Cardiff City dropped their first home points since 30 September as they were held to a 1-1 draw by fourth placed Stockport in a game which included a serious looking injury to striker Yousef Salech who was treated for thirteen minutes for what looked like a neck injury.
I’ll return to Salech’s injury later, but, as I type this, City’s position at the top has improved as Bradford were beaten 1-0 at Huddersfield and seventh placed Luton went down by the same score at Plymouth in the other lunchtime kick offs.
Lincoln’s 2-1 win on Thursday over Burton means that the six point gap over second position we has last weekend has been cut to four, but with the three o clock kick offs just starting we’re ten points ahead of Bradford, albeit we’ve played a game more than them and seventeen points clear of Luton with them having played one more match than us.
I’ve tried to steer clear of the subject of League One referees recently because the standards are generally so low that you end up sounding like a stuck record. However,I cannot apply my recently acquired more tolerant approach to them after Paul Howard’s inconsistent showing today.
That said, I would say that, albeit only on the one viewing, the incident that led to Salech’s injury was an accident which did not merit any further action from Mr Howard in terms of a card being shown. What happened as I saw it was that Stockport Centre back Brad Hills challenged for a high ball with Salech and the striker landed awkwardly, possibly on his neck, with Hills then landing on top of him. It was a forceful challenge with a possibility that Hills’ elbow made contact with Salech, but it did not strike me as deliberate. It was the sort of challenge which may have been penalised by a foul, but it would have struck me as harsh.*
Maybe I’ll feel a bit different when I see a few replays of the incident, but, by playing on (and then booking Ryan Wintle a few seconds later), I thought Mr Howard got it right.
If I would criticise Mr Howard, it would be for not recognizing the possibility of a serious injury of a type which could have serious consequences for the player concerned.
So, rightly or wrongly, I’m not too critical of the referee on the game’s main talking point, but I fail to see how in a match which saw Stockport penalised seventeen times for fouls to our eleven, we ended up with three players booked to their two.
I’m not saying that the yellow cards issued to Wintle, Joel Bagan and Omari Kellyman were wrong – they were all for cynical “take one for the team” fouls (including two shirt grabs on a player who had got the wrong side of the three of them). If Mr Howard did not caution the three City players, he would have been marked down by the assessor for not interpreting the laws of the game as current guidelines say they should be. However, something is wrong when Ollie Norwood is not shown a card for a late diving tackle on Callum Robertson – Norwood seemed genuinely contrite after the foul on a former Sheffield United, but it was a poor tackle and a yellow card, possibly a red one, all day long.
Worse still was the elbow to Wintle’s face by Josh Stokes which Mr Howard did actually show a card for, but, for me, it was the worst of a few occasions when Stockport elbows were raised when jumping for the ball and was worthy of a red card – especially as Stokes looked to check where Wintle was before jumping with his elbow raised.
Also, Stockport scorer Kyle Wootton who had already been booked was penalised for a shirt pull by Mr Howard, but no further card was shown – there were one or two other fouls committed by Wootton after his caution as well.
Hills, of course, was treated by the crowd as very much the villain of the piece after the Salech injury and he was another one who could have seen a card for persistent fouling following that incident.
The ref was definitely inconsistent and poor, but were Stockport as dirty as I’m sure many City fans are accusing them of being? I’m not sure about that, I thought they were physical and played with an aggressive forward press in what I felt was an impressive first half showing.
In fact, I’d say Stockport were bettered only by Bradford in terms of the best visiting sides to come to Cardiff City Stadium so far this season and it was easy to see why they possess the second best away record in the division. However, on another day and with a better referee, they could have easily have been reduced to ten, or even nine, men.
David Turnbull missed out because of the illness he’d been suffering with all week with Joel Colwill replacing him and Cian Ashford came in for Chris Willock in the two changes BBM made from last week at Bradford. There was also a late change on the bench when Dylan Lawlor sustained an injury in the warm up which at least meant that we had a keeper among our subs as Harry Tyrer got his first call up into the first team squad.
I found the game a good watch, but looking back at it now, It’s difficult to recall too many events in either goal mouth worth recording.
In very dull, wet and windy conditions, it was the visitors who settled first to take the lead inside ten minutes as Josh Dacres-Cogley, an influential player in the first half especially, got clear of Wintle to create plenty of space for him to run into as a three on two in his team’s favour was created. The Stockport player decided to hit a low twenty yarder which Nathan Trott dived to keep out, but the ball bounced straight into the path of Wootton who tapped home from six yards.
City struggled to respond until Wintle’s chip presented Salech with a diving header half chance which was directed too close to visiting keeper Ben Hinchcliffe.
That was to be Salech’s last meaningful contribution and his injury seemed to affect City, but in the seventh of fourteen additional minutes at the end of the first half, a fluent move ended with Tanner, who had a Curate’s Egg of a game, claiming another assist as his good pass found Colwill who worked himself some room on the edge of the area before beating Hinchcliffe with a shot which may have got a very slight deflection off a defender.
City went on to have the better of the second half as they passed the ball well until they got into the final third where they struggled to find the creativity to unlock a stubborn visiting defense. Kellyman replaced Tanner, but proved to be more erratic than Ollie was, while Willock did supply some creativity on the left after he replaced Colwill. However, while our results since he sustained his injury at Northampton suggest we haven’t missed him that much, this felt like a game where we could have done with a fit Rubin Colwill.
Isaak Davies came on for Alex Robertson as City chased the win and they finally had the chances to get the three points in the last fewminutes as Willock picked out Ashford whose shot flew over after a Stockport defender got a touch on it – Ashford didn’t really have the time to take the touch which came before he shot. Then it was Willock again who set up Robinson for what looked to be the winner only for Hinchcliffe to get off his line quickly to block the close range shot.
Elsewhere, Bolton moved up to third on goal difference when a penalty in added time secured them a 2-1 home win over Leyton Orient. Stevenage drew 1-1 with in form Mansfield and Peterborough won 2-0 at Wycombe.
After the game, BBM said that Salech had gone to hospital to have a precautionary scan on his neck, but he sounded positive about the outcome and there was even a suggestion that he could be available for Tuesday’s game with Barnsley.
While our manager would not comment on the incident which led to Salech’s injury, he was critical of the way his striker has been treated by officials this season with all sorts of fouls going unchecked virtually from day one back in August as yet another interpretation of the laws which favours defenders has been applied.
It was a draw as well for our under 18s as it finished 2-2 away from hone against a Bournemouth team we’ve tended to struggle against in recent seasons at age group levels – Leo Papirnyk and Hayden Allmark were our scorers.
In the Ardal South West League, things are looking really bleak for Treherbert Boys and Girls Club after their 5-0 home defeat by Evans and Williams FC, while in the Highadmit South Wales Alliance Championship, Ton Pentre ended their poor recent run with a 5-2 home win over bottom of the table Bettws FC.
*I’ve now seen the Hills/Salech incident a few times on video and the Stockport man’s elbow does make contact with Yousef’s neck, but, for me, it’s because the momentum of Hills getting up to continue with the game causes the contact to be made. I should say that there are plenty of City fans who’ll think I’m being over generous to the Stockport player there, but I just feels that the images aren’t conclusive to maintain that Salech’s injury was caused deliberately.
