It’s been a long time since Cardiff City did routine 3-0 wins, but, rather like the one against Rotherham in our last home league game, tonight’s victory over Cheltenham in the Second Round of the League Cup had the feel of one together with a slight disappointment that it was not a bigger winning margin.
BBM made eight changes from the team that started against Luton with just Dylan Lawlor, Joel Bagan and Callum Robinson retaining their places. Among the more interesting replacements were Perry Ng making his first appearance of the season, Dak Mafico in his favoured number six role and Tanatswa Nyakuhwa making a first start in a competitive game on the right wing.
Cheltenham enjoyed a notable 2-0 win over League One Exeter City in the First Round, but, that apart, they’ve been having a wretched time of it with five defeats from five in the league leaving them at the bottom of League Two with just one goal to their name.
Actually, Cheltenham might well have played their most encouraging ninety minutes of the season tonight because although they didn’t score, they really should have done so as they had a penalty saved, hit the woodwork twice and forced Matt Turner into a number of saves.
At the other end of the pitch though, the visitors defended like a team that has already conceded five in a game this season (at MK Dons) and it so easily could have been a repeat of that 5-0 scoreline or worse.
Ex City keeper Joe Day had already had to make a diving save by the time Nyakuhwa crossed low to Salech whose shot hit the crossbar and then bounced over in the third minute and pressure was ramped up until the opening goal came on eleven minutes.
Cheltenham had conceded a pretty amazing seventy odd per cent of their goals from set pieces coming into this match and it got only ever so slightly better as two of the three they let in were set piece goals.
Actually, I feel Cheltenham would dispute my contention about two set piece goals, but I would argue it makes no difference to such stats if one of the goals conceded came from your own set piece!
Cheltenham won themselves a set piece and chose to work a short corner routine which involved Ethon Archer seemingly rolling a pass into the path of a team mate who would run on to the ball and shoot from around twenty five yards. In the event, Archer’s pass was hit so slowly that it was never going to reach his team mate and Mafico intercepted and played Isaak Davies into space. Davies had sixty yards to go to reach the Cheltenham goal, but there was also plenty of open space for him to utilize his pace in. At one time, a poor touch looked to have lost Davies his chance, but he just got to the ball first to burst between the last two defenders and then he rolled the ball across Day and into the net from about fifteen yards. It was a fine solo goal capped by the type of finish which I would contend marks him out in a squad of not outstanding finishers as maybe the best of the lot of them.
In the end, City had twenty three goal attempts with ten on target with Day making good saves to deny Nyakuhwa and Salak twice. However, he had no chance when Calum Chambers met a Davies corner on the near post and glanced it across goal and inside the far post to double City’s lead.
Chambers’ starting appearances for the first team tend to be entertaining affairs with something unusual to mark them out and here, he slipped while trying to get out of his penalty area following the breaking up of a Cheltenham attack and, in the process brought down visiting striker Lee Angol to concede a penalty.
Angol took the penalty himself, but was denied by Matt Turner. Anglo’s penalty was not a bad one, but Turner sprang to his left to turn the penalty against the post and when the rebound fell to Angol there was nothing he could do except fire tamely wide.
Within a minute, Angol was tearing through a huge gap left by Lawlor to try a shot that caused no great problems for Turner who again dived to his left to save.
Somewhat surprisingly for me, BBM elected to introduce Rubin Colwill and Chris Willock for Robinson and Davies at half time and Rubin wasted little time in creating his younger brother’s first senior City goal with an arcing run that ended with him finding Joel who steered his shot in from fifteen yards against the team he scored six league goals for last season while on loan at Cheltenham.
Despite his mishap with the opening goal, Archer looked like Cheltenham’s best player to me and he was out of luck when his shot whacked against the crossbar and over. That was as close as either side came to scoring at 3-0 and so City head into a third round draw that will not include the three Premier League sides who were knocked out of the competition tonight.
The under 21s had made a good start to the season, but we’re lucky to only be beaten 2-1 by Wigan at Leckwith this lunchtime, Wigan were always the better at pressing high and, in doing so, denied City the ability to create much – indeed , apart from a shot into the side netting by Isaac Jefferies that He really should have got on target and Jac Thomas’ fine free kick which reduced the deficit deep into added time, City never looked like scoring and were flattered by the closeness of the scoreline.
Thomas Prickett is a new name to me, but he got the goal which allowed the under 18s to begin their PDL Cup challenge up and running with a 1-1 draw at Wrexham this lunchtime.
It looks like we’re going to get an outfield signing with five days of the summer window remaining, but, if it comes off, it feels like it will be worth the wait. Wales Online reported yesterday afternoon that the Auxere defender Gabriel Osho has had a medical ahead of a permanent move to City on what has been said to be a four year deal. Apparently, there are still a few more things to be sorted out before the deal can be concluded, but it seems it all should be confirmed in the next 24 hours.
Osho is a centre back who can play as a full back who turned 27 earlier this month. He was born in Reading, but is qualified to play for Nigeria and has a single cap for them. He started off with Reading and signed for Luton in 2020 when he turned down an offer of a new contract by Reading. Osho was loaned to Rochdale, then under the management of Brian Barry-Murphy ,in early 2021 before becoming a first team regullar at Luton and his CV for the last three seasons reads;-
22/23 Part of the Luton team that won promotion to the Premier League, he scored against Sunderland in the promotion Play Off Semi Finals.
23/24 Injured at the start of the season, he went on to make 21 Premier League appearances for Luton.
24/25 Left Luton to join Auxerre, made 21 Ligue 1 appearances for them last season.
On the face of what he’s done since 22/23, Osho looks like a great acquisition for City provided there are no last minute slip ups like we saw with Jody Morris all of those years ago.
Overall then, this is a good time for Cardiff City after a period where they have become something of a laughing stock, but, currently I would have thought that there are plenty of other clubs who are envious of a side that seems to have made something of an inspired choice as to who their next Head Coach/manager would be, the team is playing bright, attacking and skilful winning football with a squad full of local Academy players, many of whom look set for a good career in the game. On top of that, their one foray into the new signings market is looking a very shrewd acquision and it’s reassuring to hear some Luton fans on social media saying that Osho is better than any of their, expensively assembled, group of centrebacks.
Sadly however, even when everything seems to be going so well at Cardiff, it is in the nature of football that there are going to be one or two exceptions to the wave of optimism affecting the club In this case, it was the news, which emerged last night after the game, that young midfielder Eli King had suffered an ACL injury on Sunday in training that is going to keep him out for the season with the preliminary target being set for him as a return for pre season training for 26/27 – best wishes to Eli for a full recovery from his awful injury and I hope he comes back as strong as ever.
