More worried about the nature of the defeat than the defeat itself.

Posted on September 13, 2017 by The other Bob Wilson

That old cliche most memorably, and ridiculously, used by Andy Gray when he asked how, arguably, the best club side I’ve seen in my life, the Barcelona team of around six or seven years ago, would cope on a “wet Wednesday night in Stoke” has already been wheeled out on the messageboards after Cardiff City’s unbeaten start to the season came to a juddering halt with a 3-0 defeat at rainy and windy Preston last night.

However, this time, it has some relevance, because, for all of the very good things City have done over their first six games, it has to be said that when, for the first time this season, they were faced with the sort of physical and mental challenge they have been setting opponents themselves, the sort of challenge this division often throws up with it’s unremitting intensity and competitiveness, they completely failed to cope.

Preston were as good as their manager Alex Neil’s word – he spoke beforehand about how his side would be in the faces of their opponents from the start and that’s what happened. City pride themselves at being the sort of side their opposition do not enjoy playing against, but last night they were completely “out Cardiffed” I’m afraid.

Now, I should say here that, apart from these brief highlights, which make it look like we were totally overrun, I’ve not seen anything of last night’s match. Therefore, I’ll admit that I’ve been presumptive in what I wrote in the previous two paragraphs, but I must say that when Kevin Ratcliffe, who was there watching it in his capacity as a Radio Wales summariser, said that almost all of the City team had lost their individual battles with their opposite number, I had to agree.

After all, he was only repeating what I had been thinking myself a minute or two earlier as I listened to what had become one of those occasions fans of every team have to endure from time to time when your team is being beaten and there is nothing in what you are watching or listening to that offers you the hope that things can change for the better.

As he often has done when his Cardiff side has been beaten, Neil Warnock directed a portion of the blame at himself as he said he was wrong to resist the temptation to make changes after Saturday’s 1-1 draw at Fulham.

Our manager also cited tiredness, as he made the point that his team had a lot of travelling to do between last Friday and yesterday evening and this was hardly ideal preparation for his players. All of this is true and I should say that, as always, he and his coaching staff are best placed to form an opinion on matters like these because you have to assume that, first, they have the advantage over us supporters in that they get to see how the players are faring in training every day and, second, that they contain a degree of expertise when it comes to the professional game that most of us punters lack – much as we might not like to admit it!

However, rightly or wrongly, and speaking solely as a supporter, I find it hard to have much sympathy with the argument that any team is tired when the season is a little over a month old and it shouldn’t be forgotten that many of those involved last night have recently had a fortnight without playing a match. Of course, it should be said at this stage that Neil Etheridge, Aron Gunnarsson and Junior Hoilett out of last night’s starting line up were still playing during that time and they also had to do an awful lot of the aforesaid travelling in that fortnight as well.

Maybe I’m being over harsh on a squad of players that, even after last night, have to be well in credit on the footballing ledger when you consider what they have done up to now this season, but I can’t help wondering if some of them have been believing too many of the nice things that have been said and written about them in recent weeks?

It seems to me that, more than most other leagues, the Championship, with it’s ability to see bottom sides shock those at the top so often and it’s grinding competitiveness,  is capable of “finding out” teams and players who start to think that they’ve made it.

After the game, Warnock said you would see a much different City team on Saturday against Sheffield Wednesday and I think that the manager has earned the right to be believed when he says that.

However, I must admit to be being shocked and a little concerned by the nature of last night’s defeat. At the end of my piece on the Fulham match, I compared the current team with the 2006/07 City side which also defied pre season predictions by storming out of the blocks to head the table during the early stages of that campaign.

I concluded that the current squad was better equipped to deal with the challenges to come than the one from eleven years ago was, but, when they suffered their first defeat of the season, coincidentally at Preston, in their sixth game, it was by a competitive 2-1, not an insipid 3-0.

Almost a year ago to the day, the much derided Paul Trollope took his struggling team to Deepdale and they were beaten by a 3-0 margin which was as comprehensive in nature as the scoreline suggests it was. Now, self evidently, an awful lot has changed for the better at Cardiff City in the past year, but based on everything I’ve seen, heard and read about last night’s match, someone who had watched the 2016 version of Preston 3 Cardiff 0 and then not seen us play again in the intervening year would have thought “so what’s changed?” if they had been present last night.

Being a Cardiff fan means that you have to get used to seeing your side lose. Even when things are going as well as they have been, a defeat is never too far away and, given the fixtures we faced between the international breaks, I was certainly not expecting our unbeaten start to extend too much longer as we went into the Fulham game, but I did not expect this team to suffer their first loss in the manner they did last night. It was the heaviest defeat of the Warnock era and, worse than that, I’d call it the worst performance in that time by a distance – to use another cliche, we really must show that what happened was just one of those blips.

Before finishing, I’d like to return to a theme I spoke about in my piece on the Fulham game when I expressed my puzzlement as to why managers seem to have bogey grounds – for example, Neil Warnock with no wins in eighteen visits I believe it is to Craven Cottage.

It’s more common for teams to have bogey grounds and, before the game, one of the regular contributors to the Feedback section on here referred to Deepdale as being one of them for us. Having done some research, I wouldn’t say that it is true to call Preston’s stadium a bogey ground, but we do have a truly bizarre record there.

We’ve played at Preston an awful lot down the years (I’ve mentioned before on here that I think I’ve probably seen us play them more than any other side in league games in my time supporting City), but even so, I make it that we’ve won twelve times there, so, even allowing for the fact that we are such frequent visitors to Deepdale, that seems like too many for bogey ground territory to me.

However, what I cannot even begin to explain is why it is that, unlike any other ground I can think of, so many Cardiff teams have taken heavy beatings there. This has been going on for nearly one hundred years, because there was a 7-0 loss there in 1930, it was 7-1 in 1954, 6-0 in 1956, 4-0 in 1963, 9-0 and 4-0 in our visits there in 1966, 4-0 again in 1990, 5-0 in 1996 and, of course, there was that awful 6-0 in 2009.

I suppose a couple of 3-0s seem fairly small beer compared with that lot, but, certainly for around ten years now, we’ve tended to be a side that doesn’t lose by such a margin too often in the Championship and yet there’s been two more of them (in 2005 and 2010 – Preston had ten men for most of the time in that second one) as well since we got back to this level in 2003.

So, while we’ve had our fair share of successes there down the years, Cardiff teams appear to be far more likely to collapse completely than at any other ground when they concede the first goal at Deepdale – why should that be? After all, it’s hardly as if it’s somewhere as spartan and unwelcoming as, say, the Withdean Stadium and Preston fans are hardly the most intimidating set of supporters on the footballing circuit are they – any theories as to why, over almost a century, so many of our sides have sunk there without trace?

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in Out on the pitch, The Championship | Tagged | 7 Comments

Callum Paterson plays as nightmare first forty five minutes consigns City Under 23s to defeat.

Posted on September 12, 2017 by The other Bob Wilson

The most important thing about the Development Team’s 2-1 loss to Hull at Cardiff City Stadium last night has to be that summer signing from Hearts, Callum Paterson played for the first time in over nine months after he sustained a serious knee ligament injury in a game against Kilmarnock on 27 December.

Paterson was one of Neil Warnock’s earliest summer signings and his injury has meant that he has been something of a forgotten man as the team have shot to the top of the Championship on the back of a record breaking five consecutive wins to start the season off.

However, despite all of the excitement caused by the likes of Nathaniel Mendez-Laing and Loic Damour in the first month of the campaign, I think it’s fair to say that many observers would think the capture of Paterson on a three year contract for just a compensation fee of £450,000 may represent our manager’s best bit of business, provided he can make a full recovery from his injury.

Paterson took his first, very tentative, steps towards that recovery in terms of match fitness last night. Frankly, if he had played like he did in his forty five minute outing and been fully fit, I would have rated his performance at something like four out of ten, but the object of the exercise was to come through his first game back unscathed – Warnock spoke of Paterson needing two or three outings with the Development team before he can be considered for the first team and so reasoned that he wouldn’t be seen at senior level until after next month’s international break.

Based on everything I’ve seen, heard and read about him, it’s easy to see why our manager likes Paterson, he’s big, strong, mobile and gets up and down the right hand side while also being a danger from set pieces – last night, the most impressive part of his game was his ability to hit the occasional clever pass, but he was largely off the pace, pretty immobile and lost the ball carelessly at times.

However, this is someone who was interesting Premier League clubs before his injury, someone who was looking like becoming Scotland’s first choice right back and someone, who was, universally, praised by Hearts fans as they thanked him for his service to their club on the messageboard I read – as long as there is no lasting issues with his injury, I’m sure Patterson will be fine and become an important member of the first team squad in time.

City also had some other new faces in their squad, Ciaron Brown was one of the three centrebacks they started the game with and Jahvan Davidson-Miller (who may well have been the trialist who scored an impressive goal in the team’s 2-1 win at Huddersfield last week) was up front, while Thomas Gaydu was on the bench.

Brown was all at sea in the first half, but then, to be fair to him, so were his nine outfield team mates, most of whom had the supposed advantage of having played and trained together for the past few years.

I’ll be critical of first teamers on here when I think they deserve it, because they are grown men who should be used to criticism whether it be constructive or otherwise, but I try not to be too harsh on the younger lads who face a big enough challenge already as they try to become one of the seemingly ever shrinking number of youngsters on the club’s books who go on to play first team football.

However, City were woeful in the first half last night as a Hull side that had just a single draw to show from their first four games were quicker, stronger, more committed and better on the ball than us. Hull were winning all of the fifty/fifty balls (and quite a few of the 40/60 ones as well) and scored twice through Tom Powell on ten minutes, when his shot got a touch off the unfortunate Brown which sent it over the diving Oliver Byrne and into the net.

City’s defence was all over the shop then and they were at fault again on thirty four minutes when it looked to me as if three defenders all went for the same ball and only succeeded in setting things up beautifully for Tyler Hamilton who side footed home from ten yards out with the minimum of fuss.

Wealdstone’s Ciaron Brown was given a trial by Sheffield Wednesday in July and last night he was one of three trialists in the City squad for the 2-1 defeat by Hull – the trialists City have used this season tend to get two games to make their case for a contract and so he may have another opportunity after a somewhat mixed time of it against Hull.

There could have been more Hull goals as City reached the break grateful to be only two down. The club’s Twitter feed says Hull keeper Callum Burton “makes a good save to deny City an equaliser” in the fourteenth minute, but I’m damned if I can remember it – the person I was watching the game with and I were agreed at half time that Callum Paterson was still waiting to see a Cardiff City player have a goal attempt of any description in his playing career with the club so far!

The whole forty five minutes had me thinking of what the scene in the dressing room before the game might have been like. What I reckon may have happened is that, as the team were about to go onto the field after hearing the manager/coach’s rousing pre game battle cry, the script went something like this;-

Manager/coach; “by the way lads, we’re going three at the back with wing backs tonight, not the usual back four”

Captain (Jamie Veale); “You what? Who’s in the back three then?”

Manager/coach; “You (Tyronne Duffus), you (Connor Young) and you (Ciaron Brown). You (Callum Paterson) can play right wing back and you (Cameron Coxe) are the left wing back – you’ll soon figure out what’s needed yourselves.

Puzzled specialist left back (Rhys Abrruzzese); “What about me? Where do you want me to play?”

Manager/coach; “Oh, I forgot about you. Hang on…………………. I know, you just stand in front of the back three and then run about a bit every now and then – you’ll be fine.”

However, even in the very unlikely event of the above representing something like the truth, you’d like to think that a group of players with the talent to be awarded contracts of some sort by Football League clubs would make a better fist of things than the City team did last night.

Paterson was only ever going to play the one half, so there was always going to be at least one change at half time, but there was a second one made at the break as well. Connor Young had needed treatment on an injury just before half time and so that was probably the cause of his withdrawal, but it said so much about how the three at the back system had fared that, rather than bring on a like for like replacement in Jack Bodenham, Ryan Reynolds came on to bolster the midfield as Coxe switched to right back and Abbruzzese to the position he is far more comfortable in.

Reynolds is a new arrival at the club after his release by Everton at the end of last season and was a member of the Welsh Under 19 squad that recently lost a couple of friendly games with Iceland and, with another member of that squad, Sion Spence, on for Paterson, in what looked more like a 4-4-2/4-4-1-1 type formation, City proceeded to give a far better account of themselves in the second half.

After seeing a possible first team debut on the final day of last season blocked by some form of red tape, Spence has been mysteriously absent from Development Team action this season until last night and you have to wonder about the wisdom of such thinking because, straight away, he and Reynolds helped introduce a sense of purpose and urgency that had been almost entirely absent beforehand.

Hull were being pushed back now, but it had got to about the hour mark before the City had a goal attempt worthy of the name as Burton dealt well with a testing free kick from Veale from about twenty five yards out. Davidson-Miller, who looked useful and worth another look at, then forced the keeper to turn his shot from the edge of the penalty area aside after a sharp turn created some space for himself, but his header from a fine Coxe cross was less impressive as City’s best chance up to then went a begging.

Hull then had a ten minute period where they settled down as City began to look like a side that had accepted their fate, but, then, with just under ten minutes left, some lovely work down the right by Spence got the reward it deserved when his low cross to Mark Harris was fired high into the net past a helpless Burton from about twelve yards out.

Spence wasn’t too far wide a couple of minutes later after City had patiently probed for an opening with some intelligent passing, but the closest they came to levelling things was when Davidson-Miller set up Harris for a well struck fifteen yard shot which, unfortunately, was too close to Burton.

City’s much improved second half had deserved some reward, but, given the extent of Hull’s first half dominance, the final score probably represented a fair outcome.

Strangely, Ciaron Brown revealed an ability to bring the ball our from the back and pass it quite well when he was in a centreback pairing that wasn’t there when he was one of three at the back – he also looked more assured in his general defensive work when in a back four. As for poor Thomas Gaydu, I can’t tell you anything about him – bafflingly, the third trialist was an unused sub!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in The stiffs | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments