Cardiff City res 0 - 3 Bristol City res

Last updated : 27 August 2003 By Michael Morris
Cardiff City line up

Margetson, Taylor, Prior, Anthony, Huggins, Whalley, Maxwell, Bonner, Bowen, Gordon, Thorne.

Subs Fleetwood, Byrne, Fish, Brimble, Cronin.

The first goal came on 65 seconds from Leroy Lita, the same player scored his and his clubs second goal midway through the half.

Loxton scored a third for Bristol in the second half.

Comments from Paul Evans.
Just got back from the reserves and it was as bad as the 3-0 scoreline indicates. From the moment Bristol took the lead after about a minute, they were always the better team and, if I am being honest 3-0 didn't flatter them in the slightest - they were about five goals better than us.

The first half was particularlly one sided with Bristol's superiority being founded by the complete domination of their strikers Lita and Marvin Brown over our centre backs Prior and Anthony (who captained the team). Lita's first goal came when he capitalised on hesitation between Margetson and Prior to lob home. After that, City's centre backs were constantly caught out by simple looking balls played from deep and there could easilly have been further goals before Lita scored at the second attempt while lying on the floor to double the lead halfway through the half.

The rest of the first half was more even, but the City never really looked like scoring and were slower to the ball all over the pitch compared to a young Bristol side that looked both well coached and well motivated.

The second half was less one sided, but still Bristol dominated and a Maxwell blunder allowed substitute Loxton to complete the scoring with about twenty minutes to go. After that Lita missed an absolute sitter which would have given him the hat trick that his excellent display deserved and Jason Bowen awoke from his slumbers to provide the three best City attempts of the match, forcing a fine save from veteran keeper Stowell, hitting the post with a free kick from twenty five yards and firing a cross shot across the face of goal with the anonymous Thorne and Gordon inches away from turning it in.

Trying to find something good from this performance is hard, I suppose Mark Bonner tried his hardest, but he didn't avhieve much and Martyn Margetson, although being at fault with the first goal, made some good saves, apart from that nothing, nobody in the team made a strong case for inclusion on Saturday and certainly on this evidence, the squad is nowhere near as strong as some would have us believe.