Here's to a great February!

NOW THE REAL SEASON BEGINS.

3 league defeats and 1 FA Cup win since my last post, and we now find ourselves rooted to the bottom of the Premier League. This is not the time to panic, as I always feared we would be in the bottom 3 at this time of year following our last 4 away fixtures - Liverpool, Arsenal, Manchester City and Manchester United. What was more disappointing was the 2-0 home defeat to West Ham, a team now above us in the table.

However, all is not yet lost. Ole has brought in a number of new players and shuffled his squad around. We have now signed Norwegian international Jo Inge Berget and former Manchester United left back Fabio. Also, on transfer deadline day, the exciting former Crystal Palace player Wilfried Zaha has been signed on loan for the rest of the season from Manchester United. Lets hope he can recapture some of the form which led to his £18m price tag. The team now has Ole’s stamp on it. Ironically, the combination of 2 away games that we were unlikely to win, separated by a winning FA cup tie at Bolton, has meant that he has had time to look at his team without too much pressure on them, and work out the best way to play.

The performances against the Manchester clubs were respectable, and the win at Bolton was more than acceptable. But now the team really has to step up in February. We have 3 home league games and the “Big One” part 2 - the away trip to Swansea. In addition there is the home FA Cup 5th round match to holders Wigan - another winnable game. Of course, the main problem is that none of the teams in February are exactly safe from relegation either, so starting with our home game tomorrow against Norwich, we really must start winning.

Matches since my last post:-

CARDIFF 0 WEST HAM 2

MANCHESTER CITY 4 CARDIFF 2

BOLTON 0 CARDIFF 1 (FA Cup)

MAN UNITED 2 CARDIFF 0

Steve Caulker challenges against West Ham (pic by Jon Candy)  

The result against West Ham was obviously very disappointing. However, the team kept attacking and on another day might easily have won 3-1. Sadly, this did not happen and a very late West Ham goal made the scoreline more convincing than should have been the case.

Craig Noone and David Silva

We didn’t give in easily at the Etihad against Manchester City, even though they have won every home league game this year. A Craig Noone equaliser gave us some hope for a few minutes, before the Manchester City strike-force re-asserted their authority.

Fraizer Campbell and Aron Gunnarsson celebrate the only goal of the game against Bolton.

The Bolton FA Cup match was a welcome distraction, and despite a slightly lucky goal we just about deserved to go through to the last 16.

Mark Hudson and goalkeeper David Marshall fail to stop Robin van Persie opening the score at Old Trafford.

Yet again, a creditable effort at Old Trafford against Manchester United, but unfortunately no reward.

TIME TO GET MOVING!

I’m pretty sure that by the end of February, we will have a pretty good idea about whether we can avoid relegation. Lets hope our new players can prise open the Norwich City defence tomorrow.

BLUEBIRDS!  

The latest on the Top 7 v the Rest.

As could have been predicted at the start of the season, the usual top 7 clubs occupy the top 7 places in the Premier League. (Man Utd, Man City, Spurs, Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool and Everton). None of the remaining Premier League clubs do very well against the top 7, and at the moment only 3 of the other 13 have won more than one game against them. We have played 10 of our 14 games against them, whereas Sunderland and West Ham have only played 7 (West Ham play Chelsea tonight 29/01/2014), and Norwich only 8. 

We have to believe we can do better in our remaining fixtures than those teams around us, lets keep the faith.  

Table of The Rest 13 v The Top 7 as at 4.00pm on 28/01/2014

Team                      Pl       W    D    L      Pts
Newcastle                8        3     1    4      10
WBA                        8        1     5    2       8
Aston Villa               9        2     1    6       7
Sunderland              7        2     0    5        6
Southampton           8        1     3    4       6
Stoke                      9        1     2    6       5
Cardiff                  10        1     2    7       5
West Ham              7         1     0    6       3
Hull                        9         1     0    8       3
Norwich                  8         0     1    7       1
Crystal Palace         9         0     1    8       1
Swansea               10         0     1    9       1
Fulham                  9          0     0    9       0

TOTALS:            111       13  17  81

The top 7 teams therefore WIN more than 70% of the games against the rest, and the rest only win around 11% of the games against the top 7. 

Therefore, 4 of the teams have not managed a single win against the top 7. Credit must go to West Brom who despite a poor season by their standards have only lost twice to top 7 teams.

I know their are no easy games, but I hope this puts things in a hopeful and positive light.

New Year. New Manager. New Players?

I usually try to keep club politics out of this blog, but in view of recent events there is no way I could ignore what has been happening at the Cardiff City Stadium. Following a woeful performance on Boxing Day against Southampton, manager Malky Mackay was relieved of his duties. By the 2nd of January, the club had announced that his successor would be former Manchester United player Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, who most recently has been manager of Molde in the Norwegian League.

Malky Mackay was clearly a popular manager, following his 2 years of building a new team which delivered top flight football to Cardiff for the first time in 51 years. However, there were some unhappy comments from the more moderate areas of the fanbase, about his negative tactics and also the quality of some of his signings. Also, of course, there was a great deal of press speculation considering his relationship with owner Vincent Tan, resulting in the now famous e-mail which is alleged to have said “resign or be sacked” to Malky. There was obviously a major breakdown in the relationship between these 2, and the press jumped on the story very quickly and made it very big news.

There have been all sorts of allegations and speculations (Is that a word?) going around about what actually happened. My own opinion, for what its worth, is that Vincent Tan is not as much of a villain in this episode as the press make out, and Malky Mackay is not as much of a saint as the press and certain die hard fans would like to believe.

No matter what, it is now time for the fans to get behind the new manager. We have been in quite an unusual position compared to most teams in that we have only had 2 managers in the last 8 and a half years, with 2 and a half years of Malky Mackay following 6 years of Dave Jones. The majority of football clubs have had more than 2 managers in that space of time (some of them many more!). Ole Gunnar Solskjaer seems to have really hit the ground running, as he was in place as manager less than a week after the departure of Mackay. In addition to that, he already has his backroom staff installed at the training ground and at the time of composing this blog is in the process of signing 2 new Norwegian players for the club - Magnus Wolff Eikrem and Mats Moller Daehli. Ole has worked and developed these players over the last couple of years whilst with his previous club Molde and with the Manchester United reserves. He certainly hasn’t wasted any time, so lets hope these guys are up to Premier League standard with such an important game coming up against West Ham United on Saturday.

Mats Moller Daehli and new Cardiff City Manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer in their previous days at Molde.

Magnus Wolf Eikrem - Solskjaer’s first signing from Norway, via Heerenveen in Holland.

ON THE FIELD

There have been 5 fixtures since my last blog post, 4 Premier League matches and one FA Cup tie :-

LIVERPOOL 3 CARDIFF 1

CARDIFF 0 SOUTHAMPTON 3

CARDIFF 2 SUNDERLAND 2

ARSENAL 2 CARDIFF 0

NEWCASTLE 1 CARDIFF 2 (FA Cup)

LIVERPOOL 3 CARDIFF 1

At half time in this game, I feared the worst. We were 3-0 down to a top form Liverpool side with 2 goals and an assist from the outstanding Luis Suarez, probably the best player in world football at the moment. I was really worried that we would go on to lose by a huge score, not so much because the team was playing badly, but just that Liverpool were so much better! However, the team seemed to pick things up in the second half, and actually pinched a goal as well. There was no disgrace in this defeat, although it showed the vast gulf in class within the Premier League, never mind outside it.

Bluebirds captain Steve Caulker tries to keep Luis Suarez under control.

CARDIFF 0 SOUTHAMPTON 3

For the second match running, we were 3-0 down at half time. However, although Southampton are a good team, they are no Liverpool, and this has to go down as one of the worst displays seen at the Cardiff City stadium since it opened. Maybe this was the game where the off-field activities at the club finally got through to the players. It was a woeful performance, and turned out to be the last game in charge for Malky Mackay.

Jay Rodriguez (out of picture) scores Southampton’s second goal (pic by Jon Candy)

CARDIFF 2 SUNDERLAND 2

Assistant manager Dave Kerslake was temporarily in charge for this game following the departure Of Malky Mackay. The team seemed more relaxed and played well, particularly compared to the dreadful display 2 days previously. An early Jordan Mutch goal settled any early nerves, and when Frazier Campbell added a second midway through the second half it looked like we could be heading for all 3 points. However, 2 goals in the last 8 minutes, including a deflected effort more than 5 minutes into added time, meant that we had to settle for a point against the team favourites  still for relegation.

Goalmouth action against Sunderland (pic by Jon Candy)

ARSENAL 2 CARDIFF 0

By the time that this New Years Day fixture came around, Arsenal were now top of the league. New manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer watched on from the stands before officially taking over. He saw the team put up a strong rearguard performance, but unfortunately resistance was finally broken in the 88th minute when Niklas Bendtner finally broke through for Arsenal. To be fair, this was no more than they deserved, but the team showed some admirable spirit in front of their new manager.

Kim Byo-Kyung tangles with Theo Walcott at the Emirates Stadium.

NEWCASTLE 1 CARDIFF 2

And so to Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s first game in charge. The FA Cup has become less intense in recent years because of the amount of money now at stake in the Premier League. however, Ole put out a fairly strong team with only a couple of regular players given the chance to recover from one or two knocks over the Christmas period. A first start was also given to Danish striker Andreas Cornelious, who has been having injury problems since we signed him in the summer.

Newcastle also had a slightly weakened team, but also had a number of top class players such as Hatem Ben Arfa in the side. When Newcastle took the lead after 60 minutes it looked as if the game was up, but a fantastic 25 yard strike from Craig Noone less than a minute after coming on as substitute and a late Frazier Campbell goal following poor marking at a corner allowed the Bluebirds to gain their first win in Newcastle in more than 50 years.

The league is clearly more important than the FA Cup, but whilst Ole is getting a look at his players, the 4th round match at Bolton will give him a further chance to look at what he has got.

BOTTOM OF THE TABLE “6 POINTER”.

The next game to come up will be at home next Saturday to West Ham United, another team fighting to avoid relegation. Let’s hope we can be ruthless here, unlike the Sunderland game.

West Ham have been on a dreadful run, and I suspect a defeat on Saturday could put their manager Sam Allardyce’s job in danger. They have a number of injuries and suspensions, as well as the distraction of a League Cup semi-final first leg against Manchester City this week. West Ham put out a definitely weakened team at Nottingham Forest in the FA cup and got beaten 5-0. apart from on one occasion, they seem to have beaten us regularly in recent years. now is the time to end that run.

Thank you Malky for what you did for the club. now its Ole’s turn!

More of the Same this Christmas?

More of the Same this Christmas?

A mixed December so far as we hit one of the busiest times of the season - 4 games in 11 days! I think it is a bit much to expect 4 wins out of 4 as we did last Christmas, with the current top 2 Premier League teams to come away from home! However, despite one or two off-field distractions, Malky does seem to have the team in the right frame of mind, and lets hope for the very best. As a realist, the best we can hope for is 2 home wins and nothing from the away games. But the fan inside me keeps thinking that both Liverpool and Arsenal are due to mess up at home, and why shouldn’t we get a point at least at either of those games?

It is only a few short weeks since Arsenal comprehensively beat us at the Cardiff City Stadium, and the sight of Liverpool putting 5 past Spurs last sunday makes things a bit scary! Added to the fact the Luis Suarez is easily the best player in the Premier League at the moment and scoring goals for fun. Still, we can hope that either of those teams has an off day!

Our home games are more important, with 2 in 3 days against Southampton and Sunderland. Southampton have been struggling a little bit recently, after their excellent start to the season. They are a good footballing side, and I hope they will give us a chance to play too. Sunderland have been struggling so far, after sacking their manager early in the season. Gus Poyet is doing his best to sort them out, and their performances have been a little better recently, but this is a game that we really ought to win.

3 games since my last blog post - 1 win, 1 loss and 1 draw.

Stoke City 0 Cardiff 0

Crystal Palace 2 Cardiff 0

Cardiff 1 West Bromwich Albion 0

Stoke City 0 Cardiff 0

Always a difficult place to play, Stoke have found themselves near the bottom of the table since Mark Hughes took over as manager. Reports suggest that the game was by no means a classsic, but that we did not really deserve to lose.

Young full back Declan John and Peter Whittingham challenge England star Peter Crouch.

Crystal Palace 2 Cardiff 0

Reports suggest that this was easily our worst performance of the season, allowing Palace to win their second game in a row to ease some of their own relegation worries. Even former Arsenal striker Marouane Chamakh scored, after former Bluebirds star Cameron Jerome had opened the scoring for Palace. A poor performance and a game worth forgetting.

Peter Whittingham challenges with Chamakh at the Palace.

Cardiff 1 West Bromwich Albion 0

5 games without a win had seen us drift in the table to one place above the relegation zone. A win against another struggling team like West Brom was therefore essential. Since Malky Mackay took over as manager 2 and a half years ago, the rare bad performances by the Bluebirds have always been followed by a good one. This proved to be the case in this game.

Goal celebrations against West Brom - goal scorer Peter Whittingham is horizontal after a rare headed goal! (Pic by Jon Candy)

For the first time this season, Malky arranged the team into a more attacking 4-4-2 formation, with Peter Noone making his first Premier League start out wide on the right. I feared that this might result in more defensive worries, but in truth West Brom offered little attacking threat despite a number of star names in their line-up.

The only goal of the game was a rare header from Peter Whittingham, but in many ways it was a more comfortable win than the scoreline suggests. David Marshall pulled off an excellent save from a Shane Long header with 2 minutes remaining, but a goal there would have been an injustice to the Bluebirds. The result for West Brom was considered so bad that manager Steve Clarke was relieved of his duties later that evening.

And so on to Christmas - Seasons Greetings to all my readers!

Now the season REALLY starts!

The BIG One (and other stories).

6 games since my last blog entry, with one win, two draws and three defeats. We find ourselves in 17th place in the league, a position I would like to see us in at the end of the season. There is no disgrace in a 4-1 defeat to Chelsea, the 0-0 draw at Norwich was probably very important as an away point against one of our lower half of the table rivals. The win against Swansea was outstanding, of course, and only the defeat at Aston villa was really disappointing. As I have posted before, any points against the “top 7” clubs are a bonus, and a point against a poor Manchester United was still a bonus. 

Samuel Et’oo scores the opener for Chelsea.

An away point at Norwich was particularly important, not so much for the point gained by us, but the two points dropped by Norwich in a match that they would have pencilled in at the start of the season as one where they would have expected to take all 3 points. Their subsequent 7-0 hammering to Manchester City also did us a big favour as far as goal difference is concerned.

Fraizer Campbell gets on the end of one against Norwich.

Then came the big one - against our closest rivals Swansea. A lot of the readers of my blog are in the USA, and it must be hard for them to understand the full intensity of his fixture. The 2 cities are approximately 40 miles apart. However, away supporters are not allowed to travel independently to this fixture, even in the BPL, because of the risk of violence and other public order offences! There may be many fixtures nowadays which encapture a good family atmosphere, but this defintely isn't one of those!

The game itself was the main feature on Sky that weekend, and was therefore featured all around the world. It probably wasn't much of a game for the neutral, but for those of us who are extremely partisan the 1-0 win from a Steve Caulker goal was outstanding. The bragging rights are ours until the return fixture in February!

Steve Caulker heads the winning goal against Swansea.

The following week involved an away trip to Aston Villa. Despite an early season win over Arsenal, Villa have been struggling for much of the season. The match seemed to be heading for a draw until a stunning free kick in the 75th minute, and a second breakaway goal a few minutes later gave Villa a 2-0 win.

Peter Whittingham and Ben Turner in action at Villa Park.

Then game 2 more big home games against 2 of the biggest club sides in world football - Manchester United and Arsenal.

Manchester United are still a good team, although not quite as fearsome as they were under Sir Alex Ferguson. However, they lack strength in depth these days, and with the exception of Wayne Rooney they are a good, but ordinary, team (in my opinion). We were well worth our point from the 2-2 draw, and yet another fantastic moment of the season was the stoppage time header from Kim Bo-Kyung!

Kim Bo-Kyung heads a late equaliser against Manchester United (pic by Jon Candy)

And  so to last Saturday's game against Arsenal - a 0-3 defeat. We have played 5 of the top 7 teams at the Cardiff City stadium this season, and Arsenal were clearly the best of those 5 teams They have an amazing array of talented midfield players, including former Bluebird Aaron Ramsey who has arguably been the best player in the Premier League this season. After not celebrating against his old club when scoring the opening goal, the applause from the home fans was heartwarming and quite a rarity in this day and age.

The Bluebirds played well, but Arsenal were outstanding and a truly great team.

Cardiff vArsenal - (pic by Jon Candy).

The Real Season starts here!

Having played most of the top teams at home already, the season proper starts now. 10 of our next 12 home fixtures are against our rivals in the lower half of the table battles, and we have to take plenty of points from our remaining home games to make sure we stay up.

The next 2 away games are pretty imprtant too, against 2 teams threatened with relegation, in the form of Stoke and Crystal Palace. A win and a draw from those 2 matches would be welcome, but avoiding defeat in both games will probably be acceptable too!

Onwards and (hopefully) upwards!

Top 7 Theory.

The Top 7 Clubs and the rest of the Premier League.

By the top 7 clubs, I mean the big money established Premier League clubs - Manchester United, Manchester City, Chelsea, Arsenal, Tottenham, Liverpool and Everton. I know that Southampton are in the top 7 at the moment, but they are the only team to challenge the "establishment".

So, I have tried to work out how important games really are for the other 13 teams aginst the top 7. Even at this early stage of the season, its amazing how little the rest of the league gets - it is almost as if there are 2 divisions within the Premier League.

So far this season, there have been 45 fixtures between the top 7 and the rest. The record for "the rest" is :-

Played 45 Won 6 Drawn 8 Lost 31

No wonder we see any points against the big teams as a bonus! I didn't expect this level of domination. Perhaps when we have another wet Sunday afternoon I'll go through the stats for a whole season!

When you break things down club by club, our 1 win, one draw and 2 defeats is pretty good. Hull have lost all 4 of theirs, Sunderland all 3 of theirs, and Fulham both of theirs. Southampton are the only team to be unbeaten, but they have only played 2 games against the top 7 - this could also explain why they found themselves in 3rd place! Villa must have really upset the fixture list gods as they have had 6 of their first 9 matches against the top 7. 2 wins and 4 losses seems pretty fair in the circumstances for them.

So, Villa have take 6 points from 18, West Brom 5 from 12, us 4 from 12 and Southampton 4 from 6. Not too bad, really. So the other 9 teams have a worse record than us. Avoiding relegation will be achieved against "the rest". So lets not panic at the end of November when we have consecutive home games against Man Utd and Arsenal!

So Far So Good.

So Far So Good.

Was it really little more than 2 months ago that I was writing the season preview? And here we are now, an established Premier League club! Well, perhaps not as established as all that, but the team has shown enough ability and won enough points so far to give the fans a little confidence. I don’t think anyone is taking anything for granted, but 8 points from our first 7 games, and a solid 14th place in the league is encouraging at the very least. As an added bonus, at the moment we are even a point ahead of our greatest rivals from 30 miles down the road!

The difficult fixtures come thick and fast, with an away trip to Chelsea coming up on Saturday, followed by an away trip to Norwich. Any points away from home are vital, but realistically Chelsea have got to be serious favourites, and we never seem to do that well in the far flung reaches of East Anglia.

HULL CITY 1 CARDIFF 1 - 14/09/2013

As Hull were promoted with us last year, this would have been one of the away games we would have hoped to get something from. They were certainly considered to be one of the favoured teams for relegation with us before the season started. Reports suggest that it wasn’t much of a game, with an excellent Peter Whittingham volley in the second half cancelling out Curtis Davies’ first half opener.

Peter Whittingham celebrates a classy equaliser with Fraizer Campbell.

I think I should emphasise the importance of this point. You can be sure that Hull would have had this marked as a winnable game where they were hoping for 3 points. In the long run, it was probably just as important to deprive Hull of 3 points as it was for us to gain our first away point.

CARDIFF 0 TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR 1 - 22/09/2013

Now this really was Premier League football! Spurs were excellent - their running, passing and constant pressure had us on the back foot from the start of the game.Spurs had 29 attempts at goal, but we managed to stop them from scoring until 2 minutes into injury time at the end of the game. A combination of luck, dogged defending and an outstanding display by David Marshall in goal kept the game level for so long.

A Man of the Match display from David Marshall against Spurs. (Pic by Jon Candy)

Strangely enough, nobody really had a bad game for us. It was a good team effort where we nearly “stole” a point, but nobody could begrudge an excellent Spurs team their win. If they can get some consistency (which they never seem to manage), then they could challenge at the top of the league this year.

FULHAM 1 CARDIFF 2 - 28/09/2013

A first away win, with nearly 4,000 Bluebirds fans making the trip to West London! Reports suggest that by half time we should have been well ahead, but an outstanding goal by Fulham’s Brian Ruiz just before half time cancelled out Steve Caulker’s debut goal for the club after 12 minutes.

However, the best was yet to come. Jordan Mutch was brought on to replace Kim Byo-kung in the second half, and 2 minutes into injury time scored with an outstanding left foot shot. Nearly 4,000 delirious travelling Bluebirds erupted!

Jordan Mutch celebrates “Goal of the Season”!

A stunning left foot shot, voted goal of the month on BBC Match of the Day. Described as an early contender for goal of the season, there won’t be many better than that!

CARDIFF 1 NEWCASTLE 2 - 5/10/2013

Just for once, the first half performance from the Bluebirds was poor. None of the players seemed capable of passing to one of their own. Even the ever reliable Gary Medel seemed to lose his bearings. At this level, you can’t afford to play like that, and Newcastle punished us with 2 clinical strikes from French international Loic Remy.

Peter Odemwinge scored his first Bluebirds goal against Newcastle (pic by Jon Candy)

For a while just before half time, I thought the team was going to cave in completely. But Malky managed to get them re-organised in the second half, and a first goal for the club by Peter Odemwinge gave them some hope. Indeed, we would have been worthy of a draw had we managed another goal. However, it is to be hoped that the team learned from this, particularly to realise that the class of players against you in the Premier League means that you always need to be at the top of your game.

ANOTHER EXCITING 6 GAMES COMING UP!

To be fair, they are all exciting at the moment! Our next 3 home games are Swansea, Manchester United and Arsenal, with away games at Chelsea, Norwich and Aston Villa. I really hope we can scrape at least 6 points from those games, but its a big ask!

I’ve been impressed with Peter Odemwinge since his arrival. I think the time has come for Malky to rethink his strategy - you can only get away with strong defensive formations for so long. I think that the recent performances of Jordan Mutch would justify a start for him against Chelsea. Also, if we are going to play a 4-5-1, then I think that Odemwinge is a better option for the central striking role than Frazier Campbell. Presumably Andreas Cornelius would be an option there when fit.

Lets all get behind the team and the players!