Draws keep mounting up for unconvincing Cardiff.

Cardiff City kept their first away clean sheet in close to six months at Queens Park Rangers today and, given that they had only failed to score in one league match in 2025, you would have hoped that this would have signalled one of the two or three wins they will probably need to secure their Championship future.

Instead, we got only our second goalless draw of the season and with Plymouth, Hull and Oxford all winning while Luton and Stoke picked up decent draws, it has to be true to say that if you thought we were going down before today’s game, you surely feel a bit more certain about our fate after today – put it this way, I can’t see how anyone has become more convinced that we’re staying up after watching today’s match.

Last week i said that our draw with Sheffield Wednesday was a pretty good game of football made frustrating by our failure to react to Wednesday’s half time substitutions quickly or effectively enough and our poor defending for their equaliser. This time around, you could make no positive claims about the quality of the game, it was poor fare throughout and, for a team that now appears to have a range of decent options up front, our finishing was pretty awful.

The positive aspect of the afternoon was that rare clean sheet and, although Ethan Horvarth had one of his periodic nervy games and was unconvincing in dealing with set pieces, the outfield players helped ensure that he was never seriously troubled by them as we dealt well with free kicks and corners by and large.

The fact that City’s better players were defenders like Andy Rinomhota, who came through the ordeal of playing so soon after the tragic death of his brother last weekend with flying colours, and Will Fish showed what kind of game it was. It’s so typical of a struggling side that they cannot perform well at both ends of the pitch in the same match as the front four who did well last weekend all struggled to get close to their standard of seven days ago – two of them didn’t make it past half time.

Omer Riza’s team selection got people excited pre game as last week’s front four of Alves, Ashford, Davies and Salech were joined by Rubin Colwill playing in the deeper midfield role he filled in the FA Cup tie at Villa Park.

Truth was though, that Colwill almost certainly wouldn’t have started were it not for a pre match injury to Calum Chambers which meant that we were only able to field eight substitutes. That said, I would have thought one of David Turnbull or Alex Robertson would have been a more likely replacement for Chambers, so it was a show of faith in Colwill by the manager to see him start.

Indeed, with Fish and Joel Bagan paired at centreback, it was probably the youngest starting eleven fielded by City in a league game this season. Unfortunately for those of us who advocate more trust being shown in younger players, three changes made at half time tells you that the original selection did not work.

QPR, as you would expect from a team with eight losses in their last eleven games, were no great shakes themselves, but they were winning most of the fifty/fifties and while it would be harsh to say City were playing as if they were on the beach already, you wouldn’t have thought they were the side in the bottom three who were supposed to be fighting for their lives.

Rangers looked the sharper and if they were hardly peppering our goal with shots, they would have definitely gone in at the break thinking they should have been ahead. Winger Paul Smyth, who gave Callum O’Dowda an awkward afternoon, came closest to scoring when he burst past weak tackles from Mannsverk and Colwill to fire a shot from twenty yards that Horvarth made a bit of a meal of as the ball seemed to swerve just before it reached him.

Rangers also claimed a penalty when Alfie Lloyd went down under a challenge by Mannsverk which I thought fell into the “I’ve seen them given “ category, but there was an offside flag up at the time, so it may have been that this accounted for a penalty not being given. Lloyd also shot across goal with no one able to get a touch, while all City had to offer in return was a shot from twenty yards by Colwill that flew narrowly wide.

Riza clearly wasn’t happy with what his team had produced and Davies, Alvez and Bagan, who didn’t seem fully fit to me, made way for Callum Robinson, Ollie Tanner and Jesper Daland.

Three half time changes for Cardiff City wasn’t as effective as Wednesday’s last week, but they did improve us a little and I would say we shaded the second period. Nevertheless, it was probably Smyth who came closest to breaking the deadlock again as Horvarth made the best save of the game to turn his fifteen yard effort aside for a corner. Apart from Horvarth’s worries from corners though, there wasn’t much else from the home side to suggest they could break the deadlock.

In truth, there wasn’t much from City either, but you couldn’t help thinking there should have been. Too often though, players chose to shoot from unlikely angles and positions when they had team mates better placed. Salech was guilty of this, but he also hit a shot just over from a promising position and also might have won a penalty when he went down as he appeared to be grabbed by Ronnie Edwards, but referee Dean Whitestone was a bit of a homer all afternoon and it was no surprise to see him wave play on. 

However, City’s best chances were from a couple of late headers, the first of which fell to Robinson from a good cross by Fish and the second to Yakou Meite, on for Ashford, from an O’Dowda corner, but on both occasions they could only head over. 

So, yet another draw then and I can’t help feeling that our failure to turn some of them into wins is going to cost us (only Plymouth have won less games than us now). 0-0 was a fair outcome today, but some pretty ordinary City sides of the recent past would have found a way to win it 1-0 – frustratingly, two single goal wins in forty attempts tells me that this team finds such victories almost impossible.

Jack Sykes is a name I wasn’t familiar with among City’s army of youth players, but I will be from now on after his trick secured a 3-3 draw for our under 18s at Leckwith this morning against Wigan.

In local football, Treherbert Boys and Girls Club drew 1-1 at home to table topping Cardiff Draconians in the Ardal Leagues South West, but there was no follow up to Ton Pentre’s first win of the season in the their last match as they crashed 8-0 at Port Talbot Town to remain bottom of the Highadmit South Wales Alliance Premier League.

Posted in Football in the Rhondda valleys., Out on the pitch, The kids. | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

Seven decades of Cardiff City v Queens Park Rangers matches.

Well, with just over a month to go of the season, it’s finally happened. Cardiff City have dropped into the bottom three that Omer Riza took us out of during the early days of his caretaker management.

Derby’s 2-0 win over Preston last night means that the danger of Riza doing a Grand Old Duke of York whereby he marches his men to the safety of the upper reaches of the bottom half of the table (the top the hill) and marches them all of the way back down again is as pronounced as it’s been at any time in the last six months.

I suppose it can happen that a team is relegated because it has a really bad manager and the same could apply if it had a really bad owner. It can certainly be relegated if it has a really bad team – whether Cardiff has a manager, owner and team that can be called really bad is arguable (i wouldn’t call any of them awful myself), but I think all of them can be graded “bad” on the evidence of this season and, as of now, that looks like being enough to bring us third tier football next season for the first time in twenty two years.

Saturday’s game with Sheffield Wednesday was a microcosm of our season. You had something of a justification for the large number who think this squad is too good to go down as we dominated a very below par Sheffield Wednesday whose manager had made some strange looking changes to his normal team. Once the Wednesday manager introduced a few of his regular picks at half time, it became a different game, but our opponents were still not near their best and it needed a typical defensive collapse from the only corner we had to defend all game for them to get back into things – once they did, we lacked the wit and creativity to fashion the chances which might have regained us our lead.

Our manager reacted too slowly to what happened at half time and, when he finally did, the changes he made were largely baffling. The players came up short yet again as another game ticked by without a win or a clean sheet – we’ve not been able to manage enough of either for about 85% of this season now, why should that situation change in the last 15% of it?

Overseeing all of this is the owner who, in terms of money spent, has done more enough to have his team placed well above the bottom three of a division we were not just surviving in, but prospering in when he took over.

However, the Tan era has seen the sort of sound football judgment you used to get a lot of in the Ridsdale era and even in the Hammam era fly out of the window as the number of dubious managerial appointments and downright poor signings continue to mount up – it’s been as clear as day for at least three seasons that Cardiff City is a club which deserves to go down and, increasingly, it’s looking like they’ll manage it in 24/25.

The latest chance to start an improvement which would see us wriggle clear of the drop again begins at a woefully out of form QPR on Saturday. Rangers have taken just one point out of their last six matches, but I recall that they’d only won once all season when they came to Cardiff in November and won comfortably enough by 2-0, thereby demonstrating another damaging City trait from this season – the “ability” to launch badly struggling teams on a run of improved results.

If we were playing our next two opponents at home, I’d give us no chance as we always do dreadfully against both of them these days, but our away record at Loftus Road is pretty good in the last few seasons, while Deepdale (we travel to Preston on Tuesday) has seen us win on four or our last five visits.

So, maybe, the challenge posed by dropping into the bottom three so late in the season will be met by a positive response? However, for us to get the wins we need, we, surely, have to rediscover how to stop the opposition from scoring and I’m afraid that watching how we defended that corner on Saturday on an afternoon when we did okay at the back otherwise, makes me believe that this improvement will not be forthcoming.

On to the quiz, seven more questions here about our upcoming opponents with the answers to be posted on Sunday.

60s. Show affection to coppice?

70s. Something of a trail blazer in a way, he was from the place with some famous marshes and so it was no surprise really that his first two clubs were from the capital. He never got to play for his first club who were not as strong as they had been before or have been since when he was there, but the short move to QPR saw him break into first team football in testing circumstances. He was more of a back up than a first choice during his three years at Loftus Road and the same could be said for his spell with a Yorkshire side that were going through their bleakest period during. his three seasons with them. He next moved to the First Division, but never got to play once for the Midland team that were established members of the top flight at the time. From there he dropped into non league football, playing for three sides from Kent where he did well enough to earn a cap for an England Semi Pro team, but who is he?

80s. A busy midfielder who had been playing senior football for thirteen years before he first moved to a team from outside his native London. he started off at QPR before crossing the river to play at two South London clubs, one with a ground that does not exist any more and one that was not playing at the ground they were associated with at the time. When he headed back over the river, it was to Loftus Road again, but, this time, he found it impossible to break into the first team and he finally left London when he headed down the M4 on loan to a county which only has one Football League club. Upon his release from QPR, he signed for a couple of seasons with another club going through a nomadic phase before ending his playing career as a first team regular for a team, now in the Championship, that had luck on their side last Saturday. Can you name the player being described?

90s’ Royal Navy galley chair heads down first. (7,7)

00s. Sports Personality of the Year makes fleeting appearance for QPR?

10s. He won 100 caps for his country, played in three World Cup tournaments and began his QPR career with a 5-0 home defeat, who is he?

20s. Which QPR regular from last season signed for a Premier League club in the summer and has not played a minute of senior action for club not country this season?

Answers

60s. Pat Woods.

70s. With a Jamaican father and an English mother, Derek Richardson was the first black goalkeeper I can remember seeing play in the Football League when he broke into the QPR side in the late seventies. Born in Hackney, Richardson had signed for Chelsea first, but only got to play senior football when he signed for QPR. Richardson was Rangers’ first choice keeper when they fought unsuccessfully against relegation from the First Division in 1979 and moved to Sheffield United, who were on a decline that would see them drop into Division Four during his time with them. Richardson was on the books of Coventry for a while in 1982, before he dropped into non league football with spells at Maidstone, Welling United and Fisher Athletic during which he played for England at semi pro level.

80s. Gary Waddock played over two hundred league games for QPR during his first spell with them, before moving to Charlton, then not using the Valley, and then to Millwall to play at the old Den. Waddock returned to QPR in 1991, but it was only during a loan spell in Wiltshire with Swindon that he played any senior football. Waddock next played for Bristol Rovers, who were playing at Twerton Park in Bath during his time with them, before making Luton (1-0 winners courtesy of a joke own goal last weekend) his final port of call.

90s. Richard Langley.

00s. A defender called Lewis Hamilton made his one league appearance for QPR when he came on as a sub against Burnley in the final game of the 04/05 season.

10s. Park Ji Sung began his career with a 5-0 loss to the jacks in August 2012.

20s.Thirty seven year old Asmir Begovic started forty five Championship matches for QPR last season before signing for Everton in the summer. 

Posted in Out on the pitch | Leave a comment