Improved City still can’t break Bristol bogey.

Posted on January 13, 2010 by The other Bob Wilson

So it’s three stoppage time goals conceded in our last five televised games as Gavin Williams’ well struck shot denied City their first win at Ashton Gate since 1969 and, if they could have clung on, then I think the victory would have been just about deserved. In fact, although I really should know better, I was feeling very confident we would see the game out as it went into added time. Whereas I just knew that Barnsley and Peterborough were going to score late on, I didn’t see Williams’ goal coming because we had done such a good job in containing the home side throughout the second half.

However, the disappointment of conceding late on yet again is tempered this time by the encouraging nature of both the overall performance and the tactics employed by Dave Jones. With Jay Bothroyd missing again and Josh Magennis’ unfortunate injury, City had no natural target man in their squad and it was good to see that fact being recognised in a way that it didn’t seem to be on Saturday after Magennis went off.

To play a quick, short passing game on a pitch where the ball was always being slowed down by the lying snow on parts of the pitch was a risky policy, but, fair play to all concerned, they made a decent fist of it. After getting into promising positions without really delivering in the first half, I thought City were certainly the better side after the break as at times they made the home team look clumsy in comparison. Once again, the final ball wasn’t quite there, but, despite this, there were some encouraging performances in the reshaped midfield.

If Joe Ledley’s mobility is restricted as much as it is reported as being, then a sitting role in front of the back four may be the best place for him at the moment – he certainly looked at home there last night as he broke up home attacks and invariably found the right pass for the situation. In front of him Aaron Wildig had a compliment of sorts paid to him in that he seemed to be the subject of a deliberate ploy to “rough the kid up” on the part of the wurzels – Wildig coped with the attention he received well, played a full part in an improved City display and, having seen how he can finish at youth level, I reckon he will have been disappointed not to have done better with that lob he tried in the first half.

Alongside Wildig for most of the match, Soloman Taiwo gave what was easily his best performance in a City shirt as he displayed a composure that, the early stages of the QPR match apart, we hadn’t seen from him before. Taiwo also has a bit of a presence about him and it seems odd that, having finally shown what he might be able to offer us, he is now being loaned out to Colchester United. Perhaps, the financial situation at the club is so bad that any offer which means there will be a reduction in our wage bill, no matter how slight, has to be accepted but Colchester are a strong team at First Division level  and it might be that Taiwo will struggle to get the games there that Dave Jones feels he needs – if he is just going to be warming the bench there, then he may as well stay here and do the same thing.

If the performances of Ledley, Wildig and Taiwo in the base and middle of City’s midfield diamond meant that the experiment was a success overall, Peter Whittingham’s display at the tip of it saw the recent dip in his form from the high standard he had set for himself this season continue – although, strangely, in the game where he moved into the middle, his dead ball delivery from wide areas was of a higher standard than it has been recently.

With Chris Burke being the only natural winger we have, maybe a diamond formation will be worth persevering with if he is to be missing for any length of time – we certainly looked more solid through the middle than we have often done in the past and with the wurzels playing the sort of 4-3-3 that is really more of a 4-5-1, we were often outnumbered once again in the middle of the park.

However, hopefully the most significant thing to come out of last night’s match was that Michael Chopra has broken his fourteen game scoreless run. For me Chops was always going to get back on the goal trail in one of two ways – either with the sort of fluke he got against Scunthorpe on the opening day of the season when the ball hit him and went in or with an instinctive finish which saw him rely on his natural talent from a position where there was no real expectation of him scoring. Chopra used his innate ability to end a barren run three years ago with a superb lob at Wolves and he did the same sort of thing last night. With the conditions against the sort of high tempo game he favours, Chopra cut a forlorn figure at times last night, but when Gerken’s error gave him a chance wide out on the right, he responded with the sort of quality finish that has been there in him all along – hopefully that fine goal will see a return of the “normal” Michael Chopra in our upcoming games.

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Has he forgotten what it’s like to be a fan?

Posted on January 12, 2010 by The other Bob Wilson

Unfortunately, the fall out from the booing that was heard at Saturday’s game continues as Dave Jones made his feelings about the atmosphere at the Blackpool match clear in both his pre match press conference for this evening’s FA Cup clash at Bristol City and in this interview with Sky Sports.

Having listened to what he has to say, it seems to me that after starting off expressing sentiments which sound quite reasonable and understanding, Dave Jones goes wrong when he starts talking about the “awful atmosphere” all through the Blackpool game because he shows that he appears to have no understanding of what being a Cardiff City fan feels like for many at the moment.

Our manager has often said that he has a cold and unemotional approach to his profession. For example, you don’t get any sentimental stuff from him before City games against one of his former sides – his approach is that the three points is the priority. Given that he is a professional earning his living from the game, an attitude like that is right in so many ways – okay, the “just another game” approach to recent matches with Swansea have shown some of the limitations to such a philosophy, but, overall, there are many ways where making decisions from a detached point of view has to be better than letting the heart rule the head.

However, one thing the unemotional approach Dave Jones favours does do is make it very hard for him to form any sort of bond with supporters of the club he is employed by. The recent fiftieth anniversary of Bill Shankly’s appointment as Liverpool manager bought to mind a member of Dave Jones’ profession who, by leading a team out of the level we are now in to become one of the great powers in the land, established himself as a far more successful manager than our manager has been up to now. Yet Shankly was also able to identify fully with the Liverpool supporters – Dave Jones is incapable of, or more likely, unwilling to do anything that comes remotely close to forming the sort of bond that Shankly had with the Koppites at Anfield.

Mention of Liverpool serves as a reminder that Dave Jones is or was an Everton fan. Perhaps he might be able to understand a little how many City fans currently feel if he imagined how he would react if he went to watch a game at Goodison Park as a supporter under the following circumstances;-

1. News had emerged in the lead up to the game that Everton had been served with a winding up order by the tax man for debts that the club Chairman, for whom the difference between his public pronouncements and what actually happens means that he must be either a liar, incompetent or a mixture of both, was telling everyone had been paid months earlier.

2. About 60% of the club’s support had committed to buying a season ticket over the Christmas period for the following campaign in a time of national recession and had been promised that proceeds would go on buying players during the January transfer window to aid Everton’s bid for Champions League qualification only to learn that the money may have to go on clearing the debts that the Chairman said had been settled.

3. Talk of the Champions League brings back memories of Everton’s pitiful failure to qualify for the competition in the previous season when they, with four games to play, blew an advantage of eight points and a +18 goal difference to rivals who only had three matches left.

4. In their previous two matches fourth placed Everton had lost at home to the team then bottom of the table and then threw away a 4 goal interval lead to draw 4-4 at the side who had dropped to bottom place following the previous round of results.

How would Dave Jones and the rest of the Everton support have felt in a case like that? Perhaps the atmosphere may have been “awful” throughout the game under those circumstances and, perhaps, a few (and the word “few” needs to be emphasised) of those present might have started booing the team during and after the game if it had seen their team hanging on for a draw for most of the second half? How would people react if the very well paid Everton manager, who makes a virtue of his emotional detachment from the club, criticised those supporters for their negativity?

Of course, Everton are not a very good example to compare with Cardiff really. After all, if you are an Evertonian you support a club that has enjoyed virtually uninterrupted top flight football since they joined the Football League over one hundred and twenty years ago. On the other hand, I am pretty sure no Cardiff City fan under the age of fifty has watched their club play the equivalent of Premiership football (they would have to have had their nappy changed at half time if they had) and they have also had to get used to a never ending stream of good players being sold as highly paid club officials always tell them that the proceeds will go towards servicing the debt which still gets larger and larger.

I look at my club with the passion that our manager doesn’t have and so, maybe, I am a letting my bias show here, but, having seen sides such as Leyton Orient, Northampton, Carlisle,  Luton, Oxford and Swindon all play top flight football since we last did as well as having to watch teams such as Stoke, Burnley and Hull on Match of the Day every week, I honestly feel that we have to be serious contenders for the title of the biggest under achievers in the Football League. In terms of lack of success when it comes to league status relative to catchment area, I can only think of Preston and Plymouth to rival us and, at least, Preston have had a few Championship play off campaigns to raise expectations lately while Plymouth have always got a geographical disadvantage when it comes to recruiting good players.

Not unreasonably, Dave Jones, only ever talks in terms of the last four and a half years at Cardiff because that is all he knows, so maybe he doesn’t realise that long term supporters have had forty years and more of disappointment and anti climax when it comes to following this club. Perhaps that is why there is a tendency for us to go a bit over the top when the side shows promise (like they did against tonight’s opponents back in August) and why a few months later everyone seems to be in the depths of despair but five decades of false promises from a variety of chancers tends to to do that to you.

A couple of years ago at another time when supporters were disgruntled an under pressure Dave Jones rubbished criticism he was getting by saying that it was from people who hadn’t played the game professionally. Well, in the current circumstances, I can’t help thinking that the boot is on the other foot to some extent here because our manager is getting involved in something that he doesn’t fully understand – even if he was one once, he has now forgotten what it is like to be a fan.

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