Definitely a point gained, rather than two dropped, as City Under 18s stay top of the league.

Posted on December 2, 2018 by The other Bob Wilson

The league fixture list for Cardiff City’s Under 18 team this season is truly barmy. Having started with a preponderance of home matches, they finally returned home for the first time in more than two months yesterday when they entertained a Millwall side which went into the encounter in second place in the table.

They are scheduled to play at Leckwith on the next two Saturdays. Although, in saying that, the club website has them playing Ipswich at 11 o clock and Hull away in the Youth Cup at 7 in the evening on the 15 December. Presumably, either the league match will be cancelled or the date shown for the cup match is wrong – flying up to Hull in the afternoon straight after the first match is a possibility I suppose, but you’d have to question how seriously we were taking the Youth Cup if that happened!

Anyway, back to the league fixture list. After three scheduled home matches on successive Saturdays, the Under 18s are then on the road again until late January, so for those of us (and I doubt it if there are many) who go along to youth team games to support the team rather than to watch relatives or acquaintances of theirs play, it’s hard to have any sense of continuity to the season. This is a shame, because the first half of 18/19 has been as successful a start to a campaign as the youth side have had since gaining Academy status in 04/05.

Based on yesterday’s 1-1 draw with opponents who had not lost in six matches going into the game, all of those weeks of playing away games has had a bit of a detrimental effect on the team, because they did not play to the standards I saw earlier in the season. Although they came close to winning the match late on when they hit the post, a City win would have been very harsh on a Millwall side which generally had the better of things for long spells in the game.

The first thing to say about the match is that the excellent new pitch at Leckwith made my pre match fears that I’d travel down on the train from Treherbert only to find that the game had been postponed because of a waterlogged pitch look pretty stupid – it played perfectly.

The pitch was a help in producing a good first half which I thought City just shaded – they were definitely playing the better football, but a bigger visiting team (the physical difference between the sides became more pronounced as the game went on as the three substitutes City brought on were all on the small side) were able to impose themselves on proceedings and the longer the game went on, the harder it got for City to maintain the standards shown in the early stages.

Although there were opportunities for Millwall in the first half, the ability of City midfielders, and sometimes defenders, to thread passes through inside the full backs to put colleagues into space was a feature of the first half an hour or so. Unfortunately, they were never able to capitalise on these opportunities because of a combination of poor technique or wrong options taken when it came to playing the pass or shot which should have at least resulted in an effort on the Millwall goal. As it was, Fanshawe in the Millwall goal was only really tested by an Isaak Davies effort after being set up by a fine Ryan Reynolds ball.

The first half did not get the goal it deserved, but one was not long in coming after the break as the visitors took the lead three minutes in from a corner with the ball being diverted to the far post where, not for the first time, there was an overload of Millwall players that caught City on the hop and O’Brien was able to score easily from close range.

City’s response was not long in coming as Sam Bowen played a free kick into the “corridor of uncertainty”, but before anything could come of that situation, the referee was blowing for a penalty, presumably given for a holding offence against one of the home players attempting to exploit what looked like a very dangerous dead ball delivery.

Tellingly, there were very few Milwall protests at the award and Dan Griffiths, scorer of two penalties on his way to a hat trick in the 11-0 Welsh Youth Cup romp at Taff’s Well last weekend, opted for power down the middle from the spot as Fanshawe dived out of the way.

Nothing to do with yesterday’s game, but I’m grateful to Michael Morris of the Cardiff City Mad website for this superb photo of Aron Gunnarsson’s goal on Friday night – he called it “Guard of Honour”!

At 1-1 with the second period less than ten minutes old, the match was set up to go either way, but it has to be said that from then on, Millwall generally had the better of things. As mentioned earlier, the visitors greater power became more of a factor, but it would be unfair to put Millwall’s superiority solely down to this – they were generally brighter and quicker than their opponents in the game’s final half an hour.

This was reflected in a series of goal attempts which flew not far high or wide with home keeper George Ratcliffe looking as if he would have struggled to reach them if they had been on target. Ratcliffe did excel straight after our equaliser as he made his best save of the game, but I suppose that if I was critical of some of City’s finishing before the break, the same had to apply to Millwall after it.

City had little to offer in response as they looked like a team that was seriously missing their most influential player, Sion Spence, who is still out with an injury picked up on Wales duty in September. Spence scored thirty times last season, but also provided creativity from the number ten position and support for a striker who did not tend to get as isolated as he looked yesterday.

Griffiths was forced to fend for himself more and more as the game went on yesterday and, after he was withdrawn, the same applied to Davies who moved into the middle to replace him. These two players were named in the Wales Under 19 squad which qualified for the Elite Round of the European Championships for the first time since 2014 (Davies had to miss out through injury) recently along with Ratcliffe, Reynolds, who captained the side, and Bowen.

How Wales would have deployed Griffiths and Davies if they had started a game together would have been interesting- would they have used them as a two through the middle or like City do with Griffiths through the middle and Davies wide on the right? With us sitting top of the league, it must be said that their our can hardly be called a failure, but yesterday Davies, who I’ve seen play so well as a centre forward in the past, looked wasted out wide and Griffiths was too often left on his own.

Yet, for all that City were not at their best, they came the closest to getting that winning goal when sub Ntazana Mayembe hit the post with two minutes of normal time left.

City stay at the top of their league with twenty five points, while Millwall are one of six teams chasing them who are within half of dozen points of that, but all of these sides have played at least two games more than them, so I think it’s fair to say that they should be happy with a point from a game they may well have lost because it does them little harm when you look at the bigger picture.

Posted in The kids. | Tagged | 5 Comments

Deja Vu again as Cardiff equal Derby record with just twenty four games to play.

Posted on December 1, 2018 by The other Bob Wilson

Almost two years ago, Wolves’ Matt Doherty, with a little help from Ben Amos, fired his side in front at Cardiff City Stadium with barely a minute on the clock. It took the Irish wing back seventeen minutes longer to find the net tonight, but, if we end up playing his team again down here next season, I hope he puts his side one up again because what happens after that is terrific if you are a City fan!

Back in 16/17, City found themselves a goal down at half time having done little to suggest they had an equaliser in them. It was then that Neil Warnock pulled off a tactical masterstroke and sent on Kenneth Zohore, a player who seemed to be on his way out of the club, with the instruction that he prove that he had a future at Cardiff.

Zohore rose to that challenge and played a big part in a dramatic turnaround, but the whole team seemed inspired and, two of the club’s forgotten men currently, Matt Connolly and Anthony Pilkington  scored the goals to give us what I have always thought was a very important pointer towards what could be possible under a manager who had only been here a couple of months.

We’d had impressive wins against Bristol City and Huddersfield under Warnock already, but we demolished Wolves in those second forty five minutes – for the first time we saw the intensity, drive and sheer will to win which has proved to be too much for so many opponents over the past couple of years.

We battered Wolves that night and as the City team trudged back to the centre spot tonight after conceding yet another set piece goal, I lamely mentioned that we ended up winning 2-1 the last time Doherty put Wolves 1-0 up down here – it was an attempt to sound confident when, in truth, I felt nothing like that.

After all, Zohore (after reports which suggested the Danish striker could be off to Fenerbache in January, “sources close to the player” stated that he wanted to stay at Cardiff and fight for his place) was, like Connolly and Pilkington, nowhere to be seen tonight having failed to recover from the calf injury sustained following a start to the campaign which could charitably be described as nondescript.

It was hard to see anyone on the City bench who could come on and play a part in the sort of transformation that cracked Wolves a couple of seasons ago and Neil Warnock, seemingly, felt the same way because he kept the same players and formation in place for the third quarter of the game.

Frankly, it was a surprise to see us keeping to the same system because, certainly by our manager’s standards, it was a bizarre one as we decided to match Wolves’, largely successful, three centreback formation.

Now, I have been an advocate of playing Sean Morrison, Bruno Manga and Sol Bamba as a back three quite often on here in the past – my reasoning being that it was a way of getting three of our better players into the team in their best positions. Results, and performances, have been patchy when the three have played together as centrebacks in the past and so it seemed a big ask to take Wolves on using the formation that they were so familiar with, especially when  you considered who we had as wing backs tonight!

I think it’s fair to say that Neil Warnock’s instincts when it comes to the wing back role in a three centreback formation would be to use players who are, essentially, full backs there – that is, say, Jazz Richards and Joe Bennett.

Our manager revealed after the game that his hand had been forced to some extent because Greg Cunningham and Richards were injured and Bennett had been unable to train for most of the week. Even then though, Lee Peltier was available for selection and someone like Joe Ralls had done a decent job as a left back occasionally during his early days as a first team player.

What I mean here is that we were hardly at a stage where Victor Camarasa and Junior Hoilett had to play as wing backs because no there was no else who could. In his post match press conference, Neil Warnock revealed that he was pretty confident that Hoilett could do a decent job in what was a strange position for him, but he was honest enough to say that he had no idea what to expect from Camarasa.

Apparently, the plan was to “have a go” at Wolves. This was understandable in a way because, for the first time in Nuno Espirito Santo’s time in charge “Wolvesalona” were experiencing a distinct dip in form and fortunes. Last Sunday, unfancied Huddersfield had given Wolves something of a football lesson at Molineux as they won convincingly by 2-0.

Huddersfield were good last weekend, but it was one of those matches where it was hard to decide how much the outcome had depended on how good the winners were or how bad the losers were – certainly, Wolves were as poor as I’ve seen them under Nuno.

Most worrying for Wolves was that this was the latest setback in a run which had seen them take just the one point (from a visit to Arsenal which they dominated) from five matches and, while it would be wrong to claim that they were in freefall towards the bottom of the table, this hardly ties in with the way the club and their fans perceive themselves these days.

It was mentioned during the commentary on the Huddersfield match that the Wolves squad had been offered a considerable bonus if they qualified for Europe this season. That just sums up what Wolves have become under their current owners and it was not surprising to read that Doherty had been talking in terms of them having to beat teams like us and Huddersfield after the game – Wolves think they are a top half Premier League team and Doherty has been talking winning the Premier League title within five years this week.

To be fair to them, they were deserving and commanding winners of the Championship last season and, although there was a lot about the entitled attitude coming from the club which grated with me throughout 17/18, some of their play during the early weeks of this season was very easy on the eye.

That’s why it came as such a surprise to see them look so ordinary last week and it seemed to me that their attitude tonight was very much one of let’s return to basics.

The early minutes saw City having the go that our manager had told them to. That’s not to say that Wolves were creaking in the face of our explosive attacking play, but we were generally on the front foot as we forced a few corners with Josh Murphy, operating up front alongside Callum Paterson in a 3-5-2 formation, causing the odd problem or two.

There were still concerns stemming from the fact that the way we were set up in wide areas seemed to leave us wide open to the sort of quick counter attack Wolves are adept at and the inclusion of the lightening quick Adama Traore in what was a rare start for him only increased that feeling – I must say that I was pleased to see Traore, like Murphy, deployed through the middle, rather in the wide open spaces down our flanks.

I also did not like seeing centrebacks Morrison and Manga taking defensive throw ins when we had two wing backs whose instincts are to go forward rather than back, but all of my concerns stemmed from how I would normally expect Wolves to play – the truth was though that there was very little of the smooth passing game that was their trademark last season and for most of this campaign.

It was as if they were thinking that they had to just get a result no matter how it came – Wolves were almost as direct as us, only had fifty two per cent of possession and they were happy to sit back and contain us, probably figuring that, given the way we have been defending, the chances would come along if they were patient.

It was from the second corner they forced that Wolves took the lead and for a team who were so good at defending set pieces on their way to promotion, it’s a shock to see how susceptible we have become to them in such a short space of time. I’ve not seen any video action of the game yet, but, apparently it was Aron Gunnarsson who let his man go this time as Raul Jimenez flicked a header goalwards, Neil Etheridge saved well and deserved better than seeing the ball drop to the unmarked Doherty who crashed the ball in from close range.

This latest giveaway means that we have still only scored the first goal in a match once this season. That came at Chelsea, for all the good it did us, and, although it says a lot about the squad that their three wins have all come in matches in which we conceded first, it is surely true that we are going to have to rediscover the knack of keeping clean sheets if we are to win enough matches to stay up.

To be honest, apart from blowing one or two very promising counter attacking opportunities through poor control or passing, Wolves offered little going forward in the first half, but, with City again showing how much they need a proper striker, they didn’t have to do much more than that – the half time highlights package on the big screen showed a Ralls shot which flew not too far wide and an excellent snapshot from Harry Arter from twenty yards which crashed back off a post and that was it as far as we were concerned.

There were spells in the first half where City really struggled. Despite having Camarasa, Ralls, Gunnarsson and Arter all in the starting line up at Everton last wekend, our pass completion rate was a worst in the Premier League this season fifty two per cent and it didn’t feel as if it was much higher than that in the opening forty five minutes tonight as the ball was given away with frustrating regularity. You’d never expect us to be high in any pass completion rate table at this level, but the four players I mentioned above should have been able to ensure that we could pass to another Cardiff player more often than we were.

So, with no inspired half time substitution at 1-0 down to a Doherty goal this time, it was hard to see a way back into the game especially considering that Wolves were unlikely to over commit while they were ahead.

There was some encouragement seconds after the restart when Camarasa found himself in space on the right, but what I think was meant as a cross flew harmlessly across goal as, not for the first time, you sensed a tension in the way we were reacting to the sort of half chances from which you at least need to work the keeper.

However, that one incident apart, there was nothing in the early stages of the second period to suggest this was a game City were going to win. Indeed, we went through another one of those dodgy ten minutes spells seen in the first half – as an example of what I mean, Hoilett was left to look after two Wolves players from a short corner routine and, criminally, there was still no support for him as the visitors took an age getting a cross over which was headed not far wide.

As the match got closer to the hour mark, Wolves were in control and it began to look as if a second goal was there for them if they wanted it. However, they seemed reluctant to go for the jugular and, imperceptibly at first, the balance of power began to edge back towards us.

The momentum shift first started to show itself in us winning a few throw ins in areas which gave Gunnarsson the chance to get involved and this helped get the crowd more involved. However, it was after Arter’s second fine shot of the night, this one was deflected for a corner, that I first detected that the home support was believing again.

Now there was a feeling that an equaliser was coming and when Arter hooked a half cleared corner back in Morrison nodded on, keeper Rui Patrício (was he fouled when Paterson blocked him?) failed to reach the ball and Gunnar hooked into the Canton Stand net in much the same manner as he did late last season against Forest in another 2-1 win.

Junior Hoilett and Aron Gunnarsson both signed new contracts with the club in the summer and I think it’s fair to say that there was much more joy when the news broke regarding the former, rather than the latter. In the event, Hoilett’s superb matchwinner was his first notable contribution of the season, whereas the return to fitness and first team action from Gunnar, seen here volleying in our equaliser, has coincided with the moment we started winning matches*,

Wolves were paying for their lack of attacking ambition at 1-0 up or perhaps, with their self belief at a low ebb,  they hadn’t had the confidence to push on at that stage?

Either way, it had now become the sort of game we are pretty good at. With the crowd right behind them, City are relentless when they sense the sort of soft underbelly Fulham showed here in October and, possibly, there was an element of that with Wolves currently because they definitely looked to be wilting.

When the winner came, it was a triumph for Hoilett who, along with Zohore, has been the big disappointment of the season so far for me. Having done no more than okay in his wing back role, Hoilett was the player I nominated to be taken off when I saw Kadeem Harris stood ready to come on, but, instead it was Arter who made way and, within a minute, the manager’s faith in his winger was vindicated.

Hoilett has scored some good goals for us, but the curling right foot strike from the corner of the penalty area, which flew in off the underside of the crossbar for added dramatic effect, is surely the best of them.

Not only was it the best goal the Canadian has scored for City, but I would argue that it was the most important because in providing his manager with the ideal present for his seventieth birthday tomorrow, Hoilett’s effort was sufficient for us to offer proof that there are certain types of games in this league that we can now go into with a degree of confidence that we can win them.

Fulham, Brighton and Wolves may not finish the season contesting a top six spot so we have to be realistic in assessing what the three wins in our last four home matches mean and it needs to be remembered as well that, despite the euphoria of this latest win, there were long spells in it where we definitely looked like bottom three candidates.

However, having reached the eleven point mark with a mere seventy two more to play for, we are showing that we can give go into homes games with about two thirds of the teams in this league with a decent chance of beating them – now, as we enter a period of away games against sides in mid to lower table, we need to provide evidence that we are not going to be almost wholly reliant on points from home fixtures to stay up.

Once again, I’ll finish with a request for support from readers by becoming my Patrons through Patreon. Full details of this scheme and the reasons why I decided to introduce it can be found here, but I should say that the feedback I have got so far has indicated a reluctance from some to use Patreon as they prefer to opt for a direct payment to me. If you are interested in becoming a patron and would prefer to make a direct contribution, please contact me at paul.evans8153@hotmail.com or in the Feedback section of the blog and I will send you my bank/PayPal details.

*picture courtesy of https://www.walesonline.co.uk/

Posted in Out on the pitch | Tagged | 1 Comment