A frantic and pulsating game at Cardiff City Stadium tonight ended up providing a fair reflection of where Cardiff City find themselves currently. They are capable of competing with and giving a bloody nose to the best sides in the Championship, but their lack of squad depth combined with what is an almost farcical situation at centreback, where it’s almost a case of the two with the least worst injuries have to play, means that we are capable of then being overrun by those same teams within the same ninety minutes.
Our best defensive performance by some distance enabled us to deservedly beat currently in third Birmingham in the game after we went to top of the table Middlesbrough, deservedly led by 2-0 at half time before we were pegged back 2-2 in a game where the dominant home side racked up the shots after the break.
We were deservedly beaten at Wolves on Saturday despite having more than double the number of on target shots to them and the home side were certainly not three goals better than us. However, tonight it was almost a repeat of the Middlesbrough game except this time it was a three goal half time lead we lost, not a two goal one.
In the first half, a depleted City side showed a killer instinct by scoring three times from four attempts as they smothered a West Ham outfit showing a distinct lack of attacking pace. Jack Moylan continued his ascent towards true City legend status with a hat trick which included a superb first goal and while 3-0 probably flattered us, we were well worth our lead.
West Ham who had that modern day Neil Warnock (superb Championship record, dubious Premier League record), Scott Parker taking charge after his appointment today following the sacking of Nuno Espirito Santo yesterday, looked like a side feeling sorry for themselves as they offered little apart from an early half hit close range shot by Castellanos which drew a good save from Nathan Trott.
However, with what is by most people’s reckoning the best squad in the division available to him, you couldn’t be confident at halftime that the points were in the bag against Parker’s new team.
West Ham made three changes at half time and, primarily due to some exceptional passing by Jarrod Bowen (once rejected by City as a youth if social media folklore is to be believed), were able to score the three goals they needed to end up with a point which you feel could mean so much to their season.
Whereas the visitors were completely unable to exploit the space behind our defensive high line in the first half, their first two goals came via that route and the equaliser was from a cross into that awful area behind a defensive line where the goalkeeper can’t really win whether he decides to stay on this line or come for it.
The bottom line for me is that in our last three games we’ve played the current top three plus the team who were many people’s choice to be Champions before a ball was kicked and we’ve managed to win one and draw two of those games despite all of our various absences and it becoming increasingly clear that we have some who are playing through the pain barrier, so I can’t be too critical of the team or manager for losing a big lead tonight.
My mind goes back to the seasons just before our relegation when we were in the habit of hoisting the white flag against parachute payment, recently relegated, sides like Leicester and Leeds when they came to Cardiff City Stadium as we seemingly went out with the sole intention of keeping the margin of defeat within respectability. We are managing to compete with sides with far bigger squads and footballing budgets than us because of the attitude BBM sends his team out with as opposed to in spite of it – we’ve taken five points from our last four games – the City sides of McCarthy, Morison, Lamouchi, Bulut and Riza would have got one point, maybe two.
Rubin Colwill returned to captain the team tonight and, predictably, lasted less than an hour, while Perry Ng, another pre game doubt, was withdrawn with about a quarter of an hour to go with me wondering how he’d managed to last that long, given how much he seemed to be struggling with his fitness at times. Two other players that were doubtful beforehand, Will Fish and Alex Robertson looked out on their feet late on, but saw the match out – I’m not sure if one of them would have though if BBM would have had another player on the bench with a fair degree of first team experience available, as opposed to four largely untried youngsters.
West Ham have an unfortunate habit of conceding early in games this season and it was maintained here courtesy of a marvelous goal by Moylan on ten minutes when, following a superb, raking pass by Fish, Robertson found him thirty yards out and the Irishman advanced before hitting what was called a banana shot in my youth (i.e. a “swerver” hit with the outside of the foot – the sort of shot you only used to see Brazilians score with back in the 60s!) high into the corner of the net from twenty five yards.
There was criticism of City’s shooting at Wolves as their keeper made nine saves with virtually all of them from efforts that were straight at him – Hermansen in the West Ham goal was never saving this one though.
Apart from a Fish header not too far over from Robertson’s corner, City were comfortable without really threatening to add to their lead for about half an hour until Ng knocked another one of those perceptive balls over the full back’s head. Usually, they’re for Ollie Tanner, but this one was for Moylan who got clear of Morato who grabbed at him. It was a little soft, but it wasn’t a surprise to see referee Edward Duckworth point to the spot and Moylan took City’s best penalty of the season so far as he sent the keeper the wrong way to double our lead.
Within a couple of minutes, the visitors desperately cleared for a corner as Moylan almost put Yousef Salech in, but it was a temporary respite for them as a ruck of players jumped for Joel Bagan’s near post delivery and replays showed it was Moylan who got the decisive to score via a post.
City comfortably saw out the rest of the half as West Ham left the field to a chorus of boos mixed with abuse from their fans, but Parker definitely got the reaction he must have hoped for as his revamped side were a different animal after the break.
That said, for all that West Ham were dominant, they would definitely have lost were it not for Bowen’s three superb passes.
The England international showed why he is rated as one of the best players ever seen in the Championship (as opposed to the second tier) by producing passes which ripped us open. The first was hit over Robertson’s head into the path of Divine Mukasa who lobbed over the advancing Trott on fifty eight minutes.
Seven minutes later, Bowen found sub Piroe I think it was who slipped a short pass to Arne Engels (was he offside?) who easily beat Trott.
The equaliser eight minutes from time came from more of a cross by Bowen which was crying out to be put away by a West Ham forward, but, as it turned out, it was centreback Max Kilman who got the scoring touch as Trott was too late in cutting it out – i wouldn’t blame the keeper much for it though, because, as I said earlier, it was such a hard ball to defend.
Just a quick mention of the under 21s who were beaten 3-2 at Bournemouth in the Premier League Cup on Monday with all five goals coming after half time – can’t tell you who scored our first goal, but Noah Williams got the second one with a header from a corner.
