Completely wrong against Cardiff and SOD needs to review this ahead of the Palace game or we will lose again. We do not have the defenders capable of stopping the likes of Bellamy, Campbell, Noone and Whittingham particularly when they are at home and in fine form, yet we set our stall out to defend. If you do this against a good team who are top of the league and are at home you will get beaten 99% of the time. When we did decide to have a go (between the 90-94 min) Cardiff did look a little shaken in defence, I just wonder why we left it so late to have a go, the changes in tactics needed to happen at about the 70 min mark, as there were far too many ineffectual performances from City players, and Kilkenny and Howard in particular looked very good in the very short time given, which bodes well for midweek. The midfield was VERY POOR yesterday, no ball retention and relied on giving the ball back to the defence or Heaton which just resulted in long balls forward which Cardiff gobbled up and then immediately re-applied the pressure, this for me was unforgiveable and surely could not have been the orders SOD gave them?? I would expect an overhaul against Palace, Anderson never got a sniff, as he was to busy doubling up on Noone who caused real problems down our right hand side. Marv was shocking, constantly moving the ball backwards or sideways, and offering Zero attacking impetus, neither did Kelly. At least Pearson grafted hard for the team, but again very little product to talk of. Up front Davies looked lively when in possession, which wasn't that often given the high amount of long balls played up, he played a great ball for Stead in the first half, and had a good shot late on, then inexplicably had the softest of finishes when in a great position, kinda summed up our performance really. Steady continues to be an enigma, he really reminds me of Lee Miller a likeable hard worker for the team, but just does not have the goals in him that a striker should, way too often he drifts out to the wing and is the guy crossing in to the centre, even the half wit Welsh commentator remarked on why it was that our tallest player was the one crossing the ball rather than the one receiving the cross. Not sure what Baldock's injury problems are, but I am beginning to wonder if he has the stomach for the fight, or is he happy to sit it out and if we go down walk away on the cheap, I may be being a bit harsh as I do not have all the facts, but his propensity to injuries is a little worrying. All up it was very poor fare yesterday, and more of that and we are most certainly headed out of the Championship. I hope SOD has a good long chat with some players today as it just wasn't good enough, and in truth we deserved to lose by a lot more than the odd goal in 3.
