“Knackered” Cardiff hold on for a draw, but should they really have been so tired?
To be fair, there were mitigating circumstances that should be borne in mind when considering Cardiff City’s error strewn performance today as their run of four straight home victories came to an end with a fortunate 1-1 draw against a Watford side that were only just outside the bottom three after losing three matches on the trot.
In the period between the September and October international breaks, City played seven matches in twenty two days with four games at home and three very long trips to Sunderland, Blackburn and Middlesbrough with the last two being evening kick offs.
That’s a very heavy schedule, more heavy than many in the Championship (e.g. Watford) because we had a Third Round League Cup tie in the middle of those twenty two days, whereas the sides that went out in the first two rounds of the competition had a week off.
We’ve also had various injuries – Aaron Ramsey, the man who gets us playing according to manager Erol Bulut, and the versatile Callum O’Dowda are out for the long term and, if Rambo does end up needing an operation on his ruptured knee tendon, then we’re at a stage where we’d be talking weeks of the season left, rather than months, when we see him again – always assuming he encounters no problems with his rehabilitation.
The injuries to Yakou Meite and Kion Etete are not so serious (a month each for their hamstring injuries to recover), but we have very few options up front now and you get the feeling that Ike Ugbo is going to be a very tired man come the November international break.
On a similar theme, It could be argued that the O’Dowda injury in particular is having knock on effects. By that, I mean that although Jamilu Collins started today after missing the Middlesbrough game in midweek because of the injury he played through against Rotherham last weekend, it was like watching him in the final hour last Saturday today- he didn’t look right and looked to be playing within himself. If O’Dowda were fit, I’m fairly sure Collins would have been given more time to recover, but after having played Perry Ng out of position and used Ebou Adams in a position he’s completely unfamiliar with in midweek to try and cover for Collins’ absence, it seems our manager has decided that he has to play unless his injury is serious enough to risk long term damage to the full back (the non use of Jonathan Panzo, who can play at left back, at Middlesbrough was a mystery as well)..
Therefore, City were hardly likely to be tearing around the pitch and picking up three points by outrunning Watford, but I do think there’s a danger of making too much of the tiredness angle.
For example, although I pointed out that Watford were one of a number of Championship clubs that played a game less than us over the past three weeks, there were plenty who played seven times as well. Anyway, let’s be straight about this, the League Cup is a bit of a red herring in any discussion about tiredness because most teams in this division do not play their strongest sides in the early rounds of the competition- City, with their eleven changes from the win at Sunderland, certainly didn’t at Blackburn.
So, one of those long journeys north for away matches becomes less of an issue than first thought because many of what Bulut thinks of as his strongest eleven did not even make the trip to Blackburn.
As for the other two away games, City have nearly always flown to games at Middlesbrough and Sunderland in recent seasons – I don’t know if that was the case this time around, but I’d be pretty surprised if it wasn’t.
So, it could well be that these three away trips in such a short space of time which I would have called pretty daunting if they had been by coach were actually nothing of the sort. Instead, they, in all likelihood, were a couple of flights that took, say, two hours at the most and a coach trip that only, maybe, Ollie Tanner out of what Erol Bulut would consider our strongest team actually went on!
So, while tiredness does need to be a consideration when looking at today’s game, I’d say it’s a fairly minor one and it should not be used to fully paper over the cracks seen in today’s game where City seemed determined to hand their visitors the three points.
City went into the last ten minutes at Middlesbrough a goal down and by the time the final whistle blew they’d conceded another one and there could easily have been two or three others – they looked out on their feet by the end and it wasn’t too different for the last hour or so today, this has to be a concern because, as I’ve tried to point out above, a degree of tiredness would be understandable, but not this much.
It was really poor fare today, Watford were better than us, but not a great deal better – I can’t remember them opening us up once through their good attacking play, all of their chances, bar a point blank header from a corner which flew well over from what might have been an offside position, came from us presenting them with opportunities.
We had four chances to score in the ninety minutes I reckon – actually it was four in forty five minutes because they all came in the first half.
