THE worst Cardiff City performance of the past five years.

Posted on February 22, 2011 by The other Bob Wilson

There are a fair number of City supporters who believe that the 2-0 win at Middlesbrough in the Quarter Final of the FA Cup in 2008 was the most complete performance they have seen from the team. For myself, it was the most dominant of any of the giant killing jobs we have done on top flight clubs that I have seen and, being honest, I’m struggling to remember a match in which so many of our players all played near the top of their game at the same time. However, you have to wonder where that marvelous performance came from, because eight days earlier, a City side which started with ten of the team that demolished Middlesbrough gave a pitiful display in losing at home to relegation bound Leicester City – I did wonder whether I was going over the top with the title I gave this piece, but I don’t think I am, forget about 6-0 at Preston, 2-0 at home to Barnsley or 3-0 at Bristol City, this was as bad as it gets for recent City teams!

Although City had played well in beating Wolves in the Fifth Round of the Cup, the fine run of form which had seen us be transformed from relegation strugglers to Play Off contenders had blown itself out through February 2008 and when lowly Leicester came to Ninian Park on St. David’s Day, it was to face a team that had taken only one point from their last four league matches whilst scoring just twice in the process. With just four wins from the seventeen matches they had played since they had dominated a televised 0-0 draw with us at the Walker’s Stadium, the optimism that was around Leicester at that time following Ian Holloway’s appointment as manager had long since departed – they came into the game with a buffer of three points over the bottom three, but had played more games than the sides around them.

First of all, let”s get the mitigating circumstances out of the way – the game was played on a bright, but very blustery day and as the strong wind blowing straight down the ground from the Canton Stand billowed the goal nets and made the corner flags come out horizontal to the ground in the moments before kick off, it was obvious that we weren’t going to see a classic. However, the conditions can only be offered as a partial excuse for the horror show that home supporters were going to endure over the next ninety minutes – Leicester were nothing special, but they didn’t have to be as they emerged with a victory which was more comfortable than the 1-0 scoreline suggests.

Leicester players congratulate keeper Paul Henderson for his killer pass which put Darren Purse through on goal for the winner.

After just five minutes, home keeper Peter Enckelman gave City fans a taste of things to come as he miskicked a clearance to D.J. Campbell to leave the Leicester striker clean through on goal only for the Finnish international to then make up for his error with a fine save. This was typical of an eccentric performance by Enckelman who soon after did well to keep out a Steve Howard header, but, besides his part in the decisive goal, the keeper’s kicking and decision making was awry throughout. At least Enckelman had his goods moments in the game mind, for most of his team mates it never got any better than poor – for example, I saw Aaron Ramsey’s performance last week against Burnley harshly described as the worst he has given in a City shirt on a messageboard, I can only assume that the person making that comment wasn’t at this game because Ramsey’s display was, comfortably, the worst I have seen from him in our first team.

In saying that, Aaron wasn’t the worst of a bad bunch by any means, but, as it often was when City had a shocker, it was skipper Darren Purse who got most of the flak. Purse and his highly rated centreback partner Roger Johnson both had poor matches, but it was the way that the former tucked away the match winning goal that singled his performance out from the dross that his team mates produced. Visiting keeper Paul Henderson spent most of the game with his slippered feet up, smoking his pipe and reading the paper, but occasionally he did have to field an aimless ball forward by City and just before the half hour mark, he had to leave the crossword he was doing to punt a ball downfield. Inevitably, it caught on the wind and was dropping about twenty five yards from the City goal  – with no Leicester player anywhere near, it should have been a simple ball to deal with, but panic set in for some reason as Enckelman came charging from his goal and Purse backtracked quickly.

What happened next was difficult to fathom – it looked to me as if Purse was trying to volley the ball out for a corner, but, instead, the ball came off his leg and started rolling slowly towards the City goal. Unfortunately, Enckelman had come out too far, too quickly and could only watch helplessly as the ball continued on it’s slow but inevitable path into the back of our net. It must have taken about eleven or twelve seconds from Henderson kicking the ball to it barely disturbing our net and eight of those were after Purse made contact with it – this own goal doesn’t beat Jason Bowen’s corker against Crewe as the best, and funniest, one I have seen us score, but it’s right up there in my top five!

Darren Purse celebrating another goal of his at the Grange End - this time a penalty in the 6-1 demolition of Crewe Alexandra.

If you were going to nominate a candidate for a comedy own goal in that team, it would have to be Darren Purse because such things had a habit of happening to him. When Purse was bad, he was truly awful and it is typical of football fans that, as the years go by, it is the unfortunate incidents and gaffes for which players tend to become remembered. In the case of Darren Purse though, this would be very unfair because, for every one nightmare there were ten and more performances where he led by example and stood up to be counted.

In many ways Darren Purse is an old fashioned footballer for whom the link between player and fans is still a genuine one – it was typical of the man that he not only went along to see us play at Leeds earlier in the season, but he was also there right in amongst our supporters. I also admired the bottle he showed when taking penalties while playing in a position not normally associated with doing such things and I think that it is great that he now has a chance to end his career playing for the club he supported as a boy – football needs more people like Darren Purse.

1 March 2008

Cardiff City 0 Leicester City 1

City Enckelman; McNaughton. Purse (o.g.), Johnson, Capaldi; Ramsey, Rae, McPhail (Thompson), Whittingham (Scimeca); Hasselbaink, Parry; Subs (not used) Oakes, Sinclair, Blake

Leicester Henderson; Stearman, Kisnorbo, N’Gotty, Clapham; Oakley, Hendrie (Mattock), Clemence; Hume (Wesolowski), Howard, Campbell (Hayles); Subs (not used) Chambers, Fryatt

HT 0-1

Att. 13,355

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Trying to keep a sense of perspective.

Posted on February 20, 2011 by The other Bob Wilson

Disappointing as yesterday’s 2-1 defeat at Nottingham Forest was, I think supporters need to look at a bigger picture in terms of the run of fixtures we are involved in. Frankly, I have never known such a long and demanding run of games as the one we are currently in the midst of and so I make no apologies for making this piece more stats orientated than usual on here as I try to show just how well we have done since Boxing Day in maintaining our position close to an automatic promotion spot.

Firstly though, just a few words about yesterday’s game. I must admit that I was concerned when I heard our team because, not only were we going to be missing our best midfield player, we were also without our best finisher. More than that though, the side had an “open” look to it which made it appear ill equipped to deal with Forest’s speed on the break because it lacked players who would, naturally, sit in front of the back four – I would have gone for two such players for this game and played 4-5-1. However, in a typically brave Dave Jones style start to the game, our manager’s tactics would have been proved to be right but for some fine saves from Lee Camp and some slightly substandard finishing from us as we shook Forest with our positive approach early on – we could easily have been 2-0 up in twenty minutes.

After that though, Forest always looked the more likely team to me and, perhaps, just about deserved their win (it certainly wasn’t as clear cut as their manager claimed it was though) in a game where all three goals had an element of doubt to them for me. I say element of doubt there, but in reality, I was in no doubt whatsoever that we should not have been given a penalty – it was just a routine challenge by McKenna and I am sure that Seyi Olofinjana must have been surprised by Mr Moss’ decision (it was the only thing the ref – who I have thought has tended to favour us when he has done games in Cardiff in the past – gave us all day mind!). As for Forest’s first goal, Dave Jones said that Wes Morgan had a ladder on Mark Hudson’s back when he scored and it is very unusual to see Hudson beaten so conclusively in the air like that, but I thought Morgan used his superior strength to get into the position to score while with Earnie’s match winner, I thought it looked pretty close to being offside (I wasn’t watching the live pictures at the time of the goal mind and so it might be that a television shot which showed it to be onside was shown then).

Earnie does what he did a hundred times and more for us and scores a goal which might prove to be very significant come the end of the season.

Anyway, the main aim of this piece is to be draw attention to how unbelievably testing a series of fixtures we are in – here is a list of our last eleven league opponents which shows their league position when we played them and also, where appropriate, has some comments about the form they were in at the time;

Coventry – 5th position, had lost one game in five.

Watford – 11th, unbeaten in four and had inflicted QPR’s first defeat of the season on them in their last game by thrashing them 3-1 at Loftus Road

Bristol City – 19th

Leeds – 4th, unbeaten in twelve

Norwich – 4th, one defeat in twelve.

Watford – 6th, six straight league wins (seven in all competitions).

Reading – 8th, one defeat in twelve.

Swansea – 3rd, one defeat in six.

Scunthorpe – 23rd.

Burnley – 8th, one defeat in six.

Forest – 4th, one defeat in eleven and unbeaten in 34 home matches.

So, in that group of games we had two which had an “easy” look to them on paper (Bristol City and Scunthorpe), but in the other nine we faced teams that had between them lost six matches out of a total of seventy four at the time when we played them. Under the circumstances, I think we have done really well to come out of these matches with a record which reads;

P   9   W   4   D   3   L   2   f   15   a   13   Pts   15

Things show no sign of getting easier either because, as of now, the records of our next three opponents look like this;

Leicester – 7th, seven wins and a draw in their last eight matches.

Hull – 10th, one defeat in seventeen and unbeaten in their last eight.

Ipswich – 13th, unbeaten in six.

Hull have to travel to Derby before they play us next Saturday, while Ipswich have to go to QPR and then entertain Portsmouth before they come to Cardiff City Stadium on 5 March, so, if those games go to form, I would say that Hull will not have lost their unbeaten record when we face them, while Ipswich will come here on the back of one defeat in eight (I can’t see them getting anything at Loftus Road). This would mean that by the time we have played Ipswich, we will have completed a run of fourteen matches which included twelve against opponents who had, collectively lost eight matches out of one hundred and ten when we faced them!

City players celebrate Peter Whittingham's penalty that put us on level terms for all of three minutes.

If we can manage something like four points from those three matches, then it would mean that we will have come through a large group of fixtures the like of which I have not seen in nearly fifty years of supporting the club with a minimum of twenty two points. Now, in terms of any two points a game target, that doesn’t look great, but in the context of the severity of the fixtures, I would say it would be a terrific return. Yes, it would leave us with a bit of ground to make up on the top two, but with only QPR, Burnley and, possibly, Millwall left to face who could be called promotion rivals, it would leave us ideally placed to kick on in our last eleven matches……….on paper anyway.

I added that qualification because I’m afraid that it might well not turn out to be that straightforward. Firstly, I would say that yesterday’s match offered further evidence of a brittleness which has often appeared in the really big games under Dave Jones – when it really counts it is so often Cardiff that takes the step back in a battle where determination and character become so important. In that respect a bit less standing (or sitting) around with their arms outstretched waiting for a referee’s whistle that is never going to come would come in handy (I’m not just talking about Jay Bothroyd here either – I can think of at least three others in our much vaunted forward line who are often guilty of doing the same thing).

Also, the trouble we had breaking down a limited Scunthorpe side shows the danger of taking a lot of the lower half of the table sides we face in our closing fixtures for granted. Iv’e talked about how tough our current run of games is, but, on the other hand, in our run of poor results starting with the Swansea defeat that ended on New Year’s Day, we faced four sides currently in the bottom six and we got just four points from these matches – a decent return from our next three games will give cause for optimism, but there are still recurring weaknesses that will need to be addressed if we are to take advantage of the opportunity that our closing fixtures give us.

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