Bulut picks a team without centrebacks and Cardiff respond with their best Cup performance in years!

Posted on August 30, 2023 by The other Bob Wilson

This morning, I was pronouncing that Erol Bulut was very much a four at the back man and would not be changing to a three any time soon. It was a bit rich me pontificating like that about a manager I’d never heard of three months ago and I’m eating humble pie tonight as our manager proved me completely wrong by picking a side playing 3-5-2 some twelve hours later! 

Not only that, but he picked a team which you looked at and thought “where’s the defenders?”. Here’s the team Bulut selected;-  

Rúnarsson, Ng, Romeo, Rinomhota, Sawyers, Adams, Wintle, Colwill, Tanner, Etete, Grant. 

Getting a workable 3-5-2 out of that lot would have tested most supporters I would think, but not only did Erol Bulut manage it, he also produced one of the best Cardiff City Cup performances of the past decade as they returned from St Andrews with a 3-1 win over a Birmingham side which has taken ten points from their first four league games as well as winning at Cheltenham in the First Round – they had not been behind in a game all season.. 

City were “stylish” and bright, took the game to their opponents and were well worth their win, in fact it could have been a bigger victory. 

I should say here that the above description is based entirely on the commentary on the club website I listened to. All I’ve seen of the game are very brief highlights because it seems that unless your team is selected for coverage by Sky, you’re not going to be able to watch League Cup games live these days unless you’re at the ground.  

Radio coverage is very limited as well- Radio Wales has not covered our first two games in this season’s League Cup (all you could listen to tonight was the Newport v Brentford tie), so at a time when the phrase “wall to wall football”has never been more appropriate, it seems the League Cup is the exception which proves the rule. 

Therefore, I’m forming my views on tonight’s game based on what I heard from two club employees on the Cardiff City website and I think it’s fair to say that you’re talking about very biased reporting generally if you have to rely on club websites.. 

From what I’ve heard, our lot are better than most when it comes to possible bias (although one of the two tonight was not backward in coming forward when it came to showing his Cardiff allegiance!). The point is really that there has to be a possibility at least that City we’re nowhere near as good as they sounded tonight – it also needs to be recorded that Birmingham made six changes from their team that beat Plymouth last weekend. 

However, the match stats tended to back up what the commentators were saying. For a start, City had seventy one per cent possession (when do we ever have over seventy per cent possession and it was above eighty per cent at one time), we had thirteen goal attempts to nine with a six three lead in on target efforts, nine corners to three and a frustrated Birmingham side committed seventeen fouls to our six. 

Let’s not forget that if it was a much changed Birmingham side that was even more true of us with only Perry Ng surviving from Saturday’s starting line up against Sheffield Wednesday. 

We all know what tends to happen when we make ten changes for Cup games – we get embarrassed. Not this time though in a match which certainly sounded as if it was played with more urgency and intensity than supporters are used to seeing from us in early round Cup ties. 

Bulut was very pleased after the game saying that no one in his side had a poor game and that they had played without centrebacks. 

Our manager is right there, Ng has experience of playing,,and playing well, in a back three, but, him apart, there was no one else who could say it was his natural position. Alongside Ng was Mahlon Romeo, no surprise really when you look at what was available in that starting line up and, intriguingly, Ebou Adams who was in the middle of the three. 

One name stood out in the Birmingham team, Lukas Jutkiewicz. He may be at the veteran stage now, but I had visions of him making mincemeat out of our back three in the air in particular, but it never happened, quite the opposite in fact. 

With Tanner and Grant as a pair of very attack minded wing backs and a midfield three of Rinomhota, Wintle and Sawyers, with Colwill pushed forward to support Etete, plus a subs bench containing plenty of youngsters, it was certainly a bold looking selection and this was reflected in the start the team made. 

City had already almost opened Birmingham up when they took the lead in just three minutes with a lovely goal as the ball was switched from right to left by Wintle who fed Grant. The West Brom loanee apparently made his marker Marcel Oakley’s life a misery all night and here he went past him on the outside before picking out Colwill who finished beautifully as he let the ball run across him before beating ex City keeper Neil Etheridge from about twelve yards out. 

One thing Championship sides have not expected to experience in recent years is to be chasing around trying to get the ball off a Cardiff City team, but that’s certainly what it sounded like tonight.  

All Birmingham had to offer in reply was a free kick by Leandro Bacuna’s brother, Juninho that brought a great save by the debut making Alex Rúnarsson. 

City, notably, Kion Etete, had chances to put us two up and my worry at half time was that we’d not cashed in on what sounded like our clear superiority, 

Birmingham had enjoyed their best spell of the first half in its closing minutes and made a change at half time amid expectations that we’d face some fierce pressure in the early minutes after the break, but instead it was City who were again forcing the issue. 

It sounded like Colwill, Tanner and Grant were all having very good games while Etete was effective even if his finishing could be criticised, but equally there were plenty of times where it felt like the quality, game experience and real cutting edge wasn’t quite there for City as final balls were not quite precise enough to really open up the home defence.. 

Adams had attracted plaudits for his performance in his unfamiliar position and he could definitely be described as the winner in his dual with Jutkiewicz when he won possession with the striker claiming he’d been fouled. The angry Jutkiewicz then flew in with a challenge on Romeo who happened to be the first City man who had the ball when he got up and, by all accounts, was fully deserving of the red card which followed. Birmingham manager John Eustace thought differently and called the decision harsh, but, having now seen the incident, I can only say that I’m sure Mr Eustace would have been complaining if a City player had made such a tackle and had not been sent off.. 

City then came up with another classy goal as Tanner picked out Colwill with a cross that was back flicked into Wintle’s path by the Welsh international (who was described as a “man possessed” by the Wales Online reporter at the match and the captain on the night guided his twenty yard shot into the corner of Etheridge’s net. 

Sub Scott Hogan got the home team back into the game within two minutes as he nutmegged Rúnarsson as the striker got the wrong side of Adams, but City were safe when in the fourth of seven additional minutes, Etete scored from six yards from a cross by another sub Keiron Evans. 

Evans had replaced Grant on the hour, while Ike Ugbo was brought on for the last few minutes for the impressive Tanner. 

Besides that, Mark McGuinness was part of a double substitution for the last twenty minutes or so when he replaced Ng, but it was the other player brought on who epitomised City’s enterprising approach – Cian Ashford had got a token three minutes off the bench in the First Round tie with Colchester, but here he was trusted enough  by his manager to come on just a couple of minutes after Birmingham had scored to replace Wintle – I don’t expect the talented Ashford to be involved on Saturday at Ipswich, but, all of a sudden, Erol Bulut has selection issues of the best type and you have to think that there should be some sort of reward for a few of those involved tonight when it comes to Championship football on Saturday.

Posted in Out on the pitch | Tagged | 9 Comments

First league win for Bulut’s Bluebirds lifts home pressure a little.

Posted on August 27, 2023 by The other Bob Wilson

When a striker is going through a bad patch in front of goal or a team is looking for a long over due win, you sometimes hear something like “I don’t mind if it’s a 1-0 with a last minute goal scored off my/someone’s backside”,

Well, it was 2-1, not 1-0 and the very late winner didn’t come via someone’s bum, but in winning their first home game in just short of six months (okay,I know we weren’t playing for three of them!), Cardiff City’s victory today did resemble that kind of it doesn’t matter how it comes as long as it comes mindset – rather than a centre forward’s posterior, the match defining moment came via Will Vaulks’ arm.

I’ll come back to our former player’s contribution later, but, having talked so much about our abysmal home record since 2020 after the very disappointing loss to QPR a fortnight ago, I want to try and put our last gasp win today into some sort of context when it comes to our long term struggles on our own ground.

The first thing to say is that sixty nine games worth of woe at home are not going to be put right by one victory – we have won twenty one out of those sixty nine despite me sometimes making it sound like we’ve lost every game on our own patch since 2020! Included in those twenty one are four 4-0s and a couple of 3-0s.

In other words, we’ve won while playing a lot better and more convincingly than we did today and it’s not been enough to stir us into going on the sort of concerted sequence of results which would have shut up someone like me who needs no prompting to revisit our horror home run every time we lose in front of our own fans.

Given what tends to happen when the jacks come calling these days, there has to be a fair chance that I’ll be bemoaning both our serial failure to rise to the Swansea challenge and our home travails again in our first game back after the international break which follows next week’s game at Ipswich.

However, trying to highlight the positives from today’s game, I would say that despite what is now a four from four losing record, Sheffield Wednesday were a better team than the QPR one we lost to in our first home match, so that’s a sign of some progress.

In fact, around the hour mark I was beginning to think that we might be on our way to another one of those three or four nil wins, because, after a first half which didn’t feature a single effort on target from either side, we’d made a fast start after the break, scored early on and were looking good for further goals.

Certainly by recent home standards, it’s a very rare thing to be ahead and in command for a while, yet the inability to get to the 2-0 score line that we only managed to reach once in the whole of the home 22/23 season threatened to cost us in the half an hour or more which remained. Wednesday were the dominant team in what remained of the game for me and , were worth a draw in a match which, while not high on true quality, was more watchable than most of the fare on offer at Cardiff City Stadium in the last two seasons especially.

To no one’s surprise, Erol Bulut decided to give Manolis Siopis a first start in midfield, but, rather than Joe Ralls, who I thought was the man most likely to make way to accommodate the Greek international, it was Ryan Wintle who was among the substitutes. At the back, Perry Ng, over last week’s illness and having signed a three year contract extension on Thursday, returned in place of the suspended Mahlon Romeo, Yakou Meite came in for the injured Josh Bowler. but it was Ike Ugbo who moved out to the wide area as Meite became the main striker.

Conspicuous by his absence today was Callum Robinson who was not even on the bench, I’m presuming he was injured, but his season has just not got going yet and, speaking for myself, he’d be my first choice in the forward positions.

Even at such an early stage of the season, the first half had the feel of a tight bottom of the table clash to it with both teams seemingly more focussed on the avoidance of potentially costly mistakes, rather than trying to dictate and attack the game.

There were only four times in the first half where it felt like a goal might be coming. As far as the visitors were concerned, centreback Momo Diaby and last season’s Play Off Final hero Josh Windass both got higher off the ground than the City defence when jumping for a corner, it was hard to see who got the final touch, but between them they sent the ball quite high over the bar. Callum Paterson, being used in one off the few positions (left wing back) he never filled while with us, was seen more in forward areas than defensive ones in the first period and he sent a volleyed, angled effort across the face of goal as he got free beyond the far post – edit, don’t pay any attention to the rubbish about Paterson playing on the left, he was used as a right wing back!

Sandwiched between these two efforts were a couple from City which put the Wednesday goal under a more severe threat than ours had been. For the first, only a great piece of defending by ex Swansea midfielder George Byers prevented Mark McGuinness being presented with a tap in from a fine corner taken by Ralls and then, about ten minutes later, a lovely Ng cross from the right saw Meite rise to connect with his head on the far post, it looked like a certain goal when he made contact, but his effort flew across goal and wide of the far post.

There was nothing else to write home about during the first period, but, having yet again looked like the away side while playing on their own pitch, Bulut looked to force the issue by pushing Ralls into a more advanced area where he had the freedom to remind a  few people that, before he became a Neil Warnock “bread and butter” midfielder, Ralls was a talented playmaker type. There were some lovely touches and passes from City’s longest serving player who did not suffer in comparison to the more illustrious Ramsey, but he played no part in the opening goal when it arrived on forty eight minutes.

Siopis popped up on the right to supply Ugbo, Ramsey then got involved to set up Ng coming into the sort of area he tends to supply good crosses from and from here, the second home league goal of 23/24 became very like the first one as O’Dowda arrived beyond the far post to head down towards Ugbo who, faced with a tougher chance than the one he scored from against QPR took a touch on his chest before confidently volleying high into the net from eight yards – Ugbo is looking Kabaesque at the moment as his three goals in four matches have come against a backdrop of him not contributing a great deal in ordinary play, but where would the goals come from without him?

Minutes later, it should have been two when Ralls sent O’Dowda through on goal, but the winger saw his effort blocked by goalkeeper Devis Vasquez’s leg.

The miss had the feel of a defining moment in the game and Bulut was, seemingly, reluctant to change his side while they were playing well, by contrast, his opposite number Xisco Munoz looked to steal a tactical march on him by introducing striker Ashley Fletcher and ex City midfielder Vaulks.

There were a few Vaulks type fouls early on after his introduction, but he also pushed forward more than Byers, the man who he’d replaced and he showed some of the attributes which made him a hard player to judge when he was with us – good passing at times mixed with moments of poor discipline and decision making.

Slowly, but perceptibly, the game was changing and it was Vaulks’ neat chipped cross which enabled Windass to get in a header which looked bound for the net only for Alnwick to make another one of the saves which have persuaded Bulut that he can let Ryan Allsop leave for Hull – although the manager made it sound like Allsop’s agent had indicated to him that his client had wanted to leave in his post game remarks.

City were now under intense pressure with many of their players suddenly looking out on their feet . At this stage, Bulut had only made one change, Ollie Tanner for Ugbo, and it seemed like more were needed. However, our manager kept things as they were and I found myself wondering if the late goals conceded at Leeds and Leicester were a sign of a reaction to the unusual pre season we had where games were played a lot earlier than usual to give our manager a chance to see the players he’d inherited in action early in his tenure in charge?

That is very much a question asked with the benefit of hindsight and so, having not thought of this before now, I can’t claim any great credit for perception and insight, but did all of the game preparation in late June/early July mean that the normal fitness training you’d expect at that time of the pre season schedule take something of a back seat?

Im probably wrong in thinking that, but City collectively looked like their legs had given up on them until a flurry of substitutions gave them some much needed impetus.

Before that though, the City lead was being put under considerable threat – Ramsey did really well to get the ball out for a corner when he found himself in a situation something like the one Byers faced in the first half, but he was at fault when he gave the ball away in a dangerous area and it took a desperate tackle Dimitrios Goutas to stop Windass from scoring as he appealed unsuccessfully for a penalty.

City were taking an awful long time to get the three players they were intending to release into the fray on to the pitch and, after Meite had ignored the unmarked Tanner to his right and opted to instead shoot feebly wide from twenty yards, the equaliser that had begun to look inevitable duly arrived as too much time was given to Barry Bannan of all people to give Alnwick no chance with a precisely placed effort from twenty yards.

Wednesday were looking likely winners now, but it still took another five minutes to get Karlan Grant, Ryan Wintle and Rubin Colwill on for Ramsey, Ralls and Jamilu Collins and there was one further alteration on 88 minutes when Kion Etete replaced Meite.

Although the winning goal when it came was a pleasant surprise because City weren’t really threatening much, Grant, Colwill and Etete all helped to add some pep to the attack, while, for the second home game on the trot, Tanner showed that he has to be a serious contender for the role of an impact sub, or even more than that, for the rest of the season.

Right from the first time he got the ball, Tanner showed he had the beating of his marker and, if there was a slight criticism I’d make of his contribution it was that, having done so well to get into a good position to cross the ball, his delivery wasn’t quite on the mark.

Clearly though, Tanner was worrying Wednesday and this may have played a part in what looked a mad decision by Vaulks some six minutes into nine minutes of added time. Again Tanner had found himself in a good crossing position, but there was no City player with a real chance of reaching his pass when Vaulks put his arm out and conceded what was a clear, and needless, penalty.

Of course, you only have to think back to last season for a reminder that the days when you could be pretty confident about us scoring from the spot are long gone. With so many contenders to take it off the pitch, I favoured Grant to try to win the game, he’s scored plenty of penalties at his previous clubs, but the replacement captain Wintle took on the responsibility and must have had everyone wondering why he’d never been tried from the spot during last season as he nervelessly put the ball right in the corner – Vasquez guessed the right way, but Wintle’s accuracy was too much for him.

Earlier in the day both the under 21s and under 18s had extended their winless starts to the season with a couple of draws. Joel Colwill’s last minute goal secured a 2-2 draw at Burnley for the under 21s (Cody Twose got the other goal). There was another late goal to rob the under 18s with the Coventry goalkeeper scoring well into added time to give his team a 3-3 in a game they were losing 3-1 at one time (all three of their goals came from set pieces)- Japhet Matondo, Troy Perrett and Dan Ola were the City goal scorers.

Not a great deal to report in the Highadmit South Wales Alliance this weekend. Treherbert continued their strong start to life in the Premier Division with a 4-0 win Friday night win over Tonyrefail in the Boys and Girls Club derby, while AFC Porth are finding life no easier in the Championship than they did in the Premier League – they were were beaten 9-0 at home today by Llantwit Fardre.

Finally, the start of the season is the time I ask readers to show their support by making a voluntary donation towards the blog’s running costs and to help towards things like book projects that I’m working on. Back in 2018, the blog would not have survived without the contributions of some of its readers as I just did not have the financial means to pay the web hosting bill I received that summer.

Since then, my finances have improved and, with me now receiving the state pension to go with my works one, I can say that there is no longer any need for anyone to donate towards running costs – touching wood, the blog will never ever be in a position again where it’ll need help from readers to survive.

So, with nothing in the pipeline in terms of new projects this year, I can say to all readers, and especially those who do still donate towards the blog, there is no need to do so this year at a time when many need every last penny to make it through the cost of living crisis.

That is not to say you cannot still make a contribution if you want to – they can be made through cash, bank transfer, cheque and PayPal. Many of you who do contribute will already have my bank details, but anyone wishing to make their first contribution can contact me at paul.evans8153@hotmail.com for more information.

As always a big thank you to all those who have made donations in the past and especially to those who still do (particular thanks go to the Owl Centre for their continued very generous sponsorship), a happier Cardiff City season than last time around to all of you!

Posted in Out on the pitch | 9 Comments