Seven decades of Cardiff City v Peterborough United matches.

Posted on April 4, 2026 by The other Bob Wilson

It seems to be generally accepted that the clubs currently in third to fifth positions in League One (Bolton, Bradford and Stockport) are guaranteed a finishing place of sixth at worst.

Therefore, it looks like there’s only one Play Off place still up for grabs and, before yesterday, nearly everyone giving an opinion as to which team would fill it were saying Plymouth Argyle. The pile on for Plymouth was so strong that they were expected by many to beat Bolton at Home Park yesterday afternoon, but, despite the visitors being reduced to ten men just before half time when the game was still goalless. Bolton were able to record a superb win by 2-1 with one of the goals coming from only their second penalty of the season – a decision which leaves City now by themselves as the team out of the the promotion challengers that has been awarded the least penalties.

It was not a good day for City who had to sit the Good Friday programme out because of Port Vale’s place in the Quarter Finals of the FA Cup. Bradford managed one of those unspectacular 1-0 home wins that they seem to specialise in these days when they beat Northampton and Stockport were surprisingly comfortable 3-0 winners over Wycombe. As for Lincoln, there was further proof that they’re fated to get the title as they squeezed past Wimbledon at home with the only goal having a pretty obvious looking hand ball by an Imps player in the build up.

City are next in action on Monday when they go to what I’d call their biggest bogey ground in the country, London Road, Peterborough. We’ve already played there this season as we fell meekly to a 1-0 defeat in the First Round of the FA Cup in former Swansea boss Luke Williams’ first game in charge.

Williams’ initial impact was so impressive that around Christmas, there were those who were tipping his team, which had been looking on course for relegation before he arrived, for a Play Off place.

However, Posh’s form has fallen away since then with only three wins, and six defeats since 27 January, although in fairly typical Peterborough style, two of those victories have been by 6-1 and 5-0!

In fact the 5-0 victory over a doomed looking Rotherham is the only one by Williams’ team in their last eight matches. So, you’d like to think that despite our own drop off in results recently, there’s no reason why we can’t go there and win. However, the game is being played at a venue where we’ve only won once and, certainly in the Championship. there’ve been quite a few occasions where what looks a stronger Cardiff side on paper has come a cropper. There’s no logical reason I can think of as to why previous results on a ground where we’ve only played once in the league since 2013 (we drew that game) should have an effect on the outcome of a game, but football is littered with examples which prove that it does!

Away from London Road, the good news is that one or both of Bolton and Stockport will drop points as they face each other at the Reebok (if it’s still called that). However, if it it turned out to be a home win, we got our usual defeat at Peterborough and then Bolton won here in a week’s time, then the gap between the teams would be down to two points with us facing away games at clubs still hoping to make it into the Play Off’s in our next two matches.

However, we’d then play our remaining home matches against a couple of teams who will probably be relegated by then before a final away match against a side with nothing to play for – we still have to be big favourites for automatic promotion, no matter how hairy the table may start to look.

Anyway, on to the quiz with the usual seven questions with answers to be posted on Sunday.

60s. Born in a village not too far from the team he first played for, his goalscoring record was such that it would have had the top flight clubs circling if it was repeated these days, but, instead, all it got him was a move down the football pecking order to Peterborough. At the lower level, the goals came at an incredible rate, but, although he ended up at a bigger club by reputation, they were still in the lower leagues at the time. Once again, his record for a club that was on the brink of big things was really impressive, but barely anyone seemed to notice and he moved to a striped team with near, more successful, neighbours for a season where his scoring rate fell below one every other game for the first time. Incredibly, that was him finished with the full time game – he’d only been in it for eight years and yet he’d scored a number of goals that most modern day strikers would be pleased with over, say, a fifteen year career, can you name him?

70s. I doubt it if this midfielder had his distinctive bald pate when he began his career in 1953 as what was called a left half at the time, but it was there when he was turning out for Peterborough in the early years of this decade. His first club wore stripes and were from his native county, Yorkshire, but he moved on to what was one of the biggest clubs in the country at the time, although they don’t have their troubles to seek these days, at the age of 22. Although he was a fairly regular starter for his new club during his two years with them, he was transferred to another side that has won European club trophies in their time for three seasons where, again, he was a regular starter. He’s best known for his time with his fourth club though where he played over two hundred games during his seven seasons with them and they won their only European trophy just as he was moving to Peterborough. He combined two roles while with Posh and went on to manage two clubs from Lancashire and one from Yorkshire beginning with a B. Who is he?

80s. At six foot six, this defender would be regarded as tall in the modern game, but he was a giant forty years ago! Along with his height, the most distinctive thing about him was his name – his first name is unique among footballers in my time supporting the game I believe and, although I can think of one or two others with his surname, it is very rare for a footballer. Very much a lower league journeyman he started off with his home town team where he wore their distinctive colours for six years, winning Player of the Season awards in three of the last four of them. His second club seem some way from a return to league football currently, but were, at one time, fairly regular opponents of City, if not too often in the league. Moving on quickly to Peterborough, he stayed with them for two years before returning to to the county where his second team are from to see out his career with reds from a junction, who is being described here?

90s. Winger with an alliterative name which may make you think of a traditional sporting event to be held this weekend. Peterborough were one of thirteen sides he represented, others included West Ham, Bournemouth, Peterborough, Partick Thistle and Hong Kong Rangers. After retiring he became a long term servant of the PFA and has also worked for UEFA, can you name him?

00s. Eyeball land at the start of race? (7,5).

10s. Fan of Welsh club in gain for the follically challenged!

20s. Lose a letter and you have star of a film about Cardiff!

Answers

60s. Terry Bly scored one hundred and forty six league goals in two hundred and sixteen matches while representing Norwich City, Peterborough United, Coventry City and Notts County between 1956 and 1964.

70s. Jim Iley had a long playing career mostly spent in the old First Division with Sheffield United, Spurs, Nottingham Forest, Newcastle and Peterborough where he was player/manager between 1969 and 1972. He also managed Blackburn, Bury and Barnsley.

80s. Wakely Gage made around 450 league appearances in a ten year career during which he represented Northampton, Chester, Peterborough and Crewe.

90s. Bobby Barnes (the teams pass under Barnes Bridge in the boat Race) played forty nine matches for Peterborough between 1992 and 1994.

00s. Bradley Allen.

10s. Jack Baldwin.

20s.Harley Mills (Haley Mills starred, along with her father John, in the 1959 film Tiger Bay).

Posted in Memories, 1963 - 2023 | Tagged | Comments Off on Seven decades of Cardiff City v Peterborough United matches.

Devastating defeat for Cardiff City/Vincent Tan in the French courts.

Posted on April 2, 2026 by The other Bob Wilson

Attention now switches back to club football and the seven game run in to this season which, amazingly, has little moire than a month left to go providing you do not make the Play Offs.

Cardiff City have got themselves in a position whereby they’re eleven points clear of third placed Bolton Wanderers with a substantially better goal difference. With only twenty one points to play for (fifth placed Stockport have twenty four to play for, but are three points behind Bolton), you’re looking at the chasing pack having to win their next four or five games to get to in a position where they can overtake us, but City are giving them a little hope as they’ve lost form just as fans were asking what game do you think we’ll confirm automatic promotion in.

In footballing terms, it would be disastrous for City to not go up automatically now given they’re in a position whereby their promotion chances have , amazingly, tended to increase despite them finding it harder to secure the wins that people had been taking for granted.

In truth, City’s loss of form would have to be transformed into a run where they get to the stage where they don’t know where the next point is coming from for us to miss out on a top two finish, but, if it were to happen, I’d give us little chance of success in the Play Offs.

It will be a humiliation if looked at in purely football terms if we end up still in League One next season, but you would hope that what is a young, developing squad could use it as part of a learning process and come back ready to get things right in 26/27. However, what happened in Nantes on Monday has added a new dimension to what occurs over our next seven games – our finances were already precarious (as indicated by the 24/25 accounts), but the conclusive defeat the court handed the club three days ago surely means that things have moved on now.

If you’re looking for a detailed breakdown of the Emiliano Sala case, you need to go somewhere else. From day one, I’ve accepted that the consequences of his tragic death more than seven years ago are beyond my level of full understanding. I can’t comment with any real authority on the world of agents, the minutiae of transfers deals, the negotiations which lead to them being concluded, aviation law and the validity of reports regarding how many points a team would have ended up with if a new player, who turned out to be unavailable for whatever reason, had been able to play a full part in the rest of the season.

No, any opinions on the various legal developments in the 2,600 plus days since that plane crashed not far from the Channel Islands that I’ve given on here have tended to be in the form of gut reactions.

Therefore, when the news emerged that City’s claim against Nantes for up to £120 million (the sum they contended they would have got when Emiliano Sala scored the goals to save us from relegation from the Premier League in 18/19) was thrown out (not just thrown out, they were also ordered to pay Nantes £480,000 in compensation for the damage to their reputation suffered by the French club with this sum is to be paid regardless of the outcome of any appeal by City against the decision), my gut reaction came out in what I posted on the City messageboard I use.

“Think it’s a bit too convenient to blame the French. What would you think of any club, no matter where they’re from. That ;-

1. Announces they’ve signed a player on a Friday for a club record fee. 
2. Three days later, the player is killed in a plane crash and, hardly surprisingly, a court case results in which the buying club claims that, contrary to what they said on their website, the player concerned was never theirs because they’d made a mistake in filling out some registration forms.
3. When they lose the court case, the buying club returns to the courts this time claiming eight times the amount they paid for the player from the selling club because they contend that’s how much money they lost by being relegated. They claim that the selling club, or their agent, were liable for the death of a player whose goals would have saved them from relegation.

Now, I would say that no matter what country the second case was held in, the buying club’s legal team would have faced a hell of a task convincing the court they had a winning case.”

It was pointed out to me in a reply that there was also a mix up whereby City were not insured in the event of Sala being unable to play for the club for any reason. As it turns out, I did debate with myself whether I should have included that in my message, but decided against it, because that was, seemingly, more down to an error by the insurance company than anything City had done.

Nevertheless, it all adds to a feeling of amateurism about the handling of the aftermath of Emiliano Sala’s death on the part of the club. That said, the mood music coming out of City, sections of the local press and supporters organisations was unfailingly positive going into this latest case.

It would appear that this optimism stemmed from two things. First, in a sort of “no win, no fee” agreement something like what we’ve all been offered by companies seeking compensation for what we’ve paid in HP for things like cars, electrical goods etc, a company was willing to offer City £12 million I believe it was based on their certainty that the case would be won. Secondly, the club seemed to believe that they had right on their side and, to a degree, the case was framed as a battle for football’s integrity – the fact that members of the Sala family backed City tended to give this line of argument more authority it seemed.

Therefore, any shock at the conclusive nature of City’s defeat has to be based mostly on the these two factors. However, speaking for myself, while I found the argument that a company had given City financial aid because they were so sure they had a winning case a pretty compelling one, there was also the realisation that trying to convince a court that Emiliano Sala would definitely have scored the goals which meant that the club would net a £100 million plus in things l;ike TV fees, prize money etc seemed such a long shot.

Again, the word “amateurish” springs to mind and this is only magnified by the fact that coming up to three days after the verdict was announced, the club have still not commented on the case and what happens next on their website. Rightly or wrongly, it feels like City are in state of shock following the verdict and don’t know what to do next . My own hope is that this will be an end to the legal wrangling,.

Unfortunately, I think it’s more likely that there will be an appeal by City which means that there’ll be more years of delay, so that, disgracefully, it will be something like a decade before the Sala family finally gets the opportunity for closure in a matter that has, surely, played a part in the deaths of other family members since that night in January 2019.

Posted in Out on the pitch, Up in the Boardroom | Tagged , | 2 Comments