas (no surprise he cannot make the Greece national team) and Robertson… (alas Alex for all his work rate is not even a Tommy Doyle, let alone a driving force in midfield à la a Bryan Robson wannabe, as some suggested he was at Pompey last season).
And it does not bear thinking about that we lost our one jewel in Mark McGuinness (and potential captain for years to come?) to replace him with Calum Chambers… a player who I genuinely think to be our weakest first choice centre back for over 20 years. I’d give him a 2. He was so desperately poor.
But there was one man poorer: Omer Riza. He truly morphed into Erol Bulut last night. His team played backwards and square, and unlike the energetic Preston management couple, he stood slumped with hands in pockets, totally undemonstrative. Someone said to me last night, ‘if only Vincent had kept him without a short term contract, he would have been passionately urging his team on from the sidelines’. An interesting point of view, that I cannot easily refute.
Look… the plain fact is that our recent transfers-in have all been duds, and we now have the worst squad of players since we came up following the 1-0 extra time play-off win over QPR, two decades or so back. Alas, we are doomed to go down.
A final point on throw-ins. If there were statistics to show which team of the 24 Championship clubs most often lost possession of the ball within 10 seconds of them taking a throw-in, then I guarantee it will be us. Indeed strike ‘24’, and insert ‘all 92’ in the four tiers. We are hopeless.
No movement from teammates to help the thrower… and the number of throw-ins that go backwards are shocking. It made me hanker for the days of Neil Warnock when he had long three long distance throwers on his books… and if there was no obvious recipient for a throw-in when in our own half, he would always get his team to throw ‘up the touchline’ and gain yardage… usually with another throw-in going to us.
Exciting? Of course not. But at least we did not surrender possession so pitifully as we have been all this season from our throw-ins.
Oh and before closing… I am a Jak Alnwick fan, but I realise managerial pressure is on him to play out from the back. So I cut him some slack there, as he inevitably passes the ball to his ponderous back four to add to our possession stats with their negative square passing to one another, as we all fall asleep. But one thing for sure, Jak is no captain.
Is Ramsey finished? Or is he coming back? One thing for sure, he is the only man with the character and gravitas to be in the middle of the park leading by example, urging on his teammates, and scolding them for an occasional lack of effort.
TTFN,
Dai.
Apols for my slipshod submission yesterday. A supernumerary ‘long’ and ‘one thing for sure’ being TWO things for sure. Pitiful from me.
You deserve better. Sorry.
DW
Thanks for the replies after what has to be a serious candidate for worst performance of the season. I can only agree with you Dai about the markings on the Wales Online site. I thought no one in the team played well at Sheffield Wednesday and it was much the same against QPR – if anything, Wednesday was even worse. As I mentioned in my piece, I thought Bagan and Rinomhota were among those having reasonable games and couldn’t understand why they were among the ones substituted with the second half barely under way and I went into some detail about how little Meite has done for us over the elngth of his contract, but he seemed more likely to cause Preston a problem than Robinson who has often looked less than fully fit to me in recent games.
We passed the ball too slowly, but I thought the almost complete of pace in the team was more of one because I don’t see that situation improving until certain players are fit again and that seems some way off yet. In that respect, Riza has been unlucky, but he’s looked powerless to alter things when they were going badly wrong in our last three home games – with Sheffield United coming to Cardiff City Stadium next, Riza could really do with at least a point today.
Roger, I’m convinced that, whether it be this season.or not, we’re heading for relegation in the not too distant future unless the club owner has a serious change of mind or sells the club on to someone else – I say little chance of the second option happening until the Emiliano Sala situation is resolved and, on all of evidence we have at the moment says that the first one is even less likely. So, to some extent, I agree that we may as well go down this season and I’d be looking to see if the good youngsters we have sink or swim in League One – the number of players in a failing squad who are out of contract next summer means that yet another rebuild is likely and bringing in fifteen or so cheap newcomers like we did two years was, at best, only a very limited success, so why not show a bit more faith in youth?
Graham, I’ve been surprised how much home crowds have been maintained at a decent level despite the fact that in recent years, they’ve seen so few wins and even less good quality performances. However, it’s beginning to look now as if the dominoes are starting to fall and there are also signs that a bunch of players who have got off lightly up to now because people have tended to blame Tan, Dalman and Choo or whoever was manager more are now looking more critically at their performance and attitude – in the majority of cases, both of those were just not good enough on Wednesday.