Cardiff City mauve and yellow army.

Cardiff City showed little of the fight required by a relegation threatened team when going a goal behind with fifteen minutes left in today’s game against promotion chasing Sunderland. Instead, they meekly surrendered to a 2-1 defeat which means that the five point buffer they had above the bottom three has been reduced to four and, true to the switchback nature of this season, it’s now one win in seven to follow on from the good run through the turn of the year.

Now, it should be remembered that this was Sunderland’s first game in eight days, whereas we’d played a match in between this one and our Cup tie at Villa. Maybe that goes some way towards explaining our lacklustre response to Chris Mepham’s first Sunderland goal or was it because we were feeling sorry for ourselves after conceding the second of the two joke goals we presented to our opponents, to go with the two poor ones we gave Burnley on Tuesday.

After we beat Hull in what seemed, and still was in my opinion, a very important match at the bottom of the table, we faced games with Aston Villa and two of the sides dominating this season’s Championship, I think it’s fair to say that most people expected us to lose all three matches, I know I did, but what is galling tonight is that all four goals we conceded in the defeats in the two league matches were avoidable and, for all that we have gained a greater attacking edge under Omer Riza and can be relied on to score in nearly all of our league matches, it’s going to need a corresponding improvement at the other end of the pitch to escape relegation and, after a few games where we did defend better, we’ve reverted to normal service this week.

Omer Riza’s selection today provoked much discussion as he went with a back four of Perry Ng, Dimi Goutas, Joel Bagan and captain Callum O’Dowda. The double pivots were Sivert Mannsverk and Calum Chambers and Rubin Colwill, Callum Robinson and Isaak Davies, making his first start of the season, operated behind Yousef Salech.

It seemed a very attack minded team with, perhaps, too much expected of Mannsverk and Chambers defensively and looking at the start we made to the game, it could be said that this proved to be the case. 

Within thirty seconds, Romaine Mundle had set the scene for the first third of the game as he beat Ng comfortably, cut inside another defender and was desperately crowded out by sheer weight of numbers – Mundle had the beating of Ng throughout the opening stages, but City’s right back would have been entitled to wonder where his support was because it was very much a one against one confrontation.

It had looked like City had laid the bogey of conceding early in away games when their strong start at Plymouth saw them get the early goal for a change, but, not a bit of it as they went on to concede within the first ten minutes or so for the fourth away league match of five.

There had been barely two minutes played when City took the first of their short goal kicks in the game as Goutas tapped it to Ethan Horvarth who , I don’t know, just looked nervous as he was closed down and played the ball to Bagan who was immediately under some pressure. Bagan is an accomplished passer with his left foot, but here was forced on to his right and sent the ball straight to Patrick Roberts who played in Eliezer Mayende who was able to easily beat Horvarth from around the penalty spot.

I’m not going to go  into detail about Sunderland’s second goal now, but Riza was right to be critical of his players about it after the game. However, he said nothing about the first goal which was, for me, equally as bad, if not worse. I can only assume that this is because any criticism for the opening goal could be equally applied to him and his coaches who, I assume, insist on us taking these short goal kicks on the altar of “playing out from the back”.

Now, I like the notion of playing out from the back in terms of a move which starts from a goal kick, but I must admit that I struggle to understand what constitutes success in the whole process? 

Failure can be measured very simply, if the ball ends up in your net, like it did with us today, then “playing out from the back” failed miserably on that occasion. So, if we measure failure in such simple terms, doesn’t it follow that success has to be when you score after having taken a short goal kick?

If that’s the case, then I submit that there’s probably not a team in the country that can deem playing out from the back, as exemplified by short goal kicks, as a success over a medfium to long period. In City’s case, we’ve not conceded many, if any, as a direct result of taking short goal kicks before today, but even if this was the first one, I reckon that puts us 1-0 down on the season ledger sheet. 

Tellingly, the short goal kicks stopped as soon as Riza had the chance, through a drinks break, to get his side together around the twenty minute mark.

By that time, City were lucky to still be the one goal down as Sunderland swarmed all over them and the feeling that we could concede at any time was only added to by things like us continuing our season long habit of allowing opponents stacks of time to take short corners and us not getting at least one player closer to the corner taker.

However, that drinks break coincided with City growing into the game and, if the first third of the match had conclusively been Sunderland’s, the second third was just about taken by us.

The first sign things were changing came when Robinson’s shot from twenty five yards beat Anthony Patterson in the home goal , but flashed not far wide.

In what was a game somewhat short of real goalmouth action, who was in the ascendancy was measured more by the amount of pressure a team was putting on and in the minutes past the half hour mark that was City. This pressure was rewarded when Robinson worked the ball to O’Dowda whose accurate cross drew Patterson out of his goal to try and punch clear under pressure from Salech, but, instead, the ball glanced off the striker into the path of Davies who side footed in from a tight angle via an upright.

The equaliser prompted a late first half attack from the home team in which Mayende got around Horvarth, but could only shoot into the side netting.

City took their improvement into the second half and came very close to going ahead when Colwill found Salech whose shot was brilliantly turned on to the inside of a post by Patterson and with that went the last hope of a City goal as the impetus slowly began to swing back towards Sunderland.

This process was probably helped by Riza’s bringing on Will Fish for Robinson and Alex Robertson for Davies in a clear sign that City were happy with a point with twenty minutes left. This was at a time when a Sunderland team that has had some poor recent results at home were struggling to create much and the crowd were becoming restive, but within five minutes, the situation changed completely when Sunderland were awarded a free kick close to thirty yards out, but instead of shooting, Trey Hume played it the side of the wall and into the path of the unmarked sub Wilson Isidor who slid over a cross that Mepham turned in from a few yards out.

There are so many questions to be asked about this goal regarding things like the number of people in the wall and it’s positioning, how could Sunderland’s top scorer be left completely unnoticed so close to goal and why did City react so slowly to the situation as it developed?

Riza was right to be critical of this goal and he was also right when he said we don’t get presented with opportunities like the one Mepham had because other teams are not in the habit of making so many basic defensive errors at once.

There’s not much else to say really. As I mentioned at the start, Sunderland will seldom have had an easier last few minutes holding on to a one goal lead as City gave them and the only good things about today were the heavy defeats suffered by Luton and Plymouth at the hands of Burnley and Sheffield Wednesday respectively, while Stoke were also beaten at Coventry, less good was Derby beating Blackburn, ten man Hull drawing at Bristol City and Oxford drawing at Norwich last night.

While that match was being played at Carrow Road, City’s under 21s were in action against West Brom for three hours as they went out of the Premier League Cup 5-4 on penalties after the game had finished 1-1 after extra time. City led from the fourth minute thanks to a solo goal by Tanatswa Nyakhuwa and, despite looking the more dangerous team through the first half, had to do an awful lot of defending to do after the break. 

It’s to City’s credit that, a clearance off the line by Will Spiers. apart, they came through the examination with flying colours until the last minute when West Brom’s best move of the game opened them up.

City had the best chance in extra time when Rocco Simic shot wide from a good position and all of the penalties were scored in the shoot out apart from Cody Twose’s which slipped wide – the irony being that Twose had probably City’s man of the match.

It was defeats all round as well with the under 18s going down 2-0 to Bournemouth at Leckwith this lunchtime.

In local football, Treherbert Boys and Girls Club have largely adapted well to life at the higher level of the Ardal South West league this season, but they came a real cropper yesterday as they went down 6-0 at a Cardiff Draconians team that looks to be on it’s way to winning the title. Meanwhile, in the Highadmit South Wales Alliance Premier League, Ton Pentre’s long, slow and sad descent towards relegation and a season without a league win continued with a 3-0 home loss to Pencoed Athletic – it’s fair to say that this blog has had better weekends!