by Cypry »
20 Nov 2011 20:52
I had a bad feeling as soon as Cardiff got the their first, bit of a fluke, but too easily given away by Kebe regardless, he simply knocked it too long straight to Whittinghams feet...bugger all Feds could have done to be honest...
Other than that, Hunt had a couple of half chances in the first half, for the best of the two his first touch took him a bit wide and a good block saw it go over....not sure about the penalty shouts, couldn't see clearly one way or the other from where I was, but they both looked more ball-to-hand than anything to me...
In fairness I can only remember Cardiff creating one other chance in the first half, a free kick which Feds saved - we were definitely the better side I felt, just missing a touch of luck.
Kebes disallowed goal was clearly offside, only debate was whether the flick came off a Reading head (I think it probably did)...again we looked the better side, at the start of the second half it only looked a matter of time before we equalised...
Cardiff started to come back into it, and then got their second - what looked like a highly debatable free kick, and I suspect that City had done their homework; it's not the first time this season we've been done from a deep free kick on the right to the near post - something definitely needs work there....
A great cross from ALF for Kebes goal (actually ALF also nearly played Karacan in earlier in the half I think? - couple of nice bits of creativity from him, maybe he's not just a finisher?), but pretty much that was that.....Manset and HRK never got into the game and it sort of fizzled out at the death (albeit Cardiff showed that they know how to kill a game off and keep the ball)...
My over-riding feeling is of frustration - we've played so much worse this season and scraped draws and even wins, yet yesterday I thought on the whole we played OK, but didn't get the rub of the green. It felt like the ref and linos all had pretty poor games, but aside from Kebes disallowed goal I've not seen any of the other key incidents to judge whether that was true...
Absolutely there's stuff that needs work - we need to defend set pieces better, the strikers need to start hitting the back of the net (suspect that this is confidence as much as anything), McAnuff (incidentally, who was it asked when the last time he created anything was? Birmingham ring any bells?) and Kebe keep making good runs and then failing to find a final ball. On the plus side, Mills seems to be getting better, defensively we look well organised (save for the odd set piece), and our own set pieces look better (for those whining about Mills "overhitting" corners, for almost every corner he took in the first half, Gorkks was coming in from the back of the six yard box - seems he's the target man, so perhaps Mills has been told to take them deep?).
I think the thing that concerned me the most was McDs apparent indecision around the substitutions - second time recently he's been about to make a change and the opposition have scored, leading to delay and seeming confusion regarding the changes. I fully don't understand this business of moving Karacan to right back, Jobi to the middle and Hunt to left wing to accommodate Manset, it just seems bizarre...add to that the fact that HRK was stripped and ready to come on at the same time as Manset, then the goal seemingly changed their mind, I don't get it - if we were chasing the game anyway, and a double change was initially considered appropriate, why would going another goal down make any difference? Given his record of making key changes last year, the seeming indecision that Brian has this year is somewhat worrying....
Still, on the whole, it feels like we're moving in the right direction, albeit slowly; just need to start scoring and we'll start to pick up points - 6 points from the playoffs today, three or four wins on the bounce and things could look a whole lot better....
