Derby Beat Cardiff by Cheating ... they know what they are doing. Mister Tan has saved enough money from cost cutting to buy a proper manager

Since Russell Slade took over I have been saying we are a mediocre side in a mediocre championship. I have changed my mind. We are now a poor, gutless, directionless side in a relegation squabble.

We now have to win just about every home and away matches to get into the top 6 and we are a long way from drawing matches.

The reason it gets worse every week is that the players and the crowd have lost confidence in the manager. We know we cannot compete with sides like Derby who actually play a stylish possession and passing game. It is the sort of game we could play. We have the quality players who can pass and move ….except they don’t.

Honestly, the long ball game doesn’t work. Believe me. it gives away possession and then brings us under pressure.  Russell has been trying it since he arrived and the results are grow more and more  shabby. One win in 8 games. When you think of the fa cup fixture as being against a fellow championship side, Reading, then you can say it is one win in 9 championship fixtures. That is not relegation zone form that is bottom of the league form.

Oh yeh the game … well city showed a little more bite and determination, which was appreciated. Derby were given a penalty for reasons that even mystified them. Moore saved brilliantly to give City fans the first genuine cheer in eons. Their opening goal was unlucky with the ball touching Malone’s outstretched foot with just enough energy to miraculously make it spin slowly out of reach of the diving keeper. Just before half time the nail was thumped into the coffin with a far post header.

The second half showed some spirit but a complete lack of ideas. What do city players do on the training grounds? They must practice the long ball so why don’t they know what to do when they play it?

Ok here we go. I take no delight in saying any of this. Russell Slade may just be merely  incompetent in the lower leagues, (remember he was about to be sacked by Orient after a dreadful run of results) but in a higher league he is shamefully exposed as tactically inadequate. Game after game we are outplayed.

While Derby pass and move City get trapped and hoof. 

While Derby know where everyone is going to be City look as lost as someone arriving in the Cardiff city centre and trying to follow the mystifying road signs.

While Derby have a few opportunities to score City have just one.

While Derby play their best players City have Manga, Fabio, Adeyemi, Ralls and Kenwynne Jones warming the bench.

Slade is right in that we need more bite but we also need a little class too. How can you win matches with your best players sitting on the bench while reading the South Wales Echo -or whatever the subs do when waiting to come on.  I hope they don’t watch the match like the rest of us.

Slade must go. We need a professional in straight away. Maybe Russell Slade will learn the game at this level before the end of the season but we no longer have the luxury of waiting for him to master the basic aspects of the game. A month on from now surely we will be in the whirlpool of the relegation zone and then it will be too late. That it is a loathsome place to find yourself where everything always goes wrong.

I know I am repeating myself but please remember Neil Lennon, yes that Neil Lennon, wanted the job!

Tan may cut the players wages, and God knows they deserve to have their wages cut, but he must find the money to tempt someone who can do the job and motivate these players –unless it is already too late.

Middlesbrough, Private Frazer, Jimmy Scholar, waking from a dream into a nightmare.

I don’t know if Private Frazer from dad’s Army was a football pundit but he would have had only thing to say about Cardiff City right now.

“We’re all doomed, Captain Mainwaring. Doomed.”

Yep!

 Don’t give me any of this nonsense about we are too good to go down. We certainly have classy ball playing players. Footballers who can win matches. But they aren’t. We cannot even get the best part of possession.

I have been here before. Famously with the same Jimmy Scholar side that challenged for promotion for the top tier in the 1971 season but just missing relegation the next. The same players who beat Real Madrid, gave top European sides like Hamburg a fright struggled the following season against the likes of Swindon and Huddersfield.

 Confidence evaporates. Players know they will lose. The crowd know we will lose. It is a quagmire.

That is where we are now, up to our eyeballs.

Before the match the Middlesbrough manager, Aitor Karanka, warned his players against complacency. That’s what it has come to. We have moved through the gears to dead stop. We are now the team that the top sides consider no more than a banana skin.

People will blame Russell Slade, the current poor sod holding the baton, but Ole Gunnar shares responsibility too. At no time this season have city been the sum of their parts, no time. Oh sure we have seen moments, even entire halves, but generally we have been over run in the middle of the park and constantly chasing to stand still.

Enough unkind words has been written on Russell Slade’s footballing nouse and the apparent lack of his famous man management skills we were all told about.

Today against Middlesbrough surely he should have played Declan John on the left. That would put Brayford back to right back where he is so effective. Slade’s 4-4-2 in attack falling into a 4-5-1 was fine but once Middlesbrough started playing wide we looked vulnerable because we had the left/right backs in the wrong places..

And how come Graham MacNaughton still bides his time at Bolton? If City needs a right back then there he is!

A wonderful RIGHT BACK(!) if anyone is looking for one- with the wrong shirt.

If we are going to get points away then places like Bournemouth, Norwich and Middlesbrough would always be the toughest.

Yet … and yet … at the start of the season the bookmakers looked at the Cardiff squad and made them favourites for promotion.

In truth we are, as I have been saying for a while, a mediocre team in a mediocre championship.

By all means give Russell a chance to prove himself but when do we say enough is enough? February? By when we could be just outside the relegation zone? When it is too late for a new manager to bring in his own players?

To think that Neil Lennon wanted the job, Tony Pulis was available and lives a bus ride’s distance from the Cardiff City Stadium.

What was Vincent Tan thinking? He employed a manager who was about to be sacked from a team in the lower leagues. A team whose points and position were even worse than Cardiff’s under Ole Gunnar Solskjaer. Was this really a time to take such a massive risk? Who advised Tan? How could he pick Slade out from all the other managers available  - and those with football clubs?

It would be nice to know the thinking behind the move.

Right now we are losing games and we will need to run fast just to hold a middle of the table spot.

Did we really sell Mats Daehli? Surely that was a nightmare. The most talented lad we have seen since Ramsey, perhaps the only bright spot from Ole’s disappointing reign has vanished. It is as if we have woken up form a dream. A player some managers might build a team around is no longer even in the squad.

Prove me wrong Russell, please.

Blue shirts, Fulham, Saddam Hussein and more urinals.

 

The fans applauded the players and the players applauded the fans. 

Mehmet Dalman and Ken Choo walked around the ground applauding the fans and the fans 

applauded Mehmet Dalman and Ken Choo for walking around the gorund. 

Russell Slade applauded the fans and the fans applauded Russell Slade.

The fans applauded themsleves and then reciprocated the gesture.

If Saddam Hussein had walked on to the pitch he would have got a round of applause and no doubt returned the applause.

It was that sort of day. 

Well it is not every day fans get their club back. I know it is not usual for blokes to get so worked up about the colour of the shirt they wear but then this is football. Tribal, divisive, us and them. And we are Blue. In fact, apparently, we will always be blue. 

By the start of this season I was beginning to think I would never hear the ‘Bluebirds, Bluebirds’ anthem again. The song echoes across the ghost of the Ninian Park Stadium, around the disembodied bob bank and billows at the back of mind. ‘Bluebirds – Bluebirds.’

Today it was back at the front of my mind. It boomed about the stadium, sung with gusto and relish by fans for whom Christmas came late but was no worse for that.

Talking of relish, if city continue to get gates this size they will have to increase the number of concessions below the stands else no one will get their burgers and relish on time. I don’t know if it was the cold, the excitement of the colour change or Cardiff still being 1-0 up at half time but you could barely get into the gents to take a wee. More beer stalls and more urinals  - else, I guess, no beer stalls and keep the same number of urinals. Something has to give and it could be my bladder.

Oh yeh, the game. Sorry, almost forgot.

Well, erm, better. I know I should be full of complimentary, flowery adjectives on this momentous day in the second decade of this wondrous century but all I saw was a visible improvement in the performance, nothing more. This is not the finished article.

Morrison scored in the 14^th minute and we tried to think of a Morrison song. There isnt one. I think we need to give that lapse in the hymn book some thought. 

Wth Fulham enjoying rejuvenation under Welshman Kit Symons you waited for their equaliser - and then their match winner. In fact as they picked up the pace in the final fifteen minutes that seemed the most likely result. Yet we somehow kept a clean sheet, also a wondrous event, and amazingly didn’t let a single goal lead slip away from us. When was the last time that happened? For that I say kudos to the players. We can build on that. That is a sea change in the expected way city play.

Some idiot on the radio on the way home said that Fulham were an average side. He should look at the table. They have won 5 of the last ten games before arriving at Cardiff on this extraordinary day. And you could see why. Ross McCormack is back to his busy-bee best, unlucky not to put a curling shot away in the first half.

But …no I mean BUT!!!, but Cardiff stuck to it. We gave the ball away far less than usual and when we had the ball there seemed to be options. Nice one Whitts, Adeyemi and Gunnarson. I like that set up. They can all play football, can all tackle and all have what it takes upstairs. Maybe when Pilkington returns we should be thinking of a 5 man midfield with a lone striker so that this trio can remain. All these midfielders can score so a single striker option should work. They seem to work together as well as any famous trio, the Musketeers, The Three Tenors or the Three Stooges. If Russell can find a way to keep them and put Pilkington on the wing opposite Noone then all he would need is a single classic number nine.

Noone sparkled, always dangerous. Fabulous athlete.

New lad Malone did a great deal well, but at times the left hand side of defence was as scarily deserted as when Fabio and Declan John play. He clearly has skill, wants to impress and has a knowing quality about him. Interesting that John not Fabio was brought on to replace him in the second half.

Simon Moore was pretty much untested because the defence seemed to have a better idea of closing down and the midfield worked harder to protect the defenders. It looks as though Russell has been working his lads hard over Christmas. What Moore did he did well including an important second half save.

Strikers. Hmmm. Don’t know. No one shone. LeFondre and Kenwynne are not delivering. Too early to commit myself about Alex Ravell. He seemed to get better as the match progressed but doesn’t seem to possess a whole lot of class. Please prove me wrong Alex or at least stick the ball into the net a few times. What I liked about him was how he shouted to other players about where he wanted the ball. So let us say there is promise.

Promotion? We are 11^th on 34 points. Watford, the sixth placed play-off side have 41 points. So do-able. Maybe. But we need other teams to drop points. The great thing about the Championship this season is that it isn’t - great that is. It is mediocre. The top side Bournemouth seem to have the best manager but are running with players largely from a division below, whilst City are running with players largely from a division above.

So I expect teams to drop points and the championship is famous for teams coming through on the inside. It could be Cardiff. The biggest question mark hangs over Russell Slade’s peaked cap. Has he got what it takes to craft these players into a side that is difficult to beat yet still capable of grabbing important goals.

Fulham was a landmark game, not because of the shirts but because it shows we can keep a clean sheet and hang onto a lead. After all that is all we need to do to get promoted.