Nearly a Good Team

This has been the story of our season so far. We are nearly a very good team, and just when you think you can write off our chances of making the playoffs, we seem to discover a new vein of form and start to climb the table again. Following my last post just before Christmas, we went to Milton Keynes dons on Boxing Day and managed to lose to a last minute own goal. This was followed by a battling but uninspiring 1-1 draw at home to Nottingham Forest, and a scratchy 1-0 win over a very poor Blackburn. The following week's defeat to lowly League 1 side Shrewsbury in the FA Cup was followed by a comfortable 2-0 defeat at table topping Hull City. So - that seemed to be that, and we were heading for a season of mid table mediocrity.

But something changed, and as I compose this report, we are 3 points and one place away from the the playoff places. A LOT has happened since the dark days of early January.

Results since my last post:

MILTON KEYNES DONS 2 CARDIFF 1

CARDIFF 1 NOTTINGHAM FOREST 1

CARDIFF 1 BLACKBURN 0 
CARDIFF 0 SHREWSBURY 1 (FA CUP 3RD ROUND)

HULL CITY 2 CARDIFF 0

WOLVES 1 CARDIFF 3
CARDIFF 2 ROTHERHAM 2

HUDDERSFIELD 2 CARDIFF 3

CARDIFF 0 MILYON KEYNES DONS 0
CHARLTON 0 CARDIFF 0
CARDIFF 4 BRIGHTON 1
MIDDLESBOROUGH 3 CARDIFF 1
CARDIFF 2 PRESTON NORTH END 1


The January Transfer Window.

Most supporters were expecting a quiet time during the January Transfer window. The financial implications of the Financial Fair Play (FFP) regulations meant that we were only expecting a couple of ins and outs with no major fees. However, about half way through the window we discovered that the club had actually breached the FFP rules and were not allowed to sign any players for a fee. This immediately ended the expected deal for Tony Watt from Charlton. Also, Kenwynne Jones was released by the club, to get his very high wages off the books. This meant an immediate change of tactics and playing style for the team, now fielding a 4-4-1-1 formation, as much as a result of the lack of target man strikers as anything else! 

This formation was first shown at Wolves, where we showed our best performance of the season to that point with Joe Mason playing as the main striker. However, an unexpected consequence of this was that Wolves were very impressed by Mason, and a little over a week later they bought him from us for £3m - a figure which should get us out of any further FFP problems at the end of the season. 

Lex Immers in his Feyenoord days.

We were able to bring in 3 players during the transfer window on loan. The first of these was Feyenoord midfield player Lex Immers. He has a good goalscoring record for a midfield player in the Erdivise, and our new formation has an immediate spot for him in front of the midfield 4. 

Kenneth Zohore - just a couple of late substitute appearances so far.

The second player who arrived was Kenneth Zohore, by a slightly more complicated route. As were were unable to sign players ourselves, our owner's Belgian club Kortrijk bought him and immediately loaned him to us! It looked a slightly questionable deal, but the Football League approved the transaction and the young Danish under 21 international was a Bluebird!

The third player signed was Welsh international Tom Lawrence  from Leicester City. Ironically, Tom had spent the first half of the season at Blackburn Rovers, which is where our previous loan player Tony Watt now finds himself! Lawrence is keen to play regularly in order to get himself into the Welsh International squad for the European Championships in the summer. He has been a useful acquisition playing out wide and is very quick.Already he has had a couple of Man-of-the Match performances.

So. How have we been playing?

In general terms, things have been going very well. Since our loss away at Hull city on 13th January, we have only lost one of our last eight games. This was away at Middlesbrough,who are challenging for an automatic promotion place themselves.

The first sign of a major improvement came at Wolves. A high tempo passing performance resulted in a comfortable three one win for the Bluebirds. Unfortunately, I don't attend away games, but reports suggest that this was easily our best performance of the season to that time. Therefore, there were high hopes a week later when struggling Rotherham came to visit the Cardiff City Stadium. But yet again we struggled against a lowly team. But we did manage a 2-2 draw with our new “makeshift” striker Anthony Pilkington scoring three times! This included a rather freak own goal early in the second-half. In many ways we were a little unlucky to only draw on this day as the run of the ball just didn't seem to go our way.

Joe Ralls, who has been outstanding this season, scored a top class goal against Wolves.

Following our disappointing draw with Rotherham, the team then went away to Huddersfield and  won 3-2 in a confident and competent manner. But a week later another struggling side Milton Keynes Dons also held us to a 0-0 draw at the Cardiff City Stadium. This was another day where we found it difficult to score against a very determined and solid defence. Subsequently, Milton Keynes have been on a good run of form and so perhaps this was not an entirely unreasonable result. We followed this with an away game at Charlton, where there was yet another 0-0 draw. We were well in control in this match and were extremely unlucky not to come away with three points against a team which now sits at the bottom of the Championship table.

So, after a couple of disappointing results against struggling teams, promotion chasing Brighton came to the Cardiff City Stadium. The weather was horrendous, with a strong wind and swirling rain soaking just about everybody at the game. But this turned out to be our best home performance for the last three years! Goals from Peter Whittingham, Anthony Pilkington and Lex Immers put us 3-0 up within the first half an hour of the game. Despite Brighton switching to a more attacking game in the second-half, an early goal from them did not cause too much panic in the Cardiff defence and a Peter Whittingham penalty to make the score 4-1 soon settled home supporters nerves.

Peter Whittinghams 2 goals against Brighton now put him above John Toshack on Cardiff's all time goalscorer list.

Three days later we made a long midweek trip to Middlesbrough, who had been having a disappointing run themselves having spent a lot of money chasing promotion to the Premier league. The fact that they had had 10 days of rest whereas Cardiff had played in the wind and rain three days previously was too much for the Bluebirds to overcome. Despite an exciting early goal from Fabio, the team ran out of energy and lost 3-1.

Anthony Pilkington wins the first penalty against Preston.

This brought us to our next home game against Preston North End. Preston had been on a run of four consecutive wins, mainly built on a strong defence. The constant movement of the Cardiff midfield players in their now familiar 451 formation managed to cause a number of problems for the Preston defence. Ultimately, it was 2 Anthony Pilkington penalties during the course of the game which resulted in a fairly comfortable 2-1 win. Anthony Pilkington was outstanding - it is hard to believe that he had been considered a wide midfield player until his recent promotion to striker! There were also notable performances from Lex Immers and Tom Lawrence, both of whom look to be very useful signings for the team.

Can we do it?

As I complete this post, we are three points away from a play-off place. My heart says we can make it into the play-offs, but there is just a slight doubt at the back of my mind and a feeling that we may just miss out this year. However, we have performed well at times this year, and the recent resolution of long term financial issues at the club by our owner Mr Tan gives us hope for further improvement next season. We CAN make the play-offs this year and our fate is in our own hands. But we need to show a little more consistency. It is hard to believe that we have not won two games in a row since last September. Now is the time to set that record straight.