Hopeful signs.

Posted on August 15, 2010 by The other Bob Wilson

I wasn’t expecting too much from yesterday’s visit to Derby. Strong finishes to our first two games had, in my view, papered over some very ordinary stuff that had gone on for the majority of the time against Sheffield United and Burton and this, combined with our poor pre-season and Derby’s fine result and performance at Leeds on the opening day had me in a frame of mind where I would gladly have taken a point beforehand.

To come back with all three of them then represents a very satisfying and encouraging outcome which should serve as a reminder to doubters like me that, despite all the negative stuff of the summer, we still have the vast majority of the assets which made us the Fourth best team in the Championship at the club (getting some of those assets to commit to new contracts would really offer proof that we are moving forward again mind).

I spent most of the second half of last season thinking that our attacking five of Burke, Whittingham, McCormack, Chopra and Bothroyd was as good a combination as any other in the Championship and at times it’s been easy to forget that those five players are still at the club. Okay, it’s looking likely that one of them will be leaving soon, but the addition of a player who has been amongst the very best of his type when he has played in this league in recent years means that, barring some dramatic late transfer window departures, our attacking options should be as strong as, or even stronger than, last season. Jason Koumas may have, understandably, looked a little off the pace at times last Wednesday but, after an hours football, he has already provided two assists. When you consider that Ross McCormack’s departure will almost certainly be accompanied by the arrival of another striker, then you would have to say that most of our rivals must envy the attacking options at Cardiff.

A quality goal by Michael Chopra, a winner by Chris Burke to back up a good personal performance and further proof of Jay Bothroyd’s effectiveness at this level offered more evidence of our attacking riches yesterday, but it was in the area where many would say we were weakest last season that I thought the main reasons for optimism came. Despite the, perhaps understandable given the circumstances of his departure, playing down of Joe Ledley’s ability by many City fans since he left for Celtic, I think it’s fair to say that losing a player of his quality would leave a pretty big hole in any Championship team’s midfield. I saw it said yesterday that Ledley would not get into the team now if he was still here, but, surely, it’s true to say that we wouldn’t have made at least one of the signings we have in that area if Joe was still here?

Whatever the truth is about that, the fact is our midfield looks stronger on paper than it did last season and yesterday offered positive signs that it will be stronger in practice as well.When you consider that we have Steve McPhail to come back into things, that Koumas, even if he will not be formally named in there, will make a contribution at times and that Peter Whittingham is spending more time in the middle of the park this season, our central midfield looks more creative before you even consider what the two starters in that area yesterday will give us.

I like what I have seen of Danny Drinkwater so far and another strong performance yesterday has me hoping that we have got an energetic player who can spot a pass and is also willing and able to do his bit in the defensive side of the game. However, it is the signing of Seyi Olofinjana which makes me believe that we have a stronger, and more adaptable, midfield this season – apart from some quibbles about “Olofinjana not able to impact on the game unless it came into his zone” (doesn’t that apply to any player?) in a pretty downbeat Wales on Sunday match report, the general reaction to his debut has been very encouraging indeed. I am still not sure that Olofinjana is the midfield “beast” that some of our supporters think he is, but I believe he can do more that just destroy for us and I am hopeful that, although all of the midfield players I have named can be creative, we have got the balance right this time between the offensive and defensive side of the midfield game.

With the replacement of the increasingly error prone Peter Enckleman with Tom Heaton in goal, I believe that we are a little stronger in that position as well, but the goal we conceded yesterday offered more evidence that, defensively, things still don’t seem right. While it would be easy to look at the role of Mark Hudson (who, sadly, looks to have become the one that all those supporters of our club who feel the need to pick a hate figure in the team have chosen this season) and blame him entirely for Cywka’s goal, for me, all of the back four except Kevin McNaughton have to take some responsibility – Gabor Gyepes allowed Varney to put the cross in too easily and I’m still trying to work out what Darcy Blake was supposed to be doing.

All three goals we have conceded this season have been pretty sloppy ones and, taken with the poor defending we saw in our two final games of last season, I think any Championship opponents can go into matches with us confident of getting chances to score. In saying that though, it is always so easy to just look at the goals we concede and pick holes while ignoring the sort of defensive blocks that the likes of Burke, Drinkwater and Hudson put in when Derby piled on the pressure in the closing stages. While I agree that the defence currently does not match the quality of the goalkeeping, midfield and attacking departments, I believe we have capable defenders by the standards of this division – I would not say that they are top six quality as a unit, but top ten perhaps.

Although we could do with a centre back of the sort of quality we had become used to for about five years before Roger Johnson left, I’d still say that a specialist left back is the main priority when it comes to our defence and speaking of left backs, what is it about Kevin McNaughton that seems to attract the sort of injuries that we saw yesterday? I can remember a delay in a televised match with Barnsley in McNaughton’s first season with us while he received treatment for a very severe looking head injury and I suppose it has something to do with the wholehearted way he approaches the game. Whatever the reason, the signs are that, just like against Barnsley, the injury he suffered yesterday isn’t as severe as first feared and that is good news for all sorts of reasons – not least of which is that, after an iffy time of it last season, the early games of this campaign have seen Super Kev back to something like his best.

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Brian Clark rolls back the years against Ron Atkinson’s Champions.

Posted on August 14, 2010 by The other Bob Wilson

With Brian Clark’s passing this week and Newport County starting life in the Blue Square Premiership today (best of luck County), I thought I’d do something different this time and recall a game I saw which, although having plenty of people with Cardiff City connections involved in it, did not feature us.

While no one can doubt that Brian Clark’s first spell with City was a success, the same cannot be said about his second one I’m afraid. The 1975/76 promotion season is remembered with great affection by the those of us old enough to have experienced it, but Brian Clark’s contribution is largely forgotten because, truth be told, one goal from the veteran striker from twenty one league starts offered all of the proof that was needed that the 33 year old was not the same player that had terrorised Second Division defences with John Toshack a few years earlier.

It was no surprise therefore that City did not offer Clark a new contract at the end of that season and, during the seemingly never ending summer of 1976, he signed for our neighbours Newport County who, as usual at that time, were looking forward to a season in the Football League’s basement, Division Four. One thing Brian Clark wouldn’t have been short of though at his new club was familiar faces as the close relationship which had always existed between the club’s was emphasised by a heavy Cardiff City presence at Somerton Park.

On the playing side, Clark’s former City team mates Gary Bell, Peter Morgan, Steve Derrett, Tony Villars and John Parsons were all in the County team that kicked off the 1976/77 league campaign with a home game with Stockport and they were joined a few months later by Don Murray who returned to South Wales from a one year spell in his native Scotland with Hearts. The ex City influence did not end there either with Ronnie Bird working as Assistant to Jimmy Scoular who was making a return to management for the first time since his sacking by Cardiff in November 1973.

One of the first things our former manager did at Newport was to change the club’s kit from the traditional amber/orange and black to what can only be described as an Argentina like kit – with the benefit of hindsight, that idea seems a daft one and the club soon changed back to their normal colours, but I can remember at the time that a busy summer in the transfer market helped lead to a feeling of a new era at Newport which the change of kit seemed to epitomise.

Unfortunately though, it appeared that his break from the game had not done Jimmy Scoular any favours and the old magic touch from his Cardiff days was no longer there. That first match against Stockport was lost by 1-0 and that match summed up County’s first half of the season – defensively they weren’t bad, but they just could not score goals. Scoular lasted only until January before resigning with County having gone thirteen games without a win, but things didn’t improve under his successor Colin Addison either who saw his new side pick just the one point from his first six matches in charge.

In their first twenty six matches, County scored just thirteen times and, with them suffering from plenty of postponements throughout the winter, they went into March marooned at the bottom of the table with another application for re election looking inevitable (back in those days the bottom four sides in the old Fourth Division had to apply for re election to the Football League which meant that their fate was very much in the hands of the Chairman of the other clubs who would decide whether they wanted to keep the strugglers in place or vote in one of the non league clubs who were putting themselves forward for election). That lack of goals offered evidence that Brian Clark was finding life in the basement a struggle – despite being a regular starter in the team, he had only scored in the one game when his two goals were enough to gain one of only two victories up until then against Aldershot (it was the only league game up to then in which Newport had scored more than one in all season!).

Slowly though, Colin Addison began to improve things and three successive home wins (with Clark scoring in two of them) at least got County off the foot off the table. However, with the team having suffered eight consecutive away defeats, there was still a feeling around that a bottom four finish was inevitable when league leaders Cambridge United came to Somerton Park on 5 April. Cambridge, under rookie manager Ron Atkinson, were on their way to winning the title and within eighteen months they would be visiting Ninian Park to play City in a Second Division match as they earned back to back promotions by finishing runners up to Wrexham in the Third Division in 1977/78.

The Cambridge team that faced Newport had a nucleus of players who would prove themselves in the Championship and one or two others who would go higher than that in their careers, but, they were no match for Newport and Brian Clark in particular on the night. Clark was able to give County regulars a glimpse of why he had been so good for Cardiff in his first spell that night as he found the net three times to inspire County to a great 4-2 win which had a dramatic effect on the rest of their season.

Remarkably, County still had twelve matches to play after that night and seven wins from their next eleven matches got them into a position where a victory in their last game against Workington would see them finish clear of the bottom four. As it turned out, they managed a 1-0 win in an absolutely awful match watched by a huge crowd, by Somerton Park standards at least, of 8,3,13. That match was to be Workington’s last in the Football League as, having finished in the bottom four so often before in recent seasons, they fell victim to re election procedure and found themselves replaced a month or so later by Wigan Athletic.

As for Brian Clark, he only scored one more goal after his hat trick against Cambridge so only ended up with eight in all, but without those three against the Champions elect, Newport might have gone the same way as Workington. Clark played on for one more season and, although not playing as many games, managed to score one goal more than in his first season with the club, but there is no doubt that the highlight of his time with Newport was that night when he rolled back the years against Cambridge.

5 April 1977

Newport County 4 Cambridge United 2

County Plumley; Derrett, Walker, Jones, Bell; Byrne, Emmanuel, , Preece, Relish (1); Woods, Clark (3)

Cambridge U Webster; Batson, Stringer, Fallon, Harper; Watson (O’Neill 1), Horsfall, Hall, Seddon; Finney (1), Biley

HT 2-0

Att. 2,306

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