Will Vaulks, who is a good and interesting interviewee whose opinions are always worth a listen, got a lot of positive feedback a week ago after the Preston win with his defence of Cardiff City’s method of playing. According to our midfield man, not every team has to build from the back and there’s nothing wrong with getting the ball forward quickly – we are, according to Vaulks, “horrible to play against”.
This was a line endorsed by Mick McCarthy later in the week and I’m sure that, if they were being honest, most teams we play would admit this is the case, so the “horrible to play against” line is, probably, officially true.
However, as the whistle blew to the signal the end of our six game winning run today with a 1-1 draw at Middlesbrough, a variation on that theme came into my mind – today, we were horrible to watch.
Now, it’s only fair to qualify that in a few respects. Firstly, and most obviously, there’s the aforementioned six game winning run, and eight match unbeaten run, during which we have played our best football of the season and attacked, and defended, with quality at times to consider – any criticism of today’s performance has to come against that context.
Second, rather like Neil Harris during our four game winning pre Christmas run, Mick McCarthy has stuck with the same starting line up game in game out – today was the fifth successive match we had begun with the same starting eleven.
Thirdly, and this particularly applies to the second point above, what looked like an outstanding physical effort to win a crucial game at Bournemouth on Wednesday was proved to be exactly that today. It felt like one game too many for too many of our team today, there was none of the spark or confidence you’d expect from a team that were on such a fantastic run – we were also up against opponents who had a day longer to recover from their midweek match.
So, what I’m going to say now comes against that background and I want to re-emphasise that we’ve been so good since the change of manager – we’ve scored some great goals, we’ve scored goals at a greater rate and conceded them at a lesser rate, so I don’t want to be critical just for the sake of it.
However, that performance under Neil Harris would have been widely panned by media and fan alike and with good reason. For me, a major factor in our improvement has been that we’ve been able to bring our matchwinners into the game more – today that just didn’t happen.
For myself, I’m sorry for getting on my hobby horse again, but I’ve got to talk about our passing, or, to be more accurate, about the lack of it.
The last week has seen a reaction from some in the club against the supporters and pundits who have been critical of our style of play (Neil Warnock also joined in) and they had a point in many respects because, as mentioned earlier, there has been a lot that is good in our play over the past few weeks. What I don’t get though, and have never done, is why it should be that playing in the manner that we have done under Russell Slade, Neil Warnock, Neil Harris and now Mick McCarthy should somehow mean that we have to pass the ball as poorly as we so often do?
Under Neil Warnock, I used to write about periods of up to twenty minutes when I would struggle to recall a single pass that was completed in a manner which did not put the receiver under unnecessary pressure – that sounds ridiculous I know from professional footballers, especially when we’re talking about a team that got promoted to the Premier League, but nevertheless I’d be at games where this would happen.
Although it doesn’t strike me as being the case, the fact that I’d not had that feeling for a while, may suggest that we’ve improved on this front – or maybe I’ve just got used to it?
Today though, it was back again, we went for a long stretch of the game in the first half without playing an accurate, measured pass that reached its intended target. Actually, that’s not true, there were two, both from Vaulks in the form of under hit back passes to Dillon Phillips that were just about dealt with as Boro attackers closed in as they sniffed a gift goal, so we did manage two passes, both of which happened within a period of about five minutes when Vaulks was also booked.
With Marlon Pack anonymous and Vaulks having his poorest game for some time, this was a day when the limitations of playing with just two central midfielders were shown. Pack and Vaulks had done well in recent games, but their cause wasn’t helped by our three centre backs looking what they are today, a trio of defenders who are not that comfortable with the ball at their feet when asked to play passes from the back – it seems we can have one or the other at Cardiff, defenders who are good at stopping the opposition scoring or defenders that can pass the ball better than our current crop can, but not both .
Things weren’t helped either by the relative lack of movement in front of the central defenders and midfielders – it’s easy to bemoan the standard of passing, but it’s a two way thing, there needs to be a desire from any receiver to help the passer by making delivery of the ball easier through their desire to find space, but, perhaps down to tiredness due to the shift they put in on Wednesday, it wasn’t really there from Messrs Moore, Wilson and Murphy.
The irony was that it was at a time when we were really struggling to get any sort of foothold in the game that we scored our goal – we’d absorbed a lot of Middlesbrough pressure without being able to get out when we finally managed to get a chance for Vaulks to send in a long throw and when it came, the ball ended up in the Boro net thanks to a pretty faint touch from Sean Morrison. The fact that our skipper still had his feet on the ground when he made contact with the ball must be a reason why Neil Warnock will have been furious at his defence. for conceding such a goal.
Before that, Harry Wilson had a free kick turned aside by home keeper Marcus Bettinelli and that was the sum total of City’s attacking efforts – two goal attempts and no corners.
However, although Middlesbrough were always the side trying to force the issue, their own lack of fire power was evident through the fact that Bettinelli’s pretty routine stop from Wilson was the best save of the game.
The home team have not been in the best of form lately and this showed with their almost complete lack of an end product to their attacking play – with City looking more comfortable after the break, I was just beginning to convince myself that we could see it through for a 1-0 win (we were never going to score a second goal) when we conceded what was a very lucky equaliser by the home side.
Boro’s good fortune began when Bettinelli scuffed his clearance along the ground, but the ball somehow found its way to the halfway line where some effective combination play down our left saw a dangerous looking cross played in which Aden Flint should have been able to deal with, but on an afternoon where composure was a notable absentee from the Cardiff ranks, the defender thrashed at the ball which rebounded off a home player back towards our goal, on to a Boro attacker’s head from which it looked to be going just wide until Paddy McNair netted from a yard or two out.
For all that it was an unlucky goal to concede, it would have been something of a travesty had we won – as explained earlier, there were reasons for our poor display and we, clearly, aren’t as bad a side as we looked today, but we were a horrible team to watch today.
It needs to be said though that, despite his culpability with the goal, Flint was part of a defensive trio which were largely responsible for us returning home with a point and an unbeaten record stretched to nine matches – Morrison and Flint were generally dominant and there was a trademark superb block by Curtis Nelson in the first half as the three of them ensured Phillips had a quiet afternoon of it.
Finally on the game, Mick McCarthy’s use, or non use, of substitutes raised some questions. Although there was a slight difference to the norm today with Wilson staying on about ten minutes longer than Murphy, you could generally set your watch in recent games by the change which sees the two of them go off to be replaced by Sheyi Ojo and Leandro Bacuna and, given our toils in the middle of the park, it was no surprise to see the fit again Joe Ralls on for Vaulks (we actually managed a few passes in central areas with Ralls on!).
However, given that he’s only scored once in more than two years at Cardiff and hardly has mountains of assists to his credit, the Bacuna move to play in a forward role looks increasingly like it’s done for its nuisance value (i.e putting defenders under pressure) than anything else – with Junior Hoilett available again, that would have been a move which suggested we were still looking to score again and you also have to ask why haven’t we seen anything of Jonny Williams if he has been fit enough to be a substitute in our last three matches?
Williams has a capacity to win plenty of free kicks when he is used by Wales and that would have been a good string to have to our bow today given our inability to make significant inroads into Middlesbrough territory, but our manager decided to make just the three changes which meant that there was another grueling ninety minutes for Moore whose body broke down under the strain of being used continuously back in December.
With Bournemouth beating Watford 1-0 and Barnsley keeping their fine run going with a 2-1 win over Millwall, our hold on sixth place proved to a very short one, but we’re right in the hunt for a Play Off place now and, with Jordi Osei-Tutu and Lee Tomlin, hopefully, rejoining the squad soon, we should have decent cover for all positions except striker where Keiffer Moore remains crucial to our hopes of a top six finish.
This weekend had a feel of back to normal to it after all of the victories of the last month or so, because, a few hours before the first team played, City’s Academy team ended their run of three straight wins when they were well beaten 4-1 at Ipswich – James Crole got our solitary goal as our youngsters struggled to come to terms with what is the longest trip of their league campaign..
Finally, it’s now less than a month to the fiftieth anniversary of our win over Real Madrid in the European Cup Winners Cup Quarter Final First Leg in March 1971. To commemorate that anniversary, I’ve written a book called Real Madrid and all that – details of which can be found below;-
Good morning Paul – “Horrible to Watch” so apt, and so disappointing after all that has gone on before in February. I have not had the courage to look at our passing statistics for the game, and not sure that I really want to know, but if my memory of what transpired some eighteen hours ago, I doubt that for this particular statistic, we would have achieved a 50% success rate. Tiredness – perhaps, certainly Laurel and Hardy the two co-commentators on the City’s streaming service seemed to think so, but even if a City player had no pressure on him at the time, attempted passes often were yards off the mark. But somehow we didn’t manage to lose, and the Boro goal when it came owed much to good fortune.
I also wondered about MM’s substitutions. I think he may well have given Jonny Williams a run out, he’s darn good at running around, and to leave on our Moore to keep chasing lost causes seemed also seemed a waste as he never looked like receiving the pass to kill the game off.
A disappointing afternoon was put behind me and the mood became better watching the vanquishing of Mr.Jones and his assembled bunch in white. Now that really was something to celebrate – and I did. Just hope that on Tuesday our men in blue can see off another bunch of men in white when the horrible Mr.Rooney comes to town.
Sorry Bob, your level-headed reports have guided my thoughts on City for so long, but on this occasion I think you’re off-beam. I know most on here will agree with you, but I don’t think that’s your aim. I think you’ve genuinely become one of the purists who feel ‘entitled’ (how I hate that word) to jam, and it’s got your mind in a jam. Where once you would have been ecstatic at City grinding out a point away to one of our rivals, now you can’t wait to have a pop at the passing deficiencies that you’ve been harbouring a grudge against and had to put to one side while our results were so good. Now, first chance, out comes the negativity, balanced of course (you’re too clever not to do that) by a nod to our recent efforts. ‘Tired minds’ I think Jason Perry called it. Pack’s passing, for example, was way off Bournemouth. He is just an example. Why, under the circumstances, is that deserving of censure? And I didn’t read you knocking Morrison’s very similar goal against the Cherries. ‘The threat that we always carry’ now becomes ‘the irony was’ and ‘the ball ended up’. Very negative. While the sarcasm aimed at Vaulks is simply beneath you. If Ojo and Bacuna had put themselves about half as much as the 90-minuters we’d have got both points. But, then, that’s not a point you want to make today.
Three points for a win for some time now.
I just didn’t want to believe it.
Ta Paul for your comments. Yes, it was a hard 90 mins to sit through, wasn’t it?
City again went 3412 whilst Middlesbrough’s 3142 caused us problems all game. Whilst City’s extra man in the centre (Wilson) played behind Moore & Murphy the home team’s extra man (McNair) played behind their two central midfielders meaning throughout the game Pack and Vaulks had the joy of pitting their wits against Middlesbrough’s three genuine central midfielders (McNair, Howson & Tavernier). This, when viewed against the schedule and unchanged team of late, was always going to be difficult ask. So it turned out. Apart from a better start to the second half we were generally sluggish and on the back foot more than in any of our six-game winning streak.
This was a gutsy performance, true, but it was laboured and unimaginative. Gone was the better movement of recent games. One staggering fact I unearthed was that in the first period we had just a 33% passing accuracy. In the second half it rose to 51% making a figure of 42% for the whole match. Middlesbrough’s passing accuracy during the game was approximately 50% better than our figure at 66%. And much of the time when we had the ball at our feet it went skyward. It seemed this 90 mins was all a little too much. In the 90 mins of action our 252 passes (an average of 2.8/min) at 42% accuracy worked at just 105 throughout the entire game that actually found a City player. Another way to put this is that a pass found a City player roughly every 50 secs. That starkly puts into perspective the afternoon’s work in the North East.
As you Paul, I’d temper my above comments with the excellent run we’ve been on but this was comfortably the worst game we’ve played since Jan 27th. I’d certainly question why Mick McCarthy has not made better use of his substitutes knowing what the fixture list was like.
During the opening 35 mins City were under pressure but were largely comfortable. Our goal on 37 mins when Morrison, surrounded by four red-shirted home defenders, squeezed home a header into the far corner of the net from the near post seemed surreal. For me, tiredness was a factor in this weekend’s performance. Also being out-gunned 3 v 2 in the centre of midfield gave us little platform from which to impose ourselves. Not that I’m complaining, I could not see the logic of Warnock playing Mendez-Laing at right wing back. His defensive duties restricted his pace being utilised in the last third of the pitch.
In the circumstances six wins and three draws since the end of January is an excellent return to start McCarthy’s reign at CCS. I, for one, did not envisage this. I just hope that lack of rotation of our squad will not cost us at the end of this season.
Home: 16 … 6 … 3 … 7 … 27-19 … +8 … 21
Away: 17 … 8 … 5 … 4 … 22-16 … +6 … 29
Total: 33 … 14 … 8 … 11 … 49-35 … +14 … 50
I must agree 100%. The few times I have watched City play this year the football has been awful…I set myself a target of seeing more than 3 completed passes in a move. I can promise you…it rarely happens. How could we survive in the Premiership with such turgid football. Constant knocking the ball into the channels is wasting the talents of people like Wilson and Murphy. We are fortunate in that we have match winners in Moore and Wilson, but they are feeding off scraps. It is just not good enough.
I am delighted that Mick McCarthy has got some positivity into the squad and has 8 excellent results under his belt….But be assured – that team down the road are miles ahead of us at the moment ….in every aspect of the game.
All followers of MAYA know that our Blogmeister is the go to man -the dog’s bollocks of Welsh football journalism-for reports on Cardiff City matches.
I rarely disagree with any of his opinions but his Middlesbrough report is unusual in that I feel that I could have written all of it myself apart from two things-his superior syntax and his ability to produce a couple of thousand words at an hour which my body clock tells me is the middle of the night.
A few years ego after wasting a never to be retrieved 90 plus minutes of my life watching City v Ipswich I contributed to the MAYA blog by writing something like-
“Mick McCarthy has been quoted as saying he wants opponents to regard his team as “bloody horrible” to play against.
He has certainly made them “bloody horrible” to watch.”
I admire Royale(the French quarter pounder)’s support for our team but think he
is a it harsh in his criticism of the Middlesbrough report
TOBW like most of us was underwhelmed by MM’s appointment but delighted with his results.
His opinion of Saturday’s performance was probably not much different from that of MM himself.In his post match interview shown on Sky EFL highlights Mick said
“It’s not the best game of football I’ve ever seen that’s for sure-maybe one of the worst I’ve seen!”
MM’s success so far has been achieved by making us very good at what we have “always” been good at and thus building confidence.He cannot fail to have noticed our deficiencies at the basic skills of passing and receiving the ball and may well have wondered how our coaches could have allowed us to become so inept at this.
I think he would be justified in concluding that with a short term contract and limited training time between matches rectifying these shortcomings would have to go on the back burner.
is a bit harsh in his criticism of the Blogmeister’s comments on our Middlesperformance
Thanks all for your comments, BJA, the rugby was a pleasant surprise for me as I’d assumed England would have too much for us, but I’d forgotten about England being a pretty stupid team when it comes to discipline – France were always the ones who would beat themselves through indiscipline, but England have taken that mantle off them. That said, Wales needed little help from the officials when the score was 24 all late on and deserve a lot of credit for the way they pulled away at a time when England must have been favourites to go on and win.
Royale, can I ask what you would have thought of that game if you had started to watch it as a neutral? Surely, you had to either be being paid to watch or were a supporting one of the teams involved to have stuck with it through the ninety minutes?
We’re all different, but the way I’m wired is that if I’m watching something poor, I tend to think it’s poor whether it’s my team involved or not. I started this blog with the intention of providing an honest and fair assessment of the matches the team I support played and I like to think that I have succeeded when it comes to the “honest” part, but it’s for others to decide if I’ve always been “Fair”. Clearly, you don’t think I have been about Saturday’s game and you also seem to be unhappy because I have been critical of our passing over quite a long period.
So, I’m especially grateful to Steve for putting some skin on the bone of my criticisms by providing the passing accuracy stats from Saturday’s game – Middlesbrough weren’t great in possession, but they were fifty per cent better than us when it came to passing accuracy. This site
https://www.whoscored.com/Regions/252/Tournaments/7/Seasons/8304/Stages/18825/TeamStatistics/England-Championship-2020-2021
shows that we are nineteenth in the Championship over the course of the season when it comes to passing accuracy with a rate of 67.9 per cent – on Saturday, that figure was 42 per cent, with a ridiculously low 33 per cent in the first half. So, clearly, we aren’t always as bad as we were on Saturday, but Byron is right (welcome to the Feedback section Byron), you try counting to more than three when it comes to consecutive completed passes by City and it won’t happen too often.
However, I took care to make clear that to limiting myself to accusing us of being “horrible to watch” for ninety minutes in the title I gave my piece. I did so because it felt that we were exceptionally bad at passing the ball against Middlesbrough and the figures provided by Steve show that this was, indeed, the case – we aren’t good at passing the ball when compared to most others in this league, but we aren’t as bad at it as we looked on Saturday.
As for Will Vaulks, he made his comments after we’d won 4-0 to make it four wins on the trot. Clearly, he had a point, we do have a method that has been shown to be very effective at Championship level at times, but that method has nothing to make it watchable or enjoyable when it was not working and he was looking at things very much in a glass half full mode. I accept that when it comes to passing the ball with City, I’m firmly in the glass half empty camp and that’s because, as someone said on a messageboard yesterday, how can it possibly be of benefit to us to pass the ball as poorly as we did on Saturday?
I would say though that I’m in agreement with Mike when it comes to Mick McCarthy, he’s got to work with what he has inherited and, if he is minded to try and change the way we play, it is only a job that he could attempt to undertake after being given a longer contract here. I never expected the way we played to change over the course of this season and have nothing but admiration for our manager for the way he has tweaked things at either end of the pitch to produce such a great run of results, but, as Barry hints at, he may have had a bit of a rude awakening on Saturday when he got his first experience of how bad we can look when our never great passing has one of the bad days that we seem to get about six or seven times a season. Our manager said it was “maybe one of the worst” games of football he had seen, I said we were horrible to watch, I don’t see a great deal of difference between the two opinions.
Very defensive, Paul. Why have you gone to such lengths to prove what I did not deny? (“Pack’s passing, for example, was way off Bournemouth. He is just an example.”) To answer your question… Yes, I’d have switched off. “Grinding out a point” suggests pretty clearly that pure football was not my priority. Am I not supposed to have different eyes for my own team? I disagree fundamentally with your expectations.
(Plenty of my glasses are “half empty”. Usually you’re a big help in keeping this one topped up. As I began.)
So, what you’re saying is that I’m wrong to expect a team of professional footballers to pass the ball at better than 42 per cent accuracy?
Situations alter cases.