As I endured the thud and blunder first half of Cardiff City’s 3-1 win over Millwall this afternoon, I tried to remember a few highlights from all of those drawn games we’ve seen at our stadium against the London side since Rudy Gestede’s early goal proved decisive in our Championship winning 12/13 campaign.
It didn’t take me long, I could recall a tremendous free kick from Jed Wallace on Boxing Day 2019 to get Millwall back on terms, but apart from that, all of the 0-0 and 1-1 draws (I’m guessing there must have been six or seven of them) merged into a maelstrom of giant centrebacks nodding away punts from goalkeepers and opposing defenders, of midfielders bumping into each other as they tried to find a yard of space and mishit shots from strikers rolling gently into keeper’s hands.
Yes, a visit from Millwall, who have been one of our few serious rivals for the title of Championship kings of hoofball over the past decade, has been the signal for some pretty awful football at Cardiff City Stadium, but I’m not holding them solely responsible for that – far from it, if anything, as the home side, we’ve been more culpable, because the onus has been on us to try to force the issue.
That opening forty five minutes, in fact, make it the opening hour, was right down there in the recent tradition of games between the two teams as many supporters, including me, looked on in the forlorn hope that a game of football might break out somewhere on the pitch.
If I had to pick out a couple of things to typify the mess of bruising, often unpunished, fouls and outbreaks of not very good head tennis which was passing for entertainment in what I’ve sometimes seen described of the fourth best league in Europe, it would be the couple of corners Millwall had in front of the Canton Stand where I’d say about fourteen of the players were wedged into the six yard box waiting for an in swinging delivery – I could only scratch my head as to how “the beautiful game” had become something akin to a rugby scrum before the scrum half puts the ball in.
What action there was in a first half which I would say was very slightly edged by the visitors consisted off an excellent Curtis Nelson block of a Benik Afobe close range shot and a Keiffer Moore header after some great work by Tom Sang, in for Perry Ng, which bounced on the top of the crossbar and over just before the half time whistle.
Moore was part of an all Welsh front three which saw him accompanied by Mark Harris and Rubin Colwill that had definitely been an improvement on what had gone before when they were introduced as subs in midweek at Peterborough. However, although Harris showed some nice touches at times and Colwill improved somewhat after the break following an anonymous first forty five minutes, they couldn’t be called a success here.
Harris and Colwill were still on the pitch as City finally began to get what had been a quiet crowd involved with a spell of sustained pressure which at least led to a few uncomfortable moments for the visitors without suggesting that a goal was imminent, but it was the introduction of Ryan Giles and Leandro Bacuna which helped transform the match.
Bacuna, with his energy and mobility, played his part, but it was Giles who supplied the quality the game had been crying out for.
If anyone had suggested during the first three quarters of the match that the final portion of it would see four goals scored, the woodwork struck, a very close miss for City and a central defender robbed of a hat trick with a clearance off the line by a defender, they would have been greeted with sympathetic looks, eyebrows raised and invitations to go to a cool, dark corner and calm down a bit.
Giles, who I thought had been little more than okay at Peterborough, made his first impact by being body checked by centre back Jake Cooper for what was an overdue first Millwall booking. The free kick was swung in by Giles from a position about thirty five yards from goal out on City’s right and it dropped some five yards from goal on to the head of an unmarked Aden Flint who was never going to miss from such a position after his two goals in midweek.
My mate who sits next to me is a former goalkeeper, only at parks level mind, and his first reaction was to blame Millwall keeper Bartosz Bialkowski for not coming out to try and gather the cross, but, having seen replays of the goal, he agreed with me that the quality of Giles’ free kick took both defenders and keeper out of the game.
If Giles’ cross for the first goal was superb, the one he came up with four minutes later for the second one was truly something to behold. Maybe I imagined it, but I’ll swear that I heard a collective rendition of the word “cross” within about a second of the ball leaving Giles’ foot as the crowd realised that this was going to be a beauty as well. The ball in this time came from virtually on the bye line on the left, but was again delivered to the far post where who else but Flint leapt to head back across Bialkowski into the opposite corner of the goal.
For me, this was the best of the four goals Flint has scored in the past four days to install him, incredibly, as the Championship’s leading scorer at this early stage of this season – if any stat tells you what Cardiff City are all about in these first few weeks of the 21/22 second tier, this has to be the one!
Of course, anyone who has seen much of Millwall would know that they are hardly the type of side that will lay down and accept a 2-0 beating like good little boys and the next ten minutes were theirs as Afobe punished substandard defending (generally, I thought we defended pretty well mind) to reduce the arrears with a shot that got a slight deflection on seventy six minutes. A few minutes later came what, for me, was the decisive moment of the game when former City man Scott Malone was on the end of a cross some eight yards from goal with just Dillon Phillips to beat – he should have scored, but, instead, his shot came back off the crossbar.
If Millwall had equalised then, especially having been 2-0 a few minutes earlier, I don’t believe there would have been any way City would have promptly gone up the pitch and scored a game settling third shortly afterwards. This time, the goal was a simple one as Sean Morrison capitalised on very un Millwall like defending to glance in a Marlon Pack long throw on the near post.
I was heartened to see City looking to add to their lead in the five minutes of added time rather than take the ball to the corners to waste time as they’ve often done in the past when two goals clear and it nearly paid off as Flint saw another header cleared off the line and James Collins, a late substitute for Moore, was just wide as he stretched for a low cross by Sang.
So, City stand sixth in the table with two wins and two draws from their four league matches (plus the League Cup win over Sutton). When you also consider that we were unbeaten in our last six games of last season, eleven competitive matches without defeat has to mean that we’re in a good place.
However, on the phone in I listened to driving home and on the messageboard I looked at when I got in, there was much talk of a lack of creativity in open play and a pragmatic, unattractive style of play from City.
Now, I think I’ve made my feelings clear on this over the last few months (and years!) and vowed to cut back on my criticism of our style last weekend, but I hope you will indulge me as I comment on the pretty critical reaction I’ve seen and heard to our win.
For me, there are two separate things at play here. First, Rob Phillips was asking on his phone in if City fans had any feelings about the fact that all eight of our Championship goals have come from headers (they’ve also all been scored in the second half).
Speaking as someone who has very occasionally had a bit of a dig at the number of set piece goals we score, I must say that in truth it doesn’t bother me in the slightest and it certainly doesn’t bother me that, at the moment, we’re only scoring headers this season.
Surely, every side is entitled to play to their strengths or are we supposed to say to Ryan Giles, “look, we know you’re a superb crosser of the ball, but would you mind awfully if you stopped them from now on because we don’t like the type of goals we score from them?”.
In an era where Liverpool are employing a long throw coach, there is a growing acceptance of the importance of set pieces and, if we happen to be good at them, fine, let’s take as much advantage of them as we can.
The second matter is our lack of creativity. This is different, because here we’re talking about a weakness, rather than a strength.
As someone who has always tended to pin the blame for this on our central midfielders, I must say that t I believe Joe Ralls and Pack are both playing well at the moment – the fact remains though that we barely looked like scoring for sixty six minutes today and for eighty minutes at Peterborough.
To just go off the subject for a short while to make an observation that is relevant to what I’m trying to say. A talking point so far this season has been how lenient the refereeing has been and today we saw a series of rugged and heavy challenges on Moore which referee James Linington, largely, left go unpunished – it was very much 21/22 style refereeing as opposed to 20/21.
In the main, this new approach has been welcomed, but I thought there was evidence in the way Millwall went about dealing with Moore today which suggested that sides are, even this early in the season, adjusting their understanding of what they can get away with.
Even in the more punitive atmosphere of 20/21, Harry Wilson spent much of his season with us being kicked from pillar to post by opposing teams and now we have a situation whereby our eight goals have come from four Giles crosses, two Pack crosses and two throw ins by the same player.
If these trends continue it’s not going to take sides long to cotton on to the fact that, if you can force one or two Cardiff players to go off injured (particularly Giles), then you’re significantly reducing the chances of them scoring against you.
I’m not sure what can be done about our lack of creativity at the moment. Maybe we’ll sort it out with a couple of loan signings in the next ten days or so (that’s what some callers to the phone in were advocating) but I don’t expect us to make signings of the type that will see new players come straight into the team and transform the way we play.
Part of my toning down of the comments about the Cardiff way is down to the acceptance that we are what we are, at least until January. Therefore, I think we have to show faith in and patience with younger players such as Sang, Colwill, Bagan, Bowen, Evans and the Davies (Tom and Isaak) who I believe could make a significant difference to how we play if they can handle the transition into the first team without, hopefully, impacting on our potency from set pieces..
A quick word about the Under 18s who notched a first win of the season to follow on from last week’s traumatic 3-2 defeat at Hull by beating Peterborough 2-0 at Leckwith this lunchtime thanks to a couple of James Crole goals.
Finally, I’d like to add my support to Andrew (someone who I went to school with over half a century ago) who rang Rob Phillips to talk about the situation at the club regarding season tickets that have still not been sent out yet at a time when the ticket office is barely ever open. This follows on from a time in the run up to the season where the club shop was closed along with the ticket office, the club were not answering phone calls, e mails were being either answered very slowly or not at all and any supporter without online access was, to put it bluntly, stuffed – they had no way of contacting the club and so didn’t have a clue what was going on with regard to their season ticket.
The situation has improved somewhat now, but it’s still far from perfect. There were just over 18,000 there today, which was a slight increase on the turn out against Barnsley, however, it’s hard not to believe that it could have hit 20,000 if the club had pulled its finger out when it comes to ticketing – if there are valid reasons for the very unsatisfactory situation, why not let us know about them?
It’s the time of year again when I ask readers of Mauve and Yellow Army to make a contribution towards its running costs. Before I go into detail about this, I should, once again, offer my sincere thanks to all of you who have helped ensure the future of the blog over the past three years through a mixture of monthly payments via Patreon, monthly Standing Orders into my bank account and once a year payments via bank transfer, PayPal, cheque and cash.
The first time I made this request for assistance, it was prompted by a need for funds to pay for three yearly web hosting costs which, frankly, I was in no position to meet following my move of house a few months earlier. However, I’m pleased to say that, this time around, the web hosting bill was settled back in June with none of the problems there were back in 2018.
Therefore, any monies received this year will go towards other running costs and, although it’s too early yet to make any formal commitments despite so many of the pandemic restrictions in Wales being lifted recently, I am minded to do another review of a season from the past book to follow on from “Real Madrid and all that” which looked back on the 1970/71 campaign. At the moment 1975/76, the first promotion season I experienced, looks to be favourite for the book treatment, which would mean a lot more trips back and forth to Cardiff than my finances have become used to over the past year and a half – hopefully, the majority of them will not have to be made via Radyr Cheyne!
As always, the blog will still be free to read for anyone who chooses not to make a donation towards its running costs and, apart from the one in the top right hand corner which is to do with Google Ads, you will never have to bother about installing an ad blocker to read this site because there will never be any.
Finally, as mentioned earlier, donations can be made through Patreon, PayPal, by bank transfer, cheque, Standing Order/Direct Debit and cash, e-mail me at paul.evans8153@hotmail.com for further payment details.
