Soon after the end of today’s match against Birmingham City at a sodden and wind swept Cardiff City Stadium I had a quick look on one of our opponents’ messageboards to see what they were saying about our best win of the season so far. Virtually the first message I saw was from some clown who said that there had been some strange results in the Championship today because of the atrocious conditions proving to be a leveling down factor which enabled the league’s poorer teams to “clog” their way to results they would not have got otherwise.
I’m sure the supporter concerned will not get to read this, but, if, somehow, they do, they should have a look at the match stats which, besides confirming we were clearly the better team, show that, in a match that was never dirty, we gave away ten free kicks and picked up one yellow card compared to twenty and two yellows from Birmingham.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/live/cmy4xjvp3pjjt#MatchStats
I then had a quick look on what I’ll always call Twitter and found that a City fan had reposted something from a Birmingham supporter marveling at our ability to retain control of the ball while playing at such a high pace.
In a way, this echoed what I had thought when I read that first message – while players often say that they like playing on a wet pitch which enables them to pop the ball about that bit quicker, the pitch today was too wet really with some standing water and the ball not running consistently.
I daresay the conditions did not help Birmingham, but I’ve read a lot this season about how they’ve adapted their game by becoming a bit more direct so that the ball does not spend quite as much time on the deck as it used to – given the way we’ve played under BBM these last two seasons, the conditions hardly suited us more than Birmingham, in fact I’d say the opposite applied.
Birmingham came here on a three game winning run with eight scored and none conceded in that time. The best pre match prediction I saw from the Podcast tipsters being a 1-1 draw, all of the others had us down to lose with us conceding at least two. That’s understandable in many respects because I think last week’s 3-0 win over a good QPR side, who beat the jacks 5-0 today, convinced many that the bluenoses were the real deal as far as top two challengers were concerned.
I’ve seen quite a bit of Birmingham this season and have been impressed – I thought they were the better team in their opening day draw at Sheffield United, deserved their win at Wrexham and likewise at West Brom. I also watched quite a bit of their only defeat before today at Norwich and thought they were the better side lost.
Birmingham are like Wrexham in that they have the financial resources to compete with the parachute payments clubs on something like equal terms. Yet, believe me or believe me not, I had quite a good feeling about today’s match because, although three of our twelve matches (QPR, Portsmouth and Blackburn) could justifiably e described as poor, in the other nine we have to varying degrees justified BBM’s confidence back in the summer that we could be a “dangerous” team at this level.
That’s why I don’t mind us being written off beforehand – as confidence increases among the players that we belong here, were becoming the sort of side that you underestimate at your peril.
So, I didn’t rule out what would have been a shock home win for many, but, where I was completely wrong was in thinking that, if we did win, it would be by something like 3-2. – what I didn’t see coming was a single goal victory achieved with our first clean sheet in fifteen competitive games!
All of these positive developments have, of course, been achieved against a backdrop of never ending disruption to some elements of the spine of the team and there was more today with yet another injury to a centreback as Krystian Bielik had to drop out at the end of the pre game warm up with a groin problem.
City had already named their starting eleven with Callum Scanlon included in place of Chris Willock on the left and Will Fish coming in for the suspended Gabe Osho. In the last minute reshuffle brought about by Bielik withdrawing, Joel Bagan moved to centreback, Scanlon back to left back, Cian Ashford going out to the wing and Jack Moylan dropping back to number ten with the fit again Yousef Salech brought into the team to lead the attack.
In his post match interview, Salech said he first knew two and a half minutes before kick off that he was in the starting line up. That may have been said half jokingly, but it did show that there was a lot of disruption to the team at very short notice and yet BBM spoke afterwards about his pride at how well his side had stuck to the pre game planning.
Birmingham, looking a confident and settled side despite the absence of their striker August Priske, edged the first few minutes and there was a dangerous, driven cross from their right which Fish did well to get a touch on to send the ball out for a throw in,
However, that was to be the visitors’ first half attacking highlight as they reached the interval with not a single goal attempt, on or off target, to show for their efforts.
This was a real feather in the cap for the makeshift back line with Perry Ng in particular doing well to subdue the very much in form Liam Miller on Birmingham’s left. However, those in front of the back four played a huge part in stifling the fourth placed visitors with Alex Robertson increasingly looking like a class act at this level and Joel Colwill, who I said had the best game I’d seen him play against Charlton I think it was, but he surpassed that here with his ability to win possession, keep possession, burst past opponents and get into attacking positions all seen to great effect – I honestly can’t name a man of the match on a day when everyone played so well, but many of those who did name one opted for Joel.
City went on to establish a degree of control, but never full control, as the half went on, however they were only to have three goal attempts to their name at the break. Importantly though, they had the lead and although it should have been by 2-0, they were happy to be just the one up in what was a tighter affair than expected.
Ollie Tanner, proving to be a real problem for left back Alex Cochrane because of the sheer variety of ways he looked to play when in possession, sent an angled drive into the 3,000 traveling fans from a promising position for one of our first half goal attempts while the other came from Salech.
The first one was from the penalty spot. All of a sudden, after two or three seasons when we barely got a penalty, we’ve had three of them in two home games. Unfortunately, the evidence so far is that, just like in 23/24 when we were being given them on a pretty regular basis, we’re not very good at them as we only have a success rate of one out of three.
Referee Tim Robinson pointed to the spot when Japanese midfielder Tomoki Iwta and Ng tried to reach Robertson’s corner – Ng did have hold of Iwta’s shirt for a second or two as the cross came in, but the fact that Ng’s shirt had been pulled to the extent that the number on his shirt could not be seen surely made the ref’s decision the right one.
After the controversy about who should take the second penalty against Watford, BBM indicated that Salech was definitely first choice in that regard, but here his effort was a poor one which enabled goalkeeper James Beadle to dive to his right to make a good, but hardly outstanding save.
Salech was much more impressive on 32 minutes when after a period of patient passing from left to right, Ng and Tanner combined to give the latter some space and I reckon he surprised Birmingham with a very early cross which tempted centreback Phil Neumann into thinking he could reach it only for Salech to bundle him aside and take a touch before guiding his shot past Beadle from eight yards for a very impressive piece of target man striker play.
City continued to give Birmingham little or no time to settle on the ball through the majority of the second half and they should really have been out of sight before the visitors roused themselves in the last fifteen minutes as City, perhaps, tired a little.
Salech shot and then headed just wide of the same post and the otherwise very impressive Ashford should have done better when we counter attacked impressively and Salech found him some ten yards out only for Beadle to block the shot which followed, then there was another effort from the same player which was blocked close to goal by Birmingham captain Christoph Klarer.
City brought on Willock for Tanner and Ronan Kpakio for Scanlon as Birmingham had one half chance and one very good opportunity late on through two of their substitutes – Marvin Ducksh volleyed over from around the penalty spot and then when the outstanding Fish headed into the path of Demarai Gray stood unmarked fifteen yards out, the otherwise underemployed Nathan Trott produced a good diving save to ensure we collected a well deserved third win of the season.
So, having taken four points off teams in the top four of the division in the last week City now find themselves six points above the bottom three and six points off eighth place and the last of the Play Off positions. Although the lack of squad depth remains a concern, current form suggests that we could be more concerned with the latter option mentioned above rather than the former if we could get a few more or our injured and suspended players available.
Before leaving today’s game, both BBM and goal scorer Salech spoke about how much a visit to Aberfan on Thursday by the squad and manager meant to them. It was the sixtieth anniversary of the awful disaster which saw a school and surrounding houses overrun by tarry slurry caused by a coal tip that was on top of a water spring sliding from its position above the village. There were 144 deaths with 116 of them being children and both manager and player made it sound as if the team had given that bit extra today in remembrance of the dead.
There were under 21s won a seven goal thriller at Charlton yesterday with the goals coming from Hayden Allmark, Gabriel Keita and two more from their player of the season so far, Jake Davies – highlights of the match can be seen here.
https://tv.cardiffcityfc.co.uk/videos/297e2292-fbdf-48b9-a1e2-e1efd7ba440e
The under 18s drew 2-2 with Millwall at Leckwith this afternoon with the goals coming from Gruff Evans and an own goal.
This was definitely the best performance I’ve seen from us this season, in part because Birmingham were better than Charlton and Watford.
The mindset of players is crucial to the performance, and so it was interesting to hear BBM say last week that Kristian Bieylik had spoken to the club psychologist about the death threats he received after the Portsmouth fan incident.
To my mind it’s likely that the team visit to Aberfan, along with the last minute change of team, and the atrocious weather in some ways brought out the performance we saw.
Our intensity yesterday was acknowledged after the game by Birmingham manager Chris Davies, who said when in possession their players invariably had a blue shirt pressing them.
Salech in his post-match interview acknowledged that it wasn’t his best performance, and as you pointed out Paul, we missed chances to extend our lead, while also being grateful to Nathan Trott for a brilliant save near the end to preserve our lead.
Our performance will however give the team confirmation that we deserve to be in this league, which we’ll need going into our next two tough games against Wolves away and West Ham at home!