Generic weak pun about dodging a dagger to the ticker

By: Martyn | August 12th, 2009

City beat Dagenham & Redbridge 3-1 in the League Cup on a pleasant summer’s evening yesterday, but in truth it was a match about as entertaining as the prospect of a party for International Leprosy Day. And keeping with the Hanson’s Disease theme, the majority of blokes in blue shirts played with the mentality that this was a game as pointless as a leper lathering daily with a pot of Dove. The Daggers’ stereotypical anti-cultured League Two formation of flat back 4’s behind the strikers meant that even McPhail was given the time and room to look alright in the one zone, whilst Whittingham came infield to operate majestically in the other free bit of field behind the strikers. Dave Jones fielded a strong XI, despite this scheduled international week subtracting 5 years from the lives of upper-echelon Football League managers. Enckelman was in goal, while Quinn and Capaldi stood guarding the corner flags. Hudson and Gerrard were the centre-backs, with McPhail and Rae in front of them. Whittingham and Comminges were instructed to get chalk on their boots and Chopra/Bothroyd resumed their one drops/one sticks forward partnership.

City were in control for the bulk of this encounter and created numerous opportunities. Bar one scuffle between Chopra and Bothroyd over who would have the opportunity to take a spot-kick and thus earn the honour of Tannoy Man Ali bellowing his name and number for all to hear, one can speak in cliché and superficially chirp that it was mission accomplished: backside-slaps and Carling’s all round! Two games played, top of the league, seven goals scored, and the opportunity once again to be a ball in the bag that gets fondled by someone like Ray Parlour. Just please don’t draw us against the Swans this time (see below: phew)!

Nevertheless, although two of the goals were well-taken (Rae, long-range, and Whittingham, one-two/shimmy/placed)- and one of them re-taken, from the spot – our finishing was abject and the defence still looks dodgy. This was epitomised in the way that the freshly-linked-with-us and talented (but tactically weak) Solomon Taiwo was able to cross for Josh Scott to finish. Why Scott was allowed to diagonally run so freely in order to net is a debate that one hopes Dave Jones raised with his centre-backs in the dressing room post-match. To elaborate on my negative impressions of Hudson, he just seems like an accident waiting to happen. The way he charges into situations with about as much regard for having a coherent plan as Neighbours has for credibility; the way he attempts back-passes so nonchalantly without bothering to shift his neck 90° for a glance; the way he doesn’t seem able to command his colleagues in clearing set-piece situations. He’s as uncomfortable playing the role of footballer as Paul Newman (Or Lippi…) was playing Lew Harper. He looks right, he sounds right, maybe he is right.. but the execution is horribly miscued.

Moving on to his sparring partner, and former-Saddler Anthony Gerrard doesn’t strike me as being capable enough for the second tier of English football either. Fundamentally, he has no pace, and given the amount of times he found himself drawn upfield when Benson began to drift in search of the ball, it makes me worry for when Steve’s cousin comes up against better counter-attacking teams and speed merchants like Sean Scannell or Marvin Emnes. Paul Quinn meanwhile just reminds me of a cross between Rhys Weston and Mark Kennedy. He spends the majority of his time either marking too tightly or giving the ball away with bizarre attempts at decision-making.

Another way in which the City defence looked somewhat suspect was in their defending of corner kicks. Every single time, Dagenham hit them high and looping to the back post where a knockdown was just too easy for one of their lanky players like Will Antwi. This was because Cardiff kept finding themselves sucked in to narrowly. Why they (a). attempted this in the first place and (b). persisted with it when it was clear this was an area in which we were being ransacked remains a mystery. This must be rectified as soon as possible because the conceding of goal from set-plays is what irks us fans the most. It is the one passage of play where players get time to find their correct position in the system and as such, the defence should come out on top 9 times out of 10 (no matter how Beckham-esque the delivery). Dave Jones – a former defender by trade – would be shunning his responsiblities if he doesn’t sort this nonsense out pronto.

The introduction of Aaron Wildig was the only look at a young gun that City fans were treated to. He slotted in at right midfield and well, despite being fed what seemed like every time we got the ball, didn’t make much of an impression. I know that it’s harsh to be critical of a youngster entering the unforgiving world of professional football, but the game was so stretched and his colleagues tried so hard to settle him in that you were left wanting something. It was a performance reminiscent of those of Darcy Blake – a headless chicken with no ounce of technical ability or ball control, but the fans will love the Passion™. You gotta love that British fan mindset. Running about ceaselessly and needlessly = what we want! Ivica Olic and Dirk Kuyt have made decent careers out of doing this mind, so maybe there’s something in it.

The visitors, a team half-based in a place with an aversion to bridges in anything but one particular shade, lined up with former Welsh international ‘keeper Tony Roberts: he is a strange mix between archetypal fat pub team peeling-post-tender and modern-day metrosexual. Either way, I imagine he made an appearance in the club bar after the game with a deep-plunging v-neck tee that reveals a freshly waxed chest and bulging Maori-tattoo resplendent quintceps. His kicking was atrocious and offered his team nothing bar fruitless chases and lost possession. It didn’t even gain Dagenham & Redbridge much territory either. The defence was a joke: skinned far too easily, pulled out of position in a way that makes the word stray seem appropriated incorrectly for a dogs home in comparison, and were maybe even just 4 random blokes hauled in when the team made a stop at a service station Burger King on the minibus down.

To be fair, they gained some momentum down the flanks – in spite of removing the impressive Danny Green from play – upon scoring and forced us into retreating, making errors and having to work a lot harder than we had been. Ok, so they only had us worryingly pegged back for like ten minutes – attacking the Quinn/Wildig side with consummate ease – but against the kind of lower calibre opposition they face on a weekly basis prolonged pressure such as this may see them fare well in the division. The one problem was that they were so slow to get back into their positions once they’d all surged towards the City goal that we were able to counter-attack in relative tranquillity against their Curly-Wurly of a set-up.

So that was that. Home-time for the hardcore 5k, Subway mobbing us perceived hungry-punters and weighing my pockets down with piss-poor deal-vouchers, and a homeward-bound Journey Lite compared to the usual rigmarole of leaving Leckwith. The stadium still doesn’t feel like home just yet, but it’s very neat and pretty in its own sort of conservative manner. I imagine it’ll be the kind of venue that I’d never use the lexeme love for, but may come to refer to it as somewhere that I like.
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p.s. Saturday’s victory. There’s little for me to add. It was as comprehensive as it was pleasing, but sadly I can’t see us registering a similar scoreline again during the season. We won’t be afforded that much time and space every week, nor will we come up against a team tipped for relegation with good reason each game. Caution must be advised with the defence’s unreliability and the fact that Scunny dominated proceedings early on and should really have scored. But I don’t want to end on a sour note. 4-0 is resounding after all, and one can safely say that league football certainly made a welcome return in this fan’s eyes (bar the BBC’s coverage of the divisions later on. Utterly shambolic)

p.p.s. Surely it’s all too good to be true? Surely?! My bet is that it’s all just some Nigerian e-mail scam and Ridders has fallen for it hook, line and sinker like Danny Wallace in Yes Man.

p.p.p.s. It’s a return for DJ’s predecessor in round two of the Carling Cup, as Bristol Rovers arrive at the Cardiff City Stadium for their debut precisely two days after city rivals Bristol City get to see it. Two Severnside rival clashes in the space of three days might be a bit taxing on the players, but it’ll give the stadium a lift with two healthy away fan contingents raising revenue, the football’s tempo and crowd involvement. Lennie Lawrence may not be the manager at Rovers, but its clear he still wields influence on all matters squad related in his Director of Football capacity. There’ll be one player making a return, and that’s CB Byron Anthony. Fellow former-Bluebird (LB) Joe Jacobson has recently departed for pastures new (Oldham Athletic), so there’ll be no homecoming for him just yet. So after evading murder weapons in the first round, doing battle with Pirates in the second, can City make it to the third round and continue this flirtation with villainy by pairing with some Red Devils?