A busy week for fixtures from Under 18 level to the first team continued yesterday afternoon at Leckwith as Cardiff City’s Under 23 Development team continued their recent unbeaten run with a comfortable 2-0 win over Coventry City.
The City team featured Matt Connolly, who played forty five minutes before making way for Cameron Coxe, Craig Bryson, who played seventy minutes in his first outing in 2018 and Kadeem Harris, who was replaced with around ten minutes left, and there was also a start for Manchester United’s Max Johnstone, who is the brother of Aston Villa keeper Sam.
Jacob Evans and Daniel Rowe were also in the team and the fact that they are featuring so regularly these days makes me wonder if they might also have been given some sort of contract by the club?
Coventry included Jordan Maguire-Drew, a winger on loan from Brighton who started for the Sky Blues against Accrington Stanley on Saturday and the vastly experienced forwards Stuart Beavon and Kyel Reid, but it was their giant keeper Corey Addai who most took the eye in a match where a bitterly cold North wind had an influence on proceedings.
With Neil Warnock expressing reservations about the condition of the Leckwith Stadium pitch in one of his recent press conferences, the club had already switched this week’s Academy match with Millwall to the Vale Training Ground, so it wasn’t a surprise to learn on arrival that the game had been transfered to the grass pitch adjacent to the stadium where the Under 16s play their matches when the Under 18s play on the stadium pitch.
Johnstone first couple of kicks did little to inspire confidence as he scuffed the ball along the ground some thirty or forty yards, but, in the trialist’s defence, although the pitch didn’t look bad to the naked eye, it soon became apparent that there it was far from ideal, with a number of “dead” bounces of balls that you would have expected to go much higher than they did.
Truth is though that Johnstone had little to do in the opening stages as all of the play was towards the Coventry goal with City, seemingly, able to cut the visitor’s defence open at will. Chances came and went at regular intervals as the pace of Ogo Obi and Kadeem and Mark Harris was proving too much for the Coventry rearguard.
It is no exaggeration to say that City could have been three up before Obi opened the scoring in the ninth minute as he cut in from the right to net with a calm finish from around twelve yards. Unfortunately, the coolness showed by the scorer there was not typical of City’s finishing in general, as all three of City’s forwards had misses they would have been disappointed not to convert to their name before Obi’s goal.
Poor finishing wasn’t always the cause of of City’s frustration though – Addai came to his team’s rescue with a series of fine saves throughout the opening forty five minutes, with his best effort being a tremendous double save to foil first Mark Harris and then Obi.
However, Addai would have been disappointed to have been beaten on his near post by Kadeem Harris in the twenty seventh minute as the winger finally found the net (Kadeem could and should have scored at least a hat trick). The keeper was back to his best though with fine saves from Rowe and Kadeem Harris as he managed to ensure that his side, somehow, reached the break just the two goals down.
Chances still came and went for City on a regular basis in the second half and, in truth, it was hard to keep track of them all, but a crisply struck twenty yarder from Mark Harris that flew just wide and a similar effort from Kadeem Harris spring to mind, while a good pass from Obi laid on a chance for Kadeem that he should have put away.
Max Johnstone had the occasional save to make in the first half, but, generally speaking, the opening forty five minutes was one way traffic. However, Coventry were a lot more lively going forward in the second period and now it was Johnstone’s turn to make good saves as the visitors sensed the game was not quite the lost cause it looked for so much of the first sixty minutes or so.
City came through the scares to record a second consecutive clean sheet and there was no doubt that they were well worth their win – indeed, even taking into account Coventry’s improvement after half time, a fair reflection of the balance of the game and the number of good chances created would have been a score of something like a 6-2 home win.
