Cardiff City (a) Match Review

Biggest Positive

As the media are sucking the oxygen out of the room discussing plucky Wayne Rooney’s Derby County and their narrow defeat to the nasty big boys of Rotherham United; little old lucky Norwich City (of whose match report you might need to scroll down several times to find) went 8 points clear of 3rd with a starting XI that was missing its 11 goal striker, first and second choice goalkeepers and a proper recognised left back. All aboard HMS Piss the League? We’ve boarded, raised the anchor and are already steaming out of the harbour.

Weekend Whinge

As far as I know, Hanley’s goal was a Jeremy Goss-esque screaming volley from 35 yards out that ripped the net apart as I still haven’t seen it. Why? Because iFollow, the platform that a business that turns over £1bn wishes to get its “product” to its “customers” during a time where they cannot actually physically see the “product” decided to not show me, and many others, the opening 7 minutes of a football match that I have paid £10, on top of my season ticket and Sky Sports subscription, to watch. This platform has been criticised numerous times on these pages over the course of this season, and quite frankly only football supporters would be treated with such a level of disdain – as the Football League know that our blind loyalty can be exploited time and time again. Can you imagine the uproar were, similarly priced, Netflix to offer such a poor level of service? Fucking shambles buh.

Random Star Performer

The owner of my random star performer sections, Grant Hanley, actually went and scored today so I can’t pick him. Hugill should have scored with the effort that then rebounded to Cantwell, but his hold up play on a very shaky and bizarrely (considering its patchworkness) high-lined Cardiff defence was excellent and needs to be credited considering he was started to fade into the background of our season a little bit.

Farke Watch

An absolute tactical, positional and passing masterclass in the first half (including exploiting the Cardiff makeshift defence with some, comparatively longish ball play), led way to a slightly bemusing 2nd that probably would have, barring the red card of Pack, seen us throw the three points away. Things suddenly got very nervy towards the back end of the game. Despite the fact we should have ran away with it, we moved into a sort of no man’s land between an attacking and defensive mentality where, really, Cardiff offered little, were down to ten men and continuing our first half attacking play would have been, in this instance considering how poor Cardiff were at the back, the best form of defence.

Moment of the match

Who knows? Considering I didn’t see the entire match, the opening seven minutes might have been best opening seven minutes of football Norwich City have played in their entire history which I missed as someone, somewhere within the middle management structure of one of the world’s richest and highest attended sports leagues decided to build their online streaming platform on the cheap.

Summary

Such is the obsession with the “narrative” within football right now, we have been weirdly pigeon-holed in some media outlets as a team that can’t take their chances “because when you look at the stats etc” despite being clear at the top of the league and continuing to play some absolutely delicious Farkeball. To go back to Webber’s favourite phrase “let’s just ignore the noise”. Win 2-1 for the rest of time if you like, it’s not going to bother me.