On a day when the six teams below them won, Cardiff City gave an uncharacteristically ragged performance in drawing 2-2 at Burton Albion this afternoon. 

I thought it was a strange game in a couple of respects. Firstly, three of the goals were heavily reliant on inadvertent deflections which acted as “assists”, while the one well worked goal might well have been disallowed if VAR was in use.

A score of 2-2 is suggestive of an open and entertaining affair, but this was a match which was flattered by it’s scoreline because, although there was quite an exciting last few minutes as both sides chased the three points, there were a total of only five on target efforts throughout.

Moving on to the second reason I found it an odd game, the conditions weren’t ideal in that the pitch struck me as the worst one we’ve played on this season. I couldn’t see what it was like on the opposite side of the pitch, but the side on which the cameras were placed looked like a car had been driven along the wing as it was quite badly cut up. The rest of the pitch didn’t look too bad, but, although it seemed quite a still afternoon, there were times when the ball appeared to bobble about more than you’d expect it to.

In saying that, the vagaries of the pitch do not fully explain why the players of both teams were often guilty of conceding possession when they appeared to have the ball fully under control and under no great pressure – furthermore, the kicking of both keepers was poor throughout (Nathan Trott’s long kicking has declined significantly in recent matches).

For some reason, it appeared as if the conditions were too testing for the techniques of many of the players on the pitch as poor first touches abounded and concentration sometimes seemed to wander.

City gave Joel Bagan a rest as Ronan Kpakio replaced him at left back and Callum Robinson came in to lead the line as Omari Kellyman, one of the few who was able to maintain his normal skill set even if he was guilty of surrendering possession carelessly at times, dropping into the number ten role at the expense of Joel Colwill.

The Kpakio/Chris Willock combination on the left never really got off the ground as their unfamiliarity with each other’s game showed. In saying that, neither of them were helped by a City start which had me thinking that I should be yelling “wakey, wakey!” at the TV screen.

City just couldn’t settle as Burton pressed them back with a series of long throw ins by Alex Hartridge troubling them. Such was Burton’s dominance early on it was no surprise to see them take the lead on eleven minutes as Hartridge’s throw caused confusion, but it would not have resulted in a goal were it not for Kellyman’s swing at the ball as he was getting up from being knocked over which served to tee up Jake Beesley who finished really well with a hooked shot from ten yards past Trott.

Sensing they could perhaps build up a winning lead before City shook themselves out of their lethargy, the home team pressed forward, but they were unable to create that chance to double their lead.

Gradually, City began to get their bearings somewhat and, although never playing well by this season’s standards, they went on to have the better of the last twenty minutes of the first half.

The fact that our front players hadn’t really got their act together was shown by how it was defenders who came closest to finding an equaliser for us before the break. Perry Ng was involved in two of the three incidents when we may have scored. The first came when he went down under a challenge by Dylan Williams for what looked on first viewing to be a stone wall penalty, but referee Martin Coy, who let an awful lot of dodgy tackles go unpunished, waved play on (for me, subsequent replays of the incident only muddied the water to the extent that I still can’t make my mind up as to whether the ref got it right or not).

Shortly afterwards, Ng delivered a wicked low cross which goalkeeper Brad Collins dived to down around the post only for Mr Coy to give a goal kick. Then it was the turn of Calum Chambers as his twenty five yard volley was tipped away by Collins for the only on target effort of the game which did not result of a goal.

With Kpakio having been booked in the opening exchanges, it was no great surprise to see Bagan’s rest last no more than forty five minutes as he was brought on for the teenager. The substitution added to BBM’s Midas touch reputation as we came up with an equaliser less than a minute after the restart, but Bagan had nothing to do with it as it was a goal created down our right. Before that though, we needed one of those careless losses of possession by the home side as the ball was presented to Ollie Tanner who found Ng and his low cross was swept into the net on the half volley by Alex Robertson from around the penalty spot. However, with Robinson stood directly in front of Collins in what looked like an offside position,  it was a goal which might have been ruled out by VAR if we had been cursed by its presence.

For a while after that, City looked more like their usual selves as there were occasional passages of play of a quality which Burton were incapable of matching, but, they were only fleeting and so tended to add to my sense of frustration. 

Nevertheless, City were now looking the more likely winners and just past the hour mark, they appeared to be on their way to the three points thanks to a second Robertson goal. Before that though, it needed one of those unforced errors which the game was never able to shake off. Collins dived to turn Willock’s shot around the post, but, rightly, Chambers’ first half effort remained the match’s only on target non scoring effort because this one was going a foot or more wide. 

City took the resultant corner short and when the cross came in a home defender could only play the ball into the path of Robertson, who had taken the corner, and he drove his amgled shot through Collins’ legs from ten yards.

Having got in front, you’d expect a top of the table side to go on to beat a team which finds themselves in the bottom four tonight, but we never looked convincing as, far more than normal, we were losing possession in dangerous positions rtoo. close to our goal.

Eight minutes from time Will Fish, who otherwise was one of our better players, gave away a cheap free kick at the corner of our penalty area and Burton took maximum advantage with a goal that owed a great deal to luck as George Evans’ shot took a deflection off the wall which sent the ball high into the air to drop perfectly for Kyran Lofthouse who had the easy task of netting from close range.

Seven minutes of added time should have produced a winner when Chambers, not at his best today, missed what looked like a straightforward long ball to leave Beesley well clear of the last defender with a forty yard run in on goal. However Burton’s in form striker didn’t have the pace, or probably the stamina, to take full advantage and ended up passing to sub Tyrese Shade who shot wide as City defenders frantically raced back to cover.

There was still time for sub Cian Ashford to knock a low ball across the home goal into an area where the absent Yousef Salech would probably find himself, but there was no blue shirt close enough to apply the finishing touch for what would have been a simple goal and so we ended up with a point which, to be fair, was all we deserved as a defeat would have been harsh on Burton.

A mixed set of results for the age group teams this weekend. The under 21s could have few complaints about their 2-0 loss to Coventry at Leckwith last night – they were a little unlucky to be behind at half time after conceding in just three minutes, but when Coventry scored a second early in the second period, City had little in the way of a response.

Incidentally, a big thank you to City website match commentator John Donovan for his kind words about this blog although I was going to take him to task for calling me The old Bob Wilson, but as I’m going to be leaving my sixties behind for ever in the coming week, I suppose he had a point!

To balance things up, the under 18s had a big win this lunchtime at the same venue as goals by Moreno, Sykes, Phelan, Prickett and Norris gave them a 5-0 win over Colchester.

Locally, Treorchy Boys and Girls were beaten 3-1 at home by Pentyrch Rangers Seniors in the Highadmit Division One East on a weekend where most of the games in the south Wales area fell victim to the wet weather.

Footnote:

Having slept on it, reading what I said about the Burton game this morning makes me wonder whether I’m being overly critical of the team. After all, we’re top of the league with about a third of the season to play and we’re unbeaten in nine games. However, what I wrote reflects how I felt in the immediate aftermath of the game and, on balance, I stick by what I say – we slipped some way below the standards we’ve set for ourselves in the last three months or so yesterday. Credit to Burton for their part in that, but we’ve not played that well in any of our three away draws in 2026 and yesterday we were worse than we were at Wycombe and Leyton Orient.

I usually have a look at a few of those podcasts where they predict the outcome of the upcoming round of fixtures and a pattern emerged as far as Cardiff City were concerned as the verdicts that we weren’t going to beat today’s visitors to Cardiff City Stadium, Bradford City, mounted up.

I was quite surprised that so many felt that the unbeaten league leaders with the best defensive record in the EFL were going to drop points, albeit against the team which sat in second position.

However, when the reason for us failing to win was given, I had to agree with the forecaster in most cases because they were saying that our results were masking some pretty indifferent performances- how could I not agree with them, they were right.

Before I go on, I should say that Bradford were very impressive in inflicting that first defeat on us. City could have no complaints at the outcome – their opponents looked fitter than them, more committed and generally better in terms of pace and physicality, it should be said as well that they were more skillful than us and had an annoying habit of getting a defender in the way of goal bound efforts!

Bradford effectively killed the game as a contest when they made it 3-0 just four minutes into the second half, but the truth is that it wouldn’t have taken too much to change for us to be going in 3-0 down at half time last weekend at Stockport, rather than just the single goal behind.

Similarly, while I thought we were the better team for long stretches of the Cup game at Exeter on Tuesday, our opponents had the better chances and so could feel somewhat unfortunate to have lost 1-0.

Our performances have dipped since the international break, no doubt about that and it seems to me that confidence levels must have dipped while fixtures were suspended for a fortnight. To be fair, we came back quite impressively at Stockport in the closing minutes of the game. However, before that (and before the arrival of some younger substitutes), there were depressing reminders of last season as some of the more experienced players rather made it look that they weren’t equipped mentally or physically to cope with some of the questions they were being asked.

For all that Bradford were good today, City made life easy for them at times. Brian Barry-Murphy called his team naive after the match and, for a side with such a good goals against record, that adjective certainly applied to some of their defending.

A bugbear of mine even in what has still been a very good start to the season has been the lack of quality on our “final ball”. Well, there were a few examples of that weakness today, but, in all honesty, our final ball wasn’t too bad today – the problem was that this meant we showed another old favourite from last season, poor finishing technique.

Cian Ashford had an early air shot from a good Rubin Colwill cross and failed to hit the target from what, to be fair, was a tough chance from a Joel Bagan cross, just before half time. Yousef Salech again showed the odd inconsistencies in his heading technique. There was one excellent header guided into the path of David Turnbull who got away one of those shots that a defender managed to block without knowing too much about it. However, by contrast, there was a poor contact on a close range header which a Bradford defender managed to scramble back to his keeper and, although the header he hit the crossbar with in the second half was hardly a sitter, the fact he didn’t have to jump for it made it quite a bit easier for him and I can’t help thinking he should have got it on target at the very least..

Finally, it is a source of considerable frustration to me that someone with the ability to strike a ball as well as Rubin Colwill can gets it wrong so often when presented with the sort of shooting opportunity from the edge of the penalty area he had on two occasions in the second half today.

How Colwill would have wished he could have hit a twenty five yarder like Tommy Leigh did when Josh Neufville rolled a corner into his path. That was how City conceded their first league goal that wasn’t a penalty this season – perhaps some will say that we should have got out quicker to close Leigh down or had someone patrolling the edge of the penalty area, but I’d prefer to give Bradford credit for a clever and unusual set piece routine. 

The goal came just past the quarter of an hour mark and for five minutes or so, City responded well and could feel somewhat unfortunate not to have come up with an equaliser.

However, when Bradford broke through a massive hole in the left side of our defence (no sign of any winger covering for Bagan) on thirty minutes, the upshot was Gabriel Osho bringing down Antoni Sarcevic with a rash challenge to concede an obvious penalty on his league debut for us.

Sarcevic blasted his penalty down the middle as Nathan Trott dived out of the way to double the visitor’s lead. As for Osho, it was a Curate’s Egg of a performance with other awkward moments interspersed with a few things to suggest he’ll be a good signing for us eventually, but, for now, I have to say that we really did miss the injured Dylan Lawlor who is still not out of his teens yet more than we should have done!

The rest of the first half made for grisly viewing as we teetered on the edge of collapse as Bradford got right on top and Sarcevic really should have made it three when he headed over from point blank range after Bradford made a mess of the right side of our defence this time.

City swapped Ronan Kpakio for Perry Ng at half time (it seems the youngster was suffering with an injury that BBM admitted to being quite concerned about after the game). Ng made some encouraging early contributions, but the visitors continued their habit of making mincemeat of our flanks when Pointon got free down Bradford’s left to set up Neufville for an easy finish from fifteen yards. 

BBM was forced into the sort of desperate substitutions he made at Stockport, but this time, it was a lot earlier in the game when the changes came and the good news is that the arrival of Callum Robinson, Isaak Davies and Joel Colwill did improve the team. 

In the case of the first named, it seems that his goal in midweek had done him a lot of good as I thought it was his best contribution off the bench so far this season. Robinson also gave City some hope with a somewhat lucky goal as a clearance hit Will Fish and Osho’s shot was deflected into his path – I say lucky, but it was a good finish with the luck coming in how the ball found its way to Robinson.

For me, Davies has been playing well for weeks and, with Ashford off his game in recent weeks and Willock falling a long way short of his recent standards today, surely he has to start a game soon? He was lively and bright again today with my one small reservation being that as someone who is paying well and is, possibly, the best finisher at the club, I’d like to see him getting into central areas more.

I was in favour of pairing Wintle and Turnbull before the game, but soon had to admit that it wasn’t working – n fact, there were times when we were overrun in central midfield. Although Joel Colwill made little impact as we struggled at Stockport last weekend, he had the movement and dynamism that had been lacking when he came on and won us no end of free kicks as Rotherham showed a few signs of tiring in the closing stages.

Another sub, Omari Kellyman, came up with his best bit of play to set up Robinson whose shot flew very narrowly wide. If that had gone in, we might have seen a very interesting finish, but, as it was, Bradford played out the remaining minutes looking more likely than us to score the game’s fifth goal.

things went a lot better at age group level as the under 18s went to Coventry, an Academy we’ve tended to struggle against down the years, at lunchtime and won 4-2. Mannie Barton got two and Leeyon Phelan and Riley Hilaire-Clark the others as we won for a third straight game at under 18 lecvel. The under 21s are also doing pretty well – they won 2-0 against Watford at Vicarage Road yesterday with Troy Perrett and an own goal completing the scoring before half time.

In local football, the app I use had Ton Pentre down as drawing 1-1 at Vale United and losing 3-0 at Cardiff Cosmos in the Highadmit South Wales Alliance Championship, so I don’t know what happened there! In Division One East, there were goals galore at Pentyrch Rangers Seniors where Treorchy Boys and Girls were beaten 6-4.

A shorter piece than normal this time because there’s not a great deal to say about Cardiff City’s Fifth Round FA Cup tie against Aston Villa at Villa Park tonight – Villa won in a manner which always suggested they were going through without too many alarms, but a score of 2-0 meant that it was a defeat with some honour for City with two or three very good individual performances along the way for good measure.

With both managers hinting before the game that this was one that they didn’t really need in terms of saving their strongest line ups for other competitions, it was a surprise to see Villa going with not too far short of the strongest team they had available. Although City gave a debut to Dylan Lawlor as one of three centrebacks and included Luey Giles again at left back, they had more experience than I expected with Dimi Goutas back, Aaron Ramsey captaining the side, Chris Willock and Anwar El-Ghazi on the wing and Callum Robinson up front.

Despite the three centrebacks. Giles, like Perry Ng on the right, was very much a full back in what was a rigid 5-4-1 system with Will Fish the other centreback and Rubin Colwill partnering Ramsey in central midfield.

Having spent much of Tuesday night defending, it was more of the same and then some for City as they fought resolutely to keep Villa out for around three quarters of the game, but the lack of attacking threat from them meant that it had looked throughout like the only way they could progress into the Quarter Finals was on penalties after a 0-0 draw.

There were only two occasions when the 6,500 City fans, who gave the team great support throughout, could have been cheering a goal. The first was not too long before half time when Ng went down in the penalty area under a challenge by Lamare Bogarde, but no penalty was forthcoming despite Roy Keene and Ian Wright during the half time break being in agreement that it was the sort of incident where VAR would have upheld a referee’s decision to point to the spot. However, referee Peter Bankes is a regular in the Premier League these days and so the bigger club is always going to be favoured when he does a cup game involving one team from the top flight and another from the EFL – I’m not saying Mr Bankes was outrageously biased or anything, but most of the contentious decisions went Villa’s way.

The only other chance we had really was just before Villa broke the deadlock as superb passes by Fish and Ng gave sub Yousef Salech the chance to slide to get the first touch on the full back’s cross and force Emi Martinez into a diving save.

I mentioned two or three outstanding individual performances by City players and Lee Dixon gave the man of the match award to Ethan Horvarth who, while still making you nervous when the ball’s at his feet, made four or five great saves. Horvarth foiled Ollie Watkins twice and Leon Bailey before half time, but, for me, his two best saves came within a few minutes of each other just after the break as he turned aside shots by John McGinn and Marcus Rashford.

Only one player managed to beat Horvarth, Marco Asensio scoring with similar finishes from around twelve yards in the sixty eighth and eightieth minutes. The first came from a pass from Rashford who looked very close to being offside, but you know these days that VAR gets offside decisions right even if it seems to take something like half an hour to confirm it. The second goal was more straightforward as Asensio fired in from a Bailey cross from the other side of the pitch.

The other outstanding City performance came from Colwill. Craig Bellamy’s lukewarm assessment of Rubin included a suggestion that he could be used in a deeper role than the attacking midfielder position he’s spent most of his career occupying, well he gave the Welsh manager food for thought tonight with a performance which suggested that he may be right about Colwill operating as a number six or eight.

I mentioned earlier that City played a strict 5-4-1 and it’s true to say that El-Ghazi and Willock were more like wing backs than wingers and the same applied to Ramsey and Colwill who rarely moved from the pivot positions.

Therefore much of Colwill’s game was spent without the ball just in front of the back five, but when he could get some possession he provided moments of quality which suggested he could have caused Villa more problems if we could have got a bit more of the ball. The thing that was maybe most impressive about Rubin tonight though was his forty yard run down the right in the ninetieth minute past a couple of opponents before delivering a deep cross which initially drew howls of derision from the home fans until it found its way perfectly to another sub Isaak Davies.

You look at the Welsh team currently and think that it looks much easier for Rubin to get in there as a central midfielder rather than as a number ten – on tonight’s evidence, it might not be  as outlandish as it once seemed to City fans like me who saw him only as a number ten type.

Other players to do well were Fish, who was assured in his passing and defending and Ramsey who provided moments of class in the hour or so he played, while Giles did better than he did at Stoke in the last round and generally came through his contest with Bailey well – Lawlor defended manfully on his first senior appearance, while also playing one or two balls which suggested that he can transfer the passing ability he shows at age group levels into the first team if given more chances.

Just as on Tuesday , the under 21 team were in action on the same day as the first team and the match with Coventry at Leckwith this afternoon was almost a carbon copy of the game at Bristol City three days ago. City again went a goal down from a corner inside the first ten minutes, then Rocco Simic equalised to secure a 1-1 draw. On Tuesday Simic finished in assured fashion with his feet, today it was a header following a good run and cross by Morgan Wigley. Simic has now scored three times in three games for the under 21s and, from what I saw of the match today, there were signs that his all round game is developing as he becomes more used to playing in this country 

Any drawn game will attract some debate as to whether it should be judged as one point gained or two dropped by your team and today’s 1-1 draw for Cardiff City at home to Coventry was, for me, one of the harder ones to make that judgement on.

It was a real game of two halves as City carried on their good work from Watford and then a bit more by producing possibly their best forty five minutes in a home match this season – they were definitely worth more than the single goal lead they gained early on and a dozy and careless Coventry side were booed off by some among their support at the half time whistle.

However, within a minute of the restart, City had conceded a thoroughly avoidable and unlucky equaliser and then, within another minute, they were down to ten men as top scorer Callum Robinson was shown a straight red card by replacement referee James Durkin (any relation to Paul, who I remember as a good ref?).

That mad minute or so turned the game on it’s head and, hardly surprisingly, it became almost like a game of attack v defence after that with play heading almost exclusively towards the City goal apart from a period of about a minute when they had one very good chance and another reasonable one to win it.

There’s no doubt Coventry will be unhappy that they did not cash in on almost a full half of having an extra man. Certainly, a win for the visitors looked inevitable during the third quarter of the game, but they rather ran out of ideas after that although Jak Alnwick still had some saves to make before confirmation of City’s point which at least halts a run of four straight losses on their own ground.

However, with Oxford winning for the third straight game at Millwall and Portsmouth continuing their run of high scoring wins at Fratton Park by by thumping Play Off bound Swansea (at least that’s what a lot in the media have been telling us lately), the teams we’re supposed to finishing above if we are to survive are racking up the wins at home and we aren’t.

Mention of Portsmouth reminds me that Coventry were beaten 4-1 there in their last away match and, on today’s evidence, you can see why. If City could have scored the second goal that they should have done when they were on top, then I could have seen them going on to match the sort of score Pompey did, but our season long affliction of wrong options taken, faulty technique when they get to see the whites of the opposition keeper’s eyes and a failure to use better placed team mates all conspired to keep the score at 1-0 prompting fears that we were not cashing in on our domination.

It’s so rare to see us score early on at home and I’ve often heard supporters say that if we could do it, the whole atmosphere at the ground would be different. Those people were proved about eighty per cent right I’d say, as we took a lot of confidence from the win on Sunday and there seems to be belief in the new system where pairing Callum Chambers and Manolis Siopis as a double pivot in front of a back four seems to have brought about an improvement in both players form.

An unchanged City side scored from their first serious attack in the sixth minute. However, the move originated from the sort of sloppy mistake we saw so much of in the first half from Coventry as Josh Eccles got a cross field pass completely wrong. Callum O’Dowda then counter attacked, burst past a defender down the left and put over a fine, deep cross which Cian Ashford headed back across goal to Alex Robertson who scored easily from six yards.

City have definitely been pressing more effectively in their last two matches and it looked at times as if the visitors didnt fancy it much as they made a habit of presenting the ball to us in our attacking third.

Robinson had the ball in the net again when he turned in O’Dowda’s shot but it was correctly ruled out for offside and attention turned to the officials as referee Geoff Eltringham was forced off with an injury and assistant referee Durkin took over. 

City’s task got harder with that change as the replacement ref was not even handed in his decision making or interpretations of the laws. Before coming on to the decision which will be talked about the most, I think we should have had a penalty when Chris Willock was pushed by Joel Latibeaudiere – if Coventry’s late penalty in the first game between the teams was legitimate, then I don’t get why this one wasn’t.

Eltringhsm hsd allowed Coventry left back Jake Bidwell to get away with two fouls on Ashford in the opening minutes and when he did it a third time in the second half, it was as if Durkin had decided the first two didn’t count as he wasn’t in charge then.

If I do moan about refs more on here these days, inconsistency in their decision making is a big reason for it – Coventry didn’t have a player booked, yet Alnwick and Andy Rinomhota saw yellow for offences which were petty compared to Bidwell’s persistent fouling. Apparently, Durkin had never taken charge of a game at this level before and it showed.

Despite the eccentric refereeing, the chances mounted up for City, but Coventry had their moments as Alnwick saved well from Eccles and Jack Rudoni flashed a dangerous ball across the face of goal.

Up the other end, Siopis continues to suggest a very rare goal might be coming as his shot from the edge of the area was foiled by one of a number of good Coventry blocks. However, Willock, Ashford and Robinson were all guilty of wasting very promising positions at times with a combination of the faults in front of goal I mentioned earlier.

Having looked to be on their way to a second straight win at half time though, it was incredible how it took just a couple of minutes to turn an anticipated three points into almost very probable none.

As mentioned earlier, the first blow was self inflicted as a hopeful ball hooked forward as much to prevent a throw in as anything turned into a defence splitting pass when Jesper Daland misjudged the bounce and, for the second successive home game, was outmuscled by the opposing centre forward.

Ellis Simms had done little in the first half as what has been a frustrating second season with the Sky Blues for him continued and his lack of confidence showed as Alnwick was able to save his close range shot, but the ball then bounced off the keeper onto Daland and into the path of Tatsihiro Sakamoto who was left with an open goal.

The frustrating thing was that I thought Daland had a decent game overall, but the brutal truth is that you could make a case for saying he’s been culpable for the last three goals we’ve conceded at home and we simply cannot afford that in our present position.

The game had barely restarted when Robinson raised his arm in what seemed a half hearted fashion to me towards Coventry centreback Bobby Thomas’s head and Durkin immediately produced a red card. It was a decision which had me wondering what the ref considers as a yellow card elbowing offence because this was less deserving of a violent conduct verdict than most yellow card elbowing offences I’ve seen.

If it was an intentional action by Robinson, it was, as mentioned earlier, all very half hearted – having seen the incident a few times now on video, there is contact, but it’s all very mild and accidental looking – Omer Riza said after the game he wants to appeal against the decision in a bid to get the resultant three game ban overturned and I think the club should do that as it seems to me that this was the sort of decision that the appeals procedure was set up for.

City were spirited and whole hearted in their defending after that and gradually belief grew that they could hang on to their point. That belief would have been boosted by confirmation that they could still create chances for themselves as attacking subs Ollie Tanner and Yakou Meite combined to leave the former clean through on goal. I thought Tanner should have taken another touch before shooting, but he decided to hit it early and keeper Oliver Dovin did well to turn the ball around the post.

Within seconds though, the keeper had given up on Meite’s well struck shot from the edge of the penalty area, but the ball flashed less than a yard wide.

So, City drop back to twenty third, but, unlike when they did it after the Oxford game, I’d say the last two matches have increased belief that we can stay up, but we really could do with signing someone with ice in their veins when we have opened up the opposing defence.

Nevertheless, to answer the question I posed at the start, I’d just about rate this as a point gained and I I’d say it’s one we wouldn’t have got through all of our season apart from October.

City would have played Watford twice in three weeks if the home game had not been postponed because of the red storm warning for the day of the match and tomorrow there’s another quirk of the fixture programme that has us playing our return game with Coventry just over a month after we drew 2-2 up there in Frank Lampard’s first game in charge.

Since then, Coventry have done better than us, but no more than okay overall under their new, high profile, manager – they’ve won three, drawn one and lost two and routed Plymouth and played out a non event goalless draw with Millwall in home games played over Christmas. However, a 4-1 loss at Portsmouth in the match before that rather bears out that a team which was being tipped for automatic promotion by some back in August has had an inconsistent season of under achievement so far and, if the threat of relegation, which was real enough in the opening months of the campaign, has rather died away, Coventry are showing few signs of putting together their usual strong run at this time of year that we became used to seeing under Mark Robins following what was an almost traditional slow start.

I’d say teams in the bottom six of the Championship are treating a home fixture against this season’s Coventry team as a winnable fixture. Before last weekend, I would have said that this line of thinking did not apply to City with their ludicrously poor home results which have seen them deservedly beaten seven times already on their own pitch with less than half of their home fixtures played.

However that performance on Sunday, totally at odds with what you’d expect from a team that was winless in nine games before they faced a Watford team with nine wins and two draws from their eleven matches played at Vicarage Road has produced hope where there’d previously been none. With a weather forecast almost as bad as the one that got the Watford game called off, who knows what to expect tomorrow? I’m going to be a coward and not make a prediction, but seeing as I would have had it down as an away banker after the Oxford embarrassment, I suppose it’s a step in the right direction!

Here’s the normal seven questions on our next opponents with the answers to be posted on here on Thursday.

60s. This striker spent much of what was a twenty three year career spread over four decades flitting either side of a border with the occasional jaunt to the Midlands thrown in as well. Coventry were the sixth of thirteen teams he played for and he arrived there after playing on the other side of that border I mentioned for clubs four and five (in fact, his time at club five was sandwiched by two spells with club four). It was during these years before he signed for Coventry that he had his best time as a goalscorer with all of his five international caps being earned while with club number five. His goalscoring return for Coventry was respectable enough, but he was thirty four when he left them and only played for one other Football League club that was very close to that border after that, before resuming his border crossings in non league football and he was still scoring goals for the Bears at a healthy rate when. he called it a day at forty three, can you name him ?

70s. This midfielder from the north east signed for Coventry as a teenager and became if not a first team regular, then a trusted squad member over a five year period.There was also a loan spell to another club named City who were involved in a pretty notorious game with Coventry a few years earlier, before an eventual permanent move to a club which I believe have regained a status unique among EFL clubs this year after having to share it with another for a while. Forty odd years ago, an ACL injury was often a career ender and so it proved to be in our man’s case after he had played less than ten league games for his new club. He attempted a comeback with non league Oval dwellers from the Midlands before enjoying a long career in coaching including a spell with Coventry where he played a ;leading role in getting the club to two Cup Finals before going on to work for Birmingham and Newcastle. Who is he?

80s. A runt in midfield gets to renew at beginning of year (5,6)

90s. Which Coventry player from this decade is now manager of a club in the UK where he is frequently rumoured to be on the brink of the sack despite, according to Wikipedia, having only lost twelve out of seventy three matches since he took charge?

00s. Strip call.

10s. Sounds like it was a cropped artisan who scored against City!

20s. Which twenty two year old Londoner in the current Coventry squad created a record in international football early in 2024 which can never be beaten?

Answers

60s. Flint born Ron Hewitt spent most of his long career with clubs close to the England/Wales border with Coventry being one of the exceptions to that rule. Hewitt enjoyed most success during two spells at Wrexham either side of a spell at City when he earned his international caps and was a member of the squad for the 1958 World Cup. After leaving Coventry, he signed for Chester before dropping into non league football and he was still scoring goals at a rate of better than one in two for the Bears of Congleton Town when he retired in 1071.

70s. Ray Gooding played just short of fifty league games for Coventry over six years starting in 1976. He had a loan spell with Bristol City quite soon after a relegation shoot out game between the two teams which ended as very tame draw because results elsewhere meant both of them would stay in the First Division. Gooding signed for Plymouth (the only club to play in green in the EFL following Forest Green’s relegation last season) before injury ended his pro career. He made a short comeback playing for Bedworth United before he became Academy Director at Coventry at a time when they twice made it to the FA Youth Cup Final.

80s. Wayne Turner.

90s. Rangers manager Phillipe Clement played twelve games for Coventry in season 98/99.

00s. Rob Page.

10s. Shaun Miller scored Coventry’s goal in their 2-1 defeat by City in a League Cup tie in 14/15.

20s. Coventry goalkeeper Oliver Dovin was born in London, but has opted to represent Sweden as his mother is from that country. He made his full debut for Sweden in January 2024 in a 2-1 win over Iceland and became that country’s first  goalkeeper to be born in the the twenty first century. 

The subject of this blog came up when I was chatting with my brother about six weeks ago. He said that these days I criticise referees on here more than I used to. My first reaction on hearing this was to think he was wrong – when I started off back in 2009, I resolved that I didn’t want Mauve and Yellow Army to be a weekly whinge at officialdom as I blamed every City defeat on the officiating and, apart from a few pieces that were as much about the likes of Bobby Madley and David Coote, I think I’ve stuck to my original plan.

However, further thought on what my brother had said persuaded me he was probably right. I do find myself moaning about the officials more than I did ten, twenty and thirty years ago. Why should this be? Is it because I’m old (think I’m passed the getting old stage now!) and I’ve become a curmudgeon?

Yes, that may have something to do with it, but, you know, sometimes you can try to find all sorts of convoluted reasons as to why things that never used to get you annoyed do so these days and there is a simple and obvious answer you ignore – the subject of your annoyance isn’t as good, efficient, tasty etc. etc as it used to be!

What I should have said to my brother is simply ‘I moan about referees more than I used to because they’re not as good as they used to be”. 

Today’s 2-2 draw for Cardiff City offered a case in point. I thought referee James Bell was poor throughout as his interpretation of what constituted a foul seemed to depend on what colour shirt you were wearing. He wasn’t terrible, just a constant irritant until the eighty ninth minute when, with City holding on to their 2-1 lead fairly comfortably, he first seemed to ignore a case of ball to hand at close quarters by Callum Chambers and then after appearing to check with his linesman, pointed to the spot.

Now, I should say a couple of things at this point. First, it’s been correctly pointed out on the main messageboard I use most that the same Callum Chambers gave away with what many City fans (myself included) conceded was a clear penalty in the recent match at Luton. Furthermore, I decided to do some research on James Bell confidently expecting to learn that he was some wet behind the ears novice at Championship level who is gradually being introduced to the division and will probably be demoted back whence he came from now because it’ll be decided that he’s not ready for this level yet.

However, this is far from the truth, Bell is a pretty experienced ref at this level now and has taken charge of quite a few City games in recent years including wins at Middlesbrough and Wigan in 2022 and a home defeat by Hull a few weeks later. He does seem to issue an awful lot of yellow cards (five for City and one for Coventry today which only adds more evidence to my feeling that he was a homer), but I suppose it’s hard not to given the way the laws of the game are currently enforced.

From memory, Mr Bell has done nothing to make me go off on one about him like I am now before , so I can only deduce that he had a bad day just like the guy who missed the Chambers offence at Luton did, but the point I think is that even refs generally regarded as pretty competent seem to be having more off days than their counterparts did, say, fifteen years ago.

Based on the way James Bell performed today, City would never have got the same decision go in their favour today, it would have had to have happened in front of the Canton Stand at Cardiff City Stadium with a great roar of handball and then a point to the spot seconds later as if the noise the crowd made was the trigger for the decision, not a linesman’s flag being waved.

The really frustrating thing was that City did not deserve that today. There have been times this season where we could not complain about one dubious decision going against us because all it did was make the margin of defeat a bit bigger, but we, just about, deserved the three points today. 

Our performance didn’t hit the heights it did against Plymouth and Portsmouth and there wasn’t the too short pockets of vibrant attacking play that so discomforted the jacks and the wurzels in our two away derbies, but it was our most complete away display so far and we made Coventry’s expensively assembled side look distinctly ordinary at times.

Predictably, there were changes to the team that had lost so disappointingly to QPR in midweek. Joel Bagan could feel hard done by to lose his place to Jamilu Collins, Manolis Siopis came in for Joe Ralls and the two players who were the architects of the brief flaring of eciting attacking football during October, Rubin Colwill and Ollie Tanner, made way for David Turnbull and Yakou Meite (neither Colwill or Tanner could have many complaints about being left out after their recent performances).

In saying that, although he hasn’t been as bad as Wilfried Kanga, Meite has been widely criticised by fans, including myself, and was generally regarded as not having much of a future at this level, but today he showed he might still have something to offer.

That said, having almost conceded inside thirty seconds in midweek, City almost did so again here as Coventry got in down our right and the ball bobbled about dangerously in front of our goal before being scrambled away. Perry Ng was to have an uneasy first half as he was often out of position and facing players running at him, but one reason for his struggles was that he was getting little help from Meite who had been allocated Tanner’s wide right position.

The thing was though, Meite was probably having his most effective attacking game ever for City. Just five minutes had gone when Alex Robertson’s corner flew over Dimi Goutas’ head and the unmarked Meite stooped to head in from around the penalty spot for only his third goal for City, all of which have come away from home.

This was not in the script with the home team’s new manager Frank Lampard looking on, but having conceded an equaliser within two minutes of going ahead at Hillsborough last week, City promptly went and did it again here.

In saying that, I watched the first ten minutes on a stream which had no sound and so for a good fifteen seconds after the ball hit the net I was convinced the goal had been disallowed for offside. The reason I thought that was because the scorer, Ephron Mason-Clark had a face like thunder in the close up pictures after his shot ewent in. It was only when a team mate appeared to congratulate him that I realised it was 1-1 – Mason-Clark had got a yard or two on Ng to steer his shot beyond Jak Alnwick as he ran on to Tatsuhiro Sakamoto’s cute pass.

After that, City spent long periods without the ball, but, unlike at Sheffield seven days earlier, it never really felt like we were hanging on. Indeed, we looked quite dangerous when we broke.

If Coventry came close through Norman Bassette, who showed that he might be quite the wind up merchant after his antics against Sheffield United, but he didn’t look the best finisher here as he nodded against Alnwick from four yards out and then missed the ball completely from inside the six yard box after the home side had got in down our right again, then we could point to a couple of close misses ourselves. Turnbull’s twenty five yarder was saved with some difficulty by Brad Collins and Meite fired just wide after good work by Callum Robinson.

Turnbull had to be replaced by Colwill just before the break after suffering what looked like a hamstring injury and Rubin did much better than he has been recently here. He was to the fore as City started the second half strongly as he crossed to Meite whose shot again brought Collins into action. 

A few minutes later, Colwill played a simple looking pass to Robertson, but it’s perfect speed and placement more or less made up the Australian’s mind that he had to shoot and his low twenty five yarder swerved beyond Collins to find the corner of the net to give him a goal to rival the one he scored against Plymouth for quality. 

This time, City didn’t give up an immediate equaliser. Instead, they took charge as Coventry grew increasingly frustrated by their failure to come up with any sort of effective response. That’s how things stayed for a good half an hour and, if there was a frustration watching how it was going, it was that City never really capitalised enough on what looked a shaky home rearguard throughout. 

The closest Coventry came to scoring until the closing stages was a Goutas header that landed on the top of the his own net and, with Michael Reindorf on to make an overdue debut for the tiring Robinson, the elusive first away win of the season was looking a real possibility.

There had to be a Coventry response eventually though – it wasn’t a particularly strong one, but we were having to do more defending when sub Ellis Sims tried to cross from the bye line and it was ball to hand with the covering Chambers no more than a yard or two away – despite the City defenders arm not being in a position where he was seeking to block the cross, Mr Bell eventually pointed to the spot and another sub, Victor Torp, sent Alnwick the wrong way to complete the scoring.

Plymouth getting another away thrashing (this time by 4-0 at Bristol City) means we go up one place to twentieth and, despite the late disappointment, City can take some heart from a performance that was a step up from the two previous games where the only good display I could see from a City player was Callum O’Dowda’s against QPR. Here, there were five or six such displays, but City really do need to stop the drift back to the sort of miserable home stuff we’ve become all too used to – it’s successive home games against Watford and Preston next and we have to see an improvement on what was on offer against Blackburn and QPR.

Penalties also proved decisive as the under 21s lost their Nathaniel MG Cup Semi Final at Aberystwyth. Trailing to a first half penalty for much of the game, Troy Perrett’s equaliser in added time forced a penalty shoot out in which two of our spot kicks were missed, but, despite the heartbreaking manner of the defeat, it’s been a very good run in a testing competition for the youngsters.

The under 18s were also beaten by 5-2 at Bournemouth in what I believe was a League Cup tie with Dan Ola getting both of our goals.

Finally, in Rhondda valley football, Ton Pentre look doomed to relegation, or worse, after their 4-1 loss at Penydarren Seniors in the Premier Division of the Highadmit South Wales Alliance , but Treorchy Boys and Girls Club continue to fare well in Division One East with a 2-1 home victory over Cwrt Rawlings FC.

The fall out from Wednesday’s truly miserable loss to QPR has seen the predictable calls for Omer Riza to be relieved of his duties, but, on a personal level, it has been good to see at least as many fans pointing the finger at those who I believe to be most guilty.

The threesome who have overseen a big decline in standards since the 20/21 season (the ten years under Vincent Tan before that have to be deemed as a failure as well in my eyes), have, rightly, been criticised for their complete silence since the meeting between Omer Riza and Vincent Tan more than a fortnight ago and I don’t believe it’s a coincidence that the two matches played since then have seen a return to early season levels of performance.

Tomorrow, there will probably be the usual one thousand or more in the away section when we play at Coventry – those supporters in particular deserve far better than they’ve had to get used to in terms of communication from those at the top of the club, but that applies with bells on at the moment. Never has a club statement on how it intends to proceed been more needed under the current ownership.

We won’t be the story tomorrow though, it’ll be about Frank Lampard who will be taking charge of his first game as Coventry manager. All I’ll say about Mr Lampard for now is that I’d be very disappointed if there had been an announcement that he was taking over at the other CCFC, but, given the abject level of performance since we beat Norwich, I find it impossible to predict anything other than the Lampard era at Coventry starting with a comfortable win.

Here’s the usual seven questions dating back to the sixties on our next opponents, the answers will be posted on here on Sunday.

60s. Was this midfielder a very early example of overseas footballers making an impression in the British game? Not really, but he would be regarded as unusual today as he was over seventy years ago when he played his first game for a Midland Second Division outfit. After five years of very sporadic first team appearances, he moved on to Coventry and it was here where the large majority of his near four hundred league appearances came over the next nine years. His departure from Highfield Road saw him return to where he started, but this time with a club that had become very much the lesser lights in the city. His last season as a player was spent with non league Gingerbreads and he then returned to Coventry to work as a youth coach for a short time before he got a job at a factory where he helped manufacture products that were, I suppose, linked to his surname – can you name him?

70s. On the subject of overseas players, this forward was born in the city where the county cricket ground floods every winter, yet ended up winning an international cap for the country he spent all of his career in, bar his seven years with Coventry at the start of it. Perhaps uniquely for someone who made almost a hundred appearances for a First Division side during this decade, I have no memory whatsoever of him at Coventry, despite him having a very acceptable scoring rate of a league goal every three or so games. His one cap came in a draw against Italy when they were reigning World Champions – he was replaced during the game by someone called Perry Van Der Beck, but who is he?

80s. Summer visitor with just a hundred?

90s. Damage NHS mun? Certainly not (6,6,)

00s. He played for seven league clubs, including Coventry, and won promotion to the Premier League with one of them. He attempted suicide while at the club he played for after the Sky Blues and has spent six months serving a jail sentence. He also won a southern area title in another sport, but failed in his bid to become an English Champion, who am I describing?

10s. There was a meeting between City and Coventry during this decade which had an attendance of just over thirteen hundred, what was the main reason for the low crowd? Also, four players appeared for City who made just twelve league appearances for us between them (two of them were full internationals and the other two didn’t play a league game for us), name the four players.

20s. Which current Coventry player shares a name with a famous figure from history whose early death, according to Wikipedia, was attributed to “exhaustion brought on by unceasing romantic interests”?

Answers

60s. Guernsey born Ron Farmer started his career at Nottingham Forest before moving to Coventry in 1958 and became a regular in their midfield as they rose towards the old First Division. Farmer lost his place before promotion to the top flight was confirmed in 1967 and next signed for Notts County and a season with Grantham Town  ensured, just about, that his career spanned a third decade. Farmer spent most of the rest of his working life at the Massey Ferguson tractor manufacturing factory in Coventry.

70s. Worcester born Alan Green played for Coventry from 1972 to 1979 and then spent the next seven years playing for a variety of indoor and outdoor teams in the USA for whom he gained an international cap in 1984.

80s. Martin Singleton.

90s. Magnus Hedman.

00s. Leon McKenzie was a member of Norwich’s Championship winning team in 03/04 and played for Coventry between 2006 and 2009. He left Coventry for Charlton and it was while he was with them that he attempted suicide and he was jailed for six months in 2012 for trying to avoid speeding convictions. McKenzie’s father , Clinton, is a former European boxing Champion and his uncle Duke is a three time World Champion, so it wasn’t a huge shock when Leon became a professional boxer at the end of his football career – he won eight of his eleven fights, with one of his two defeats coming when he fought for the English super-middleweight title.

10s. City played an away First Round League Cup tie against Coventry in 14/15. The game was played at Northampton’s Sixfields Stadium because the home team were unable to play at the Ricoh Arena at the time. We won 2-1, with one of our goals coming from Austrian international Guido Burgstaller, who only played three league games for us. Norwegian international Magnus Wolff Eikrem made nine league appearances for us, while young full back Jazzi Barnum Bobb only played in a couple of League Cup matches for City. Local youngster, Tommy O’Sullivan came off the bench that night, but was another one who never made it into a City league team.

20s.  Raphael is a young winger Coventry signed from Australian football in the summer and his namesake is an Italian Renaissance painter and architect from the sixteenth century who died at the age of thirty seven.

Two games played, two games lost with no goals scored, seven conceded and, hardly surprisingly, bottom of the Championship table and with an away local derby against opponents who have dominated the fixture in recent years, Cardiff City have to view their 1-1 draw at Swansea today as a positive outcome.

While the jacks have come to Cardiff City Stadium quite often in the last fifteen years or so and won easily, it’s says so much about how we’ve faced up to the challenge of playing at Swansea since we won 1-0 there in 2011 that the only time we’ve scored and avoided defeat there before today was in a 1-0 win in 2021 which was played behind closed doors.

For forty minutes or so today, our performance could be described as the most feeble out of the half a dozen limp losses we suffered on the ground since Craig Bellamy’s late winner thirteen and a half years ago – there was absolutely nothing to commend it, apart from the fact that we, somehow, managed to stay just the one goal behind. 

When the tide began to turn somewhat in the closing minutes of the first half, I found it hard to avoid the thought that it had more to do with Swansea over confidence than anything else.

Swansea representatives on Radio Wales and Sky both heavily implied that we dragged the home team down to our level by making the game a more scrappy affair after the break. While understandable to some extent, I’d say Swansea were hardly blameless when it came to their drawing a match which I’m sure they felt they should have won, but they completely lost their earlier poise, got more edgy and, consequently, their mistakes increased.

Swansea fans amused themselves in the first half with shouts of “hoof” when we resorted to some long aerial clearances as a consequence of their effective pressing, but there was not much evidence of the much vaunted “Swansea way” today. The jacks were more direct than usual and the best piece of football all afternoon came from us with the construction and execution of our first league goal of the season.

Erol Bulut made a couple of changes to the side that, in some respects, played better in losing 5-0 at Burnley last week than they did today. Two new signings came in for first league starts with Jesper Daland replacing the struggling Dimi Goutas as left centre back and Alex Robertson in central midfield for the injured Joe Ralls – there was also a first appearance from the bench for Anwar El Ghazi.

It’s happened more with Cardiff v Swansea games than the other way around, but City might just have been starting to congratulate themselves for getting through the opening minutes without conceding, when they let in yet another very poor goal in the tenth minute.

In mitigation, Swansea got lucky in the build up three times. Firstly, in trying to cut out Harry Darling’s pass intended for Ronald, Yakou Meite headed the ball in field straight to a white shirt from where the ball was worked out to left back Josh Tymon whose cross found Liam Cullen in glorious isolation ten yards out in a central position. Cullen’s intended volley was a complete miskick which fell perfectly for Ronald whose well struck effort was stopped by Ethan Horvarth, but the ball dropped perfectly for Cullen who easily scored his third goal in four appearances in the derby from six yards out.

I thought Daland was one of the plus points to be taken from today’s match, he has an assurance to him that bodes well for how we want to play if we can only get a bit of confidence into the team – sometimes, he came over as a bit too assured, but, in an increasingly frantic fixture, he came through a testing derby on his debut with no major traumas in that department. 

With one exception, Daland also defended well, but when I watched the goal back, it looked like he was the one who had lost Cullen as the cross came in.

You had to feel for Horvarth though. He was goaded from first minute to last by Swansea fans all too eager to remind him of his catastrophic error last week and it was always going to be a huge test for him in what would have been a high pressure game anyway. It was typical of the way things are going for Horvarth that his best moment of the game gave him no reward as his fine save only delayed the goal for a couple of seconds.

Unfortunately, although he did not concede again, Horvarth did not inspire confidence. For a lot of the time he still looked like an accident waiting to happen with the ball at his feet and in a game where he was tested more than normal in this department, his handling of crosses was uncertain.

Much has been said in the last year or so about how negative we’ve been when beginning games under Erol Bulut, but I’m not sure that applies this season as we started off positively against Sunderland, were taking the game to Burnley before Horvarth’s horror moment and while we were hardly piling forward here, we hadn’t been under too much pressure before Swansea scored.

You get the feeling that Bulut will be looking at these early goals being conceded though and he’s surely going to think this can’t go on, so a reversion to type will soon follow, but, for now, we’ve got two hundred and seventy minutes of league action behind us and we’ve been trailing for all but forty five of them.

Maybe that might explain why our response to going behind was such a timid one, confidence must be low after the sort of start we’ve made and our poor finish to last season can’t be helping in that regard either.

Instead of going looking for an equaliser, City stood off Swansea as if they were in awe of the team that used to compare themselves with Barcelona and not be joking about it. Our pressing became non existent and, as far as any attacking was concerned, we looked like Cheltenham must have last season after failing to score in their first eleven league games!

I can only guess that City were thinking let’s just stay in the game at 1-0 down and hope that, somehow, something will turn up later.

As is so often the case, our problems started in midfield, Manolis Siopis had one of those afternoons where he was always a little late in arriving and the ball had gone by the time he did, Aaron Ramsey again played ninety minutes, but I can’t understand why because he’s struggling so far this season (you know he’s going to get injured as well if Bulut keeps on doing this) and while Robertson looked neat on the ball, he had little impact when Swansea were in possession.

The strange thing is that for all of Swansea’s complete domination of the game in the half an hour or so after they scored, I can’t remember them coming that close to getting a second.

On this evidence, this is not one of the strongest jacks teams of recent years and their limitations were exposed somewhat in the second half, but it says how abject City were that the home side were clearly so much better than us for ninety per cent of the first period.

The five minutes before the break offered some hope though. WIlfried Kanga only touched the ball twice in the first twenty five minutes and he was getting nowhere until he combined with Chris Willock and shot about a yard wide from the edge of the penalty area. Another effort shortly afterwards was not as convincing, but at least home goalkeeper Lawrence Vigouroux was finally given something to do.

If City were not making things hard enough for themselves, they also had to endure a very poor showing from referee Oliver Langford who was your archetypal “homer” throughout. Not for the first time in their home derby game, Swansea were given full latitude by a referee to welcome City to proceedings with late challenges and fouls that drew no card from the official – Harry Darling, a persistent offender in this respect since he joined the jacks from MK Dons, was at it all game with the ironic thing being that when Langford eventually showed him a yellow card in the tenth minute of added time, he didn’t seem to do much wrong as Perry Ng took retribution for a poor tackle on him by Darling in the opening minutes with a niggling flick and then a dramatic fall aimed at getting the Swansea man a red card. Ng was, rightly, booked, as was Rubin Colwill apparently..

Langford continued to favour Swansea through the second half and maybe there was a sense of injustice behind City’s gradual improvement – I say gradual, but I should really qualify that with one or two verys! 

The game had changed, but it was more to do with the jacks losing their way. I’d read quite a bit about the damage the home wingers Ronald and Eom Ji Sung would cause us, but they were both increasingly wasteful with the latter eventually being withdrawn and their patchy play epitomised why it was becoming clear that there was a way back into the game for City if they could only create something resembling a chance for themselves.

Maybe it was the thought that it was a more even game now that made Bulut reluctant to make the substitutions that were clearly needed. Colwill did come on for Robertson just before the hour mark, but that was the only change made until the game was well into its final quarter.

Colwill slotted into Ramsey’s position and the Welsh captain dropped into the deeper role that has been occupied by Robertson. 

Colwill made City look a bit more lively and a cross of his flew across the face of the Swansea goal with no City player making the sort of run which would have left them with a simple header to equalise, while Ramsey was slightly more effective in his new position. However, it was only when Ollie Tanner came on for Meite and then Callum Robinson and El Ghazi replaced Kanga and Willock that City began to build up a head of attacking steam as a few corners were forced which came to nothing.

To be honest, City weren’t doing much to suggest an equaliser was coming, but then, from somewhere, they conjured a really high quality goal just as the match was entering its last ten minutes. 

It started with Calum Chambers finding Colwill who played a beautifully weighted ball down the right which gave Tanner the chance to go at Tymon and he made himself a yard to cut back an intelligent, low cross. The intelligence did not stop there either as Robinson created space for himself by not following the Swansea centre backs towards goal and so he was perfectly positioned to meet the cross with a first time shot into the corner from eighteen yards.

After having made scoring look almost impossible for two hundred and sixty minutes of league action, City had come up with something so effective and simple that you wondered why they’d struggled so much before that.

The drama was added to when Tanner picked up a nasty looking cut in the celebrations following the goal when a hoarding fell on his leg. City questioned Swansea’s security arrangements after the game, but it seemed that the accident would never have happened if some supporters hadn’t decided to climb over another set of barriers to try to join in with the team’s celebrations.

Within seconds of the restart, a Swansea mistake presented City with a chance to go ahead, but the chance really needed to fall to someone other than Siopis whose daisy cutter of a shot was saved with few problems by Vigouroux.

Both sides looked for a winner after that, but, although one or two decent crossing positions for either side were worked, nothing came of them and the most noteworthy incident saw Erol Bulut red carded after holding on to the ball following another wrong decision by the officials as a throw in was awarded to Swansea which clearly should have gone to us. The whole thing became a bit stupid really as Bulut argued with Swansea players Jay Fulton and Kyle Naughton and, after consulting fourth official Keith Stroud, the City manager was ordered to leave the dug out – it seemed like an over reaction by an official who’d had a poor afternoon.

So, City have broken both their points and goal duck. In truth, there was still lots to be concerned about in our performance, but the pressure has lifted a little by getting something out of a game none of the pundits gave us a chance in. For example, all three of the journalists in a Wales Online article had City losing without scoring a goal, while it was nice to see the smug presenter who barely has a good word to say about us on the Second Tier podcast lose out on his “banker” selection of a home win!

In the past two weeks, I’ve been able to end reports on first team defeats by saying that at least the under 18s won, but this time they were beaten as they went down 3-2 yesterday at Coventry with Osion Rees and Leeyon Phelan scoring.

The Highadmit South Wales Alliance is up and running again, but it looks like Treherbert Boys and Girls Club, who did so well in the Premier Division last season, have folded* because they’re no longer in the competition. There is a new local side in the First Division East (the third tier), Treorchy Boys and Girl’s Club and they have won their only game so far by 2-1. Back in the Premier Division, it seems Ton Pentre have a real struggle on their hands over the coming months, their two games so far, both played at home, have seen them losing 2-0 to Llantwit Fardre and 12-0 to Pencoed!

*After further investigation, it looks as if Treherbert Boys and Girls Club FC have, in fact, been promoted to the Ardal Southern South West Division, so, congratulations to them for reaching what I think is the level two tiers below the Cymru Premier Division, they’ve not played any games yet, but I’ll continue to keep readers up to date with how they’re doing over the course of the season.