Weekly review 29/5/22.

Posted on May 29, 2022 by The other Bob Wilson

First things first, apologies for the lack of posts from me since the season ended at Derby three weeks ago, but the reason is that I’ve been waiting for City to announce their retained list. Ordinarily, this would not delay me, but, with so many players out of contract and expected to leave, it would be handy to know exactly where we stood.

In one of his media briefings in the closing weeks of the season, Steve Morison spoke of 21 May being the day when the retained list would come out. To be fair mind, it was clear our manager wasn’t entirely sure himself of this, but it does seem that the details of our retained list should have been with the EFL last weekend and I’ve seen from messageboard posts that the footballing authorities will be releasing details of all clubs’ retained list by the second week in June.

My assumption was that the delay in City releasing theirs was down to negotiations with player(s) they wanted to retain continuing, but given what I said above and that Steve Morison had said that the players who were leaving had already been told of this, it seems unlikely.

The identity of some of those leaving has been revealed. It was clear Alex Smithies would not be staying once Dillon Phillips took over from him for the last seven games of the campaign and Marlon Pack’s drift out of the first team picture over the second half of the season told its own story, while Aden Flint, who captained the team in his final match for us, has confirmed he’s off amid speculation this week that Wayne Rooney wants him at Derby (there have been rumours that Smithies may be returning home to Huddersfield, so it may be that he’ll be in the Premier League next season, while Pack has been linked with a return to Bristol City).

My best wishes to the three of them and also to Sam Bowen who is signing for Newport County on a free transfer despite still having a year left on his contract. So, the Wales Under 21 international who made a good impression in the games he played in the first team early last season under Mick McCarthy’s management, leaves without seeing any senior action under Steve Morison. Injuries played a part in ensuring that happened, but our manager was distinctly lukewarm about the midfielder when asked by the media about him and the news of his departure is not a shock at all.

I happen to think playing for a manager who values and rates him may well enable a talented player like Bowen to show Steve Morison he has made a mistake in allowing him to go, but our manager’s the one who earns a living from the game not me, so what do I know.

Conservative estimates had us needing ten new signings over the summer to cover all of the departures, less conservative ones had it at fifteen.

Well, we’ve signed four already! Don’t expect thousands of words of analysis on them on here mind because they’re hardly the sort of players your typical Championship fan would have high on any list of their team’s potential signings.

I probably know most about the first of the new arrivals, central midfielder Ebou Adams who will be joining us for pre season training at the end of next month after his contract with Forest Green Rovers ends. I’ve seen Adams, who’s twenty six, born in London, but qualified to play for Gambia (he has won eleven caps for them), a few times on television and it seems to me like he was booked in all of them!

However, if the true way to analyse a new signing is to see what fans at his old club think of him, then City are on to a winner because Forest Green fans love him!

Adams describes himself as an all round midfielder, but his ball winning stats are good and it appears Steve Morison sees him in that role with his energy as another attribute that can improve his team.

Clearly, the two division jump for Adams needs to be factored in, but it’s encouraging that the highly rated Blackpool manager Neil Critchley wanted to take Adams to his club and it was expected that was where he would end up, but City managed to conclude a deal first.

The arrival of goalkeeper Jak Alnwick from St. Mirren on another free transfer had been signposted about a month before he signed for us. Alnwick is another who is highly rated by supporters at his former club and has been rated one of the SPL’s better keepers in recent seasons. Like Adams, his CV is a modest one, but it’s an improving one and twenty nine is generally regarded as an age when goalkeepers are coming to their peaks.

Alnwick, who I suspect will start the new season as our first choice goalkeeper, is said to be good with the ball at his feet and this is thought to have been a factor in City’s decision to sign him. I may have seen Alnwick play before he was linked with us, but, if I did, I can’t remember it – I did watch the highlights of his final game with St Mirren when they drew 0-0 at Aberdeen where he made a series of saves which fell into the good, but you’d expect him to save them category.

On the subject of goalkeeping, best wishes to Andy Dibble who, incredibly when I remember how young he was at the time, played his first game for City forty years ago this month. He’s left his job as goalkeeping coach having been appointed during Neil Warnock’s time with the club and he can take his share of credit for the fact that two of the players he coached (Smithies and Neil Etherdige) were voted City Player of the Year during his time here.

Gong back to the new signings, the four of them arrived in the week 14/21 May and the last one to arrive was Jamilu Collins whose contract with Bundesliga 2 side SC Paderborn runs out next month. Collins is twenty eight in August and has twenty five caps for Nigeria, He can play left midfield, wingback and centreback, but is primarily a full back. He has played in Croatia and Slovenia besides Germany and has scored just two goals in his career, but one of them was from thirty five yards against Bayern Munich when Paderborn were in the Bundesliga and can be seen on this link

I saved the most interesting newcomer to last. Ollie Tanner is a twenty year old winger who spent last season with Lewes FC playing in the Isthmian League which is in the seventh tier of the League pyramid, this was after he had struggled to establish himself in the National League with Bromley and left them at the end of 20/21.

So what is there in that lot to persuade City to pay a fee, reported to be £40,000, to bring him here?

Well, apparently, Spurs and two other Premier League teams were after him and Luton were seemingly one of a cluster of Championship sides chasing his signature.

Also, it is more than just paper talk as far as the Spurs link goes because they’d agreed a deal with Lewes for Tanner in January only for the player to turn down the move amid stories of a critical Tweets he made at the age of twelve as a boyhood Arsenal fan. So, clearly Tanner had been doing something at Lewes in the first half of the season to get the scouts of one of the biggest clubs in the country interested in him.

Player’s highlights reels should always carry a Government Health Warning, but it must be said that Tanner’s is impressive – whisper it quietly, but there’s something of the Gareth Bale in these few minutes from last season.

Intriguingly, the word from City is that Tanner, who has signed a two year contract, is a first team squad signing which explains why he did not play for the under 23s like most trialists do when he was with us for a fortnight late last season.

Welcome to Cardiff to the four of them – the brave new world is beginning to take shape!

Posted in Out on the pitch | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Eli King’s Ramsey impersonation wins it for City!

Posted on May 8, 2022 by The other Bob Wilson

Cardiff City at least ended what has been their worst Championship season since their return to this level in 2003 after a long absence with a 1-0 win at relegated Derby County which means that they will not start the 22/23 campaign on the back of a six game run without a victory.

With their goal coming from their only on target effort of the game, City were fortunate to get the three points in an encounter that was a little like the first meeting between the sides at Cardiff City Stadium in that Wayne Romney’s side dominated possession, but didn’t do a great deal which worried the City defence with it, and were beaten by a good City goal to nil.

In that first match, City had offered a threat of their own at times and a neutral observer would not have been completely surprised by Uche Ikpeazu’s goal which Derby contested on the grounds that he had fouled Curtis Davies. This time however, they would surely have been staggered by how an opponent that had given Derby what must have been as easy a fifty five minutes of defending as they must have had all season, sliced them open all of a sudden with an outbreak of quality football totally out of keeping with what had been a fairly typical, sleepy, end of season affair.

City opened up Derby as half time sub Rubin Colwill (on for Ollie Denham) fed Cody Drameh who produced a clever near post cross to Eli King and the youngster came up with a lovely bit of skill to leave the vastly experienced Davies on the seat of his pants as he kept his head to roll over a pass from the corner of the six yard box that was deftly turned in by Jordan Hugill.

It’s funny how a piece of play in the modern day game can bring to mind long forgotten incidents. Within a second or two of the ball hitting the back of the net, I had gone back fourteen years to another end of season match, at Ipswich, where the seventeen year old Aaron Ramsey had done Steve Bruce’s son Alex like a kipper to lay on a goal for Gavin Rae – I’ve looked for a video of that goal in vain, so the best I can do is post a link to a match report

If you can’t remember that goal, believe me, the similarity between it and today’s match winner is uncanny. Now, don’t think for a second that I’m saying that we have another Aaron on our hands, but what I am saying is that although King has not looked out of place particularly in his first team games so far, there hadn’t been much from him that caught the eye.

I’ve been at pains to point out that I was not being critical of a young lad taking his first steps in the senior game when I have said that I feel the first team claims of, for example, Sam Bowen and Keenan Patten were stronger than King’s at this stage in their careers.

However, today there were signs as to why Steve Morison rates King so highly. I’m not just talking about his part in the goal either – in the first half, there were a few examples of a composure and imagination in his play which bodes well for the future for both him and his club.

Going back to the goal, the only other time I can remember Derby being reduced to pains stations at the back came in added time in the first half when the front two of Hugill and Mark Harris combined well only for the former to go down under a challenge by Jason Knight which brought loud and prolonged shouts for a City penalty. Referee Keith Stroud gave the appeals short shrift though as video replays proved inconclusive – although there was a possibility that the offence, if there was one, was initiated outside the penalty area.

To be honest, it was little surprise that City offered so little threat going forward in the first half in particular because of a team selection which included three centrebacks (Curtis Nelson, Denham and Aden Flint, captaining the side in what was probably his last appearance for the club), wing backs who were utilised in more of a defensive than attacking fashion in Drameh and Joel Bagan and a midfield three of “sitter” Ryan Wintle, his former Crewe team mate Perry Ng, who had played all of his football for City in a primarily defensive role up to today, and King.

That line up ensured that City were pretty solid at the back as Derby were reduced to efforts from outside the area in the first half to test Dillon Phillips with Liam Thompson and Tom Lawrence drawing saves from the keeper which fell into the good, but should be saved category.

With the introduction of Colwill and then Isaak Davies replacing King, City had more of a potential cutting edge, but, a goal up at this stage, they’d sacrificed some of that defensive strength – Davies’ withdrawal after just a quarter of an hour for an injury received when he was cynically chopped down by Thompson offered a chance for Steve Morison to get his defensive numbers back up again by, perhaps, introducing Jai Semenyo for a league debut, but, instead, he opted for  another attacker in Max Watters, so there was almost a 4-2-4 look to us with Colwill employed well up the pitch as Hugill and Harris were called on to do their share of defensive work as the home side strove for an equaliser – again though, all the extra pressure brought was plenty of passes and hardly any chances as Phillips flopped on a jabbed effort by Davies that would have squeezed in by far post.

There were also a few shots not too far off target, but City finished up with a fifteenth win – winning just short of a third of your matches should ensure a higher finish than eighteenth with fifty three points, but you’re always in trouble if your lose exactly half of your games like we did with our home record being well below par for the second consecutive season..

Last Tuesday the Under 23s wound up their season with a 2-1 win over Crewe in a game played at Cardiff City Stadium. It wasn’t a bad game either with two well matched teams playing some nice stuff even if it looked for long periods like it would end up goalless. However, a goal out of the blue for Crewe prompted an instant response from City from James Crole as he wrong footed the keeper with a clever finish and then a winner by sub Cian Ashford with a deflected shot from the edge of the penalty area to mark his comeback after a couple of months out with injury.

Ton Pentre brought another season which justified their labelling as one of the fallen giants of the Welsh non league game to an end with a 3-0 win at bottom of the league AFC Porth, but their finish of last bit two in the Ardals Leagues South West continues the downward trend that has certainly been taking place since I moved up here four years ago and I’d say it started long before that. In the Hghadmit Welsh Alliance Premier Division, Blaenrhondda’s season is drawing to a close with them in the mid table position they’ve occupied all season – I’d hoped that a strong finish would see them, maybe, making into the top six or so, but a 5-3 defeat at Aber Valley continued their recent poor spell.

Well, that’s it for the season, so I’d like to thank all of you who have supported the blog down the years with this one being as hard a campaign as I can remember in recent years to maintain a level of enthusiasm for the club. Hopefully, the excitement our manager feels about the rebuilding job he is about to undertake will percolate down to supporters in the upcoming months, because I honestly can’t remember a time when Cardiff City was more in need of an injection of positivity more in the twenty first century.

As always, I’ll be providing weekly updates as to what’s happening at Cardiff City Stadium through the summer months and, of course, there are some very significant games to be played by Wales in the next six weeks or so, while one of the things I hope to do next season is provide updates as to how City’s women’s team is doing.

Enjoy your summer’s!

Posted in Football in the Rhondda valleys., Out on the pitch, The stiffs | Tagged , , , , , | 4 Comments