What to make of this Cardiff City team? On Tuesday, they go to the side in third position in the League One table and restrict them to two goal attempts, neither of which were on target. Looking at our goals conceded away from home record, those impressive stats shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise – we’ve only conceded six away goals all season, half of them in one game, and that’s comfortably the best record in the division (Bradford with nine against are next best).
Contrast those figures with our goals against record at home though. Today, we conceded three times at Cardiff City Stadium for the third time this campaign and only Blackpool have conceded more at home in League One than our fourteen.
How can you reconcile those figures? Traditionally, teams concede less at home than they do away, not us though and, our opponents today, Doncaster Rovers, were just like Bradford and Leyton Orient when they both scored three times here in that they could easily have scored more.
Perhaps a clue comes from the fact that, although Bradford were deserved 3-1 winners, Leyton Orient and Doncaster were on the end of 4-3 beatings.
We’re now at a stage where the season has been going on for long enough for its narratives to be set and one I’ve heard more and more as the weeks have gone by is that Cardiff “give you a chance” and that Cardiff are “very open”. Now, clearly, these comments refer to us at home – six goals conceded in nine games hardly merits such descriptions.
No, it can only refer to when we play at home. If you want more evidence that this is the case, let’s look at goals scored instead of goals conceded. We’ve got ten goals in our nine away games, not a bad haul, but if you stretch that kind of scoring rate across the course of a season, we’re going to score fewer away goals than some of our more mediocre Championship sides of recent seasons did.
So, our away games have yielded a total of sixteen goals in nine matches. A pretty miserly less than two goals a game then – what a contrast there is at Cardiff City Stadium!
Ten matches on our home ground have produced forty goals, so it’s easy enough to see that our home games are producing more than twice as many goals per game as our away ones are.
None of this is to say that we go away and shut up shop, I think we’re quite attacking in our outlook, but nowhere near as much as we are at home where we really go for it!
Once again, if we maintain our current scoring rate at home for the rest of the season, were on course to score more in our twenty three games at Cardiff City Stadium than we managed in the forty six matches of most of our recent Championship campaigns.
Therefore, is it any wonder that we are going to be stretched defensively at times at home? There is so much attacking intent from BBM’s team that even someone like me who grew heartily sick of the attritional “anti football” that became the norm at Cardiff for close to fifteen years, often asks under my breath for us to be a bit more “pragmatic” in our attitude!
Look at Doncaster’s second goal today, from their perspective there was a very perceptive through ball by our former Academy player Charlie Crew to Brandon Hanlan who netted with a calmly taken finish across Nathan Trott. However, from our point of view, Crew had got the wrong side of our two deeper lying central midfielders and he wouldn’t have seen many blue shirts in front of him as he contemplated what to do next – there was enough room to drive a bus through the empty spaces beyond him!
So, our attitude at home seems to be the archetypal “you score three and we’ll score four”, but that doesn’t mean that rank bad defending is tolerated and there was far too much of that today.
While I’ve maybe tried to put Doncaster’s second goal down to our mega attacking attitude, that doesn’t explain the big gap between Ronan Kpakio and Will Fish that Hanlan had to run into -Kpakio should have done more to get across to cover inside and didn’t seem to realise the danger until it was too late.
As for the first and third goals, they weren’t down to us being short of numbers behind the ball. For the first one, Joel Bagan was beaten by the very impressive Luke Molyneux who then pulled a cross back to the penalty spot where the unmarked Owen Bailey must have had about five or six City players in front of him as his shot got a touch off Ryan Wintle and went into the middle of the goal.
The third goal came from dead ball as we lost a header, were beaten to a second ball and allowed the scorer, Harry Clifton to get free of his man, cut past another blue shirt and fire in.
I must say I was impressed by Doncaster who came here with just one win in twelve and I can’t help thinking they’d have left with three points if you swapped the two keepers around – they were very unlucky to have lost. However runs like City are on create a special kind of momentum in that our winner in the ninth minute of added time didn’t come as a total shock and the same applies in reverse if you’re going through a spell like Doncaster are.
City went with Kpakio in for Perry Ng, Omari Kellyman for Joel Colwill and Isaak Davies for Chris Willock and made a careless start that suggested complacency or having Tuesday’s visit from Chelsea on too many minds.
Putting our early issues entirely down to that would be a disservice to Doncaster though who were playing attractive and effective football with Molyneux a threat down the right. When the visitors took the lead on fifteen minutes it was deserved, they’d been the better team, but, within twenty minutes, they were behind and City fans settled down thinking their team’s slow and scratchy start had been put behind them.
Strangely, I was thinking Isaak Davies is more effective coming off the bench than starting games about twenty seconds before Wintle found him out on the left, Davies then burst past his marker, despite being fouled twice by him (the hopeless American referee decided conceding a goal was sufficient punishment for the transgressor despite there clearly being bookable offenses committed) and played a clever ball to Kellyman who controlled with his rightt foot and scored, with the aid of a slight deflection with his left in one slick movement.
Nine minutes later, City’s best player on the day, Cian Ashford, received a header from Yousef Salech out on the right forty yards from goal and embarked on a run which showed pace and power in driving past two opponents before stabbing in a shot as he fell from ten yards that found the corner of the net.
From a City perspective, a fine individual goal, but Doncaster would rue the failure of those two defenders to stop Ashford in his tracks and keeper Thimothee Lo-Tutatha not being able to get a stronger right hand on a shot which was not that powerful.
Doncaster were averaging less than a goal a game before today, but they had no trouble in creating chances here and any thoughts that, having fallen behind, they would meekly accept their fate were dispelled by Hanlan’s equaliser.
The notion that BBM was angry at our first half was given credence by the replacement at half time of Kpakio, Will Fish and Davies with Ng, Dylan Lawlor and Willock (BBM has said in a posty game interview that Kpakio had been ill earlier in the week and was not feeling right, while Fish had a series of bumps and bruises which was affecting him – he did though confirm the unlucky Davies’ replacement was tactical with the danger Molyneux was causing at the heart of it) .
For a while, the changes seemed to have worked – City scored s fine third goal early in the second half when Wintle’s great ball was swept in expertly by Salech (I thought our top scorer was very good today – he dominated the Doncaster’s defence physically, exemplified by the way he brushed aside his marker in scoring his goal).
Still City couldn’t shake off the visitors though and after they’d made it 3-3 in the seventy second minute, Doncaster were the team that looked the more likely winners, but then, with the clock at ninety eight minutes plus (seven minutes added time had been shown), Ashford came in from the right and got a decent strike away from twenty yards. Ashford’s shot left Lo-Tutatha with an awkward save to make, but it was one he’d have been expected to manage, but instead he spilled it to his right and Bagan followed up to score his first goal since his three goals in a week spell under Mick McCarthy early in 2022 and send the crowd wild.
It was far quieter last night at Leckwith as City’s under 21s beat QPR 3-1 in the EPL Cup We probably deserved our 1-0 half time lead through a Troy Perrett penalty in an even first half, but got right on top after the break with goals by Tanatswa Nyakuhwa and the impressive Luke Pearce before the visitors grabbed a late consolation – like the senior game less than twenty four hours later, the entertainment value from the second string was very high.
It was also 3-1 at the same venue this lunchtime as the under 18s came out on top against a Premier League club’s Academy team. Brentford were beaten by with goals from Riley Hilaire-Clarke and a couple from Mannie Barton, both of which were penalties.
