Watched this at home on the television and have to say I'm a little bit dissapointed- Not with the scoreline, I think 1-0 against such a strong team is fantastic, and something we should not take for granted but there are a few things that really got under my skin tonight. 1.) Craig Bellamy- The attitude towards his existence on the pitch was comical at times, "oh - we have a premiership class player on the pitch, oh oh! He's in space in a good position, he's demanding the ball... ok so I'll just LOB THE BALL 40 YARDS FORWARD". This annoyed me. I'm not saying we should have fed every single move through Mr Bellamy, but it seemed as though we didn't even know he existed. In the second half I think he had the ball twice. 2.) Aforementioned lobbing of the ball forward. When I heard we had signed Helgusson, I thought fantastic- a player who can win the odd aerial challenge. I didn't expect to see every single attacking movement occur in the air- towards his head. Once or twice is fine, but when you have midfield players like Bellamy, Whittingham, Gunnarsson, Mutch and Cowie, why boot the ball forward. No disprespect to Huddersfield but I thought we would have have a better game if we had kept the ball on the floor and attempted to play football against their midfield. 3.) Peter Whittingham. Who thought it was a good idea to stick him in defence? Really? I'm all for letting him drop deep and play silky passes (there were a few lovely ones across field) but I think he was far too deep today. In conclusion, we were lucky to persist and be rewarded with a win today. I think the referee missed a blatant penalty on Helgusson, but I can't moan about that. HOWEVER- I kept telling myself not to get too wound up. Craig has surely only had one training session with the lads, so they cant be expected to be playing like they can read eachothers minds. Also Huddersfield were fantastic - though a bit physical- in defence and credit must be given for that. I thought it was a lucky three points, and I am very pleased with them- I would have liked to have seen a more traditional passing Cardiff playing to their true strengths!
Yes, a good three points, no thanks to the most disgraceful exhibition I have seen from a referee in years. Even for the goal he spent several seconds looking long and hard at the linesman for any excuse to disallow it. I think Mr. East should concentrate more on learning the rules of football rather than topping up his tan. What a muppett!!! As to our performance I agree with everything Uni said. I can only assume Grayson watched a number of videos of us in the second half of last season when we faltered every time against sides who put up 2 banks of four and chased down everything. His tactics nearly worked and Huddersfield stuck well to their guns. They will be a very tough side to beat. Just realised Rhodes didn't play - thought their no. 9 was quiet. Thank heaven for David Marshall who had one of his best games for us.
Didn't want to come out too hard on the ref, but I'm obviously not the only person who thought he had a bit of a bad game. (Don't want to sound like the typical biased fan-but I'm sure some Huddersfield fans will agree with me!) And yes- Marshy pulled out some of the stops of his life- what a game for him, he's made it very difficult for Joe Lewis!
I thought they were excellent defensively, they out worked us all over the pitch. Both their full backs were quick and delt with cb and cowie fairly easily. Cowie can't play right wing against such a quick lb again IMO. 2nd half when he beat the lb to the ball knocked it 8 yards past him and 'sprinted' after it, the lb committed, missed, turned, recovered and still beat Don to the ball with a yard to spare! Our midfield 3 never managed to move the ball quickly or accurately enough to take the legs out of their very enthusiastic pressing. I think mason would have provided better movement than hh to give them options. That's not to say I thought hh played poorly on what was very limited service. Bellers, much, hh looked like they'd never really played together, I'm sure that will improve though. On a thread a few weeks ago someone said we needed better full backs, I thought their rb was excellent and someone that quick and energetic would really add to our back 4 on either side. Biggest positive was playing to the end and finding a way to escape from that match with the 3 points, they deserved something from the game in terms of effort and football played, but there was real justice that they conceded in injury time being as they'd feigned injury twice in an attempt to slow the game and waste time.
simple I went full of excitement and left actually quite bored and thanking god for Marshall easy 2-1 win for Hudders if he had not been in form tonight.
A : Craig Bellamy - given service like he head today he'll be wondering what he's doing here. (Maybe he should have talked to Kenny Miller about the service he got last year). It's going to be difficult for Bellamy to look like a good player if this is the way we choose to play. B : We spent a lot of last year hoofing the ball forward (again, ask Kenny Miller about this). C : The idea of playing Whitts in such a deep role is not a new one. Dave Jones did it with some success. We do need a link between the midfield and attack, not just a huge gap between them (which is why the ball ends up being booted 40 - 50 yards). Overall: a poor display with huge open spaces between our defence and attack when we tried to play the ball out of defence. Bellamy in the game very little. Mutch looks a good player. We didn't look like much of a 'team' tonight, but we stuck at it and Marshall secured the three points for us with several great saves. No cutting edge (till Mason came on), we don't look like scoring, and (worryingly) we haven't got a 20 goal striker waiting in the wings. After this we can only play better ... surely?
A win is a win. We will get better as the season progresses, but I don't think we are as good as some suggest we are and autos will be a big ask. Still, there is a long long way to go Malky has to look at how Bellamy and Whitts are used because it was pretty shambolic yesterday. Last year we were hard to beat, but as we know, we drew too often. If we can start to get a few late winners, we can have a look at the top 5 I think.
All good points. I predicted that line up as Malky is such a big fan of Don Cowie. It was the wrong decision. Mason or Conway should have started. What I cant understand is why it took around the 78th minute for a change. We had a lot of quality on the bench. The players on the pitch were not performing. Sorry Malky ive been a big supporter of yours but I cant understand you not making changes last night far earlier. Youve got the players use them. Loads of teams are going to be like Huddersfield and close us down , happy to play for a draw and counter. Lots of better teams too. Our passing and movement needs to be quicker and we need pace in the wide right position Cowie is a good player. However along with Ralls and Kiss should be challenging Whitts , Gunnarson and Mutch for a position in the middle 3. 3 points though. However the players and Malky have to improve. Im sure they will!!!
A good result to start the season. I was looking at the BBC match page though, and noticed the attendance. Do you think the shirt/re-branding business affected the crowd turn out? According to the BBC, it was only 21,127 which is more than 21% empty (based on a capacity of 26,826 on wiki). For a Friday night first game to a new campaign with lots of new signings, were you expecting more or is this the anticipated backlash to the re-branding?
We had the attendance on french tv as 23000+ .....................21,000+ still nt bad for a rainy night when game on sky ,even some prem team struggle to get that playing non top six teams ? ..................;O)
I thought starting without Mason was a particularly negative start. Yes, a win's a win but it was more of the same. i.e last year. Seen it all before. We need to shape up. Expectation is high — and so it bloody should be. Money spent, big 'committment' to the club etc. Looking forward to seeing Kim-bo, I have to say. But I really feel we need another left back before the end of the month. Poor distribution. Having said all that, they kept at it and got the win.
The weather was bad, it was on sky and we were playing Huddersfield which is hardly one of the seasons must see championship fixtures
I thought the crowd would be around that. The re-branding had little effect - obviously some as there have been ST refunds. Id say those not going because of rebranding would have been a couple of hundred. 21% ? rememeber the segregation loss , away end over a 1000 short. 21,000 plus for a live match on Sky on a very wet night was what I expected. Weather and Sky had more impact then rebranding in my opinion.
Sensible answer to an obvious WUM attempt. As far as the game was concerned which is what the thread is about before our jack friend tried to take it off course, I have to say we've seen it so many times before. Long ball tactics against a side set up to frustrate and close us down. We seem unable to pass our way out of defence and initiate attacking oportunities from inside the last third of the pitch. Very average game but 3 points in the bin. With the centre field players now at Malky's disposal, we must improve.
I have been over here for a bit of wumming in the past, but this was a genuine post. The thread was "after match thoughts". I was just asking the question about whether numbers were down because of politics or simply that a rainy Friday night against Huddersfield isn't much fun when it's on Sky. Hilts response was the one I was after. You guys were there and better able to gauge feelings.
A lucky win in the end but wow that was close, well played marsh i say, he played a blinder, MM needs to get the team playing on the floor more like last season as he wont be so lucky next time....Had £10 on cardiff so cant complain doubling my money....3pts in the bag lucky or not...
another season of obsession. FFS they have a thread obsessing about our win with 40 comments, their one discussing their first match against QPR has marginally more, 51 at the time of writing. most would rather discuss us than them!! NOTHING CHANGES....
A win is a win, doesn't have to be pretty or even remotely convincing - it's still 3 points and top of the league! (for a few more hours anyway )
i love the word LUCK its what makes dreams come true http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=p5SBsAL6Q1Y im not sure i`d be so calm if my luck came in mind
