I usually have a look at a few of those podcasts where they predict the outcome of the upcoming round of fixtures and a pattern emerged as far as Cardiff City were concerned as the verdicts that we weren’t going to beat today’s visitors to Cardiff City Stadium, Bradford City, mounted up.
I was quite surprised that so many felt that the unbeaten league leaders with the best defensive record in the EFL were going to drop points, albeit against the team which sat in second position.
However, when the reason for us failing to win was given, I had to agree with the forecaster in most cases because they were saying that our results were masking some pretty indifferent performances- how could I not agree with them, they were right.
Before I go on, I should say that Bradford were very impressive in inflicting that first defeat on us. City could have no complaints at the outcome – their opponents looked fitter than them, more committed and generally better in terms of pace and physicality, it should be said as well that they were more skillful than us and had an annoying habit of getting a defender in the way of goal bound efforts!
Bradford effectively killed the game as a contest when they made it 3-0 just four minutes into the second half, but the truth is that it wouldn’t have taken too much to change for us to be going in 3-0 down at half time last weekend at Stockport, rather than just the single goal behind.
Similarly, while I thought we were the better team for long stretches of the Cup game at Exeter on Tuesday, our opponents had the better chances and so could feel somewhat unfortunate to have lost 1-0.
Our performances have dipped since the international break, no doubt about that and it seems to me that confidence levels must have dipped while fixtures were suspended for a fortnight. To be fair, we came back quite impressively at Stockport in the closing minutes of the game. However, before that (and before the arrival of some younger substitutes), there were depressing reminders of last season as some of the more experienced players rather made it look that they weren’t equipped mentally or physically to cope with some of the questions they were being asked.
For all that Bradford were good today, City made life easy for them at times. Brian Barry-Murphy called his team naive after the match and, for a side with such a good goals against record, that adjective certainly applied to some of their defending.
A bugbear of mine even in what has still been a very good start to the season has been the lack of quality on our “final ball”. Well, there were a few examples of that weakness today, but, in all honesty, our final ball wasn’t too bad today – the problem was that this meant we showed another old favourite from last season, poor finishing technique.
Cian Ashford had an early air shot from a good Rubin Colwill cross and failed to hit the target from what, to be fair, was a tough chance from a Joel Bagan cross, just before half time. Yousef Salech again showed the odd inconsistencies in his heading technique. There was one excellent header guided into the path of David Turnbull who got away one of those shots that a defender managed to block without knowing too much about it. However, by contrast, there was a poor contact on a close range header which a Bradford defender managed to scramble back to his keeper and, although the header he hit the crossbar with in the second half was hardly a sitter, the fact he didn’t have to jump for it made it quite a bit easier for him and I can’t help thinking he should have got it on target at the very least..
Finally, it is a source of considerable frustration to me that someone with the ability to strike a ball as well as Rubin Colwill can gets it wrong so often when presented with the sort of shooting opportunity from the edge of the penalty area he had on two occasions in the second half today.
How Colwill would have wished he could have hit a twenty five yarder like Tommy Leigh did when Josh Neufville rolled a corner into his path. That was how City conceded their first league goal that wasn’t a penalty this season – perhaps some will say that we should have got out quicker to close Leigh down or had someone patrolling the edge of the penalty area, but I’d prefer to give Bradford credit for a clever and unusual set piece routine.
The goal came just past the quarter of an hour mark and for five minutes or so, City responded well and could feel somewhat unfortunate not to have come up with an equaliser.
However, when Bradford broke through a massive hole in the left side of our defence (no sign of any winger covering for Bagan) on thirty minutes, the upshot was Gabriel Osho bringing down Antoni Sarcevic with a rash challenge to concede an obvious penalty on his league debut for us.
Sarcevic blasted his penalty down the middle as Nathan Trott dived out of the way to double the visitor’s lead. As for Osho, it was a Curate’s Egg of a performance with other awkward moments interspersed with a few things to suggest he’ll be a good signing for us eventually, but, for now, I have to say that we really did miss the injured Dylan Lawlor who is still not out of his teens yet more than we should have done!
The rest of the first half made for grisly viewing as we teetered on the edge of collapse as Bradford got right on top and Sarcevic really should have made it three when he headed over from point blank range after Bradford made a mess of the right side of our defence this time.
City swapped Ronan Kpakio for Perry Ng at half time (it seems the youngster was suffering with an injury that BBM admitted to being quite concerned about after the game). Ng made some encouraging early contributions, but the visitors continued their habit of making mincemeat of our flanks when Pointon got free down Bradford’s left to set up Neufville for an easy finish from fifteen yards.
BBM was forced into the sort of desperate substitutions he made at Stockport, but this time, it was a lot earlier in the game when the changes came and the good news is that the arrival of Callum Robinson, Isaak Davies and Joel Colwill did improve the team.
In the case of the first named, it seems that his goal in midweek had done him a lot of good as I thought it was his best contribution off the bench so far this season. Robinson also gave City some hope with a somewhat lucky goal as a clearance hit Will Fish and Osho’s shot was deflected into his path – I say lucky, but it was a good finish with the luck coming in how the ball found its way to Robinson.
For me, Davies has been playing well for weeks and, with Ashford off his game in recent weeks and Willock falling a long way short of his recent standards today, surely he has to start a game soon? He was lively and bright again today with my one small reservation being that as someone who is paying well and is, possibly, the best finisher at the club, I’d like to see him getting into central areas more.
I was in favour of pairing Wintle and Turnbull before the game, but soon had to admit that it wasn’t working – in fact, there were times when we were overrun in central midfield. Although Joel Colwill made little impact as we struggled at Stockport last weekend, he had the movement and dynamism that had been lacking when he came on and won us no end of free kicks as Rotherham showed a few signs of tiring in the closing stages.
Another sub, Omari Kellyman, came up with his best bit of play to set up Robinson whose shot flew very narrowly wide. If that had gone in, we might have seen a very interesting finish, but, as it was, Bradford played out the remaining minutes looking more likely than us to score the game’s fifth goal.
Things went a lot better at age group level as the under 18s went to Coventry, an Academy we’ve tended to struggle against down the years, at lunchtime and won 4-2. Mannie Barton got two and Leeyon Phelan and Riley Hilaire-Clark the others as we won for a third straight game at under 18 lecvel. The under 21s are also doing pretty well – they won 2-0 against Watford at Vicarage Road yesterday with Troy Perrett and an own goal completing the scoring before half time.
