Cardiff play Barnsley for the first time this season.
Although the table is still very compacted apart from it’s very top and very bottom, I think we’re reaching a stage where sides in the bottom half currently know they can’t wait much longer for the run that will propel up the league to a position where a top six finish is realistic.
However, there is one team in the lower half who will be telling themselves that if they can maintain steady results for a few more weeks, there’s still plenty of time for them to start climbing the table.
Barnsley are in fifteenth place currently, yet their 2-2 draw at Reading on Saturday only represented the halfway point in their league season, they are only now at the twenty three game mark and so have anything between two and five matches in hand on the other twenty three teams in the division.
Quite why Barnsley have played so few games I’m not sure. International call ups will account for most of those games they have to make up on the rest I would guess, but no club in the division has had more games called off during international breaks than us and yet we’ve played four more games than them. Two of those four games are down to the fact that we played league games on the weekends of the Second and Third Round of the FA Cup while Barnsley made it through to Round Three, but as for the other two, I can’t see a reason – maybe they had two postponements during the recent cold snap?
Up until Christmas, Barnsley were considered to be among the pack chasing Championship football next season, but a poor run over the holiday period from which they are only just emerging cost them a lot as they’re now at the stage where they’re not being completely forgotten as a promotion candidate, but they are something of an afterthought.
Barnsley have been inconsistent, but they are a little like Orient in that they’re averaging more than one and a half goals a game when it comes to goals for and against, so you’d think tomorrow night’s game shouldn’t be a sterile 0-0 – it’s a game which we should win, but I’d rate Barnsley as dangerous opponents as they’ve beaten Huddersfield, thrashed Luton and drawn at Bradford and Stockport this season.
Here the quiz, the answers to which I’ll post on Wednesday.
60s. Summer visitor seen not far from Cardiff?
70s. Record holder with a modern day Cardiff City connection.
80s.War leader in the soup!
90s. Capped thirty three times, this midfielder played for, among others, Ajax, Barnsley and Swansea and in recent years has appeared in a podcast which is presented from a field in rural Ireland, can you name him?
00s. Tangled with Civil Service middle manager and ended up at Barnsley! (4,5)
10s. The product of a Dingwall team rotating a male animal maybe!
20s. In debt to a decent sort by the sound of it!
Answers:
60s.Barry Swallow.
70s. Defender Barry Murphy made 569 league appearances for Barnsley which is a club record.
80s. Winston Campbell.
90s. Jan Molby has appeared in a Podcast called Molby on the Spot which, according to his Wikipedia page, is presented from a field in Ireland.
00s. Dale Tonge.
10s. Ross Turnbull.
20s. Owen Goodman.
