blueball.gif (262 bytes) Sat 15th April 2000 - Cardiff City 0 - 4 Cambridge. Match report.
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I am still stunned. Why is it we can cock up big time when we can least afford it. Poor officials, poor luck and poor bloody everything. Cambridge were nothing special, they scored with just about their first three efforts on goal. The shot count in the first half was 9 - 2 in City's favour. We were beaten by a side who just stuck to a game plan. They were tactically better than us and it paid dividends. How many times did we hit crosses to their centre forwards without a City player in sight. We kicked off from the centre spot 5 times today. Correct me if I'm wrong but all five restarts resulted in a throw in to Cambridge after Mike Ford hammered the ball straight out of play. His distribution today was poor. No one player stood out. Seamus was nervy and unsure of himself, he could have done better with the first goal. Cambridge scored after a clear offside. But the City players stood and waited for a decision that was never going to come. Taylor greatfully pull the ball in the net.

The second goal was a penalty, the obnoxious Benjamin, who was niggling and diving and obstructing at will all game went down under a challenge from Kelly. He was going away from goal and from where I was sat I thought he made a meal of it. But penalty it was, Kelly was booked and beaten from the spot.

The third from what I could see was down to scrappy defending and Taylor squeezed the ball into the corner to get his hattrick.

Late on the Cambridge sub, who replaced the hattrick man Taylor, scored direct from a free kick.

All in all today has been crap. I find it hard to find anything positive to say. Yes we had the bulk of the possession and chances but we failed to do anything with it. Goals are what count and we did not get any.

I have just been looking at the stats of the game. City had 13 attemps on goal. Only 2 of which were on target. Cambridge only had 6 attempts of which 5 were on target, and they scored from 4 of them. City were caught offside 6 times to once by Cambridge and we had 8 corners to their zero.

The first half dominance / control and second half capitulation is not a new thing. How many times have we been in the game at half time looking relatively comfortable (I know we were down at half time today but then it looked like City would come back and win), remember Preston at Ninian, 0 - 0 at half time, then whack 0 - 4 at the end, Notts County away leading until 10 mins to go and losing 1 - 2. The killer instinct is missing and that has to be put in by the manager. Pretty pretty namby pamby football is well and good but if you are not getting the final results then its pants. We should have won easily today but we were tanked. Cambridge were too big and strong and we did nothing about it. Get the tactics sorted Billy. Instill some steel and resolve in these players and for hecks sake if they have three big centre backs stop crossing the ball at head height for them to bat it away at will.

As for our survival chances the optimist in me has taken heart from Oxford's loss. We may have dropped a place today with Scunthorpe winning at Blackpool but we still have a game in hand on Oxford and Scunny above us. Well done to Cambridge.I think today may have secured their second division status.

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Copyright Michael Morris 2000.