Season Review. Part 8

Last updated : 20 June 2008 By Paul Evans
Maybe Thommo had given the interview some time before it was published, but, whatever had happened, it hardly represented ideal preparation for a game which saw the resumption of Cardiff/Bristol City derbies for the first time since our Play Off victory over them in 2003.

The team who I believe most of my generation class as our biggest rivals, had been surpise promotion candidates in their first season back at this level in eight years and were to maintain their challenge right to the end of the campaign, but, there was no reason why City shouldn't have traveled to Ashton Gate confident of laying another of their bogeys (they had not won there since 1969).

Unfortunately, just as in so many away matches with the wurzels down the years, it was the performance of the referee that attracted most post match attention. Card happy Premiership "star" Uriah Rennie did not have a good afternoon all round, but City pointed to three decisions that they claimed cost them their 1-0 defeat.

To be fair to Rennie, television evidence suggested he got two of those decisions right. The first came after 15 minutes when Thompson, who had already had a header cleared off the line ploughed into home keeper Basso as he tried to shepherd the ball out for a goal kick. Basso had no intention of playing the ball and, speaking as someone who thinks all defending players should be penalised when they plonk themselves in front of attackers to prevent them getting at the ball before it crosses the bye line, I have some sympathy with what Thommo did - that said, to do it at the home end which ensured that Rennie had hundreds of supporters close by him baying for a red card to be shown, made a sending off inevitable.

City were therefore left to play out the remaining seventy five minutes a man short and Thommo left to reflect on an incident that would keep him out of the next three matches (I found myself wondering whether the furore caused by the article earlier in the week had been a contributory factor in the whole thing).

The second of Rennie's controversial decisions came twelve minutes into the second half when he allowed the game's only goal to stand - City complained that Schemichel was fouled as he came out to collect a corner that saw three home players putting him under a lot of pressure, but, on second viewing, the decision looked a good one as our keeper trailed and failed to deal with an excellent dead ball delivery as Elliott bundled the ball in from close range.

However, when Rennie failed to spot what seemed to be a clear handball by centre half McCombe as he lay on the floor in a frantic injury time scramble in front of the home goal, it looked like City were very harshly done by - television replays were to confirm this.

In between times, the ten City players did themselves proud as they took the game to the wurzels throughout most of the second half and they were unlucky not to leave with a point - Basso saved well from Ledley in the first half, but the injury he sustained in the incident that saw Thommo red carded meant that he had to be replaced at half time by Weale who had to endure quite a few scary moments before his sides victory was confirmed.

There was one other significant aspect to this match, ordinarily you would expect a team that was 1-0 down and had Robbie Fowler on the bench to bring him on with about half an hour to go, yet, it said so much about how Fowler's Cardiff career had gone that he only got on to the pitch in the 89th minute! Fowler had been out since the defeat at Charlton, but the word from the club was that he was now fit again - the lateness of his introduction into the game certainly suggested otherwise and in the coming weeks it emerged that he was suffering from a long standing and career threatening hip injury. Fowler's season was over - his signing had been a gamble which, without having access to his medical reports, I thought was just about worth taking at the time, but, even before this news, his signing had to be viewed as a very expensive mistake.

You'd think that after 36 years without a league win against the wurzels, I would have become used to losing to them, but, defeats by them still really hurt me (more than losing to the jacks does) and it was reassuring to see that the two best City performers on the day were generally reckoned to be Joe Ledley and Chris Gunter the two local boys who turned in displays that certainly suggested that the severnside derby meant a lot to them as well.

The awful home display against Charlton apart, Gunter's return to the team for the Ipswich match had coincided with an upturn in the sides level of performance, but they would have to maintain this improvement without him from now on because during the following week his rumoured transfer to Spurs turned into fact as a deal was done which would see the 18 year old move to London when the transfer window opened in January.

City fans could hardly complain about this move having come out of the blue - it had clearly been signposted for two or three weeks that the club would be cashing in on at least one of it's promising youngsters and with Gunter having got national recognition for his fine Wales' performances a month earlier it shouldn't have come as a shock that it was him who was the one to go.

As to how much we got and will be getting for Gunter, well, as far as I am aware, that remains a mystery because there has never been official clarification as to the size of the transfer - the City's next match was the main feature on ITV's Championship highlights programme and during the coverage the commentator remarked that it had been reported that the deal could amount to £4 million, but Peter Ridsdale had told him it was "not quite as much as that". Certainly, that's the closest to a statement from the club regarding the fee I have heard and there appears to have been no indication at all as to how much we were paid up front for the player.

However, for me, it was the other change that Dave Jones made that day which was the really important one because it represented the final piece in a jigsaw that saw us transformed from under achieving relegation strugglers in the first half of the season to one of the Championship's form sides in the second half of the campaign. With Steve Thompson starting his suspension, Paul Parry was moved up front alongside Hasselbaink and, from now on, the team had the outlet that a striker with pace and movement provides - midfield players and defenders could now play balls into the channels confident in the knowledge that Parry would put opposing players under pressure and, more often that not, at least gain the team a foothold further up the pitch. Another bonus from this move was that it gave Peter Whittingham a regular starting place in the team in right midfield and, although he remained frustratingly inconsistent, he became far more influential from now on than he had been.

Going back to Parry though, it needs to be remembered that he had played the occasional game up front already, but without any real success. However, the difference for me this time was that he was playing in a more confident side than before and as results continued to improve so did Parry's form and belief - when he was at his best, he was able to match very effective work on the ball with a prodigious work rate off it which meant that opposing defenders weren't given a moment's peace.

Of course, it also helps if you score a match winner in your first game in a new role and, in a game that proved to be almost a carbon copy of the Ipswich match a month earlier, that's precisely what Parry did! Just as against Ipswich, the visitors could and probably should have scored within the first twenty seconds - this time James Beattie blazed over from around the penalty spot after a borderline offside decision went in his favour. The similarities between the two matches certainly didn't end there either - Sheffield never really threatened again until the end of the game when full back Bardsley shot just wide from a free kick and City won the game with a goal around the half hour mark from the same player which came when Whittingham exploited a lucky bounce to play a lovely little reverse pass that set Parry clear and he went on to score pretty easily as he nutmegged keeper Kenny.

To me the major difference between the Ipswich match and this one was the level of City's performance -whereas the first victory had been ground out, this one was achieved with a fair bit of style and, while many pointed to how poor Sheffield United were, I preferred to give City credit for making them look so ordinary.

Next up was a lunchtime visit to leaders Watford on Boxing Day. That might have sounded a daunting prospect, but the truth was that Watford were a team very much on the slide - they had not won at home in five matches and their once commanding lead was being whittled away game by game by the likes of West Brom, Bristol City and Stoke. Therefore, given the sides upturn in fortunes, it wasn't really so much of a shock to see City, with MacLean in for the rested Hasselbaink, completely dominate the first forty five minutes during which home manager Adie Boothroyd was forced into making a tactical substitution after thirty six minutes as O'Toole was replaced by Williamson in midfield. This change came a minute after City had gained an overdue lead when Johnson headed in a corner, but it did nothing to alter the way the game was going as a second successive victory seemed assured.

Watford surely couldn't be as bad in the second half - the minutes immediately after the break saw them put City under pressure for the first time and it didn't take long for their old fallibility at corners to reemerge as DeMerit bundled the ball in from close range. However, things soon returned to normal and Peter Whittingham's shot from outside the area restored the lead.

After that, City held on comfortably until the dying minutes when Watford raised themselves for a grandstand finish which saw them gain a succession of corners and attacking free kicks. City's victory seemed assured when a couple of great saves by Schmeichel preserved their lead deep into added time, but then Jobi McAnuff left the keeper helpless with a tremendous curled shot of a quality that he never showed when he was playing for us!

Once again, City had conceded late on and three points were turned into one. Dave Jones had a point when he complained that Watford's equaliser came four minutes into added time despite the replacement ref (he had come on when referee Bentley went off injured) saying that there would only be three minutes extra - incredibly, there was still time for City to force a corner after Watford's equaliser as six extra minutes were played! Others pointed to a negative approach by City's manager letting Watford back into the game as his team dropped deeper and deeper with centre back Purse replacing striker Mac Lean after eighty six minutes - however, the amount of added time and City's tactics late on shouldn't have been an issue because the game should have been put beyond Watford's reach well before then, to that extent, this was a draw that felt very much like a defeat.

Games came thick and fast at this time and next it was a visit to struggling Preston which started poorly when City conceded again from a corner in the fifth minute as a half clearance fell to Simon Whaley who smashed a fine half volley shot from twenty five yards beyond Scmeichel. City, with Hasselbaink in for MacLean, were second best for most of the first half and were a little fortunate to reach half time just the one goal down.

However, there had been signs that they were beginning to get the upper hand in the closing stages of the first period - this trend continued after the break and it wasn't too much of a surprise when Johnson scored for the second successive match when his header from Ledley's corner beat Lonergan in the fifty third minute.

With Preston stuck in the bottom three having lost their previous two home games, the opportunity was now there for City to really take control and this is precisely what they did to the extent that their winning goal, which arrived a quarter of an hour later, felt overdue. City scored a few slick team goals through the season, but this was certainly not one of them as Joe Ledley beat Davidson in the City goal and headed towards goal - he ran on and on, almost went down in the penalty area under a challenge from St. Ledger, regained his balance and then clipped an angled shot over the keeper and into the net for a remarkable goal which was clearly the best solo effort the team managed during the season.

City had few problems hanging on to their lead against dispirited opponents and they saw out the old year with what turned out to be their last away win of the season - when reasons are sought as to why the team's Play Off challenge came up short, their failure to win more than four times away from home has to rank high up amongst them.

TBC