If Russia is a metaphor for injury then we’re starting to look rather like Georgia!
By: Martyn |
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Well… we made it through to Round 3 of the Naff Fizzy Tasteless Lager Cup. And that’s a ruddy positive! As with everything in life though, there came a price. A mightily impressive looking Tony Capaldi limped off in the first half, followed by Darcy Blake. Even worse, Riccy Scimeca was the victim of a horrific challenge that saw him stretchered off in an almost lifeless state. It was very gulp-inducing and crowd-hushing indeed, and although I am now truly concerned about our midfield options with Gavin Rae out also, I can’t help but feel a tinge of sadness for Scimeca. A true pro, I’ll be amazed if he can salvage his career after what seemed like a certain ankle break. Best of luck though Riccy, and here’s hoping you get better soon son! Read the rest of this entry »
Category: Cardiff City News
It might well beggar belief, but Canaries prove to be more annoying than pigeons and seagulls!
By: Martyn | Add Comments
Although I confidently predicted a 2-0 cruise, it turned out to be more like a trip on the ill-fated Titanic. We got the exciting part and ride on the ship, but then it all went pear and iceberg-shaped. We rested on our laurels and paid the price for some Laurel & Hardy defending. Understandably I’m biased towards my own team, but on paper, perhaps Norwich were better value for their draw than I make out. They hit the post and Jamie Cureton did his best to aim a penalty into the Grange End rather than goal. Nevertheless, the spell I predicted from us after we had scored the first goal - the spell that is less magic than a squib in the Harry Potter series of books, and duller than the Teacup ride at the funfair - naturally surfaced as it always does. Read the rest of this entry »
Category: Cardiff City NewsHe may not be Vedder of Pearl Jam, the Champions League-winning Extra Time-scoring former Colchester United part-timer, nor our ex Chairman/Manager May… But hello anyway, Fulham reserve EJ!
By: Martyn | 2 Comments
In a week that has seen two of our players end up on losing Welsh national teams - Parry with the full team, Blake with the U21’s - here’s hoping that they rejoin a squad still buoyed and surfing the momentum wave provided by the unbeaten start to the season. Watching City-wise, this week sees us in action 3 times and I am eagerly awaiting taking my place in the crowd for every single one of them!
First up in the triple bill is tomorrow’s Championship encounter with Norwich City at Ninian Park. The Canaries, who haven’t exactly made the greatest start to the season are blighted by the problems I and every other sucker noted would hamper them before the season began: No Strikers = Not Enough Goals. As a result, we’ll get a result. Although Wes Hoolahan looks like he could cause us one or two problems, the start our full-backs McNaughton and Kennedy have had to the season fills me with almighty confidence that they’ll keep this particular threat sealed in a Tupperware container at the bottom of the rucksack. Read the rest of this entry »
Category: Cardiff City NewsHave you heard the one about the Hungarian at the Cobblers?
By: Martyn | 2 Comments
No me neither as such a joke doesn’t exist, but it acts as an apt headline to the news that we’ve signed a Hungarian centre-back from Northampton Town. I’m really trying my utmost to avoid using a pun involving our club being peckish and… yeah, you get the drift. So this, presumably, is the deal that fills the Netherlands-sized hole left in our defence by Celtic’s Loovens signing. If football was as simple as judging ability and filling gaps by the size of the country’s land mass, then we’d have twice the player of Loovens in Gyepes as Hungary is a fair bit larger than the orange third of Benelux. Sadly, football operates in a fairly more credible and harsh reality so it really will have to be a case of wait and see. Maybe we could save time spending money on new gambles and pay a scientist to clone all of our most talented players! A simulacrum may distort passport and birthland matters, but at least a few of them would keep our team together! Anyhow, you really can view this new signing in two ways: Read the rest of this entry »
Category: Cardiff City NewsPerhaps we ought to sign Cher, she was strong enough.
By: Martyn | 2 Comments
As Mark E Smith once said of the current music scene, the lump of bread dipped ravenously and plentifully into yoof of today chutney: “God help us if there’s a war.” Roger Johnson has chosen to come out and attack City fans for daring to chant at manager Dave Jones during Saturday’s encounter with Doncaster. The chants in question were the four-word-ditty, ‘Jonesy, sort it out’, and came after the team had put on an hour’s performance that dragged longer than doing a multitude of mundane household chores. Is the lanky centre-back for real!? As one of the 2000 or so fans who made the five hour trip up to Yorkshire (how many other teams in the Premier League, let alone this division would take that many fans to a game against one of the league’s lesser lights?), such chants were fully justified. They were in no way uncalled for, and in no way were they vicious, insulting, irrelevant or clueless. On the other hand, the team were insulting (to the fans who had paid good money to see the game), irrelevant (in terms of making an impact) and clueless (in the hour’s play which preceded the chanting). The delicate XI in the blue and yellow shirts weren’t exactly vicious mind… Read the rest of this entry »
Category: Cardiff City NewsCity use (Keep)moat to stave off attacks to Heaton’s castle but forget and fail to take Don’s King in the process.
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So it continues: The last time City tasted defeat was in the FA Cup final. Our 100% start to the season - continuing a successfully undefeated pre-season - was maintained yesterday with a draw at lowly but plucky (patronising and condescending: Why the hell not?) Doncaster Rovers. After 5 rather hungover, mundane, irritable and unmemorable hours on the road getting to the damn venue itself; hours spent reading every Fleet Street offering cover-to-cover, predicting scores for the games in every division that was humanely possible, and praying to every God, deity and holy being that Darren Purse wouldn’t chuck deodorant cans on the fire like he normally does, the coach journey was palpably more pleasurable on the way back after yet another last minute equalizer from the boys in blue! Read the rest of this entry »
Category: Cardiff City NewsThe earlier than expected Scout Post and defensive dilemmatic deficiencies
By: Martyn | 2 Comments
Lo and behold, it looks as if we’ve finally made efforts to sort out the woeful scouting system inadequacies! The appointment of Roger Smith is a leap in the right direction and shows that the club is starting to realise that ambitious actions can speaker louder than phony words. Although the examples of Smith’s coups (Reyes and Baptista Finest Moments in an Arsenal Shirt DVD, anyone?) provided in the linked article made me grimace, highlighting the chap’s most famous and sensational name-on-paper spottings possibly overlooks some of his lesser tips that wouldn’t give the article as clean a sheen. Why settle for a petite and more attractive 32B figure when you can have a Zoo-endorsed 36GG chumbawamba?! Chugging and cat-calls all round!
To be frank (whom I can’t literally be save for changing my name by deed poll), this hiring is long overdue and getting someone in to help with transfer procedures is a matter I’ve venomously rattled on my keyboard about previously. I know it’s only normally paedophiles who get this excited over scouts (oof, too risqué? Private Eye probably isn’t for you in that case!) but a man with Smith’s pedigree, experience and reputation joining our staff is not to be scoffed at. Naturally, I still fully conclude that a Sporting Director is much-required, but this is a start and one would sincerely hope the shape of things to come. Maybe the rebuilding and overhaul of the infrastructure that Keith Harris is supposedly on board to undertake has defied the signal failures and leaves on the track to get underway. Keep rolling that snowball and it’ll get bigger and more powerful! Read the rest of this entry »
Category: Cardiff City NewsSMERSH/SPECTRE rejoice as Bond meets an end stickier than a sapling…
By: Martyn | Add Comments
Naff lager, naff cup. I’m sure Chester fans will concur with me at the very least. Seriously, if anyone, anywhere lists this competition as their absolute favourite please make yourself known. Now now, don’t all rush at once… this isn’t the opening of a Primark flagship store y’know! As was entirely appropriate to a competition of such minimal stature, interest and effort, the game at the Fitness First stadium placed quality second (in the second half, anyway). Disconcerting aside, Kevin Bond’s AFC Bournemouth were the team eliminated, and we live to fight another day (perhaps an apt advertising slogan for a competition sponsored by the drink of louts UK-wide!).
No Bourne Supremacy
Darren Anderton appears about as often as Soviet Union submarines surfaced on US waters during the Cold War. Alas, play last night he did, and in the second half we allowed him to get on the ball more often than perhaps we should have. I know he’s the oft-cited key Bournemouth man as he’s the only one anybody knows. Regardless, he has played at the very highest level and we should have cut the supply to him more readily than we did. McPhail and Rae must be more ruthless in their suffocation of the opposition’s go-to guy. Others seemingly worth of mention for the Cherries last night (both of whom conforming to their rather unflattering stereotypes in the process) were perennial dodgy ‘keeper Shwan Jalal, and Jo Kuffour, who seems to score 9 or so brilliant goals a season and then proceeds to do naff-all for the rest of it. Read the rest of this entry »
Category: Cardiff City NewsGod may have blessed us with Banoffee pie, Newcy Brown, Elvis, and The Legend of Zelda series of games, but he only truly peaked with the creation of last minute winners!
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Every single win, be it a 31-0 thrashing or a jammy, undeserved sucker punch steal is rewarded with exactly the same prize: 3 points. Such logic applies in all aspects of life: If you work 80 hour weeks for 20 years before you finally earn your fortune, Sod’s Law dictates that you’ll still end up financially equal to someone who only ventures from the sofa once a week to buy a (jackpot winning) lottery ticket. By no means was the performance today a disaster but then by no means was it ever entirely convincing. The fixture was played in the kind of driving rain that reduces even the most mild-mannered into a frenzied swearing fiend. Our game was not fluent in any sense of the word, bitty being a more appropriate descriptive term. However we picked up more of the pieces than Soton did so you could straightforwardly make a case for the win being warranted. That quarterly trip to the offy to enter the Lotto might just pay off come the end of the campaign when the numbers are totted up so its a sly grin that shapes my lips this evening. Here’s how I felt the 13 City players involved fared today, grouped under labels representing the good and bad of the chocolate world! Read the rest of this entry »
Category: Cardiff City NewsIf you’re having girl problems I feel bad for you son/I got 99 problems/But these ain’t ‘em!
By: Martyn | Add Comments
Reading back through my own posts I’ve noticed that there is a rather torrid malodorous stench of defeatism, regret, pessimism and kismet-submission. In fact some of my reportage on the club has been more negative than finding out that you are HIV Positive. Sure, there are still/have been far too many inexcusable aspects and issues docked in the club’s immune system like a debilitating virus. But there comes a time when one must climb out of the pit of despair and focus on jumping into the multi-coloured ball-pit of joyous buoyancy! So… dismayed with my own disillusion for a team I love so much that it borders on the disturbing, I contemplated and conjured 10 things that are great about Cardiff City FC at this moment in time. The most fulfilling thing about compiling such a list is not just that I found it so easy - which is always a healthy sign - but the fact that when you decide to sample life on the other side of the fence you discover that optimism truly is damn infectious! Hereto, parity is restored!
(1). We have a minimum of 8 players that would breeze their way straight into the first XI of every team in this league. McPhail, Johnson, Loovens, McNaughton, Scimeca, McCormack, Parry and Ledley. The majority of these have been secured on long-term deals so should a sale be initiated, we’ll end up with more notes than an over-prepared after-dinner speaker! For the time being and foreseeable future, it’s great to enjoy watching players of this calibre represent our club. Read the rest of this entry »
Category: Cardiff City News
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