A third of the way through the January window and two days before we resume league fixtures against Leeds and no movement on the transfer front, in or out, by Cardiff City yet. This comes as something of a surprise when you consider some of the things which were being said before January 1 and how many were presenting one signing in particular as a done deal – there’s still plenty of time for it to go through, but, clearly, it’s not the formality it was being presented as.
This weekend sees the reverse fixtures from the opening day of the season when City went up to Leeds, led 2-0 at he interval and were only pegged back to 2-2 well into added time. When you compare the two teams, Leeds should be beating City twice quite easily this season (this is true most of the time as well), but, whatever happens on Saturday, yet another campaign will have passed where they have been unable to do that – when you consider that we’ve played each other so often during the time, City’s league record against Leeds in the twenty first century is one of the most remarkable things about the club during this period..
Can we continue to be a bogey team for Leeds? Two things give me some hope that we can come out of 23/24 undefeated in our encounters with them. First, Leeds’ ordinary away form and, second, things like the remarkable 3-3 draw at Elland Road in December 2019 when a City side that looked on for a thrashing against the eventual Champions that season at 3-0 down early in the second half, came back to level things up despite having Sean Morrison sent off at 3-2. Things like that suggest that there is a “Cardiff factor” with Leeds, but I must admit to bafflement as to why that should be.
Anyway, here’s the usual seven questions on upcoming opponents, with the answers to be posted on here on Sunday.
50s. No 60s question this time, we’ll go back to the previous decade to ask what I think is quite an easy question – what very exclusive Leeds related club only had Ron Stitfall, Danny Malloy and Brian Walsh as members?
70s. He scored for Leeds in a European final and ended his career with spells at Walsall, Bradford City and Doncaster, who am I describing?
80s. Me and a nerd invade Leeds and end up playing in defence. (5,6)
90s. Released by Leeds without playing a game for them, one of his five international goals was scored against Portugal. He’s represented three of the four Welsh EFL sides and played his last football in 2019 for Cornish side Callington Town before steering a team to a title in the second tier of Bulgarian football – name the individual involved.
00s. The first goals of his career were both scored at Bootham Crescent against York City and the last one was scored while playing for Leeds some fifteen years later in 2005. Although he certainly had high spots during his career, he is also the holder of two unwanted records – the first one is jointly held and relates to the Premier League and the other involves international football in that he was the first player to score a goal in an international played in a famous stadium, but, unfortunately, it was into his own net. Who is he?
10s. Ghostly inertia?
20s. Mail goes backwards when sent by barrel maker.
answers.
50s. They were the only City players to be selected for all three of the Third Round FA Cup ties played in consecutive years at Elland Road – remarkably, City won each of the games, played between 1956 and 1958, 2-1!
70s. Midfielder Mick Bates made not far short of two hundred league appearances for Leeds, but the fact that it took him between 1962 and 1976 to accumulate such a totals tells you that he was more of a squad member than a regular in the great sides of that time. However, in 1971, Bates was really at the centre of things as he scored one of the goals in a 2-2 draw at Juventus in the first leg of the Fairs Cup Final that helped Leeds win the trophy on the away goals rule when the second leg at Elland Road finished 1-1.
80s. David Rennie.
90s. Northern Ireland international Warren Feeney never played for Leeds’ first team, but he did make City and Swansea’s senior elevens, as well as managing Newport County for a spell. Four of the five other sides Feeney are Northern Irish with the exception being Bulgarian team Pirin Blagoevgrad who he was in charge of between 2018 and 2021.
00s. Nathan Blake’s first career goals earned City a 2-1 win at York in October 1990 and he scored against Coventry in one of two games he played on loan to Leeds in early 2005 – it was the last goal of his career. Blake jointly holds the record for the most relegations (five) from the Premier ;League, while his own goal for Wales against Finland was the first goal scored in an international played at the Millennium/Principality Stadium.
“Fantasy football” is a phrase that has acquired its own meaning in the last thirty years or so as what seems sometimes like millions play it every week and you get the impression that for many it’s more important than what is happening on the pitch – indeed, to hear some talk, they think the purpose of the Premier League programme every week is to provide points for their selected eleven!.
Yes, you say the words fantasy football now and every one knows what you’re talking about, but, having watched Cardiff City play cup football this season, I would argue that in this corner of south Wales anyway, fantasy football is a term that has a second meaning when applied to the team I support.
Cardiff City are having a better Championship season than was forecast by pundits from far and wide. It was generally thought we were going to struggle with nearly all of the forecasts I saw from nationwide organisations tending to place us in the bottom third of the table somewhere. There was the odd optimist who had us maybe reaching halfway, but, if you were looking for anyone who was saying we’d make the top ten, then you’d almost certainly be looking at locals who would be, how shall I put it, swayed by their allegiance.
Yet, Cardiff have spent nearly all of the first half of the season in the top half of the table and, at times, they’ve been in the top quarter. Cardiff’s success, such as it is, has been built upon hard work, defensive discipline, making the most of set pieces and, importantly, everyone fully knowing and performing their roles when the team is not in possession of the ball. The emphasis placed on that last named aspect of our play in 23/24 has been made clear by a manager who has gone public with his criticism of some first team squad players for their lack of work ethic when we don’t have the ball.
A neutral reading that last paragraph would likely deduce that entertainment has been in pretty short supply at Cardiff City this season and, while there have been some matches earlier in the season in particular where this was not the case, they would not be too far wrong. The truth is that results have been better than performance and, for many, that’s fine, they want to see their team win above all else and so aren’t too worried that at times watching them play is like watching paint dry.
Yet, would City have been able to make it to their current position of eighth if they had gone out with an enterprising, attacking attitude where they wouldn’t worry about conceding three because they knew they could score four? I think we all know the answer to that one!
So, those who, like me, want to see some entertainment to go with the points we pick up have, largely, had to accept that we can’t have the best of both worlds
That said, there’s always Aaron Ramsey to come back (at least I hope there is) and Erol Bulut has been pretty open when talking about his recruitment plans for this month – he wants a more reliable goal scorer and a general increase in his team’s creativity.
However, when it comes to cup matches in this season of pragmatic, defensive and thrill free league football, it’s almost as if Erol Bulut and his coaching staff have taken pity on supporters wanting some excitement from their team because when there aren’t any points to be gained, anything goes – Cardiff City play fantasy football in cup competitions!
Whereas it’s a rigid 4-2-3-1 every week in the Championship, it has been a back three consisting of a token centre back, a full back and midfielder at times in the cups. Not only that, in front of the three or four defenders, the players selected are given more freedom and there are plenty of fancy flicks and play on the half turn to enjoy. I swear the best footballing performance I’ve seen from us this season was when we went to Birmingham in the Second Round of the League Cup and comfortably beat them 3-1 with a back three that included Ebou Adams and Mahlon Romeo – we scored some classy goals and the home side were chasing shadows at times.
In the next round we travelled to Blackburn and, with a back three consisting of Adams, Romeo and Jonathan Panzo traded goals with the home team in an enthralling first half which ended with us level with our hosts at 2-2. The second half saw our fantasy football exposed though as we fell apart and could have conceded eight instead of the five we did let in – in the end, 5-2 probably flattered us..
This game was a confirmation of what must, surely, happen more often than not if you put out experimental, makeshift defences against something close to first choice Championship attacks – for all that you may play some watchable football along the way, you’re going to end up being beaten and, often, beaten heavily.
Therefore, I assumed that we’d seen the last of Cardiff City’s wacky selections at Blackburn, but, not a bit of it, we were at it again tonight at Sheffield Wednesday in the Third Round of the FA Cup and this was even more fantasy football than anything seen before!
Just have a look at the team we started with tonight. In front of Jak Alnwick was a back four consisting of under 21 captain and regular centreback Xavier Benjamin at right back, first team right back Perry Ng and central midfielder Ryan Wintle at centre back and Ollie Tanner, who has mostly been on the right wing this season, at left back. The sitting midfield two were forgotten men Romaine Sawyers and Andy Rinomhota (both of whom have been linked with moves away from City in the coming weeks), with Josh Bowler on the right wing, Callum Robinson on the left and Rubin Colwill supporting centre forward Kion Etete.
To be fair, Dimitrios Goutas is, apparently, on compassionate leave following a death in his family and Mark McGuinness was missing with an illness that has laid low some other squad members as well as Erol Bulut himself if social media is to be believed, so, this time, it might be that the bizarre selection was forced on us.
However, more than any other cup game this season, tonight’s match fully lived up to the fantasy football label (from our perspective at least) because it had absolutely nothing to do with what is Cardiff City’s reality over the first half of the 23/24 season when it comes to league football..
In some ways, we played better tonight than we did in beating Wednesday twice in the league, the Ng and Wintle pairing meant that we passed the ball better out of defence than we normally do and whenever Sawyers plays there are quite a few reminders as to what a fine player he once was, Rinomhota gave the midfield more energy than it often has and Colwill, Tanner and Etete often linked up effectively in a way they don’t get the chance to in the first team as they are seldom all on the pitch at the same time.
We had twenty two goal attempts to Wednesday’s twelve, nine on target efforts to their six and won the corner count by ten to four, but there was a professionalism and ruthlessness to Wednesday which we just couldn’t match.
There was, to be fair, a generous helping of luck on Wednesday’s side too, Josh Windass has made a career out of scoring goals like the one he did in just seventy seconds, so it would be wrong to dismiss it as a fluke, but when a similar speculative thirty yarder from a full back flies into your net before the half is out, you do start wondering if it’s just not your day.
Most bizarre of all today though were the two penalties City missed within seven minutes of Windass’ very early goal. First, Rinomhota ran fifty yards with the ball in a way that none of our other central midfielders at the club do and was then brought down for what I’d call a fairly dubious penalty award. Wintle stepped up to take the penalty which made sense as he’d netted from the spot in a far more pressurised situation deep into added time to win the game with Wednesday at Cardiff City Stadium back in August. This time though, Wintle’s penalty was nowhere near as impressive and all keeper Cameron Dawson had to do was guess the right way to dive to pull off a fairly routine save.
Three minutes later Etete was brought down for what looked a more obvious penalty and Callum Robinson was nominated to take this one – quite why that should be, I don’t know as Robinson missed two from two in the league last season when he was playing far better than he is this time around. The result was completely predictable as the second penalty was even poorer than the first one and while Dawson will get a lot of headlines for his double saving of the spot kicks, I thought he made better stops within quick succession just before half time to foil Colwill and Etete.
Colwill must have had three or four shots of varying quality which were saved before half time as City responded well to the blow of conceding early and then missing two spot kicks, but their makeshift defence were struggling to cope and Alnwick twice came to his team’s rescue with good saves.
However, the keeper was at fault when he came for and missed a corner which hit the blameless Sawyers and rebounded into the net and then long serving full back Liam Palmer smashed one in from long range to send his team in, somehow, 3-0 up at the break.
The pattern was repeated in the second half as Robinson and sub Cian Ashford missed well worked chances that they should have put away, but the difference in finishing quality between the teams was further emphasised when sub Mallik Wilks made it 4-0 in added time with another well taken goal.
It’s hard to know what to think about City’s attitude to cup football this season, but, overall, I don’t see how someone like Benjamin benefits from being played out of position in an experimental rearguard and then being taken off at half time. Similarly, Joel Colwell, Benjamin’s replacement, played forty five minutes and I thought he did well, but did it all do his first team prospects any good? I doubt it, Colwill was on the bench on Monday at QPR and you knew he was never going to be brought on because that’s not how the Championship version of Cardiff City works in 23/24 – today was only fantasy football and it’ll be back to the real stuff next weekend.
That’s the bit I don’t get – I can fully understand why it’s impractical and dangerous to approach league games as we do cup games, but there have been some good aspects to our cup games this season which you’d like to think could be utilised when it comes to the Championship.
Earlier, I not very seriously suggested that we’re playing like we do in Cup ties because Bulut and co have taken pity on those of us who yearn for some entertainment from their team to go with their, admittedly, good results. However, it’s probably more realistic to say that our manager and his coaching staff are showing us romantics what would happen if we played like some of us want the team to play like – the football we play in the cups has no basis in reality and the fantasy in the football we play when there are no league points at stake is all to do with the traditional meaning of that word.
Elsewhere, the under 18s continued as they left off before Christmas with a 3-1 win over Millwall at Leckwith today. Troy Perrett’s penalty put us one up at half time with Daniel Ola and Jake Davies adding further goals after the break.
In a weather hit programme in the Highadmit South Wales Alliance League, there was a much needed 4-2 win for Ton Pentre over Caerphilly Athletic in the Premier Division to arrest their drift towards the relegation places, but they’re going to need a few more similar results in the coming weeks if they are not going to suffer another relegation.
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