I spent eighty per cent of today’s match between Cardiff City and Burnley ranting about how you cannot play such an open, expansive game with two centrebacks with questionable levels of fitness and just one central midfielder with defensive responsibilities.
I was right as well, Cardiff fell 4-1 down with an own goal by that Solé defensive midfielder, Alex Robertson, and it looked like Brian Barry-Murphy’s slavish devotion to his methods was going to get what would have been its first serious bout of public criticism in his almost eighteen months in charge.
We’d been wide open at the back and you suspect that a fully fit Will Fish and Krystian Bielik (BBM admitted after the game that Bielik wasn’t fit and was fulsome in his praise of him, Fisn, Robertson and Perry Ng for playing through the “pain barrier”) would have struggled against a pacy Burnley counter attack, but in their current level of match fitness, they had no chance.
With teams at the bottom like Preston and Charlton winning and Watford getting a creditable draw with Middlesbrough, City were clearly going into the latest international break with serious relegation worries if they lost. It’s all very well being media darlings because of their relentless positivity, but City really needed to be adding more wins than just three out of fifteen.
Then what happened? Well, the simple answer is that we bought Yousef Salech on. However, excellent though the striker, who had been left out of the starting eleven for Cian Ashford, was, there were other things going on which contributed to the remainder of the game becoming an occasion that those present will be telling their grandchildren about for decades to come.
For a start, Burnley seemed to remember that they’d only won two league games in a calendar year. This together with an, understandable, attitude on the part of the visitors that their attacking work for the afternoon was done, gave City a foot in the door so to speak and they proceeded to blow it off its hinges to secure a win in what I’d say was Cardiff City Stadium’s greatest ever game!
There are so many reasons why football is the greatest game in the world and one of them is that it throws up so many examples of how a player can go from the pit of despair to the highest of highs in half an hour.
In this case, it was the aforementioned Robertson who clinched victory with the goal of the game in the ninety fourth minute – in true epic style, the game went on for another ten minutes which featured a mass brawl with members of both benches spilling on to the pitch!
A part of me felt sorry for Burnley, it must be an absolute nightmare to be a player in a side that hasn’t won at home in a year and have only got those two victories to draw on In so long.
I’ve known plenty of sides go through really horrendous runs, but to carry one from one season into another is very unusual in that they tend to involve a relegation and consequent fixtures against weaker teams. Burnley players would not be human if they weren’t mindful of the fact that Luton and Leicester had completed successive relegations in the last two season and I bet there were a few of them thinking “we’re going to lose this” when we got it back to 4-3.
City started the game so well and had a couple of decent penalty shouts to go with Gregoire Coudert tipping a Joel Bagan shot around an upright. The keeper also blocked a close range Will Fish header as City looked to work the sort of intricate patterns that were needed in the absence of the physicality Salech provides.
However, in among all of City’s possession and pressure, Burnley were able to show an ability to get beyond our high line and, once behind it, the ability to move further clear of our defenders.
City had been given one or two scares already when a high ball saw Fish unable to cope – Andreas Hountondji moved away from the stumbling defender and placed his shot beyond Trott to ensure that we would not be adding to our single clean sheet of the season.
City kept probing and while it’s perfectly reasonable to aim the criticism that we need to score at least two to win, it’s only fair to say that opponents won’t often beat us if they only score once – Burnley were defending well at this stage and getting their blocks in, but they weren’t going to keep us out for ninety minutes.
However, like the other two relegated sides we’d faced in the past week, Burnley must have been fancying themselves to show new manager Fabio Celestini their goal power after low scoring draws in their first two matches under him.
Jaden Barnel dribbled clear of Perry Ng to cross to Marcus Edwards twenty yards from goal and, although City had plenty of players back this time, his shot went through Bielik’s legs and beyond Trott to double the visitor’s lead.
Within what seemed seconds Edwards was sent through a yawning gap in the middle of our defence only to lob ineffectually over when he really should have scored and, with boos beginning to ring out from sections of the home crowd, Robertson was “ambushed” thirty five yards and Trott was having to tip another shot over the bar.
It’s at times like this that the BBM way can look soft and naive and Fish did well with some last gasp defending as the visitors threatened to take the game way from us.
Burnley also now had the advantage of being able to sit back and draw us on knowing-that the gaps at the back for them to exploit would only get wider. That said, you still felt there were goals in it for City and one arrived with five minutes of the first half left when Bagan’s far post corner was headed back by a defender under pressure from Ng and Rubin Colwill flicked towards goal from eight yards. The ball was going in, but hit Tanner who was stood almost on the goal line before entering the net prompting appeals for offside. However, replays showed that Coudert and a defender were also both on the line and so I’d say Tanner, who was credited with goal, was onside.
I should say at this point that I’d done some research to try to confirm a suspicion of mine that we have been experiencing a second half fade out this season and the figures tended to prove me right. Before today we’d scored eighteen first half goals in our sixteen competitive games and only eight second half ones – so, what did we do today? Score half of our figure for the season in one game!
We were almost level within minutes of the restart as Coudert had to turn a Tanner header on to a post and Moylan’s follow up attempt was cleared from very, very close to the line by Burnley’s Ekdal – it was very close to being a goal, but these sort of situations are decided by the best piece of equipment available to officials these days, the wrist watch devices which provide a decision almost instantaneously and so you don’t see the protests you tend to get in other tight calls.
Having dodged a bullet there, Burnley proceeded to take a very tight grip on proceedings by scoring twice in seven minutes. On fifty five minutes, Bielik, betraying the anxiety City were showing when high balls were knocked beyond them, chose to flick a headed half clearance rather try to find Trott and only succeeded in finding an opponent who fed Largie Ramazani who finished really well into the top corner from fifteen yards.
Burnley’s fourth goal was far too easy as sub Aaron Ramsey (not that one!) was sent clear and Robertson, trying to perform his defensive duties (unlike one or two others) turned the ball into his own net with no opponent within yards of him.
Salech came on for Tanner at this stage, but it all felt like too little, too late. However, within a couple of minutes, City had luck on their side as the Dane reduced the arrears. Ashford played a poor pass infield straight to Ramazani. The winger was impressive throughout going forward, but proved a defensive liability here as he took the ball back towards his own goal before attempting a clearance which bounced off Cian straight into the path of Salech who scored from six yards.
For a while, Burnley did a good job of nipping any City revival in the bud as they kept possession well, but the second City sub to do really well, Calum Scanlon (whose pace would have been handy from the start in defensive situations as things turned out) clipped over a beauty of a cross that Salech looked sure to head in until another sub, Connor Roberts, nudged him over and we were given another one to add to the recent plethora of penalties.
Jack Moylan is the man in possession as far as penalties go now and he smacked this latest one high into the corner of the net as the keeper dived the wrong way.
City had shown plenty of signs of tiredness late on against West Ham on Wednesday, but here they kept on driving forward and looking the fitter team. I wouldn’t say an equalizer looked inevitable at this stage, but, with fifteen minutes to go, it did feel pretty certain that the scoring was not over.
Sure enough, goal number eight arrived on 82 minutes with its share of controversy because it was scored while Burnley had been forced to play with ten men for a minute for taking too long over a substitution.
City took full advantage as Ashford worked Rubin into space down the right and produced a cross to rival Scanlon’s to give Salech the chance to power in a header off the underside of the crossbar.
The crowd went bonkers, but the excitement proved too much for someone in the Ninian Stand as the game was stopped while they received medical attention. Thankfully, it seems the person concerned made a full recovery, but it all meant that there was ten minutes time to be added on after the ninety.
It was the visitors who first threatened to win it in time added on as Trott made saved from Ramsey.
Within a couple of minutes, Robertson collected a pass by Chris Willock, no Burnley player came out to close him down quick enough and the midfielder took a couple of touches before whacking a twenty yard right footed shot beyond Coudert to give this extraordinary game the winning goal it deserved.
Given The chaotic nature of the game, six minutes was still quite a long time for City to hold out and Trott was forced into his best save of the game to deny Ramazani. However, they were helped on their way by the brawl which was instigated by Kyle Walker reacting angrily to a Salech challenge. Surprisingly, no one was shown a red card in an incident which involved around twenty players and men in track suits, but when play restarted, it seemed to me that the visitors had lost their focus as they gave away free kicks to break up any continuity in the game.
At the end, the celebrations went on long and loud as I mused that maybe sending out a knackered team to defend with a very high line and a single pivot may be a tactical master stroke after all, but I think we all know better than that.
Enormous credit to the manager and the injury ravaged squad with three or four starting matches when they shouldn’t be really, it says so much about the spirit BBM has engendered. In saying that, we can’t expect to win when we concede three and four in a game – we won’t and so we really need to get more players fit and a few more in when the transfer window opens because key players are going to be “gone” physically well before May.
An under strength under 21 side were beaten 3-0 at Millwall yesterday, while there was an unusual occurrence this morning as the under 18 side for their game at Bristol City was announced on social media only for the game to then be called off because of fog.
