So, now what do they do? Sack the manager in the hope that this will engender performances in the next four games that will be a big enough improvement on what was seen in the previous four?
Well, if those running the club (or to be more precise, Vincent Tan) have decided on a change following today’s 1-0 home loss to Stoke in a game billed as the hugest, most massive the club have played in decades (yeah I know), then they are going to have to act with uncharacteristic haste because we play again in six days time and this is not a situation where Tan can act at his leisure like he usually does when we’re looking for a manager.
If there is a desire to make a change, then it seems to me that someone will have been sounded out about the job already and will be in place days before we go to Sheffield United on Good Friday. However, let’s be honest here, if there is a change of manager in the coming days, it’s far, far more likely that Tan will turn to his old, favourite, the appointment from within and we all know how well those have gone up until now!
My prediction is that if Tan opts for a desperate last throw of the dice and relieves Omer Riza of his job, then Aaron Ramsey or Joe Ralls (or perhaps a combination of both) will be in charge at Bramall Lane.
That said, my feeling is that Riza will see the season out and be put on gardening leave in early May after relegation has been confirmed until his contract runs out.
I’m saying when, not if, relegation is confirmed because it looks inevitable tonight. However we’re still only one point behind Derby in twenty first place, so it should still be all to play for and I suppose it must be acknowledged that, no matter how unrealistic it sounds tonight, Riza, or someone else, could still keep us up.
My feeling for most of the time Riza has been in charge was that he should be offered a longer deal if he kept us in the Championship, but in recent weeks, especially since the defeat to Luton, I’ve started to change my mind.
I thought that Riza showed signs that he could become a pretty good manager at this level when he first took over, but it seems to me the longer he’s done the job, the less sure he has become in his decision making and the constant changes of personnel, tactics and formation put me in mind of the last but one manager to get us relegated, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, in the closing months of the 13/14 season.
We finished twentieth and last in the Premier League under Ole and, watching us play since we did pretty well in defeat against Burnley about a month ago, I’d say a last placed finish is more likely than one in twenty first place or better.
I say that because in recent weeks every club that has been in relegation trouble have picked up notable victories or draws which would have kept the hope burning that they could wriggle clear – every club that is, except for Cardiff. We, on the other hand, have won once at a bang out of form Blackburn and had a run of increasingly unconvincing draws that only helped deepen the gloom as well as suffering two very, very damaging home defeats against teams around us in the table.
Luton are one of the sides to gain hope after winning at Cardiff City Stadium in recent weeks and, although today’s defeat at home to that bang out of form Blackburn, who played the closing stages of the game with ten men, looks a devastating one, they can still take some heart from the run of good results they’ve had since their win here. Plymouth, who are continuously being written off as already down by many, battle on after their dramatic come from. behind win against Sheffield United and what do Cardiff have to cling to? Nothing – results are bad and performances worse.
The four game unbeaten run after the shattering loss to Luton was able to keep us clinging to the hope that we could get those wins from the games we really had to come out on top in, but we could all see what was happening out on the pitch.
In the eight halves we played in the unbeaten run after Luton, we were convincing in just one of them (the first half against Sheffield Wednesday) and I’m sure I wasn’t the only City fan who became progressively more convinced we were going down with each passing game in our unbeaten run.
People who haven’t seen the last of those matches will, no doubt, look at the fact that we twice came back from a goal down at Preston with our second equaliser coming deep into added time and say I’m exaggerating, but we were so lethargic for much of that match and were very lucky to get anything out of it.
I’m not going to go into much detail about today’s game because so little of note happened in it and it was in many ways a reminder of many of the things which have marked us out as a bottom three side since August.
First, there were the usual wholesale changes from the previous game, then the club that has made a habit of not turning up for home games for virtually the whole of this decade so far did it yet again with another one of those performances where they make simple tasks look next to impossible – basic passing and ball control looks beyond their capabilities.
Apart from an early miss by Lewis Baker and great volley by Jordan Thompson which got a slight deflection off Alex Robertson onto the crossbar, Stoke did little else to suggest they’d score until their late, lucky and controversial goal, but they were the calmer, yet more combative, team throughout and were definitely the better side until the last half an hour or so when they seemed to have been dragged down to our level with the result that we were able to put them under pressure for the only time in the game.
Despite a feeling that things might just be swinging in our favour, there was only one time when City genuinely looked like they might score and that came when Rubin Colwill did well to fire over a cross to his fellow sub Isaak Davies who could not keep his effort down from no more than two yards out. It was a ball that was fired at him rather than passed to him and it was a bit of an angled finish, but you’d have thought it only needed to hit Davies to go in.
Three minutes later, another of those season long weaknesses, poor set piece defending, cost City dear. This time it was a long throw which caused the consternation, the ball definitely seemed to bounce off Stoke centreback Ashley Phillips’ hand and then it found its way to fellow defender Ben Wilmott whose shot got a couple of deflections, the last off Will Fish, to win a priceless three points for the visitors.
The truth was City looked no less desperate at 0-0 than they did after going behind, i definitely wouldn’t accuse them of not trying, it was more that the nerves got to them – the brutal truth is they bottled the Luton game and they bottled this one and, for me, another season long weakness, a lack of on field leaders, was clearly in evidence.
With that in mind, you have to wonder how and why City will discover the resolve and character to cope in their remaining four games. Will a new face, or faces, in the dug out inspire the team in a way Riza hasn’t? I can’t see it myself.
In complete contrast, City’s under 18s went to Peterborough this morning and won 4-0 with Riley Hilaire-Clarke scoring two and Jack Sykes and Mannie Barton one each.
Treherbert Boys and Girls Club won 2-1 at Seven Sisters Onllwyn FC in their latest Ardal Leagues South West game, but it was defeats in the Highadmit South Wales Alliance for Ton Pentre, beaten 3-0 at home by Port Talbot, and Treorchy Boys and Girls Club who went down 4-3 at home to Splott FC.
A couple of things to finish, it seems that the City fan who fell ill at today’s game, thus causing it to be delayed to the extent that it finished around a quarter of an hour after all of the others, is making good progress, my best wishes to him for a full recovery.
The other is to bemoan just how poorly Cardiff based sports teams are doing currently. City are on their way to League One, a mediocre Cardiff RFC have gone into administration and had to be bought out by the WRU who are hardly in the best of financial health themselves. Glamorgan, who barely play home games outside of Cardiff these days, have started their season very poorly with a conclusive defeat by Leicestershire and are struggling in their second game against Gloucestershire- the Ice Hockey team lost last weekend as well!
Paul
One of your final comments in that piece, mentions the lack of leaders on the pitch, something which has been evident since the start of the season. However, it’s nothing new & it has been a failing of our players for the last few seasons. Do we deliberately go & get players, who are not leaders? Is it Tan’s dictat that he doesn’t want players, who might stand up to him? I’m joking of course but the question needs to be asked.
Ironically, the powers that be, at the club, had decided that yesterday was going to be a day, to invite along some past captains of the club. I wonder what their take was, on the insipid, aimless & stuttering performance that was served up to them. We have been desperate for a Kavanagh type leader and I expect, that although he had a foot in both camps yesterday, he would have been massively disappointed with our performance & how we are as a club at the moment.
I can’t say that at any point yesterday, did I get excited or heartened by what I saw from us. It was a tough, tough watch, made even harder by my phone buzzing a lot, mainly in the 2nd half, with the news from our relegation rivals’ matches. Dear oh dear, yet another day when results go against us.
As I’ve already said on the City messageboard, that although I was slightly optimistic about our attacking starting line up, I was left very disappointed with the showings from some of the players. One of them I picked out was Robertson, who I thought would be the lynchpin in creating chances aplenty for us. How wrong I was and he was culpable for numerous errors, almost leading to Stoke scoring. However, he wasn’t alone. Poor first touches, ball rentention and basic passing and control were issues affecting the whole team & it made for a very frustrating game. I thought that after having made a few errors, Robertson should have been hooked, as he looked knackered, but Riza kept him on until the final whistle, to confound us all. Yet another odd call from our trainee tinkerman manager.
I really can’t see any way out of this for us, with the stark reality being that if our players, can’t beat the likes of our relegation rivals, in recent weeks, then what hope do we have against top half teams like Sheff Utd, WBA and Norwich?
I’m afraid Div 1 is our destiny. I’m not looking forward to it and I only hope that we can bounce back quickly. I think it’s almost 23 years since we were last in Div 1. Dear oh dear.
My reply to your report of the Preston game in midweek, is sadly lost forever, due to a combination of being distracted before finishing it, and then having to urgently reboot my pc due to an error.
However one thing it did say was that erratic officiating would likely play a part in who stays up and who goes down for these final games.
Stoke had experienced both recently, firstly when the scandalous award of a penalty to Millwall in the 94th minute consigned them to defeat, but then they benefitted from the awarding of an equally soft penalty at Preston to gain a draw.
I was told before this game that Dean Whitestone had only been the ref for two of our previous games this season – the 5-0 defeat at Burnley and the 7-0 defeat at Leeds.
For the Stoke goal it wasn’t only the officials who were against us, missing the blatant handball assist from Ashley Phillips. It was also surely the gods as Hovarth’s brilliant reactive save from Ben Wilmot ricocheted back off an unfortunate Will Fish and bounced agonisingly over our line.
I have to say though that overall, while we didn’t deserve to lose the game, we didn’t do enough to win it, and the win was more important to us than Stoke.
While it feels harsh to criticise young players, Isaak Davies, Cian Ashford in particular, and even Will Alves showed they still have some way to go to establish themselves as consistent performers at this level.
Davies and Ashford in particular wasted two of our best chances. The best thing you can say is that at least they got themselves into very good positions.
But Ashford’s unchallenged header from a pinpoint cross from the centre of the Stoke six-yard box in the first half, was tamely glanced well wide, and then Davies with the miss of the match when with an open goal less than two yards away he blazed his effort high over the bar when it looked much easier to score.
I know managers are the easy target for criticism, but I can’t see how you can blame Omer Riza for those glaring misses.
As has been said several times, many games are decided by fine margins, and today we weren’t fine enough.
Finally I’ve noticed in a number of games at this stage of the season how long throws have led to a high number of goals, so if we’re going to beat the odds and avoid relegation, we’re going to at least need to defend them better at the back, and exploit them more going forward in our remaining games.
Plus generally show more urgency and fight!
We’ve lacked soo many things this season but key for me has been:
Lack of a striker/ goalscorer, until the recent arrival of Salech
Sadly, Aaron Ramsey missing soo many games.
Turnbull getting injured after he seemed to have forged a great relationship with Robertson
Key players having poor seasons e.g. Ng
A stable consistent side.
The table doesn’t lie, this team deserves to be where they are, they’ve underperformed. I dread League 1, I fear our drift and the overall lack of good decision-making at the top will not change.
Just realised I should make a correction and some updates.
1. In my previously mentioned lost response to the Preston draw, I had mentioned that the ref at the QPR game last Saturday must have been a former Saturday afternoon wrestling fan, as he’d been happy to watch Salech being grabbed and held all afternoon by QPR defenders without interfering.
That ref was Dean Whitestone, who I got mixed-up with as the ref for our Leeds and Burnley defeats and who missed the Stoke handball as the assist for their goal, who was Michael Salisbury.
2. Paul, in your reply to the other comments on the QPR game, you said you couldn’t think of the worst Cardiff performance you’ve seen, but the Cardiff v Brighton 0-0 from 2015/16 was one of them.
I also remember that game with us being managed by Russell Slade and Brighton by Chris Hughton.
The reason I remember it is because it was the only Cardiff game I can remember falling asleep during the first half, when literally nothing happened!
My justification was that it was a sunny/balmy midweek evening game, and I’d come to the ground straight from a pretty demanding day in work and picked up a sandwich in ASDA next door.
I remember sitting in the warm sunny evening watching two teams who seemed to have decided that 0-0 would be a good result, so made no attempt at any attacking moves at all in the first 45 mins.
As there was nothing to watch my brain must have instinctively decided why not have a nap instead, so that’s what I sub-consciously did..
3. Back to the here and now. I’ve just been advised that Hull got a late deflected equaliser this evening, against the run of play against Coventry, whereas we conceded a late deflected losing goal against Stoke. Whichever God you may believe in, they certainly don’t appear to be Cardiff fans atm!
Thanks for the comments all. i’m going to start by saying that it’s not too often my opinion differs from Blue bayou’s, but it does when I say Stoke, who were pretty ordinary themselves, were the better team on Saturday – we had a spell when in the second half where we had a bit of momentum in the second half becauae Stoke started making the sort of poior errors we’d been coming up with since minute one, but all our best period of the game did was emphasise in starker terms our lack of creativity and quality.
I’d forgotten about Ashford’s mkiss, but having now seen it a second time, it looked to me as if the cross was a bit behind him – I may be wrong there as I couldn’t be bothereds watching it again, but what I would say is that I think he gets that on target if happens in January when he was confident and in and form -it was also before Riza chose to virtually ignore him for a few games for reasons I still cannot fatham.
Regarding that Brighton game, I think they were in relegation trouble at the time and Chris Hughton (someone who I’d call a pretty defensive manager) was quite apologetic about how his team had played – don’t think Russell Slade was though!
Iain, I’, reminded of Mally Mackay’s comments about how the scouts at the club at the time would look into the character of potential new signings as well as their playing ability. My memory is that Mackay’s comments attracted a fair bit of mirth, but it strikes me that no such checks were done on the players we signed last summer and some of those signed under Erol Bulut – not saying we signed “wrong uns”, but we do seem to have too many who are npwhere to be seen when the going gets tough. It really was an unfortunate day to have the likes of Kav, Paul Ramsey, Jimmy mullen and Terry Boyle watching from the stands. Given their attitude during their playing careers, they would have been apoplectic about thew attitude of the team to such an important game (one of four “Cup Finals” we’ve had since losing to Luton and our quarter of former captains can be assured that, apart from the first half against Sheffield Wednesday, the team’s attitude was little better in the three games preceding Stoke.
As for Robertson, he’s not the same player he was in the first half of the season. As with Ashford, he was left out foe plenty of games by Riza and, although there was talk of it having something to do with the hamstring injury which kept him our for so long last season, it again fwels as is Riza’s tinkering has had a detrimental effect on the player.
Peter, increasingly it looks to me as if it’s not a happy ship at Cardiff. I was thinking yesterday about how long I’ve been saying that we were going down unless Tan and co grasped that they needed to make serious changes in terms of their running of the club and the lack of football knowledge at the top of the club. It’s definitely two years and I think it may be three – I claim no special talent for being able to spot the way we were drifting, after all, I was hardly a voice in the wilderness and there was also Vicent Tan’s largely unimpressive first decade in charge to consider as well. You’re probably right when you suggest the drift and poor decision making will continue, but I retain some hope that relegation for his two clubs this season would be enough to get Tan to acceopt that hios methods are not just not working, they’re detrimental to Cardiff City. Since at least 2019 City have been operating under the considerable handicap that the club owner thinks he knows better than the large majority who operate in a manner which chimes in with the prevailing views on how football clubs should be run – he doesn’t and never will do – if he ended the self imposed disadvantage he has applied to the club he has had charge of for fifteen years now, perhaps we might start getting somewhere.