I never thought I’d be doing one of these review pieces in September, but so much has changed in the last few months that the old certainties have been left far behind. Equally bizarre is that this will be the fourth and final “summer” weekly report on close season events at Cardiff City because, little over a month after our excellent, but ultimately useless, win over Fulham in the Second Leg of the Play Off Semi Final, it all starts up again this weekend with a First Round tie in the League Cup 20/21 at Northampton.
Apologies for the delay in getting this piece out, this is due mainly to the fact that my time has mostly been taken up putting the finishing touches to the book I’m doing about City’s 1970/71 season – the season when we beat Real Madrid at Ninian Park.
I had hoped to get everything done and with Amazon for approval before printing by the end of August, but I hit a snag yesterday which means that this will be delayed for a week or two – the problem falls into the nuisance category. rather than anything more serious than that, because it means that work I had already done will have to be completed again because of circumstances out of my control.
So, with more work to be done on the book, this will only be a brief run through of events over the past ten days or so.
Firstly, I read a speculation piece yesterday that despite signing a goalkeeper from Spain to replace the departed Lee Camp recently, Birmingham City’s reported interest in Neil Etheridge has not ended – in a way, I hope this is true, because goalkeeper has always struck me as a position where we have more than enough cover even if one of the three senior keepers were to leave.
From a position where we have almost too much strength in depth to the area where we had barely any. In my last piece on here, I said that it had been reported that the arrival of a new right back was “imminent” and added my opinion that it was “increasingly likely” that that Dion Sanderson would be rejoining us on loan from Wolves – well, I was half right!
While it has been reported that we may still bring Sanderson in for the new campaign, our new right back is Arsenal’s Jordi Osei-Tutu who signed on a season long loan deal a week ago.
Osei-Tutu started off at Reading’s Academy, but switched to Arsenal a few years ago and played plenty of times for their Under 18 side before moving the Under 23s. The twenty one year old, who has yet to play for Arsenal’s first team, spent last season on loan at Bundesliga 2 club Bochum where it’s fair to say he enjoyed mixed fortunes.
Osei-Tutu’s first half season in Germany was a time to forget in many ways as the coach who signed him was sacked barely a month into the season with Bochum struggling and the new man in charge obviously didn’t fancy the loanee, because he spent a lot of time out of the team.
If Osei-Tutu did struggle in Bochum’s opening league matches, then it wasn’t altogether surprising given that, shockingly, he was the victim of racist abuse in a pre season match against Swiss side St. Gallen. Initially, Osei-Tutu left the pitch in tears, but eventually returned and and completed the game. However, despite messages of support from players at other clubs, including ex City man Rabbi Matondo at Schalke, it was clearly a traumatic experience for a young player who was just getting started with a new phase of his career away from where he was born and grew up.
As the season went on and Bochum continued to struggle, Osei Tutu eventually regained his place in the team and, proving his versatility by operating as a wing back and then a winger, he was one of the major factors in a last season improvement which saw his team move clear of the drop zone.
With five goals and three assists, the youngster proved that the attacking side of his game was a strength and, seemingly, this came while he also fulfilled all of the required defensive aspects of his role.
Osei Tutu said in his first interview as a City player that he still sees himself as a right back first and foremost and surely this is the position that we intend to use him in to start with at least given our lack of depth there.
The new man made a contribution to the senior side’s first pre season match as they took on Newport County at Leckwith early last week in what was, to all intents and purposes, two fifty minute games with wholesale changes in both line ups at “half time”.
City won the first half 1-0 thanks to a goal from Robert Glatzel and Osei Tutu’s contribution came in the second match when it was City’s other newcomer Keiffer Moore who captured the headlines with a couple of goals (one of which was a penalty) to ensure that the whole thing finished with a final score of Cardiff 3 Newport 0.
On Saturday, there was a similar game at Bristol Rovers’ Memorial Ground with the two matches lasting eighty minutes each this time. A cagey first half ended 0-0, but the second period was a complete contrast with plenty of chances at either end.
The first goal of the afternoon eventually arrived through Aden Flint when he headed in a corner. The home side, featuring former City man David Tutonda who has just signed for them on a two year contract following his departure from Barnet, equalised when Lucas Tomlinson’s shot was deflected wide of Etheridge who was called on to make some fine saves, but City won it when Glatzel netted as he followed up on a shot that had been beaten out by the Rovers keeper.
It was good to see a few younger players getting game time against Rovers. Tavio Kouakou d’Almeida and Keiron Evans both started the first match, with the former eventually being replaced by Sam Bowen, while Joel Bagan and Mark Harris were among the players brought on at the change around and Ben Margetson saw some late action when he replaced Greg Cunningham who was making a welcome return with his first game in almost a year following the injury he picked up early in his loan spell with Blackburn.
In these days of behind closed doors warm up matches where the first thing you learn about them is their result, it’s possible that City might have something lined up for the next few days, but it’s more likely I would think that, given how short their close season break has been this time, that’s it as far as pre season football goes.
So, it’s probably just Northampton on Saturday and then the start of the Championship programme when Sheffield Wednesday come here a week later and the chances are that some of those younger players I mentioned may feature in the squad for the Cup game because, besides injury victims Joe Ralls and Lee Tomlin, Moore, Will Vaulks and Callum Paterson will all be on Nations Cup duty for their respective countries this weekend.
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