Today’s game at Plymouth Argyle for Cardiff City surely has to be the longest match in the club’s history excluding ones which went into extra time or played on until someone scored like that game against Bristol City during the Second World War.
It was into the one hundredth and fourth minute when referee James Bell brought proceedings to an end to leave Omer Riza to contemplate how he can patch together a team to face Hull in another relegation six pointer on Tuesday.
Cardiff are currently going through an injury crisis which is worse than the one they suffered just before Christmas and, once again, you have to wonder about training and fitness standards at the club.
It’s hard to keep track of all of the injuries we have, but I’ll try to list them – these are the players with first team experience who were unavailable through injury or illness today;
Ronan Kpakio, Jesper Daland, Calum Chambers, David Turnbull, Alex Robertson, Ollie Tanner and Callum Robinson and now you can almost certainly add Jak Alnwick and Joel Bagan, plus Dimi Goutas who has to serve a ban for his straight red card this afternoon.
I’ll be surprised if all ten players listed will be out on Tuesday, but how fit any of them who start will be is a matter for conjecture.
Today’s game ended in farce really amid a flurry of players from both sides being treated for injuries and yellow cards being issued and I can’t help thinking that it could have continued another six or seven minutes beyond the ten signalled if Mr Bell had decided to be really conscientious about his time keeping.
However, it might be that the official had had enough of a game that was becoming increasingly fraught with Alnwick’s injury (it looked like he pulled a hamstring while kicking the ball upfield with about ten minutes to play) seemingly the catalyst for a fracas in the City penalty area which saw two Argyle players booked and scuffles in the dug out area apparently.
With Alnwick unable to kick the ball and his movement greatly reduced, City did well to get out of the game with a 1-1 draw considering that they were a man short for over fifty minutes in the second half. However, there also has to be frustration because they were the better team while it was eleven against eleven even if the match has descended into a bitty, scrappy affair following a good first twenty odd minutes at the start for the visitors.
Riza decided on a change of formation as City reverted to a back three with Bagan and Goutas joined by Perry Ng as Callum O’Dowda and Andy Rinomhota switched to wing back roles. Aaron Ramsey started after his effective substitute appearance last weekend as Rubin Colwill moved to a wider position with Anwar El Ghazi dropping out – Yousef Salech made his first league start in place of the injured Robinson.
With City having developed the very unfortunate habit of conceding early on in their recent away matches, it was heartening to see them make a dominant start by taking the game to a Plymouth team that had won their previous three home games, including their famous FA Cup Fourth Round victory over Liverpool.
Salech has made a seamless transition to EFL football despite it being the off season in Sweden, the country he had been playing in, when he signed for us and he was very close to putting City ahead inside five minutes as Argyle keeper Connor Hazard,, with the help of defender Nikola Katic, just about managed to scramble out his header from a Will Alvez cross.
With Ramsey and Sivert Mannsverk running the midfield, Colwill making some telling early contributions and Alvez lively on the right, City looked capable of capitalizing on a poor start by the home team and they duly did so on eleven minutes.
There was an element of luck to the goal as Colwill, having done well to win an initial tackle, saw an attempted Plymouth clearance bounc off him into the path of Alvez who was able to deliver a low cross to Salech who swept the ball in from about four yards for another of those “goal hanger’ finishes we’ve been lacking for most of the season.
At this stage, the game was looking a little like the first meeting between the teams back in October when we ran out 5-0 winners, but Plymouth have improved since then thanks to some shrewd January transfer dealings. While they never looked like the side which beat Liverpool at any time, they were able to reduce our effectiveness as the first half went on as play became increasingly scrappy in conditions which almost seemed Spring like on the sort of bobbly surface you associate with that time of year.
City still had the best chance of the second quarter of the game as a Ramsey corner found its way to Mannsverk whose shot from the edge of the penalty area was probably going wide until Colwill tried to turn it into the net only to divert the ball over from about eight yards out.
All Plymouth had in response was a good shot by captain Mark Randell from twenty yards which fizzed just wide as City went in at the break looking pretty comfortable at 1-0 up.
With Plymouth facing possible stamina issues late on due to their match at Luton on Wednesday, there were grounds for optimism at this stage as you would have hoped that speedy subs like Cian Ashford and Isaak Davies, finally fit enough to make the match day squad for the first time this season, could exploit any sluggishness in the home defence. However, after a comfortable first eight minutes or so as the match continued on its uninspiring course, all such thoughts disappeared as what at first looked to be a nothing route one type ball forward produced consternation in the City defence which ended with Goutas bringing down sub Bali Mumba on the edge of the penalty area and receiving a straight red card for what was deemed the prevention of a clear goal scoring opportunity. Goutas protested that any contact on Mumba had come from an accidental collision, but replays of the incident show that the decision to send him off was probably correct under current interpretation of the law..
You can argue about whether City could have done more to prevent it becoming a game of attack against defence from then on, but I think you have to factor in the league table to note first that, for all Plymouth’s ordinariness on the day, we aren’t very good ourselves and, second, that this was a game we could not afford to lose – I’m not going to be too critical of them for, essentially, shutting up shop..
It didn’t help that within ten minutes, City had suffered another defensive blow as Bagan had to go off injured. This brought Will Fish on to join Ng in a very makeshift looking back four which was breached within another five minutes.
Mumba had made a difference for Plymouth. Normally a full back,. he operated as one of two number tens for the home side and he’d come as close to scoring as anyone for them when his header beat Alnwick and bounced back off the crossbar. However, when he won another header on the edge of the area, he guided the ball into the path of another sub Mohamed Tijani who was left with a simple finish from ten yards out.
So, yet another game without a clean sheet and, although this one was conceded under trying circumstances, the defending was still poor with Ng, who I thought played well otherwise, losing Mumba who beat O’Dowda to the header.
Considering that Ng was hobbling for the last quarter of the game after an injury suffered from a nasty looking tackle by Randell for which he received a yellow card, and they had a height disadvantage which became more pronounced when Davies replaced Salech, I thought City defended pretty well apart from that one lapse. Plymouth never really built up the attacking momentum that I thought was inevitable in the final thirty five minutes or so after they’d equalised.
The constant interruptions probably helped City’s cause as they held on for a result which sees them drop another place, but maintain their three point gap over Plymouth with a game in hand. Hull continued their good away form with a notable win at Sunderland, but a home loss to a very late Millwall goal for Derby together with Stoke’s 4-2 defeat at Norwich makes it a good day for City even if Tuesday’s game looks a very tough assignment as of now.
At the end of it all though, I’m reminded of the saying that successful sides find a way to win when things aren’t going too well for them, but, the brutal truth is that City found a way not to win this one when we were playing pretty well – that’s just three league wins in twenty now.
A very young looking under 18s side were beaten 3-1 at Leckwith by Bristol City this morning, no news on who got the goal.
In the only game played by local teams today, Treherbert Boys and Girls Club went down 3-1 at Morriston Town in the Ardal South West League.
