I'm more than happy with a draw and a win in our last two away games and I hope that with Simms playing a part we can continue this good form this afternoon...
I could watch our first goal against Huddersfield again and again as it was almost as good as the one against Reading. We hadn't scored goals like these for a very long time. Amad and Ba are looking better with every game and you can see that the former is going to get more than a few goals for us. Cardiff are currently six places below us and they've lost four out of their last five games. They've had difficulty scoring as they've only managed to do so fourteen times in eighteen matches. Now that Wright has returned to our defence things are looking more solid at the back. A win could take us a place or three up the table and I reckon we're going to win again today. My match prediction is 3-0.
When I got the team-news around 2.15, there were four changes from Wednesday’s starting line-up and by and large I was pleased with them. Neil, Ba, Clarke and Simms were in while Embleton, Evans, Dajaku and Pritchard were out. Dajaku wasn’t even on the bench but the other three were. It was a young side but a one with flair and I felt more confident about my 3-0 prediction.
When I tuned in to SAFSEE, there was the traditional two minutes’ silence for Remembrance Day and then we were down to business. Unlike Wednesday evening the weather was dry. We won the first corner in the fourth minute after a good run from Clarke but following a Neil mistake this only led to a fast break from Cardiff and we were lucky not to concede. There were one or two more stray passes in the next five minutes or so and we needed to tighten up. Things didn’t get better and in the twelfth minute we conceded a penalty when Batth fouled Philogene. Patterson guessed correctly and dived to his right to punch away Ralls’s spot-kick so we could breathe again. I hoped that would give us the kick up the arse we needed after a wobbly start. Amad had a shot blocked and we soon won our second corner but it came to nothing, as usual. We were still giving the ball away far too much and this contributed to it being a very open game. Benno said that Mowbray must be tearing his hair out. Philogene had a shot on target in the twenty-fifth minute but Patterson had it covered.
Our youthful midfield wasn’t working out well at all as we seemed to be wide open and Benno suggested we get Evans on before too long. We conceded two corners in quick succession and were living dangerously but getting away with it. We certainly hadn’t done much attacking for a good while and I had the feeling we’d go behind before long. Neil joined Batth in referee Andy Davies’s book. Not conceding before the break was looking like a good achievement. We won our third corner but Cardiff quickly got it away and we were nearly caught out from our own set-piece. Harris missed a good chance for them when he put it wide after being allowed too much space. Mowbray was shouting instructions and Ba moved over to the right. I kept looking at the time hoping that the whistle would blow very soon. The dramatic changes had clearly not worked at all as several players didn’t seem to know what they were supposed to be doing so there would surely be further changes very soon. O’Nien was yellow-carded in stoppage-time thus ruling himself out of the Birmingham match. Despite an awful performance so far, it remained 0-0 at the break and I hoped for much better in the second period.
Surprisingly there’d been no changes as we kicked off again. Three minutes in, we were behind when Romeo fed Harris, who was under little pressure, and he smashed it into the net. A draw was looking like a good result. Pritchard and Evans came on for Neil and Ba after ten minutes or so. Cardiff made a couple of changes too and took off their scorer Harris. We soon won a free-kick which Pritchard drove into the side-netting. The crowd had perked up a bit and we were starting to improve at last. Simms has barely had a mention all game because he hadn’t been getting the ball.
Bennette replaced Roberts in the sixty-seventh minute. We continued to do most of the attacking and with just over fifteen minutes on the clock a Simms header from six yards out went just over the bar. Simms was soon replaced by Embleton. I felt we could get one back but as we totted up the corners I was pretty sure it wouldn’t come that way. Five minutes to go and prospects were bleak but then four minutes of stoppage-time brought a faint flicker of hope. We had a penalty shout right at the death but nothing came of it and there was a bit of handbags at the edge of their box that resulted in bookings for Embleton and Kipre. It ended 0-0 to a lot of booing.
This was probably our worst performance of the season and the major changes obviously didn’t work as we only improved after those second-half changes had been made. Four yellow cards didn’t help either so it was definitely a game to forget.
