A second tense, tight game at Cardiff City Stadium in four days, but, again, while this wasn’t the free wheeling, goal happy City of their five game winning run in the preamble to the holiday period, it was a good come from behind victory (our sixteen points gained from losing positions is now the best in League One) to record a double over Stevenage who were in fifth place before kick off.
Stevenage showed themselves to be a better attacking outfit than in the reverse game between the teams on the ninth of this month (they could hardly have been worse mind) and were an unhappy team and coaching staff at the final whistle. I’d guess that the cause of their annoyance was the goal they had disallowed well into added time. Having seen a replay of it, I’d say the ref Charles Breakspear had blown for a foul on Nathan Trott before the ball reached the Stevenage player beyond the far post who took a touch and then fired a fine volley into the net from an acute angle.
If the goal was disallowed for a foul, then I feel City got lucky because it’s not clear there was one on the video of the incident, but there’s also the question of a handball by the Stevenage player to control the ball before striking his shot – it looks like the ball did hit the top of his hand, but I’d be moaning like anything if a decision like that went against us.
Stevenage will probably feel like they deserved a point, maybe they did, but if a 70/30 pobssession split in City’s favour doesn’t mean as much as I once thought it did, a goal attempts breakdown of 22/5 in our favour rather tells a story about how the game went in terms of territorial play.
Unfortunately, we did not have our shooting boots on and only four of those twenty two ended up on target with one of them coming from someone who knew very little about his “effort” as the ball hit him and another one of them being an attempted cross that was deflected towards goal.
Still, despite their wayward shooting, City managed to breach the division’s best defence twice after falling behind with almost an hour played. That’s pretty impressive and the sort of thing promotion teams do – as on Boxing Day, we may not have looked like a top two side in terms of performance, but you get in the automatic promotion places by finding a way to win when not at your best.
With our rivals at the top having, with one exception, easy looking home fixtures, City knew there was the opportunity for three or four in the chasing pack to close in on them if they slipped in their top six game and, by and large, the teams that are not too far behind did their bit by picking up three points.
The team with a tougher looking assignment were Lincoln who travelled to Oakwell to face Barnsley, but the Yorkshire team are in a poor run of form currently and Lincoln were able to stay second with a 2-0 win. It was just 1-0 at Bradford where bottom of the league Port Vale were seen off by a score the Yorkshiremen have specialised in lately and Stockport’s dodgy recent run came to an end with a 4-2 victory over a desperately struggling Doncaster. Luton and Huddersfield from just outside the top six maintained their recent improvements with home wins over Leyton Orient and Northampton respectively, but the big losers on the night were Bolton who were beaten at home for the first time this season as they went down 1-0 to Mansfield.
As is his wont, BBM made five changes from the team that edged out Exeter on Boxing Day. Nathan Trott had recovered from his hand injury and returned in goal in place of Matt Turner while there was the usual change at centreback as Will Fish took over from Dylan Lawlor. Friday’s goal scorer Alex Robertson stepped down for David Turnbull, while Callum Robinson was in for Amari Kellyman and Cian Ashford dropped out of the squad completely with Chris Willock replacing him.
Trott’s first action on his return was almost to pick the ball out of the net as he was grateful to see Harvey White’s early over hit free kick bounce down off the crossbar as the keeper continued his occasional habit of looking unsure when dealing with crosses.
That was the sum total of Stevenage’s attacking output in the first half as they gave a performance which summed up their season as good defending more than compensated for their lack of chances going forward.
You couldn’t see Stevenage winning the game during the first forty five minutes, but by the same token, there was little sign that City could either. Yes, the stats recorded that they’d had ten goal attempts, but none of them had hit the target and not many of them came close to doing so. Yousef Salech’s well struck effort from twenty five yards that flew about a yard wide and Turnbull’s jabbed effort from a cross that got a slight deflection which flew about a yard over were as close as we came, but, generally, Stevenage were pretty comfortable.
The second half offered quite a bit more in the way of goalmouth action although there wasn’t too much of an improvement in the accuracy of the shooting from either side.
It wasn’t with his feet that City top score Salech was inaccurate though, it was with his head as soon after we’d fallen behind he nodded a Willock cross wide from a central position six yards out and shortly after that he was beyond the far post to meet a Ryan Wintle ball which he could only head across goal.
The first on target effort of the night came on fifty seven minutes when Stevenage came up with their best passing movement over their two games against us as they built neatly from the back to work a chance for Phoenix Patterson out on the left who came inside to hit one of those side footed right foot efforts from the edge of the penalty area that never looks like going anywhere else than in the net.
It was a fine goal in both its build up and finish, but it was Stevenage’s only on target effort of the night, so for all that they looked more dangerous going forward tonight compared to nearly three weeks ago, it was one of only six goal attempts they had in the two games against us and Patterson’s goal was the only one on target.
BBM responded immediately to going behind by bringing on Ronan Kpakio and Kellyman for Perry Ng and Isaak Davies and straight away we looked more dangerous down the right.
City responded well to going behind and although Salech’s misses had you feeling it may not be our night, the upturn in energy levels made one hopeful that it need not be the case and within seven minutes of conceding we were level.
Even if the finish was quite scruffy and gave an indication as to why Stevenage are so hard to break down, the making of the goal showed City at their best. The ball was passed briskly and accurately on our left before Turnbull played a fine cross field pass to Kellyman who fed the overlapping Kpakio whose cross was deflected towards goal to force Filip Marschall into his one serious save of the night. From there the ball dropped to Robinson whose shot was cleared off the line only for it to come back to the man whose goal made all the diffence at Broadhall Way and this time he took a touch before getting in a better struck effort from eight yards which was still almost blocked by a defender and Marschall before hitting the back of the net.
The fact that there were two or three Stevenage defenders besides their keeper there trying to keep the ball out of their net offered more evidence of why they are still waiting to concede their twentieth goal of the season.
The goal was a fitting reward for Robinson though who I thought had one of his best games for a while and his hard working display was heartening to see after he had not seen too much action off the bench lately.
Having been preoccupied with defence for so much of their two games with us, Stevenage now looked like they were chasing a win with attacking substitutions as we lost our way a little after equalizing and so it was something of a surprise when we came up with a winner with eight minutes of the ninety left.
Again, it was a good move as we passed patiently and well to set up Willock who appeared to be trying a shot, but, whatever it was, he ended up with an assist to his name as the ball hit Salech on the side about six yards out and flew into the other side of the goal to where Willock intended his effort to go.
Even if the goal was something of a fluke, I give Salech credit for getting in front of his marker to be in the position where he could score and for the first time this season I believe, Stevenage had lost a league game by a scoreline other than 1-0.
However, before this could be confirmed, City brought on Robertson for Turnbull and there was a return to action for Ollie Tanner as he replaced Willock, while Joel Colwill came on for Robinson a few minutes later. The rejigged line up had to face ten minutes of added time and besides the scare with the disallowed goal, there was a shot from sub Louie Thompson that flew narrowly wide, but City held on to take their points tally above what we managed for the whole of last season when we’ve still not reached the halfway stage of the campaign this time around.
A happy New Year to all readers!
