Just a quick piece about tonight’s EFL Trophy game at Exeter.
Goals are at a premium when Cardiff City play away this season. After tonight’s game, it’s a total of five goals in five matches, with the good news being that four of them have been scored by us. Stockport’s penalty on Saturday remains the only one we’ve conceded in a match which was something of a goal spree by our away match standards as it finished 1-1.
The other three goals have secured 1-0 wins with Callum Robinson’s second half header tonight adding to the victories at Wimbledon and Luton to go along with the goalless draw at Port Vale.
Now, as someone who has occasionally expressed how 1-0 away wins have their own kind of special satisfaction to them, I’m not going to start moaning about us winning by that score.However, I have to admit that there is a part of me wishing that we could show that we’re capable of scoring more than the 0.8 of a goal per game on our travels that we are at the moment.
Is our lack of goals on our travels a cause for concern? Clearly, while the only goals were conceding are penalties, it’s something we can live with, but, just as with our previous four away matches, there were periods tonight when we rode our luck and so I think the time will come pretty soon when we’re going to need to carry more of a goal threat on our travels.
Perry Ng was the only one out of Saturday’s starting line up to begin tonight’s match, but, with Exeter making eight changes themselves, it was effectively something akin to a Development game tonight.
Gabriel Osho and Omari Kellyman both made their City debuts, but, neither of them completed ninety minutes. Osho seemed to have a groin injury which forced him off about twenty minutes from time, but Kellyman didn’t make it to half an hour played. There was no obvious sign of an injury for him and I suppose the plan may have been to give him just the thirty minutes. However, given his recent struggles with hamstring issues (he’s had to have an operation on one of them), it’s got to be concerning to see him leaving the game so soon.
Turner, Giles, Mafico and Nyakuhwa were all starters for City and there was another debutant when Troy Perrett came on to replace Kellyman – I thought Perrett looked one of our best players on the night as well.
The first half was a little like the one at Wimbledon as City looked very impressive at times with the way they moved the ball, but, apart from a shot by Robinson beaten out by Exter’s debutant keeper seconds before the interval and a scuffed Giles effort that drew a diving save , we barely threatened to score. Isaak Davies was sharp on the left and you felt something might come from his lively running down that flank, but nothing ever did really and he was replaced by Cian Ashford for the second half.
By contrast, Exeter, for all that they spent most of their time keeping their defensive shape, while out of possession, had the better opportunities such as when a long range shot almost squirmed past Turner, a header was cleared off the line by Ng, a one on one was missed and a shot flashed across the face of our goal.
City had the end product to go with their domination of possession in the second half and the goal came when Turnbull and Ashford worked a quick corner routine which enabled the latter to drive in a fierce cross which Robinson glanced in via the underside of the crossbar.
David Turnbull probably came as close as anyone to adding a second with a shot just wide, but there was an element of thinking they’d done enough to win already to City’s approach as the clock wound down. Truth be told they probably were right to think that if it had remained eleven against eleven, but Ashford, having been yellow carded for his part in a dust up with the home captain Sweeney, then received a second one shortly afterwards, apparently for kicking the ball away following the award of a free kick against City.
Ashford’s stupidity almost cost City as, within seconds, what looked a very tight offside call went in our favour as the home team netted with a bullet header.
City now have home games against Newport County and Arsenal’s under 21s to complete their group and, if we make it through, I presume it then becomes a knock out tournament?
There seems to be a lot of days this season when both first team and the under 21s are playing and it was no different today when our youngsters travelled to Huddersfield – no details as to our scorers I’m afraid, but I think we’ll be satisfied wwith a 2-2 draw.
