Cardiff, West Ham:why Cardiff City are not allowed to have Penalties

Cardiff, West Ham and why Cardiff City are not allowed to have Penalties 

Caulker tries to jump for the ball but is mugged by a pack of yobbish Londoners. They duff him up, haul him to the floor. They drag off his shirt, beat him with baseball bats and threaten him with a Tommy gun and a rusty butter knife. What does the ref do: nothing. What does the linesman do: nothing.

Now you may feel I am exaggerating. That surely no footballer would be allowed on the pitch with a Tommy gun or even a baseball bat. But teams facing Cardiff city can do as they please and the refs will not ever, not once, award a penalty.

Fatty Sam, Allardyce to his mate, had studied previous games such as Liverpool. There Martin Škrtel got away with more thuggery than Al Capone as he followed the rules of World Wide Wrestling in man handling Caulker.

When Sam told his thugs this in the prematch plan they didn’t believe him. Then he showed them how Cardiff are the ONLY Premier League team not to have been awarded a penalty. The only one. THE ONLY ONE.

I sat the same distance from the penalty area as the linesman for the West Ham match. Watching as time and time again he followed FA rullings in not awarding Cardiff a penalty.

Oh and the match? Well Cardiff had a perfectly good goal disallowed because their goal keeper, Adrian, almost fell over when he was almost touched by Campbell. Almost making contact with a keeper who almost falls over will always be seen as a foul by referees. Goalies are like baby seals, a protected species.

Cardiff played a clever trick of shooting straight at Adrian who lacked the good manners to step away from the middle of the goals. I counted 5 shots straight at him. There were more.

What did we learn?

One: Cardiff are slow in bringing the ball forward. Bellamy once again reminded everyone how it should be done, with direct and impressively creative runs but no one seemed in the mood for learning.

Two: Wolf, I cannot type Eikrem, was cool on the ball and must learn not to  shoot straight at a goalkeeper, it upsets them. Makes them feel as if everyone is patronising them. He must understand his team mates are doing it wrong, you must aim the ball for the netting either side of their keeper.

Three: Solskjaer needs to get a winger and a forward. Ok Maybe a couple of wingers.

Four: Cornelius would have been over valued at 5 million let alone ten million and did someone say his fee could be twenty million by the time all the costs are added together? IN fairness he may prove me wrong, but he is far from doing that right now – and I hope he does prove me wrong.

Losing Rude Gestede was as unwise as buying Cornelius.

Anything good we can take from the Cardiff v West Ham game? Yep at least we don’t have to play with Andy Carrol a man who makes Cornelius look as sublime as Chelsea’s Hazzard on a good day.

The Arrival of the polite Boy Scout and the importance of defeating Newcastle

Newcastle, the FA Cup and I cannot quite believe this.

I am now a fan of a Premier league club who are successful. Thought I might mention that at the very off. Haven’t been able to say it before.

For the last 45 years I have watched City endure disappointment after disappointment with the occasional promotion from the lower leagues back into what I call the Second Division, but younger souls refer to as The Championship. Yeh I know it sounds better. The Championship! Division two sounds a bit, well a bit division 2ish.

But even in the championship, (sorry forgot the capital that makes it something it is not: The Championship),  I gazed up at the world of the Premier League as if it were some sort of heavenly day dream. Malky stepped us up to the big time and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer seems the sort of guy who will, like some young, smiling, courteous boy scout, help us up to the next level. I hope he doesn't come across too many old ladies trying to cross the hectic Cardiff Streets, they could prove a major distraction.

One nil down and cruising to defeat against a powerful Newcastle side at the bear pit called St James Park. Had to check it was still St James. Not the CoCola Ground, or the MacDonald’s Pitch or the Jordan Boobs Ground or some such bankable name. It is still St James Park. So we beat the Geordies, who of course emanate from anywhere around the globe other than the North East of England, on their famous ground.

We scored a disallowed goal – of course. Part of the excuse. We would have sighed, “If only they had let that goal stand. After all it was scored by that wonderful, much missed Mark Hudson. Bastards” But ‘they’ snatched that from us, and from Hudson’s dream return, and we still won. Mark Hudson is like having a slab of gold hidden in the family vault that people forget about until the door is prised open.

On the other hand Craig  Noone can be relied up to be totally anonymous, like the shy guy hiding in the kitchen at a party, and then totally brilliant, usually in the same match. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer wisely understood this so kept him anonymous for most of the match by securing him to the subs bench before introducing him for the two minutes of brilliance we have come to expect. Yep it worked. A 25 yard shot and we were back in the match. Why is it called  a sub’s bench btw, when they look the most comfortable chairs in the ground?

Then Campbell was unleashed to hit the post, offering Odemwingie an opportunity to miss  before scoring himself.

And we won. The last time we beat a premier league side was West Brom back in the mists of time – well mid December last year.

So I am a fan of a club that is successful in the premier league. Yes I know. All you pedants shouting that this is the FA cup, that folk don’t play their first teams in this second rate, tarnished competition, that no one cares …. I don’t give a monkeys. We beat Newcastle, we beat them at St James Park and a big thank you to the quietly, polite boy scout Mister Solskjaer I think I am going to enjoy this first year of your rolling contract.