Cardiff vs Hull Post-Mortem

Come on Jones, what excuses are you going to use this time? No training facilities? Small squad? Long trip? All true, but we are a club in freefall playing woefully poor and getting turned over by struggling teams. The honeymoon is over and we are in trouble.

This latest humiliation at the hands of second from bottom Hull City really put the nail in the coffin. We have fallen from six points clear at the Championship summit to fifth. No wins in six, no skill, no passion, no hope.

Thankfully I didn`t go to Hull today. It was a radio job for me. It sounded absolutely hopeless. City fell two goals behind inside ten minutes with the defence lacking any sort of organisation. Then came a killer third before half time and we were condemned to our second three-goal hammering in three weeks. We are the laughing stock of the division.

City got one back and it briefly looked like we`d put up some sort of fight, but those thoughts were soon extinguished with Hull`s fourth. The home side, roared on by 23,000 at the KC, could even afford to miss a penalty.

How can a team which was playing so well get so bad virtually overnight? Sure, we`ve had injuries and suspensions, but today we were only missing two players, Gilbert and McPhail, from the eleven which hammered Wolves 4-0 at the end of September.

Jones will inevitably point to our lack of training facilities, again. It`s just excuses though and he will gain few supporters by continuously pointing the finger rather than taking some of the blame himself.

Besides, can you honestly tell me that there isn`t a decent area of green within an hour of Ninian? Here is a photo, taken today, of a pitch in the Radyr suburbs:




Looks alright, eh?

There are far too many players failing to turn up week after week. Thompson started the season brilliantly yet has barely touched the ball in the last five games. To be fair to the Scot, he was rushed back from injury when he should really have gone under the knife, such is the desperation of our situation.

Chopra has been poor, though his goal today was the only positive to take from an embarrassing afternoon. The midfield, once our strength, is beginning to look as strong as a digestive biscuit and the defence, even with Loovens back, is disorganised and leaking goals.

It really is such a shame that we won`t be going in the Christmas period on the back of a good run. The next four games (Leicester a, Plymouth h, Crystal Palace h and Luton a) look tricky. We need to pick up some points to keep us in contention when the magic January transfer window opens. Jones has said that he has a list of 40 players that he wants. We need to get at least three of them to ensure we don`t continue our fall which, dramatic as it may sound, could see us slip well into the bottom half unless we pull ourselves together!

This will be the real test of our new investors. They have promised us some money to play with but, worryingly, their identity is still unknown. Why the secrecy? We must pray that our lack of form and poor attendances don’t put them off.

You can argue that if we were offered this position in August we would have taken it. The truth seems to be that we have massively over achieved and we must respond soon to prevent this season from ending in absolute disaster.

Jones, sort ’em out!


Article by Cardiff fan Sean Wozencroft.