Another Saturday evening and again the post match debate is about sacking the manager. Cardiff lost today (of course they did, they always do these days), they didn’t score (of course they didn’t, they never do these days) and the Cardiff City Stadium crowd shuffled out, some of them well before the final whistle, having seen very little to get them excited (of course they did, they always do these days).
This season Cardiff City lose their home league games 2-0. To be honest, I’ve not been overly impressed by Sunderland, Middlesbrough and Leeds the three teams to have won here, but they’ve all been comfortably better than us.
Strangely, the games have followed the same pattern with the opposition going 1-0 up in the first third of the game and defeat has looked inevitable after that until the second goal arrived at the end of the game to confirm it – three games in and there is a bleak, monotonous and familiar pattern to our home form already.
Before leaving strange occurrences, I’ll just mention a couple of odd statistics which I’m not sure are just coincidences or a sign of a malaise which goes some way towards explaining why we are making a start to the season that is entering the record books as one of the club’s worst ever.
Going back to City’s second league game of the season, Ethan Horvarth’s comedy own goal at Burnley, which was the first real sign of the horrors to come, arrived around the nine/ten minute mark, then we conceded at the same time in the next two matches (Swansea and the Southampton League Cup tie). The sequence was broken in the Middlesbrough game when it took our opponents half an hour to score and now it’s been the same in the following two games against Derby and Leeds – is it a concentration thing?
I should mention though that there was a mitigating factor today which I’m sure Erol Bulut and those who serenaded him at the back end of last season with choruses of “we want you to stay” who remain loyal to him will seize upon and that is the fact that we had to play three quarters of today’s match with ten men following the sending off of Joel Bagan.
Bagan was dismissed, harshly I thought, for fouling Wilfried Gnonto thereby denying him what was deemed a clear goal scoring opportunity. I thought a yellow card would have been sufficient punishment. Referee Joshua Smith, a new name to me, wasted no time in brandishing the red card though, so it seems unlikely there was any consultation with the fourth official and it was hardly as if Gnonto was in a central position bearing down on goal.
In his post match interview, Erol Bulut apparently said we might have got a draw if it had remained eleven against eleven and that is the get out clause he and those who still back him can cling to – how can you sack a manager when his team was reduced to ten men, at a time when it was 0-0, for most of the game?
In some ways, it’s a fair point, but I don’t think it tells the whole story. Yes, there were one or two signs that Leeds and their supporters were getting a little impatient before Bagan’s dismissal and so there was that chance that City could have capitalised on this with a full team, but, for me, that’s clutching at straws.
What I’ve not mentioned yet is that Bagan was playing as a third centre back alongside Callum Chambers and Will Fish (who was making his first start for us) in what was a back five with Perry Ng and Callum O’Dowda the full backs. Joe Ralls and Manolis Siopis were the two deeper central midfielders and Ollie Tanner and Rubin Colwill were the “wingers” flanking Wilfried Kanga.
Maybe Ng and O’Dowda would have shown themselves to be wing backs when we had possession, but we seemed happy enough to let Leeds have the ball as we lined up in what our manager described as a “compact” (i.e. very defensive) style.
On the rare occasions we had the ball, we almost seemed eager to give the it back to our opponents (our passing accuracy figure in the first half was a woeful fifty three per cent).
One of the anomalies of the Erol Bulut managerial CV is that he is widely described as a cautious manager and yet, at Cardiff City at least, he has weakened the defensive play of the team he has charge of.
Despite the masses of blue shirts behind the ball when it was eleven against eleven, Leeds still found it pretty easy to play through us and in truth they might have been two up before Bagan was dismissed.
It took Leeds about seven minutes to score once we went down to ten and the goal was simplicity itself as a headed clearance was flicked on by Mateo Joseph as Chambers committed himself to Largie Ramazani who ran twenty yards before beating the advancing Jak Alnwick.
The City goalkeeper had already made a couple of decent stops to deny Leeds and shortly after conceding, he did very well to foil Ramazani after the visitors’ best move of the game.
If City deserved any praise, I suppose it was for the stubbornness which kept them in the game until a long way into the second half. I say kept them in it, but, in truth, there was very little sign that Leeds would need a second goal as our passivity and carelessness in possession meant that it was almost too easy for the visitors at times.
When O’Dowda brought down Jayden Bogle for a penalty no home player bothered to argue about, Leeds should have had their second, but Pascal Struijk’s spot kick was poor and Alnwick was able to save with his feet as he dived to his left for a kick which went straight down the middle.
The emotional tribute from a good sized crowd for a modern City great, Sol Bamba (who was also a popular player for Leeds) had failed to rouse the home side, so there was little prospect that Alnwick’s heroics would and so it proved as any lingering doubt about the outcome was ended when Chambers made a mess of a clearance, sub Joel Piroe was put clear and the ex Swansea man shot fiercely across Alnwick to make it two.
That was in the eighty seventh minute and yet within a few seconds, two City subs combined as Chris Willock linked with Anwar El Ghazi and the latter was suddenly clean through, only for him to decide to shot early for some reason and Illan Meslier saved without too many alarms.
After every defeat, and this goes back to last season, Erol Bulut talks about the chances his team missed when he often should really be talking in the singular. That was true here as that very late one to El Ghazi after Leeds had made the game safe was the only one his team came up with all afternoon – Meslier held a well struck free kick from Colwill from over twenty five yards in the first half and there was an effort by the same player from twenty yards that flew well over in the second period, but that was it – there were no more goal attempts from a team that “enjoyed” just twenty per cent possession.
Erol Bulut turned on some of the club’s fans in his pre game media briefing as he made it sound like any one who dared to criticise him was not acting in the club’s best interests. According to Bulut, there are some in City’s support who criticised the team’s style last season and are now turning on the club because of their results.
Well, that sounds like me and I would guess hundreds, if not thousands, like me who were supporting City before our manager was born. However, you don’t need to be anywhere near as old as me to recall a time when a Cardiff v Leeds game almost certainly meant three points for us as our superiority over the Yorkshire giants became almost a joke at times.
Quite often, we’d beat Leeds during the two decades that followed our FA Cup win in 2002 because we had a better team than them, but there were also times when we’d come out on top despite Leeds having the stronger team.
Back in 2020, City beat the Leeds team that won the Championship title that year 2-0 having come back from 3=0 down to draw in the reverse fixture at Elland Road earlier in the season and, as recently as January 2023: a relegation battling City team on a long run of games without a win gave then Premier League Leeds a real fright in an FA Cup tie before an equaliser in added time enabled them to escape with a draw.
What a contrast all of this offered to what has happened on the two occasions we’ve faced Leeds at home under this manager. No one will deny that Leeds are a better team than us now, but back in January we were so timid in losing 3-0 and, with Neil Warnock and some of the 17/18 promotion team watching on, the occasion demanded a better response today than it got – we weren’t as negative as that because we were a man short, we were playing with exactly the same mindset when Joel Bagan was on the pitch and yet the manager sees fit to lay into those of us who have been critical of his team’s style!
I’ve taken many hundreds of words to describe how I feel about today’s game, but gladly concede that the first caller to the Rob Phillips phone in programme tonight got over how he felt, after watching a match he had taken his son to, presumably as some sort of treat, far more succinctly. He called the whole thing a “joyless” experience – City’s owner, Chairman, Board, manager, coaching staff and senior players should consider that and, between them try to come up with a reason why that person is incorrect in thinking like he does, because I can’t think of one.
What a contrast in attitude with City’s under 18 and under 21 teams – the former were at home to Ipswich this lunchtime and trailed 2-0 early on, only for goals by Jack Thomas, Dan Ola and a couple by Jake Davies to secure a 4-3 win.
No game for Treherbert Boys and Girls Club this weekend and I’m afraid it was another thrashing for Ton Pentre in the Highadmit South Wales Alliance Premier Division as they went down 6-0 at Llantwit Fadre, but at least Treorchy Boys and Girls Club beat Pantyscallog Village FC 3-2 in the First Division East to move to sixth in that league.
