January 2002 and Cardiff City suffer from the mother of all hangovers.

Posted on December 28, 2009 by The other Bob Wilson

We decided to treat ourselves to a seat in the Grandstand for the Leeds FA Cup tie in 2002 and as I climbed the stairs to the exit at the end of the game, I looked at those City “fans” rushing across the pitch towards the Grange End (not the ones who were celebrating a famous victory around the centre circle – they weren’t doing anything wrong) and said “I see the idiots are going to ruin our day again then”.

I claim no credit or kudos for being proved right over the following week, but, in saying that, the media reaction to what had happened off the field as opposed to on it left me shocked and disappointed – yes, some of the supporters of the club had, predictably, misbehaved on the big day, but the media reaction was, in my view, out of all proportion with what had happened. I had expected the off field antics to be the subject of indignant media reporting for a day or, possibly, two with the newspaper stuff soon becoming that weeks chip shop wrapping but I was wrong – the moralising  and criticism went on for a week and more.

Without wishing to sound too patronising about it, the way the red tops sense a story and then milk it for all it is worth meant that I suppose that there was always the possibility that the tabloids would have a field day, but the so called “quality” end of the market also got themselves heavily involved. In particular I remember this piece in the Guardian which, although making a fair point about the bad behavior not being limited to just supporters, contained some dreadful and false accusations about the meaning of the Ayatollah gesture. At least the hack concerned had the good grace to acknowledge his mistake but the nationals would not let the story go and so it was that when City played their first match after the Leeds game there were a gathering of journalists from the broadsheet media making, possibly, their first ever visit to Ninian Park – given what had happened the previous Sunday, their priority was hardly what happened out on the pitch!

That first game post Leeds was against Peterborough United and I’m afraid that the hacks saw little to get themselves worked up about in terms of crowd behavior and even less as far as City’s performance was concerned! Peterborough came to Ninian Park  just above the relegation zone owners of a poor away record which had seen them lose eight of the thirteen matches played on opponent’s grounds. As for City, they were just in the top ten with a home record which had similarities with this season as too few matches were being won and it was a useful away record which was keeping them within just two points of a Play Off place.

Therefore, under ordinary circumstances, I would guess the game would be seen as not quite a home banker but one which City should win. The thing is though that what had happened six days earlier meant that these were hardly ordinary circumstances. For a start, sides which pull off FA Cup giant killing acts quite often suffer a reaction to their heroics when they next play and, to add to that, the club had been a major story for nearly a week with virtually none of that attention being focussed on the group of players who had played so fantastically well against Leeds.

Because of what happened off the pitch against Leeds, those who gained one of the club’s best ever results have tended not to receive the credit they deserved for beating the team which led the Premiership when the game was played. If the City team felt resentful about about this lack of recognition then I for one wouldn’t blame them and their cause wasn’t helped when the local sporting public showed their traditional indifference to the “bread and butter” league stuff as only 11,301 bothered to turn up to watch the conquerors of Leeds perform.

Whilst I suppose that some would have been put off by the crowd misbehavior six days earlier, that was still a very poor turn out – nearly half of those who had seen us beat Leeds now found something better to do with their Saturday afternoon and the gate was even three thousand down on the 14,000 plus gates for the previous two home league matches.

The feeling of anti climax was palpable on the terraces beforehand and so I can only guess that the players felt the same way – certainly their performance that afternoon strongly suggested this. For a while, Peterborough appeared intimidated by what they had been reading and hearing during the week and if City could have capitalised on the visitor’s early nerves, then the outcome would probably have been different. The passion and fire which did for Leeds was missing this time though and the match became a low key affair which had supporters deciding that reading “”tough times never last, tough people do” a pamphlet they had been given as they entered the ground which set out, at great length, Sam Hammam’s response to the events of the past week.

On the field, City were edging the game in terms of possession and chances but had to make a change when Spencer Prior limped off to be replaced by Rhys Weston and perhaps they were still reorganising themselves defensively when Leon McKenzie (who made a habit of scoring against City in those days) reached a cross before a slow reacting Neil Alexander to nod the visitors into the lead.

Things went from bad to worse early in the second half when hesitancy between Weston and Scott Young enabled the on loan Spurs striker Neale Fenn to run through and score easily. Against Leeds Leo Fortune-West had turned the game when he came off the bench and Alan Cork introduced him hoping for something similar – instead though we saw the other side of Leo as a clumsy aerial challenge left a Peterborough defender in a heap and he was lucky that referee Warren only deemed his offence worthy of a yellow card.

Given the amount of money spent in assembling the team, expectations were very high at this time amongst supporters and this often revealed itself in a lack of patience which saw them turn against the players pretty quickly. Therefore, you might have thought that the final whistle would have been greeted by a barrage of boos and abuse for what, it has to be said, was one of the worst City performances of that season – however, with this being the same set of players that had done everyone proud in their previous game, they left the pitch to virtual silence as the crowd shuffled miserably out of the ground.

Beating Leeds was probably Alan Cork’s best result in his managerial career and I am sure he would have thought he had greatly increased his job security that evening. However, with City bowing out of the Cup in the next round at Tranmere and the inconsistent league results continuing, a manager who was never popular with large sectors of the club’s support was soon under pressure again – so much so that when Wigan scored four unanswered goals from corners less than six weeks later to leave City in eleventh position, Sam Hammam reacted by sacking Cork and replacing him with the recently installed Director of Football Lennie Lawrence.

12 January 2002

Cardiff City 0 Peterborough United 2 (McKenzie, Fenn)

City Alexander; Gabbidon, Prior (Weston), Young, Legg; Boland (Low), Kavanagh, Bonner, Brayson; Gordon (Fortune-West), Earnshaw Subs (not used) Maxwell, Bowen

Peterborough Tyler; Joseph, Rea (Cullen), Edwards, Williams; Farrell (Hooper), Oldfield, Bullard, Toner; McKenzie (Clarke) 1, Fenn 1 Subs (not used) Forinton, Connor

HT 0-1

Att. 11,301

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Typically Cardiff City.

Posted on December 27, 2009 by The other Bob Wilson

Although football and, in particular, Cardiff City retains the capacity to surprise occasionally, one of the disadvantages to watching both (often football and what happens out on the pitch when City are playing doesn’t appear to be related!) for around fifty years is that there isn’t much that goes on in the game which you haven’t seen before. Therefore, football can be very predictable in many ways and exactly the same applies to Cardiff City.

A fortnight ago today City went to Middlesbrough and carved out a hard fought 1-0 win which meant that they had taken nine points out of nine without conceding a goal during December. The team had momentum and, with two home matches to follow, there was a real opportunity to put pressure on West Brom in the second automatic promotion place. However, apart from the good news about the HMRC winding up order being dropped, what we have seen since then is a further example of what has been a recurring theme over the past forty six years – if something can be cocked up, then you can usually rely on Cardiff City to find the way to do it!

The farcical postponement of the Leicester match because our state of the art undersoil heating (which we are told was in perfect working order three days after the match was due to be played!) hadn’t been finally commisioned (I still don’t know what that means), meant that the momentum I talked about was lost. Who knows, we might have lost the game anyway if it had gone ahead – it would have done at any other club that had undersoil heating fitted, but at Cardiff, where cock up is king, we never got the chance to find that out.

Yesterday had such a familiar feel about it. A big crowd on  a Bank Holiday weekend turn up to see a seemingly in form home team take on the side at the bottom of the table without a point or even a goal to show from their past five games – it’s got to be a home banker hasn’t it? As mentioned earlier, football retains it’s capacity to surprise so there are very few certainties, but in about eighty per cent of occasions, you would think that the bumper crowd would end up seeing their team victorious – how come then that such an occasion seems to end up with defeat and disappointment where Cardiff City are concerned on far more than one in five occasions?

As per usual during this season, City started poorly and allowed opponents, whose confidence must have been very low beforehand, to gain some belief as they created and wasted a great chance virtually before City had got into the Plymouth half. For a while after that, City managed to work Larrieu in the visitors goal a bit as he made a series of saves which although decent in quality were ones that a keeper at this level really should be making, but, with the crowd disappointingly quiet, the life soon went out of the game and the only times people tended to get animated during the rest of the first half was when visiting striker Rory Fallon was being penalised for aerial challenges.

Yes, having booked Fallon for use of the elbow and then warned him for dissent shortly afterwards, referee Gibbs was weak when he refused to show the ex Swansea striker a red card in first half stoppage time, but a team standing fourth in the table should be able to see off such limited opposition in an eleven against eleven clash anyway, yet it had become apparent by then that City were going to struggle to do that – why should that be though?

The first thing to say falls into the category of the bleeding obvious really, our central midfield is short on creativity and, although questions can be asked as to why our manager allowed this to happen while he was off buying full backs and centre halfs last summer,  there is little that Dave Jones can do to rectify things at the moment. Therefore, our strikers are not being given many goalscoring opportunities which in turn could be resulting in some anxiousness on their part when they do actually get one. In saying that though, I thought our front two were poor yesterday – Jay Bothroyd had one of those days when he becomes the most irritating player in the team as he  spends half of the match on his back side. I also thought he was one of a few in the side whose attitude suggested that they thought they only had to turn up to collect the points. The thing with Bothroyd though is that when he has an off day all that happens is that you get a demonstration of how important he is to the team because we have no one else who can provide the sort of things that he can.

Alongside Bothroyd, Michael Chopra ran about a lot again, but there should be more to a multi million pound player’s game than that. Chopra is there primarily to put the ball in the net and the way he approached that glorious chance just after the break suggests it is going to need the sort of goal with which he ended a previous lean spell (his lob at Wolves) that has little pressure on it because no one expects him to score or a lucky ricochet for him to start doing it again. At the moment, if he has to think about what he is doing, like he did yesterday, then I expect him to miss whereas early in the season he would have buried that chance without hesitation.

Behind the front two, Peter Whittingham turned in the sort of display which was common throughout last season when he played well once in every four or five matches. When a team lacks real creativity in the middle of the park, set piece delivery becomes even more important and I am afraid that one good one in every four or five like Whittingham came up with yesterday isn’t enough.

Far too many players weren’t at their best yesterday. That said, I thought the two centre backs did okay and Joe Ledley had one of his best games in a while, but, having had nearly five years when he has been generally moving forward, this season has been a difficult one for Joe for all sorts of reasons – I can’t help thinking that shot which went just wide in the dying moments would have gone in for him this time last year.

Dave Jones made some fair points after the match as he, predictably, pinned all of the blame on his players, but, given our appalling Boxing Day record over the last decade, I wonder if any thought was given to changing routines prior to the game? Perhaps I am wrong, but the distinct impression I get from the outside is that it is often the same old, same old from our manager and his staff – this was the fifth time we have failed to win on Boxing Day under Dave Jones, so isn’t it reasonable to question whether his approach to such games is wrong?

So yesterday was just another typical Cardiff City cock up with the actions of many at the club being at least open to question. As I mentioned before, you grow to expect such things at the club, but that doesn’t make them any easier to endure when they happen. In fact, if anything, it gets harder because you get the impression that no body seems to learn from the occasions when it goes wrong – you see the same mistakes being repeated over a period of decades not years.

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