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.”
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| 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!
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| 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.
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