After losing their first three games of the season, Cardiff City’s Under 23/Development team had been on a fine run with five wins out of six going into this afternoon’s rearranged encounter with Birmingham at Leckwith which had been postponed earlier in the season.
Benefiting from a more settled selection policy which makes much less use of trialists, City, with their more direct style compared to previous seasons, had been climbing the table on the back of wins over the likes of Palace and Sheffield Wednesday. Today, however, they were beaten by a better team as Birmingham City won by a single goal in a manner which raised questions with me about some of the assumptions which I’ve heard regarding how long it would take for City’s first team to be reshaped by any new manager to a degree where they could play in a completely different style to what we see now.
I’ll return to that shortly once I’ve quickly run through the main highlights of a game which was certainly not deadly dull, but, by the same token didn’t reach any great heights either.
The first half was the more watchable of the two as both sides traded goal attempts in front of City manager Neil Warnock who stationed himself about twenty yards from the dug out and appeared to take no part in any decisions being undertaken there. It seemed to me that he was just getting a close up view of the likes of Will Vaulks and Gary Madine (who must come into the reckoning for Sunday’s match with Bristol City in light of Robert Glatzel’s injury and Danny Ward’s suspension), but I couldn’t help but wonder if he might find it hard to break the habits of a lifetime and not get in the linesman’s ear as he ran past him!
With our manager deciding to vacate his place by the touchline for the second period, City’s performance fell away and with Birmingham maintaining their first half standard, Matt Hall made himself into our man of the match with a series of good saves to keep the visitor’s lead down to a single goal.
Madine was almost in for an early goal and also tested visiting keeper Moha Ramos, while Shama Moore was not far away at all with an angled shot which flew just too high and Vaulks forced Ramos to tip over with a shot from about twenty five yards in an opening half that kept a decent sized crowd pretty well entertained.
Up the other end, Birmingham had a shot deflected not too far wide and then had the ball in the net from the resultant corner only for a linesman’s flag, apparently raised for a foul, to rule it out. Midfielder Jake Evans also came to City’s rescue when he cleared a shot by Redmond off the line with Hall beaten following another corner.
It seemed that half time would be reached with the game goalless, but a minute before the interval, Birmingham came up with a goal fit to win any match. The visitors had been the better passing side throughout, as was illustrated by the build up to the goal, but it was the shot from the impressive Jack Concannon which gave it it’s real quality as he pinged a shot into the the far corner of the net from the edge of the penalty area with impeccable technique.
The second half saw City become more and more reliant on knocking it long to Madine and with Vaulks hurling his long throws in as well, this was a long way from the sort of stuff seen from the Development team in previous seasons. There’s no doubt that there is a logic to what is essentially our reserve team mimicking the style of our first team, but, whereas City were not wholly reliant on the long ball and set pieces for their attacks before the break, the game offered a complete contrast in styles after it,
The only two occasions when it seemed like an equaliser may come were both down to the desire to look for the head of Madine, as Vaulks’ throw went beyond the near post and saw the striker left with what was virtually a free header which he put narrowly wide and the second came when he nodded a cross to Vaulks who was unlucky to see his shot from around the penalty spot come back off a post.
The visitors also struck the woodwork through Concannon and, with all of the aforementioned saves from Hall as well, I don’t think there could be much argument as to them deserving their win in a game where they were always the more fluent team.
That word fluent brings me on to what I wanted to say about the assumption that it would be impossible to change the way City played in the short term when our manager leaves, because we just don’t have the players to do so.
Now, I must qualify what I say by remarking that, although I watched quite a lot of televised Championship football during our season in the Premier League, I cannot remember seeing a great deal of Birmingham, so I cannot claim that what I’m going to say about their style of play is totally accurate,
Nevertheless, I can remember always thinking before we played Birmingham in the years before we went up that the forthcoming game would offer a very rare chance for us to have more than fifty per cent possession because, they played in a way that was similar to us. Rather like Millwall, Birmingham were a low possession, physical outfit greatly reliant on attacking dead ball situations for their goals. So, unless they underwent a total transformation last season, it doesn’t seem to have taken them long at all to adopt to a more fluent passing style (as exemplified by their first thirty minutes especially on Saturday and then again by their Under 23s today).
Although the results have not been startling, the apparent change in Birmingham’s approach has certainly not seen them sliding down the table. In fact, I would say that they are doing slightly better than they have in recent seasons and, while there was been a large turnover of players during the summer, the financial situation at the club means that there was no huge outlay in the transfer market given that they received a big fee for Che Adams.
What Birmingham have done is be imaginative in their transfer dealings and show the courage to trust their best young Academy players when it came to first team selection – if they can do it, there’s no reason why City can’t.
