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Two points dropped as “frantic February” gets underway 02/02/2011

Cardiff City 2 Reading 2

Yesterday’s match was the first of seven games in 25 days in what’s been dubbed “frantic February”. It ended in a disappointing draw.

With the teams around us winning, we slumped down to fifth in the table, but it could have been even worse hadn’t Craig Bellamy blasted home the 96th minute free kick.

Aaron Ramsey was as expected in the starting line up, with Michael Chopra a bit surprisingly making way, but Dekal Keinan was only on the bench as Dave Jones for some reason decided to keep faith in the same defence as against Watford. How does everybody else but Jones see that Lee Naylor needs to be dropped? Time and time again Naylor is singled out by opponents as our weak point, and against Reading I understand Jimmy Kébé gave the left back a tough time and that Naylor (not for the first time this season) was at fault when the visitors went ahead in the first half. I suspect one of those players Dave Jones said slipped just as the transfer window came to a close on Monday was a left back, but surely Kevin McNaughton cold do the job just as well as Naylor so that Keinan can play alongside Hudson in central defence?

Transfer deadline day was mostly quiet for Cardiff, and keeping an eye on skysports.com’s transfer clockwatch throughout the day, it was mainly news of Fernando Torres getting in a helicopter heading for Chelsea and Andy Carroll’s transfer to Liverpool. A bit funny that both Peter Whittingham and Michael Chopra scored more goals than £35 million Carroll in the Championship last season! As only a few hours of the transfer window remained there was surprise rumours that we were about to sign Manchester City goalkeeper Shay Given, but it never happened. I guess it could still do though in the so called “emergency loan window”. Cardiff reportedly also tried to capture Preston’s goalie Andy Lonergan earlier this month, so it seems that Dave Jones although having two quality keepers in Tom Heaton and David Marshall is intent not to let any potential injuries or suspensions in that department become a problem in the battle for promotion. I hadn’t thought that much about it and with youngster Jordan Santiago also available should there be a crisis I thought we were well covered.

Andy Keogh joined Danny Drinkwater in being recalled by his club so that they could loan him out to another Championship side, Bristol City, where he’s probably going to get more playing time than at Cardiff. He scored a couple of late, important goals for Cardiff in his months here, but he never looked to make a real impact for us. Sadly he didn’t score in his debut for Bristol City against Swansea yesterday, as the Swans won 2-0!

I feel sorry for Chris Riggott whose short Cardiff career has come to an end bacuse of the injury he picked up in the New Year’s Day defeat at Bristol City. He made a promising debut against Coventry on Boxing Day having just having returned from a serious knee injury he’s been struggling with for two years. Good luck to him, as he now probably has to find something else than professional football to do for a living!

Back to the Reading match, and there were some positives yesterday: Jay Bothroyd getting yet another goal, Chopra looking lively when he came on as sub, an excellent Cardiff comeback for Aaron Ramsey and last but not least the superb free kick by Craig Bellamy in the 95th minute.

Going down 1-2 already into time added on and having been the dominant team in the second half could easily have seen the us fold, but the players showed guts and determination as they kept on going right to the death, and the equalizer and a point was the reward. That’s the sort of attitude that has brought Q.P.R. to the top and a team like Leeds into the promotion mix and is a key to success in the remaining games.

We’ve got to get the defense right when we play Swansea on Sunday.

I can’t bear the thought of another derby day defeat.

Come on you Bluebirds!