My Cardiff City team of the 2010’s.

Posted on December 30, 2019 by The other Bob Wilson

Nathan Blake picked his team of the decade last week and I think it’s fair to say that it was a controversial selection with one or two choices which came as a real surprise to me, but, overall, I wasn’t as critical of it as many others were.

I think Blakey talks a lot of sense on the weekly City podcast on Wales Online and I respect his judgement on players, but, nevertheless, I just don’t get the Mendez-Laing and Chopra’s selections!

Of course, most supporters talk on social media as if they would make better managers than the likes of Messrs Mackay, Warnock, Jones etc. etc. and know more than pundits like Blakey, Gabbidon, Perry etc. etc. so here is me proving that I don’t fall into either of those categories as I name my Cardiff City team 2010/2019!

Just a few words about category for selection and formations first though. I’ve made my selections based entirely what a player did while playing for Cardiff City during the decade that is just coming to an end – hence my earlier comment about Michael Chopra. The Chops of 2006/07 (his first season with us) would definitely have been in this side, but I feel he was some way from being that player when the 2010’s began. Similarly, I think Kevin McNaughton played his best football for us in the noughties and I’d say the same applied to the likes of Steve McPhail, Chris Burke and Joe Ledley, while someone like Aaron Ramsey was only with us for a few weeks and did not do enough in a City shirt during the decade, despite him being, perhaps, the best player to have represented the club in the ten years.

As far as formations go, although I don’t believe we had as many good centrebacks in the 10’s as we did in the noughties, we still had plenty of strength in depth there. When I also consider how much reliance we have placed on wingers at different times during the decade, I’m struck by how often that faith has not been repaid with consistently influential performances – I considered Junior Hoilett for selection, but decided that, this season especially, none of our wingers have been good enough and, although they were sometimes match winners on their day, I’d say the same applies to players like Burke and Craig Noone.

If I was going to go for a winger, I think it would have been Kimbo Kyung who was brilliant in what was City’s best win of the decade (the 3-2 win over Manchester City in our home Premier League debut in 2013), but I’ve decided to do without them in a 3-5-2/5-3-2 formation – here is the team I’ve come up with;-

Goalkeeper

Neil Etheridge is one of four (possibly five with Curtis Nelson) very good free transfer signings made by Neil Warnock and he let no one down in the Premier League last year, while Tom Heaton is a quality keeper who I particularly remember for a great save he made to keep out a Steve Gerrard penalty in the shoot out in the 2012 League Cup Final. However, this is the easiest selection of the lot. It’s got to be the man whose brilliance persuaded the club they could let Heaton leave – David Marshall was many people’s pick as the best keeper in the Premier League in 13/14 and I can remember goalkeeping masterclasses that were almost solely responsible for getting us 0-0 draws against Villa and Bristol City – it has to be him.

Centrebacks

I can understand why Blakey was willing to pick Steven Caulker because, in terms of sheer quality, I think he is probably better than two of my selections. I also think Ben Turner was an under rated performer who gave supporters possibly the City moment of the decade with his late equaliser in that League Cup Final, and I always enjoyed watching Matt Connolly play, while Sean Morrison was a truly inspirational captain of the 17/18 promotion team.

“Inspiration” has been a big factor in my selection of Sol Bamba and Mark Hudson, who were superb representatives of the club during our two promotion season, with Bamba becoming a talisman from the moment he marked his debut with a winning goal against Bristol City, while Hudson was a model of consistency in 12/13 and also scored, perhaps, the goal of the decade with his outrageous sixty five yarder against Derby.

If Bamba and Hudson were “attitude” selections, the third centreback is picked on ability and class – I always said that Bruno Manga was prone to the odd mistake in the Championship because he found it too easy at times, but if we’d have had five more as good as him in the Premier League last season we would have stayed up easily.

WIng backs

Full back/wing back has not been a particularly strong area of the pitch for us in the last ten years and I did find this selection hard. On the right, although he seldom excites, I’d rate Lee Peltier as the best defensive right back we’ve had, but the fact I’d want him as a wing back counts against him. I did consider Kevin McNaughton and I thought Adam Matthews turned in a few superb performances in a wing back type role for us as a teenager, but I’ve gone for Kévin Théophile-Catherine who didn’t pull up many trees during his season with us, but did a steady job at Premier League level.

Candidates on the left were Mark Kennedy who I remember for his classy reaction to Martyn Waghorn’s penalty miss which sealed our place in the 2010 promotion Play Off game and a series of displays in which he looked unflustered at full back despite having played most of his career as a winger. I also thought Andrew Taylor was an underrated player and Fabio was a good quality Championship full back, but, despite slipping from his usual standards this season, I think it’s got to be Joe Bennett who played with consistency and no little ability for the best part of three seasons starting with 16/17.

Midfield

I think Joe Ralls is a very good Championship midfielder who did a decent job in the Premier League last season, but he doesn’t make it into my team. I was going to go with Blakey and pick Jordon Mutch who was one of our most effective Premier League performers in 13/14 , but changed my mind at the last minute, while I also seriously considered Gary Medel, but was put off him by a feeling that he stopped giving his best for the club about halfway through that season.

Essentially, Ralls and Medel were in contention with Aron Gunnarsson for a place and I opted for Gunnar in the end. One of my main reasons for that was a slightly odd in that it was more about how he is/was missed when he wasn’t there – I appreciate Gunnar more when I see how we have done without him this season. Also, although he was never that easy on the eye, you only have to see how highly he is valued by his country to see that he is one of those players who is “inspirational” and I reckon he is always very highly valued by his team mates.

The second midfield spot boiled down to a choice between Mutch and Victor Camarasa – it was very close, but I went for the Spaniard who was very much the class performer in our side last season. Mutch had an eye for goal, but, with both of my wing backs being more full backs than wingers, I think my team might need the extra creativity and flair that Camarasa would provide.

The final midfield spot did not come down to any kind of competition. It’s Peter Whittingham, certainly my favourite player of the 10s and, probably, City’s best player of the decade – I’ll leave it at that!

Forwards

A real contrast here between what we had to pick from in the noughties and what we had in the 10s makes these, perhaps, the hardest selections. If Kenneth Zohore could have maintained his 2017 level of performance over a few seasons rather than a few months, he would have been in with a chance as my target man selection, while Heidar Helguson may not have supplied many goals in our first promotion season but his experience and canniness made him a very shrewd signing indeed.

In the end though, I had to go with Jay Bothroyd. He was a frustrating player at times and he certainly didn’t cover himself in glory in the Reading Play Off Second Leg game which turned out to be his final match for City. Bothroyd had everything though, decent in the air, a turn of pace, superb ability for such a big man and he could finish – there’s no way the only man to be selected for England while being a Cardiff player in the fifty six years I’ve supported the club could be left out.

It rather tells a story that the two men it came down to choosing from to play up front alongside the target man were probably better known for playing in other positions. Anthony Pilkington was a personal favourite of mine who did a very good job as our main striker during our unlikely Play off challenge in 15/16 and was simply a good all round player with no obvious weaknesses to his game. I’ve picked Craig Bellamy however, who may have left City under something of a cloud, but I’d never seen the like for fan reaction when he signed for us for the first time. Bellamy was a Premier League player turning out in the Championship in 10/11 and he was instrumental in helping make our promotion in 12/13 such a comfortable one.

Subs

Etheridge

Connolly for his ability to play across the back four

Mutch

Ralls

Hoilett

Pilkington

Kimbo

Although I think that side would be pretty solid at the back, I do wonder about its goal power – I think that, like so many other City sides of this decade, they would be heavily reliant on Whitts’ set piece delivery.

Posted in Memories, 1963 - 2023, My best........ | Comments Off on My Cardiff City team of the 2010’s.

Cardiff City end 2019 with best performance of the season so far to move into top ten.

Posted on December 30, 2019 by The other Bob Wilson

I daresay that there are those who read this blog who feel that my game reviews this season have been overly negative and I admit that the large majority of these pieces have been critical of the team, manager or both.

Indeed, it could be that some may believe I enjoy slagging off City. Let me assure them that nothing could be further from the truth, I did not begin this blog with the intention of going on about how awful supporting Cardiff City is, I wanted it to reflect my love of the club that I had been supporting for 46 years at the time the blog began.

I derive far more joy from writing about good things happening to Cardiff City than I do reporting on what I see as under achievement by the team this season.

Having got that off my chest, it is only right and proper that, having written so much that is critical in the first four and a half months of the season, I should give due praise after today’s excellent 2-1 victory over Sheffield Wednesday at Hillsborough.

I’ve heard today’s performance and result being described as the best so far by City under Neil Harris’ management, I would go further than that and say that this was the best of the season in terms of performance and, probably, result.

Around a month ago, City went to Nottingham Forest and recorded their first away win of the season against a side that was in good form at the time and challenging strongly for third place. That win was similar in some ways to what happened today because City struck early to get ahead in the game and then had to absorb a lot of pressure before being able to claim the points.

Today, their opponents were in fine home form having gone unbeaten since August. Sheffield, like Forest, are in the top six and would’ve fancied their chances against a Cardiff side that had struggled to a couple of home draws with unimpressive displays over the Christmas period.

Having only managed three goal attempts against Preston and three on target goal attempts against Millwall, the last thing anybody could’ve been expecting was for this notoriously slow starting City team to come out of the blocks so quickly that they were two goals ahead after just eight minutes.

Ironically, the home team started well and City’s goal came under threat a couple of times in the first five minutes. However, there was a confidence and liveliness in Cardiff’s early play which could not have come from anything that had happened in front of their own fans over the past week.

Oddly, it was almost as if City were carrying on from how they had ended their last away game when they had scored three times in the last 25 minutes to earn a very unlikely point against a Leeds United team that were topping the Championship at the time.

Cardiff never showed the sharpness and decisiveness that saw striker Robert Glatzel sprint into space towards a central position inside the Wednesday penalty area as his team were awarded a freekick for a foul on Junior Hoilett in the two home matches that City fans had to suffer through recently.

There had been promising signs of a partnership being formed between Glatzel and Lee Tomlin when the former came on as a substitute at Leeds and here Tomlin showed again that he was on the same wavelength as the German as he immediately put the ball down and played the freekick into Glatzel’s path.

 There was still much to do for Glatzel as he had not quite shaken off his marker, Wednesday skipper Tom Lees, and also right back Liam Palmer had come around on the cover. So, the City striker was faced with two defenders in his vicinity before he could think about getting a shot away.

There was a slight bit of luck in the way that the ball bounced for him, but Glatzel earned that good fortune by the way he was able to work himself clear enough of Lees and Palmer to guide a firmly struck  low shot beyond home keeper Cameron Dawson from about twelve yards out.

It was a good goal, but not a patch on the one which followed just three minutes later. Again, the buildup came down City’s right following a searching crossfield pass from captain Marlon Pack to Tomlin who combined with Glatzel and right back Jazz Richards who knocked a lovely first time pass into the number ten’s path.

Tomlin was just onside as he took the ball towards the byline and then looked up and delivered the perfect low cross into the path of Hoilett who gave a lovely move the finish it deserved by confidently side footing home from around the penalty spot.

I can’t think of a better goal scored by Cardiff this season and I hope it can be a very significant one which will provide confidence and belief in the side, because they will have scored such a beauty against what is a good Wednesday defence.

I say that mind while acknowledging that Wednesday had been 2-1 up at struggling Stoke City going into added time at the end of the game on Boxing Day and ended up losing 3-2. Therefore, Wednesday had conceded four goals in something like ten minutes and one more for City in the minutes after they had got their quickfire double would surely have put the game beyond the home team with barely a tenth of it played.

As it was, there was always the strong likelihood that City would have to face a strong home fight back. Two nil can be a dangerous lead at any time but particularly when it is gained so quickly in the game as it gives the opponents plenty of time to put things right.

Evidence that the remainder of the match would be anything but straightforward for City soon arrived as Richards made a great bloke to deny Sam Winnall and then Neil Etheridge produced a flying save to turn away a Barry Bannan effort from the follow up.

So, it was ominous to see us concede another soft goal from a set piece within ten minutes of going 2-0 up. This one arrived when Lees got a long way above Curtis Nelson to head in a Bannan’s corner – Nelson has to carry his share of responsibility for this goal I suppose, but it would never have ended up in our net if we had somebody stood guarding the far post.

I’m probably showing my age here, because I would always have two people on the posts when defending corners. Yes, I accept that this has its disadvantages in that a defence cannot push out confidently in the expectation of getting an offside decision if the ball is cleared and then played back into the penalty area because of those two players guarding the posts, but it seems to me that the balance of probabilities says that more goals would be prevented by clearances off the line from an effort like Lees’ today than goals disallowed for offside when not having players covering the posts.

Anyway, the upshot was that today City faced something like seventy five minutes with a single goal lead that they would have to defend. As it turned out, that seventy five minutes became something like ninety when the time taken up by a couple of injuries which caused much reorganisation in the Cardiff ranks were taken into account.

The first of these came about in very unfortunate circumstances when a clash of heads between Hoilett and Joe Bennett led to the latter being taken off and replaced by Will Vaulks. With Lee Peltier missing through the injury which caused his early withdrawal against Millwall, City were left with just the one specialist full back, so Leandro Bacuna filled in on the right while Richards switched to Bennett’s left back position.

However, this new arrangement was only to last a few minutes because a hamstring injury to Nathanial Mendez-Laing meant a second substitution before half-time. Rather than bring on Josh Murphy as a like for like replacement, Neil Harris opted for a complete change of formation as Sol Bamba was brought into the fray for only his second appearance of the season.

Bamba was accommodated not in the defensive midfield role he has sometimes occupied in his Cardiff career, but as a third centreback alongside Nelson and Aden Flint, with Bacuna and Richards utilised as wingbacks.

Considering that, from memory, this is the first time City had used such a formation this season, I must say that they coped pretty well while absorbing a lot of Wednesday pressure in the second half. In saying that, goalkeeper Neil Ethridge did not really have a great deal to do. True, he did have to decisively fist away a well hit twenty yard effort from Josh’s twin brother, Jacob Murphy and then come off his line a long way to punch clear the threatening cross which followed, but in the main, the home side’s shooting was from distance and wayward – substitute Adhte Nuhiu’s effort from what was a very decent late chance epitomising those failings..

In fact, the best of the efforts from twenty yards or more came from Pack as he fizzed a twenty five yarder about a foot wide in what was a rare second half attack by City,

The early substitutions forced on City meant that the likes of Glatzel, Richards and Hoilett had to play the whole one hundred and four minutes (there were seven minutes added time in each half).

The first two named were among City’s best players with the German striker turning in what was, almost certainly, his best performance for the club.

As for Hoilett, he must have thought that he may have had to make an unwanted early departure as the home crowd bayed for him to be shown a red card following a challenge which looked bad, but did not seem malicious to me. Luckily for him, referee Tim Robinson deemed a yellow card to be sufficient punishment for the Canadian, because it was the sort of foul that can easily bring about a dismissal these days..

In some ways, this ranks as Cardiff’s most complete display of the season so far, because they combined decisive, inventive and even stylish attacking with the sort of defensive resilience which was a trademark during their promotion season, but had been noticeably absent too often this time around.

I’ve said on a few occasions over the past months that Cardiff had not looked like a top six side in any of the games so far during The 2019/20 season, but I feel that has changed now because today offered hope that there could be more of this sort of performance to come.

Today’s result closes the gap on the six placed team to a couple of points after a short period where it had been growing again because of the four game run without a win following the three successive victories which had seen that gap close to a single point.

City end their holiday period fixtures with a trip to a Queens Park Rangers team that will be set on revenge for their freakish 3-0 loss at Cardiff City Stadium back in September. Rangers looked a promising and dangerous team that night, but their young side has, predictably, struggled for consistency over the intervening period. They are certainly capable of beating us, but although our away record doesn’t look that great, it is only three defeats in our last 11 now on our travels.

Despite not hitting any great heights over the first half of the season, just six losses in 25 matches would have us in the top six if we could have converted two of the 10 draws we’ve had into wins. Today may have offered evidence that we can sustain the top six challenge which looked out of our reach as we laboured against Preston and Millwall.

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Posted in Out on the pitch | Tagged | 4 Comments