cardiffcity.no

A drubbing 09/02/2010

Newcastle United 5 Cardiff City 1

As expected Newcastle proved a tough test for Cardiff. I wasn’t too surprised by the defeat, but I was a bit surprised that it became a drubbing.

The warning signs were there. Number one: Dave Jones was nominated for manager of the month. It seems that every time Cardiff’s manager gets the manager of the month award it starts going downhill the next month. This time the nomination was apparently enough, as Dave Jones (luckily I’d say) didn’t get the prize. Let’s hope that means there won’t be any jinx on the rest of February.
Warning sign number two: players (was it Chops?) telling journalists how “we’ve beaten W.B.A. and Middlesbrough away, we can beat Newcastle as well”. I guess it’s okay to try and boost your confidence by telling yourself these sort of things, but it might also lead to a complacency that might have been a factor in the opening minutes at St.James’ Park.
Warning sign number three: Cardiff have in many ways been overachieving in 2010. A thrashing was looming.

I treasure the live mobile score service I subscribe to, but it’s not always a very pleasant way to follow Cardiff’s matches. I came off a plane about twenty minutes into the Newcastle match, and turned my mobile on. Four new messages. I only expected one – the one that says the match has started… Going straight to the last one of the four messages i got the shock: 0-3 with only fifteen minutes played. Game over. It was a lot nicer when I came back to my car after football training when Cardiff gave Bristol City a beating and the last of the seven unread messages said Cardiff were 5-0 up!

Hats of to Newcastle though. They’re a Premier League team playing in the Championship. And having a solid squad already they strengthened during the January transfer window. As we all know Cardiff with their already small squad weren’t able to bring in a single new player, and as Dave Jones pointed out after the match, the other teams around Cardiff on the table have also brought in new players in January for millions of pounds. The terms are very uneven going into the last third of the season.

Wayne Routledge is the very incarnation of the gulf between Cardiff (and other even more cash-strapped teams in the Championship) and Newcastle (and other wealthy Championship clubs). As most of you will remember he dumped Cardiff in a not very respectable way for Q.P.R. a year ago. If what was written in the press back then was true, Cardiff and Aston Villa had already agreed a fee of £300 000 for the player and he had been offered a lucrative three and a half year deal. Then Q.P.R. raided in doubling the fee to £600 000 and pouring large sums into Routledge’s pockets as well. I was fuming at the time, and to make matters worse Routledge allegedly didn’t even bother to say farewell to his Cardiff team mates before setting of to London. Now Routledge has left Q.P.R. probably cashing in even more money and with the prospect of Premier League football next season. Rumour had it that Dave Jones was interested in bringing him back to Cardiff this time around had the funding been available, but I fear that an enormous amount of money would have been needed and I doubt very much Routledge would even have considered going to Cardiff anyway being the “golddigger” he obviously is (like most modern footballers you might argue, but that’s another discussion).

But back to the game. To qoute Dave Jones: “We’re going to be like that from now until the end of the season. That’s the way we’re going to be – up, at it, winning games and now and again we’ll lose games”.

Two positives from the Newcastle match was the return of Stephen McPhail and Aron Wildig getting his first goal for Cardiff.

Tonight’s game at home to bottom placed Peterborough is a “must win” match.