Regular readers will know that the summer months on here see me doing a series of weekly reviews which, in an essence, consists of a round up of the week’s more believable transfer gossip and a round up of other Cardiff City related news, such as announcements of pre season friendlies, league fixtures for the upcoming season etc.
Well, as we come to the end of yet another long delay without a match and we enter a final phase of the campaign where the games come, relatively, thick and fast, I wonder if I should have made such round up’s a regular item over the past few weeks when the notion of Cardiff City actually playing a first team game was something of a novelty!
I’m afraid the latest blank weekend made our relegation all the more likely as Burnley conceded an own goal inside the first five minutes and then cashed in on a very charitable Bournemouth team’s generosity to leave the south coast with all three points as they won 3-1. That victory lifts Sean Dyche’s side to thirty six points and means that City will, in all likelihood, have to win half of their remaining matches to stand even a remote chance of finishing above them. In truth, Burnley will go into Saturday’s match, which was being billed as a real relegation dogfight, knowing a win will, surely, keep them up as their awful looking final four matches appear more and more to be an irrelevance.
The sliver of good news was that Southampton lost 3-1 at home to Liverpool, so they are now five points above us with a better goal difference, but they have played the same number of matches as us. Unfortunately, the Saints have a very decent looking run in and have the buffer of a home game against relegated Huddersfield to end their season on – I just can’t see us finishing above them now.
Despite them having played a game less than us, Brighton now look the most catchable team for me, but with Bournemouth and West Ham currently pooled with the two relegated sides as the best opponents you could wish for, this weekend’s home match with the Cherries looks almost like a banker. Chris Hughton’s team do have a tough looking run in, but I think we are now in the territory where City need a minimum of nine or ten points from eighteen to stand a chance of staying up.
3-1 was a popular result over the weekend as both our Under 23s and Academy team suffered away defeats by that score. The Development team went down at Birmingham where Stuart O’Keefe scored a late consolation for a side that, just as it had done a few days earlier in a goalless draw at Watford, featured an awful lot of trialists.
There’s a home game against Bolton to end the season for the Under 23’s on Monday night. Currently, they sit eighth in a ten team league and, even with a win in their finale, that would appear to be their likely finishing position – so, for a second consecutive season at this level, I find myself asking what is the point in our Development team playing in it’s current format? It certainly doesn’t “develop” first team footballers.
Two or three years ago, Brentford ditched their Academy and Development sides and opted for going ahead with a B team. One downside of this idea would appear to be be that the London side’s B team squad does not get to play matches where there are league points at stake, but a look at their fixture list shows a frequent and interesting line up of opponents.
Based on what I’ve seen of our Under 23 team over the past two and a half years, I’d welcome something like Brentford’s B team idea, but I do appreciate that our location would probably make it difficult to compile a fixture list that compared favourably with theirs.
One thing I certainly wouldn’t do is follow Brentford’s example of scrapping their Academy though despite the fact that our under 18s are ending their season in very disappointing fashion. They are currently coming to the end of a spell of five matches in a fortnight in which the absence of important injured players has been keenly felt.
In my last piece I mentioned the unlucky 2-1 defeat at Sheffield United the Academy side had suffered on the day the first team were beaten at Manchester City, but it was a horror show on the Saturday I’m afraid as they were beaten 3-1 at Crewe against a team that had lost their previous nine matches and were at the bottom of the Northern Section of the league.
Dan Griffiths put City ahead, but Crewe soon leveled and in the second half City fell away badly as they conceded a couple of goals and had Keenan Patten dismissed for two yellow cards. Ironically however, on the day they gave what may well have been their worst performance of the campaign, it was confirmed that City had qualified for the end of season Play Offs because the only side that could catch them, Millwall, had also lost form at the worst time and had suffered consecutive defeats (yes, by that 3-1 scoreline!) at Barnsley and Charlton.
Leaders Ipswich were hammered 4-0 at Sheffield Wednesday, but, with City unable to take advantage, they maintained their two point lead over us. City were able to cut the gap by one point and end their losing run by drawing at Bolton 1-1 yesterday as Dan Griffiths (the lack of alternative scorers to him in recent games has to be a big contributory factor towards our poor run of form) scored a late goal to equalise the one we had conceded a couple of minutes earlier, but it’s now only two wins in ten for the Academy team and you have to think their chance to win the title has gone.
City have one last game, at home to Burnley on Saturday, in their regular season before the Play Offs which, if they follow the format of previous seasons, will consist of a one off Semi Final almost certainly away to Leeds or Sheffield Wednesday (we’ve beaten the former and lost to the latter in the last month) before a Final which I believe is due to be played on the ground of the team from the Northern section if one gets through.
Blaenrhondda were undoubtedly the team out of those covered on here to prosper most in the past week. Firstly, they continued their transition into a lower scoring, more defensively solid, outfit with a 1-0 win at Penrhiwfer AFC a week ago, thanks to a very late goal by Huw Bowtell. Things got better for Blaenrhondda despite them not playing over the weekend when promotion rivals Cornelly United and FC Cwmaman were beaten by already promoted Porthcawl and Tonyrefail BGC respectively – Tonyrefail are the best side I’ve seen Blaenrhondda play this season and they are coming up on the rails with a late run as the latest table shows.
Finally, Ton Pentre were once again heavily beaten at home, this time 4-1 by Llantwit Major, and, with only four games left to play, they trail last but one placed Goytre, who have played a match less, by five points – Ton were spared relegation after finishing bottom last season and it’s looking pretty certain that they’ll have to hope for something similar this time around.
Finally, it’s been revealed on social media that Steve Tucker, who wrote about City for Wales Online for what must have been a decade or more, has passes away.
I posted the following on a City messageboard this morning as a tribute to someone was always well worth a read, whatever he was writing on.
His music taste suggests he couldn’t have been much older than fifty
(I subsequently found out he would have been 53 tomorrow) – I’m really shocked by this news.Thanks for posting that link because I think it goes a long way to support my view that Steve Tucker was a better, and very funny, writer on the world in general than he was on football. That’s not to say he was poor when it came to writing about the game in general and Cardiff City in particular by any means (what came over when he was writing about City was the fact that he was such a fan), but I used to love his columns before he became a football writer first and foremost at Wales Online and his articles in that link brought back memories of his earlier stuff.
One thing is for sure, if I was asked to name all of the people who have written on Cardiff City for the Western Mail and Echo since I first saw us play, Steve Tucker would be one of the first names I’d come up with because bland he most definitely was not!
RIP.
Condolences to his friends and family.
the link I referred to can be accessed here .
