Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, Cardiff City fell a goal behind at home today around the fifteen minute mark and then spent the rest of the game huffing and puffing away to little effect – I can only think of one good chance they created in that last seventy five minutes and it felt like they could have played until midnight without scoring.
You almost certainly will have told me to stop by now, because it’s a story everyone has become used to since about the time football restarted after COVID – the scenario outlined in that first paragraph could have come from any season going back to 20/21.
Every team has a few matches a season where they toil away at home, lose and barely look like scoring, but whereas for most it seems to be about two or three times a season it feels as if it’s about half of the games we play at Cardiff City Stadium for a few years now..
Therefore, it’s sobering, to put it mildly, to see City begin a new season, after an encouraging set of warm up fixtures, with exactly the sort of result and performance that sees any kind of pre season optimism fading quickly.
By the standards of recent summers, it felt like City had been pretty shrewd with their recruitment and it may be that they have been. Although today was very deflating, it’s fair to say that even if the first match of the season goes poorly for a side, the next forty five often provide a season that turns out to be nowhere near as bad as the opening fixture suggested.
It’s also true to say that only two of those five “shrewd” summer recruits started today. Another one of them came on for the last twenty minutes or so, one was an unused sub and the other is probably two or three weeks away yet from being at a stage where he can be considered ready for serious first team action.
Nevertheless, after the first half of the summer break was taken up with a will he, won’t he soap opera about our manager staying at the club and then a very positive reaction when it became clear he was committing to City, this sort of afternoon will serve as a reminder of how limited and useless we looked in losing heavily to Middlesbrough and then a very poor Rotherham team in our final two matches of 23/24.
If you were reading this blog through the second half of last season, you will know I became very disillusioned with Erol Bulut and this meant I was in what seemed a tiny minority at times through May and early June who really wasn’t bothered whether Bulut stayed or went.
Now he is staying, and has a two year contract to boot, it seems perverse to want him to fail, so my attitude is that he gets a fresh start as if that deal he signed until 2026 was his first with us and, to be fair, I thought we were a lot more attack minded and enterprising in our pre season friendlies than we had been through most of 23/24 – I enjoyed watching some of those friendly games.
Indeed, for fifteen minutes or so today, this looked like a different team to the turgid and cautious one that would show little or no attacking intent in home games against modest opposition last season.
City pressed effectively and well early on and pushed a nervous looking Sunderland back as they moved the ball briskly and rotated positions. The only down side was that this good play was not leading to much in the way of goalmouth action – our manager spoke of chances created and wasted after the game and I can only say in reply that he must have been watching a different match to me..
I think a reason the pundits have tended to place us lower than many City fans, myself included, thought they would in their predicted tables is that stat about us being the worst team in the Championship at creating chances from open play last season and, on today’s evidence, maybe those pundits do have a point.
All City had to show in the way of meaningful efforts on goal in the period when they were on top today was a header from Dimitrios Goutas that keeper Anthony Patterson turned aside and that came from last season’s strong point in attacking terms, a set piece.
Sunderland began as they went on when it came to defending, they got their blocks in and gave City little room in attack. This was in direct contrast to City who fell apart the first time they were put under any pressure and conceded a truly shocking goal from a set piece.
On an afternoon when City’s crossing from set pieces and open play was disappointing, Patrick Roberts’ clipped ball to the far post from a free kick awarded for a soft foul by Ollie Tanner was a quality delivery, but it probably didn’t need to be that good as Dennis Cirkin was stood in glorious isolation as he headed across goal for fellow defender Luke O’Nien, again completely unmarked, to nod in from no more than two yards out.
Normally, when any team concedes from a set piece, it’s pretty easy to identify players who have lost their man and so allocating blame is pretty simple, but, this time, the two Sunderland players involved got in completely uncontested headers – I honestly couldn’t tell you who was supposed to be marking Cirkin in particular, it could have been any one out of about five!
The man who I’d rate as our best defender, Mark McGuinness, was absent again today with an injury, but my suspicious side has me thinking that his absence has more to do with the reported interest in him by teams like Luton – four of our five signings are free transfers, but they’re all going to be on a very decent wage and, Ebou Adams’ sale to Derby apart, we’ve done nothing yet to balance the books.
For a side that placed so much emphasis on defence last season, our goals against record (I can’t remember if it was the third or fourth worst in the division) was poor and we got worse when McGuinness was absent through injury for much of the second half of the campaign – if he was to be sold, then, even though we’ve signed Calum Chambers, bringing in a good quality Championship defender would become a priority.
There’s not a great deal to report really after that. We became more and more frustrated as a Sunderland team that deserved their win, but had me thinking that we’ll face some much better sides than them down here this season, held us at arm’s length with barely a problem.
Callum Robinson got in a scuffed shot from twelve yards that Patterson dived to hold easily and Ollie Tanner nodded our best chance of the afternoon wide from about eight yards just before half time. After that, it was back to slow, slow, slightly less slow stuff straight from the 23/24 season as we retained possession (67 per cent apparently), but, frankly, looked tired as the ball was worked across the defence, into midfield and then back again to no purpose.
It sounds daft saying we looked tired, but we were very laborious in moving the ball around and I found myself thinking back to those pre season games where I noted that the pace was upped and we looked more purposeful when we brought the youngsters on for the established first teamers..
Now, I’m not naive enough to advocate packing the side with kids, but I can’t help thinking that Isaak Davies will be a big miss and the selection seemed typically Bulut today. In particular, why was someone like Eli King not there instead of Andy Rinomhota who would seem to have no future here and, although Cian Ashford didn’t have a great pre season, his absence from the squad was a disappointment.
That being said, the two younger players who did feature didn’t really make the case for the inclusion of more vibrant youth – Tanner was sluggish and wasteful and Yakou Meite, brought on to replace him, looked far more lively and effective. Rubin Colwill was brought on very late and barely featured apart from when he, first, did well to wriggle clear of a marker, but then lacked a burst of acceleration to get clear of another one. Was Colwill then fouled? I’m not sure he was really – Sunderland then gained possession and broke clear to score a second goal as we entered added time which they didn’t really need through the highly regarded Jack Clarke.
Another thought which occurs to me is that any team that goes in with a midfield three who are all over thirty is asking for trouble – I thought the youngest of the three, Manolis Siopis, was our best player, but I can’t help thinking that Alex Robertson is going to be a very busy young man once he establishes himself here.
On that score, Joel Colwill may not be ready yet to be included every week by City, but he has the mobility in the middle of the park that was so painfully missing today and he scored two good goals on his debut on loan for Cheltenham as they beat Newport 3-2. The younger Colwill’s winning goal came in the ninety sixth minute with the sort of forward run into the penalty area from a number six or eight position that you just don’t see in City home games, especially deep into added time.
At least the under 18s started their league campaign off with a win as they came out on top by 3-1 at Fleetwood – Dan Ola, Mannie Barton and Jake Davies getting the goals.
