Originally Posted by
the other bob wilson
I can remember reading as a kid how Glasgow Rangers used to have hooks in their dressing rooms that players could hang their clothes on set a foot higher than anywhere else to try and emphasise to opponents how much bigger their players were than anyone else - it's one of the reasons that club feature pretty high on the list of teams I don't like.
Nathan Blake said on the Wales Online podcast this week that he didn't think City fans would tolerate Cardiff trying to play like Swansea because they would get impatient with all of the passing. Based on what I've seen from Cardiff teams since 1963, I think Blakey is probably right because with a few exceptions, City have been a physical, long ball team that doesn't value possession too highly for half a century and more, so it's hardly surprising that supporters want to and expect their team to play a certain way.
Fifty years ago, City played with two target men in Toshack and Clark and used to start games by playing the ball back to one of the full backs who would knock it fifty yards up the pitch to one of the strikers who would try to head the ball onto the other one. It worked spectacularly once at Hillsborough when I believe it was Clark who headed on to Toshack who nodded into the net to give us the lead after about twelve seconds, but most of the time it just meant that we had handed possession back to the opposition.
Ten years later, I heard the phrase "route one" applied to football for the first time when Richie Morgan's side which had Ronnie Moore and Gary Stevens in it were described as the team that plays more route one football than any one else in the Second Division by an opposition manager.
Since then we've had no end of pretty immobile target men who, at first, had a smaller and nippy partner playing alongside them and the plan was to either hit the big man or play the ball long into the channels for someone like Earnie, Dale or Chopra to chase. More recently, we've played with one striker who, almost without exception, has been a big target man type and, as most of them have had their limitations in terms of movement, pace and technique it has limited the way we could attack.
I mentioned "a few exceptions" - in Alston and Evans, the 75/76 had a pair of footballers up front that meant we could attack in different ways and, albeit in the old Third Division, we played some dazzling, entertaining stuff that year. Jay Bothroyd was such a good technical player that he could make something out of any type of service when his head was right and when it was their day, Dave Jones' teams with him, McPhail and Whittingham on song were irresistible at times, while, for a short while, Kenneth Zohore looked the sort of complete player that could be the fulcrum for a more rounded and varied attacking approach.
Most of the time though opponents have come to Cardiff knowing what to expect and I have to say that they would be a side that I'd not be looking forward to watching much if I were a neutral because they aren't usually an entertaining team to watch - however, they are my team, always have been and always will be, so I try to not be too critical about us not having as much style as most of the sides we play.
Truth be told, the contrast in styles between how the first team plays and how all of the other age group sides at the club play is probably being looked at in the wrong way in this thread because many are saying that the first team needs to start playing like the Under 18s do to give our youngsters the best chance of breaking into the first team, but, looking at it logically, if Cardiff has an "identity" for the way they play, it's a lot closer to what we see from the first team than what the Under 18s will be coming up with in a short while when they play this lunchtime.
Therefore, it could be argued that our youngsters should start playing more like the first team do.
For myself, I'm at an age where I've seen far more Cardiff City matches than I will do in the future and it would be nice to get the chance to see a City team playing the game in the way I would prefer us to before I pop my clogs. I'm being selfish there, but also I think I'm being realistic, because the sort of football that has identified Cardiff City for an awful long time is becoming, if not obsolete, then old fashioned and I don't believe it has kept pace with the alternatives we now see from so many others.
However, especially with the current squad, changing to a more considered approach, would, almost certainly require a lot of patience from supporters and Boardroom alike and that is something that is in very short supply these days - whichever way the club decides to go though, there needs to be an acknowledgement that our youth development in terms of producing first team players has been seriously lacking for far too long.
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