All season I haven’t been overly bothered about the prospect of relegation for Cardiff City, but, today, after a depressing day for the club on and off the pitch, I’m far less convinced we’ll stay up than I was.
About an hour before kick off in today’s 1-1 home draw with a Blackpool side in the bottom three, news broke that City were operating under a transfer embargo. Following the latest verdict in what seems a string of them identifying Emeliano Sala as a Cardiff player at the time of his death nearly four years ago, it seems that City are in the first of a series of embargoes designed to run for the duration of the next three transfer windows if they do not pay the first instalment of the £15 million owed to Sala’s former club, Nantes.
Mehmet Dalman, the club Chairman confirmed this afternoon that we were under an embargo, but, correctly, pointed out that it will have no impact on us until the transfer window opens on 1 January.
Mr Dalman offered the opinion that there was the possibility that the embargo will be lifted as a result of “negotiations” with the EFL and FIFA. However, the club have said they have no intention of paying the first instalment of the transfer fee, so it’s hard to see how they can persuade the authorities to lift the embargo. A full report of what Mr Dalman said can be viewed here
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/64011483
Within the last week or so, there has also been news that City are suing their insurance brokers for £10 million. The full story can be read here
but, on the face of it, this seems pretty desperate stuff by City
Mind you, even if I had a professional knowledge of the matters of law involved in the case, I still feel it would be hard to comment on it because I don’t feel anyone bar a select few has a clue what the real situation is.
However, I can’t help but be struck by one thing Mr Dalman said this afternoon. Don’t forget that this is the Chairman of the club talking here and yet he states that he doesn’t know the current City manager “dreadfully well”! Let’s not forget either that Mr Dalman was also at the club for some of Mark Hudson’s time here as a player – if anything tells you what sort of club we are these days under Vincent Tan, it’s that.
As to the game, well there was a positive selection by Mark Hudson in that he started with four genuine attacking players in Gavin Whyte, Mark Harris, Callum Robinson and Kion Etete – Callum O’Dowda moved to left back in place of Neils N’Kounkou as well.
On the face of it, this placed a huge burden on Ryan Wintle and Joe Ralls in central midfield, but in the first half at least, they came through this test with flying colours. City were well on top in that opening forty five minutes as they created chance after chance with Wintle and Ralls overseeing some smooth attacks which had the visitors defence at sixes and sevens much of the time.
However, I deliberately said we created chance after chance, because all that did was show our inadequacies when it comes to finishing – we only scored the once. This is nothing new – we’ve been completely dominant in three home games I can think of and only won them 1-0. Birmingham, Rotherham and Blackburn were comprehensively outplayed, yet the last of them would have left with a draw were it not for Ryan Allsop’s late penalty save and there was the feeling each time that we really should have made the points safe with at least a second goal.
Yet our domination of the first half today was more complete than in any of that trio of matches I mentioned and this time we paid for our profligacy.
Before I list the chances we made a miss of today, I should say that we should have had a penalty as well – although, given our nought from two record this season from the spot, we probably would have missed the penalty if we’d been given it.
I’ll return to the potential penalty and the referee presently, but, off the top of my head, Wintle, Robinson and Etete had chances they will feel they could have done better with, Whyte twice opted to shoot when the right pass would have led to a simple tap in, Ralls opted also shot from twenty five yards when he could have slid Whyte in on goal. Robinson didn’t hit a shot from a promising position cleanly enough and Harris slid a great low cross over from the right that was crying out to be finished off by someone gambling on making a run to the edge of the six yard box.
All of these near misses came in that opening forty five minutes and there may have been more that I’ve forgotten, yet, in among all of that, we managed to score a fine goal on thirty six minutes. The impressive Robinson burst over halfway and then threaded a lovely ball with the outside of his right foot through to Etete who calmly lobbed the keeper Dan Grimshaw to score his first goal for the club in a competitive game.
City lost the only home game they’d scored more than one goal in this season, but they really should have been out of sight at the break and, such was the one sided nature of proceedings, it felt inevitable at half time that they’d make it to at least two today.
However, City faded completely as an attacking force with the few sights of goal they did have being wasted by players opting to ignore better placed team mates and firing off scuffed shots instead.
As good as Wintle and Ralls had been earlier, the pair of them were pretty anonymous after the break. Blackpool manager Michael Appleton made tactical and personnel changes which brought his team back into the game.
Ian Poveda was an influential half time substitute, C J Hamilton on the left stopped Mahlon Romeo making the forward runs which had been so threatening in the first half and by sticking two big men up front and hitting them early, City’s defence was tested in a way they had not been in the first period.
Nevertheless, Hudson’s response to these changes was not up to the mark in my opinion. I’ve not checked this, but it seems ages since Ralls last played a full game before today and yet he was on for the full ninety seven m8nutes this afternoon – could that have something to do with our second half midfield fade out?
Bringing Andy Rinomhota on to either replace Ralls or to switch to a three man midfield at a time when Blackpool were suggesting they could equalize was, surely, worth trying. Etete did well, but he was very tired by the end and it may have been best to bring him off, but Hudson only made the three substitutions and one of those was late on when N’Kounkou came on for O’Dowda who looked like he could be concussed after blocking a shot – whatever the reason, it was an injury induced substitution rather than a tactical one.
Poveda created Blackpool’s equaliser when his cross was nodded in by Gary Madine who thereby did what he never looked like doing when he was with us – score at Cardiff City Stadium. Mind you, Allsop would surely have been able to save Madine’s effort were it not for a touch off Perry Ng which diverted the ball past the keeper.
By rights, Madine should not have been on the pitch by this time. After the game Mark Hudson claimed that Madine had said he was going to “do” Ng within earshot of him and others on the touch line and the City bench made the officials aware of this during the half time interval.
Sure enough, Madine jumped at Ng early in the second half and landed with a stamping motion. Having seen a replay of the incident, it’s a sure fire red card to me and a potential leg breaker, but referee Josh Smith immediately produced a yellow card without taking the time to give himself the opportunity to make a more considered decision.
Mr Smith made several very poor decisions (not all of them favouring the visitors) and denied City a clear penalty in the first half when Grimshaw brought down Robinson, yet it was the City man who was booked for diving. As I’ve seen mentioned elsewhere, City got lucky with penalty decisions last week at Stoke, but, even so, I really thought nobody could surpass Bobby Madley for refereeing ineptitude at Cardiff City Stadium this season – Mr Smith managed it though and I hope that is the last we see of him during this and any other season.
Luck was not on our side today (eg the deflection for their goal) and a reasonable argument can be made about the ref costing us a win, but all of this is to ignore the fact that we should have been far enough ahead to render arguments about penalties, red cards and lucky deflections irrelevant.
All season long we have been able to get ourselves on top in games and give ourselves the chance to make our goal difference a lot more healthy. We are certainly better than we were last season at establishing a dominance in games, but we’re hopeless at cashing in when we’re on top and if things don’t change in that respect, we certainly aren’t too good to go down.
At the final whistle today, the PA played Bob Marley’s Three Little Birds with its “down worry about a thing” chorus. If I remember rightly, that was first sung by City fans in the League Semi Final game with Palace which went to penalties after we had completely dominated the one hundred and twenty minutes and we eventually prevailed. Singing that song seemed right at that time, but it’s wholly inappropriate now. I’ve said before that it may not happen this season (although I’m less inclined to believe that after today), but if the club keeps on being run as it has been in the past two years, we’re going to be relegated soon.