It’s to Cardiff City’s credit that, following on from a season where they only kept their place in the Championship because of another side’s points deduction, they’d only had one defeat by more than a single goal margin before today as the 23/24 campaign nears its halfway mark.
City were beaten 2-0 at Middlesbrough in early October and, to be honest, it could have been a lot worse that night as they rather folded in the closing minutes and the margin of defeat could have been doubled with a bit more poise in front of goal from the home team. On the other hand, what had been a pretty tight affair for nearly an hour turned on an opening goal that replays showed was scored from an offside position, so there was a hard luck element to the defeat to cling on to.
Today, however, there were no bad calls by officials, there was no inspired defending or goalkeeping to deny us, there were no unlucky deflections or mishit shots that trickled in and there was no “worldy “ of a goal from thirty five yards to stun us. No, all there was at Southampton this afternoon was just about as comprehensive a 2-0 defeat as you could imagine.
Like Middlesbrough, Southampton could be accused of being profligate in front of goal as the chances to run up a huge score were missed. This might have been dangerous to the dominant home team if these chances were being missed while the score was still 0-0, but the Saints had got their scoring done early by netting twice in the first quarter of an hour and, for long stretches after that, the game took on the air of a training encounter..
City had their spells where they gave their three thousand travelling supporters some hope that they might mount a comeback, but it always felt like Southampton had gears.to move up through if needed and a goal for us would soon have brought another one for the home team – Southampton were the best team we’ve played this season I’d say.
The manager opposing him and the team he’s in charge of may be different, but Russell Martin has certainly got the measure of Cardiff City, as easy victory follows easy victory and it has to be said that for all that he has a reputation of not been the best when it comes to the defensive side of the game, just two conceded and four clean sheets in five victories suggests that he finds organising his defence against us a fairly simple procedure.
As far as today goes, it’s reasonable to say that when you consider that one of the teams involved this afternoon spent their summer transfer window buying and selling players for tens of millions of pounds, safe in the knowledge that there was also a parachute payment to fall back on, while the other was under a partial transfer embargo which stopped them paying transfer and loan fees for new players, there should be a pretty big gap between them.
Although we’ve now played all three of the relegated teams away from home, I didn’t get the feeling of there being two leagues within one that I did today when we played at Leeds and Leicester.
The great attraction of the Championship for me is the number of times when the have nots defy the haves and manage to overturn the much too big advantage that the relegated sides are given, but today it all felt quite helpless as far as City were concerned – or at least the passive, standoffish first quarter of an hour or so did.
Of course, it’s a bit rich a Cardiff fan whingeing about the advantages of parachute payments when his club have benefitted from them twice and I admit that my sour grapes are flavoured by the bitterness of my club completely wasting the advantages that those extra payments should have given them.
This applies especially to the second of our relegations where we concentrated on signing players with little or no resale value, players who, in many cases, lacked the technique to play the game in the way in which it was headed.
Although there aren’t many left from that 2019 intake now, their influence lingers on, especially if the intention is to play in a way where more emphasis is being put on ball retention. Last season, we tried to become more of a ball retention team, but, just as in 21/22, we had to go back to a more direct style of play because we were dropping too close to the relegation zone. We ended up knocking it longer because, to be frank, we weren’t good enough to play the way we wanted to.
Today Southampton combined a relentless press with quick movement of the ball over short distances that we struggled, and failed, to overcome. The Southampton press, especially in the opening minutes, exposed the shortcomings we still have when we try to play in a “modern” way.
Errol Bulut had shown that he wanted to play out from the back by again including Alex Runarrson in goal and occasionally his distribution could be questioned, but more damning were the big gaps between players which meant that we were trying to play modern passing football when the nearest team mate was often fifteen and twenty yards away – much better teams than City would find it impossible to play effectively with gaps that big between players.
So, while those opening minutes in particular exposed technical failings in the City team, I’d say it also asked serious questions about fitness levels – we couldn’t get near Southampton when they moved the ball quickly within our defensive third.
The feeling of annoyance about Parachute payment opportunities being wasted at Cardiff intensified when the two goal match winner Adam Armstrong took his season’s total to twelve because the damage had been done by one of those players who is very effective, at Championship level, but has failed to do the business at Premier League level (i.e. the sort of striker we could have signed at one time, but Kieffer Moore apart, never did).
Armstrong’s first goal on eleven minutes was beautifully taken and a little overdue as he took a touch and then curled a left footed angled shot beyond Runnarson from fifteen yards. Four minutes later it was effectively game over as the home side cut us apart down our right, the resultant cross was deflected into the air and fell, a little luckily, for Armstrong to nod in from about six yards out.
There are those who blamed Runnarson for not cleaning Armstrong out before he got the chance to put his head on the ball, but I wouldn’t – saying that, Runnarson wasn’t wholly convincing once again and the decision to include him instead of Jak Alnwick still looks like a wrong one to me if the defining criteria is ability, rather than some loan clause.
Again, City did not compare well to Southampton with their assortment of goalscoring under achievers up front – you can point to good aspects in the play of Meite, Ugbo, Etete, Robinson, Grant and Bowler, but the plain fact is that they’ve only scored one more league goal than Armstrong between them.
It was Grant who came closest for City today, first when he sent a close range shot wide after our best move of the game just before half time and then when he bamboozled the impressive Kyle Walker-Phillips and drove forward thirty yards before shooting a yard wide from the edge of the penalty area. Apart from that, it looked like Etete had missed a good chance in the dying minutes after he combined well with fellow subs Colwill and Ugbo, but replays showed that a lunging tackle made things awkward for him as he was left pleading for a penalty that was never going to be given.
However, there were at least three instances of Southampton close misses to every one of City’s and I would imagine that Errol Bulut is counting down the days until he can attempt to bring some better quality, particularly in midfield and up front, into his squad, while also hoping that we will not be kept waiting much longer for Aaron Ramsey’s return.
Away from the first team, I forgot to mention the under 21 side’s mad 5-5 draw at Charlton last Monday in my piece on the West Brom game – Ryan Kavanagh with a penalty, Joel Colwill with two, Cameron Antwi and own goal provided our goals in a game where we led by 3-1 and 4-2 as well as losing Cian Ashford when he was shown a straight red card.
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