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Saturday 27th |
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| Rochdale Edwards Sparrow (Jones 80) Barlow Bayliss Monington Farrell Carden Lydiate Morris Peake (Lancashire 80) Holt (Painter 56) |
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Cardiff
City Hallworth Young Legg Mitchell Eckhardt Carpenter Fowler Delaney Williams (Thomas 73) Nugent Hill (Middleton 61) Sub not used |
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| Report
from Michael Morris. City kicked off and proceded to kick the ball straight into touch, good start, it got worse, to be fair the pitch affected both teams but Cardiff did not seem to adapt. They wanted to be treated with respect, like they are at Ninian Park. At home they get time on the ball and can play it around on our billiard table like surface, here they wanted too much time and were beaten far too often. Dale had the best of the early exchanges and had the best chances, three or four times they sent shots just over the bar. Fowler had city's best chance with a shot straight at the dale keeper. Due to the low surrounds of the ground it was easier to kick the ball out of the ground than keep it in (keep that in mind if you happen to be driving past Spotlands when there is a game on as two sides of the ground have public roads running immediately alongside). City defended clumsily, but they managed to clear most danger. The Dale goal came on 44 mins just as looked like a goaless first half. Either a poor shout or no shout from Jon Hallworth left Scott Young with no choice but to try to volley a clearance out (it would have carried to Hallworth easily) Scott mis hit the clearance and it fell Peake who could not miss from 6 yards. In the second half City started to commit themsleves more and they got more possesion, Rochdale were content to soak up pressure then try to strike on the break, the long ball approach they adopted would have suited City but maybe its not in Franks nature. City's goal typified what they should have been doing all match. The ball was crossed in, a clash between Nugent and the defence resulted in the ball running loose and Legg came rushing in to crash it home from 12 yards. Up until that time Rochdale won 1st and 2nd phase ball, when they made the initial clearance in all City's previous attacks they also managed to get a Dale player to thump it upfield from the knockdown. City never seemed to be abale to get the that 2nd phase ball until Legg delighted the travelling fans by cracking in the equaliser. The expression on his face showed the relief we all felt as he ran towards us celebrating. Once again City managed to get a body to a Rochadle half clearance but Middleton sent it rocketing against the advertising hoarding on the roof of the stand behind the goal. City pressured and finished the stronger team. Dai Thomas nearly got on the end of a cross but was just beaten to it to earn a corner. Cardiff must have had at least 10 corners but I cant recall one occasion that a City player got on the end of a cross. Jon hallworth made the save of the game but the linesman had already flagged (Hallworth did not know this) it was a superb reflex save from 6 yards). I cannot recall him having to make any other save of note, just a couple of punchouts and cross takings. All Rochdales efforts went over or wide. The Dale keeper was probably as quiet as Jon, though he did have one dodgy momnent in the second half when a Nugent shot bounced up about 2 feet from a divot and smacked him in the face but he was abale to regain possession. The final whistle confirmed the draw, probably a fair result. My worries from the game were that City tried to rely on their passing game and faith in the defence. If a move fell down then it was everybody back to defend not lets try to win the ball back. On such bad pitches away from Niniam Park I feel that we need to fight a bit harder and adapt a different tactic. A draw at Rochdale is not a bad result, Dale went into the game on a good run of form, they had won their previous three matches including a 1 - 0 win over City's promotion rivals Scunthorpe last weekend. Once again the other teams in the chase failed (except Cambridge) Scunthorpe lost again, Brentford drew at home with bottom club Scarborough. We are still top, we are seven points ahead of the play off zone, February has been a nightmare. Four matches and only two points. The two most worrying statistics are that we have not won away from home since Dec 12th (2 - 0 at Scunny) and we have not kept a clean sheet in the last 11 league and FA Cup games. We have six league games to come in March, this coming month will tell us if we are capable of going all the way. We have to look for a minimum of 12 points out of 18 available in March. Report
from Soccernet. Report from AOL. |
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