New manager, same relegation side. Cardiff City continued their descent into League One with a 1-0 defeat at Luton tonight after a performance which had an awful lot of heart, but it must be soul destroying playing in a side which you know isn’t going to score – it certainly is watching one.
Remember those times as a kid when there weren’t enough of you to have a “proper” game, so you played attack and defence with, say, a keeper, a defender and two attackers? I used to hate being the keeper or defender because the object of the exercise was to keep the ball out of your goal with none of the hope that those further up the pitch could come up with a goal or two to win the game for you. Playing for City, especially in goal or at the back, must be like a never ending game of attack and defence where the only “positive” outcome is if you can hang on for ninety minutes to a 0-0 draw.
With the winning goal coming in the eighty eighth minute and a slight deflection on the cross which provided it working to the home team’s advantage, City had grounds to complain about their luck tonight but, overall, I thought the result was right.
As you would hope, there was an improvement in performance under a new manager, but only to the extent that we defended well with Mark McGuinness outstanding, Cedric Kipre good, Jack Simpson making a decent fist of an unaccustomed left back role and Perry Ng solid, Ryan Allsop also saved his second penalty of the season, but in front of him and those four defenders, City had little to offer apart from defensive discipline and the odd moment of quality from Callum Robinson.
Sabri Lamouchi will have learned the size of the task he faces and that City’s pathetic scoring record is no statical blip. It’s just gone ten o clock as I type this and still there’s no news of any new players coming in – without them, I think we can be good enough defensively to stay up, but Lamouchi will be something close to a miracle worker if he can somehow conjure the requisite goals out of this lot.
Tonight, there were just three moments where City threatened to score. Robinson saw his well struck twenty-five yarder hit the top of the crossbar and bounce over in the early minutes, then in the second half, Sheyi Ojo, who is playing a bit better lately but to little effect, hit a shot from the corner of the penalty area that drew a save from home keeper Ethan Horvarth which would have looked good for the cameras, but he would have had to have been badly at fault with to let in. The third miss encapsulated our scoring problems as Robinson picked out a fine pass to Ryan Wintle who was completely unmarked on the edge of the penalty area – it wasn’t the easiest ball to hit, but the midfielder whose form has fallen away since the turn of the year misfit his shot which flew yards wide to the accompaniment of derisive jeering from the home fans.
That apart, City were mostly concerned with keeping Luton out – they managed that prettily comfortably for forty-five minutes, but there was more intensity about the home team after the break and with City’s so fragile confidence and their recently acquired habit of conceding late goals, Luton must have known there’d be chances for them even after their penalty miss.
The spot kick was awarded against Kipre for handball and, having seen a few replays of the incident, I’m still not sure whether it was a fair decision or not. On the one hand, it was certainly harsh because the ball only travelled a yard or so before making contact with Kipre’s arm, but he was raising it, so, bearing in mind the interpretation regarding “natural” positions of the hand when the ball hits it, I can see why it was given.
As it turned out, Elijah Adebayo’s rather scuffed penalty was turned aside for a corner by Allsop diving to his right, but, credit to Luton, they seemed to step up their efforts in the minutes following while City appeared to shrink back into their shell somewhat – “wilted” would be an unfair way of describing it, but a 0-0 draw seemed to be the limit of their ambition.
Adebayo got his revenge though when former City loanee Alfie Doughty’s cross from the left brushed off the covering Ojo and this helped the ball to reach the striker who nodded in from five yards out.
In the time that remained, City frantically tried to find a goal from somewhere, but, yet again, only showed their huge limitations going forward with Ng the villain of the piece this time with a ridiculous shot from forty yards which flew well wide and a badly over hit cross from a decent position which left his team twelve games since a win. However, before they can start to think about that elusive victory, they, first need to try and remember how to score.
Nearly ten to eleven now and still no confirmation of any new players despite the talk of three new signings a few days ago, but there have been a couple of departures with two Academy prospects heading for one of the Manchester giants each. Striker Gabriele Biancheri has joined Manchester United and it seems that goalkeeper Lewys Benjamin, who was on the bench for the first team for the first cup tie with Leeds and was very impressive in his one appearance for the under 21 side, will be joining Man City.
Biancheri and Benjamin therefore join Charlie Crew who signed for Leeds this summer as sixteen year olds who have left us for Premier League clubs in recent months. Wales Online talks about “big six figure” fees for the two players leaving us this month and I dare say there was one for Crew, but “derisory” seems a more apt description to me given the amount of time and effort has been put in by City towards developing them as players.
You can’t blame the players for leaving, but it’s galling that, surprise, surprise, the current rules completely favour the biggest clubs (you know, the ones that were going to jump ship and form a Super League a few months ago – apparently, Brexit has worked against the smaller clubs as well). It seems to me that an increasing number of clubs are going to start questioning whether it’s worth continuing with their Academy’s when it looks like it’s only the elite few that are drawing any real benefit from the system.
Well, the windows closed now and, right at the death, there’s confirmation that City have signed Gambian international Sory Kaba on loan for the rest of the season from Danish club Midjtylland. Kaba is six foot three inch striker and there’s a video around showing him scoring some text book headers on the plus side, but just two goals in twenty seven appearances this season does not inspire confidence that he’s the man to get us scoring again and the only comment I’ve read about him from a fan of his parent club was pretty scathing.
Still, I’m not going to prejudge him, at least we’ve got someone in, but at least two more to accompany him wouldn’t have gone amiss. The increasing sense of foreboding I’ve been feeling for about six weeks now has not gone away after the events of tonight – it’ll be one day short of three months without a win by the time we play again.
As often happens, the age group sides endure miserable runs when the senior side is struggling and the under 21s were beaten 3-1 at QPR while the first team were tumbling to their latest defeat – no details as far as to who the goalscorer was I’m afraid, but I can tell you that QPR have taken to call their team QPR B which may be relevant to what I was saying above about Academy’s – could it be that they’ve followed the example of Brentford and one or two others and are now looking towards more of an old style reserve team?
