On Monday night, Leeds United went to Burnley for a top of the table clash which the Sky hype machine went into overdrive about, yet I bet there were plenty of fans of the Championship who were not surprised in the slightest by the result of the match.
It finished 0-0 (Burnley’s second favourite score this season after 1-0), but what would have been a shock to most was what a truly awful spectacle it was as home goalkeeper’s James Trafford’s last minute save from a Dan James shot kept out the only on target effort by either side of the night.
It’s only with hindsight that I say that the cautious and lethargic stalemate five days ago was the worst possible thing that could have happened to Cardiff City as the general slating the game at Turf Moor got seemed to fire up Leeds to show the world what they could do going forward in their next match.
So it was that Leeds annihilated City 7-0 at Elland Road this afternoon and, in doing so, inflicted on us our heaviest defeat since a 9-0 loss in a meaningless end of season match at Preston in 1966.
City travelled north with the confidence of an eight match unbeaten run that had helped open up a four point gap above the drop zone and soon mounted a promising attack which saw Callum O’Dowda get to the bye line and float over a cross to the far post which came to nothing, but the attacking momentum was maintained and Callum Chambers had the ball some twenty five yards from the Leeds goal.
It was at this point that City got their first view of the humiliation they were to suffer over the next ninety minutes or so – this was the afternoon when the consequences of the type of team we’ve become over the past five and a half years came home to roost with a vengeance.
Back in the summer of 2019, with parachute payment money following our relegation burning a hole in our back pocket, we completely wasted what I’ve always felt was an unfair advantage anyway given to teams not good enough to survive in the Premier League.
While we’d been away for a season, the Championship had changed as pacy, more technical sides had prospered and there was more of an emphasis on recruiting younger players.
So, pace, youth and technique was the way to go for most in the division, yet, with more funds to rebuild on those lines more productively than most, Neil Warnock stuck to his “tried and trusted” methods as he went with old, slow, (well, relatively slow), his “bread and butter” midfielders and size and power over technique as he, once again, opted to try and bully his way towards promotion.
It took about a month to fully confirm the obvious, this was nowhere near a top two squad and Warnock, quickly sensing how the land lay, was on his bike with the season barely a third over. However, the damage done by that summer’s recruitment still lives on even if all of the players brought in at that time are no longer with us.
Attempts are now being made to improve the technique level and average ages of playe at the club, but it’s being done with far less money available than there was back in 2019 and, afternoons like today suggest that any improvement in technique is coming with a parallel loss of the physicality and power that is still needed for success at this level.
However, when it comes to pace, it’s a source of genuine bafflement to me that no serious attempt has been made yet to address this long running weakness. We are now almost at the end of another transfer window and although there are rumours that we’re trying to bring in Leicester’s Will Alvez, who is supposed to be something of a speed merchant, on loan, we have done nothing yet to improve the speed level of what must be one of the slowest squads in the Championship.
Even if we do bring Alvez in, one man is not going to make a huge difference to what seems an obvious weakness to all but the club’s recruitment staff.
It was pace (by that I mean physically, in terms of speed of moving the ball and speed of thought), more than anything else, that did for us today. To go back to Callum Chambers in possession twenty five yards out, he was quickly robbed and what I have always called a counter attack, but now seems to be classed as something like a defensive transition situation was on.
Many teams at our level would waste such a counter attacking chance, but not Leeds who for the first time, but by no means the last, killed us with their pace.
At the heart of it all was Wales’ Dan James. Now, granted, he was facing a team that was absolutely perfect for him to be seen to good effect against, but he played with a cleverness, sureness of touch and ability to make the right decision that I do not always associate with him.
Chambers losing the ball soon led to James tearing through our back line and after it looked for a while that a combination of Jak Alnwick and Jesper Daland had foiled him, he kept his head to feed Brendon Aaronson who was left with a tap in.
I’m not going to go through all of the goals, but so many of them were tap ins after Leeds had rapidly got to our bye line and fed one of the many attackers who had burst into our penalty area in a manner we just don’t emulate.
Another Leeds player to have a field day was left back Junior Firpo who was constantly exposing the yawning gaps down our right flank (our left was little better) and at least two of the crosses for goals came from him.
When we were in the Premier League it was expected that sometimes we’d get blown away because the gap between top and bottom of that division is so great, but should that be the case in the Championship, especially for a team that was getting parachute payments until quite recently?
The usual discussions as to why we lost are taking place tonight with many querying tactics, selection, substitutions etc. etc . Usually, there are valid arguments to be had in defeat regarding these subjects and worthwhile arguments can be had, but I’m not sure that such things apply here.
I say that because a team playing with such pace, skill and power as Leeds showed are like Kryptonite for this one paced City squad who had no answer at all to the waves of attacks that rained down on them. The goal attempts figure of 29 to 2 in Leeds’ favour tells some of the story, but not all of it – this was more one sided than even 7-0 suggests, in fact, I’m struggling to think of any game I’ve ever seen where we were so much second best.
We’ve played away against two of the four sides that are dominating the division this season and the games have been lost by an aggregate of 12-0, but I’ve always maintained that there was a freakish element to the early season 5-0 loss at Burnley as they managed to score one goal more than they had on target attempts.
Perhaps, there was a freakish element to yesterday’s game as well as Leeds, perhaps fired up by having three former jacks in their line up intent on revenge for what happened a fortnight ago, kept on pushing for goals whereas at other times they’ve seemed happy to settle for three or four? It also needs to be pointed out that Leeds are very good at home this season – only Burnley, with their ridiculously good defensive record, Portsmouth, on the opening day of the season when you get all sorts of odd results and Blackburn have avoided defeat there.
As an aside, Blackburn are interesting in that their effective young manager John Eustace, no doubt considered to be too boring by the Cardiff hierarchy to manage here, has an unbeaten record against Leeds in his four encounters with them over the past two seasons and his teams have only conceded one goal in the process.
However, what cannot be ignored is that when it became clear that this could be a very heavy defeat for City, they struck me as being too willing to accept their fate. Yes, it was an awful situation to find themselves in, but there was a lack of resolve, pride and character on offer which was worrying..
Besides being an embarrassment, today was a reminder that, for all that we’ve had five weeks or so of relative positivity, we are still a very poorly run club with an apprentice manager who are stuck in a relegation battle that might well be lost.
On a day that needed something of a good news story, the under 21s provided it as they returned to form to deservedly beat Everton 3-2 to win their League Cup group. In an entertaining encounter which featured forty five minutes from Aaron Ramsey and striker Rocco Simic, the former was influential while he was on the pitch and it was his lovely pass that sent the Croatian through to coolly equalise after Everton had led through an early penalty. The visitors soon restored their lead with a deflected shot from the edge of the penalty area, but they were lucky to lead at half time because they had been second best most of the time.
The second half was more even, but with about twenty minutes left, Luke Pearce, who had replaced Simic, was put through by what was an even better pass than Ramsey’s by the impressive Tanatswa Nyakuhwa and finished emphatically to make it 2-2. Just three minutes later another sub, Isaac Jeffries, cut inside from the right to shoot home from twenty yards.
City held on to their lead without too many alarms to win and, in another game with plenty of goals, the under 18s recovered from a two goal deficit to come out on top 4-3 at Charlton with Dan Ola scoring twice as Osian Rees and Mannie Barton also netted.
In local football, Treherbert Boys and Girls Club won 2-0 at Ceri and Williams FC in the Ardal League South West Division and Treorchy Boys and Girls Club won 3-1 at Penygraig United in the Highadmit South Wales Alliance Division One East.
