Brian Murphy, Loic Damour, Gary Madine and a returning Nathaniel Mendez-Laing all start for the Development team tonight.
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Brian Murphy, Loic Damour, Gary Madine and a returning Nathaniel Mendez-Laing all start for the Development team tonight.
Decent game, and performance, I thought. Watford looked lively early on but we took control of it from the middle of the first half and Murphy had an easy night after an excellent save early on. I was dreading an aerial bombardment with Madine there but we mixed it up quite nicely, brought everyone into it including the full backs and played some good stuff. Worked hard off the ball too, plenty of commitment there with some great covering tackles and some crunching ones too.
Duffus was excellent, I thought, and played a big part in both goals. Coxe got forward well and had an impressive 90 minutes but no one had a poor game, even Madine stuck at it and had a decent last ten minutes, I didn't begrudge him his goal at all. First chance I've had to watch the under-23s this season and I was pleasantly surprised. Massive improvement on the shambles of last season.
I couldn't get there so thanks Loramski. Good to see Duffus fit and playing regularly again. I thought he looked a strong boy with potential before a number of injuries last season.
Damour didn't do anything wrong but I thought Duffus was the more impressive of the two. I'd certainly be looking to extend his contract here and then trying to sort out a loan deal for him in January based on what I saw tonight. We may only have Ralls left in central midfield come the end of the season, it's going to cost a lot to rebuild there so it'll be a big bonus if we can (finally) bring one or two through ourselves.
Couldn't get to last night's match (more accurately, I would have made the effort to get to last night's game and face a half hour wait on Cardiff Central or Radyr stations waiting for a train to Treherbert if it had been the youth team playing), but I see that the Development team are at home again on Friday afternoon against the wurzels with a 2 o clock kick off, so I'll try and make that one because there should be more trains running at that time.
To be fair to the Under 23s, results are improving slowly, but there'll surely be lots of changes made for Friday because some of those involved last night will be travelling to Everton - the Under 18s did not play this weekend and don't appear to have a game until 1 December, so, although I doubt it, we may see some of them in action on Friday.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">U23 | Friday's fixture with <a href="https://twitter.com/BristolCity?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@BristolCity</a> will now take place at <a href="https://twitter.com/CDFSportsCampus?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@CDFSportsCam pus</a> - 2pm. Free entry! <br><br>Full details and match preview <a href="https://t.co/x3eq4Ti2Zg">https://t.co/x3eq4Ti2Zg</a><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/CityAsOne?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#CityA sOne</a> ⚽️⚽️</p>— Cardiff City Academy (@CF11Academy) <a href="https://twitter.com/CF11Academy/status/1065188313097822208?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 21, 2018</a></blockquote>
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A report on yesterday's Development team game against Bristol City.
http://mauveandyellowarmy.net/
If you're wondering where Ibrahim Meite is, it looks like he's on his way in January after a successful trial with FC Ural in Russia. Makes a change from Hereford or Weston-Super-Mare I suppose. He scored against Enosis Neon Paralimni FC, haven't we all though?
https://www.goal.com/en-tza/news/car...61azq435fs5mgx
The Academy boys did have a Welsh Cup tie today. They won 11-0 at Taffs Well following on from their 17-0 win in the last round. Looks like everyone made it back ok from Wales u-19 duty, Isaak Davies is fit again too.
https://twitter.com/CF11Academy?ref_...Ctwgr%5Eauthor
The scheduled Academy game against second in the table Millwall at Leckwith, still appears to be on if anyone fancies some more football after last night's excitement, kick off is 12 o clock, but it may be worth checking this link every now and again for a possible postponement.
https://twitter.com/CF11Academy
There's just been a post on the site I mentioned confirming the kick off time as twelve o clock, so, presumably, it's definitely going ahead.
I believe MATEMBE is an England U-15 international. Has he played for them while at Cardiff?
Not sure about that, Gringo might know. Mayembe played in the Cymru Cup last year which is for Welsh qualified lads but it looks like he started for England under-15s against the Netherlands last year too.
He nearly won the game for the Academy today, hit the post in the last minute of a 1-1 draw with Millwall. I've seen him a couple of times, he's got something about him and it'll be interesting to see how he develops from here.
Not a great performance overall today, a similar system to last night but Millwall bullied us a bit and a few players went missing. Our lone striker (Griffiths then Davies) ended up as isolated as our first team striker normally is and we were lucky to get a draw. Reynolds impressed me again, played in central midfield today and looked up for the battle. Still three points clear with two games in hand so no damage done.
My piece on yesterday's Academy match.
http://mauveandyellowarmy.net/
Agree completely about the "very disappointing" comment, but we didn't play well against Millwall and should have lost that game by rights - we are a much more low scoring side without Sion Spence.
I looked at the side shown on the CF11 Academy Twitter page and it was about as strong as could be expected, but, given that goalscorer Keenan Patten was not in the squad shown, I wouldn't put a great deal of faith in them having got the rest of it right either.
They only put 10 starting players on that team sheet, Patten was the one they left out. No idea why they have to jazz that up anyway, just put down the players and the subs, don't worry about fancy writing and a nice background. Do they think we want to print it off and make a poster out of it or something?
It's a decent twitter feed to be fair, I'm grateful for it. I saw that Isaak Davies was being called a winger in there so I assume Bellamy was persisting in playing him wide which does seem a waste, as you pointed out at the weekend. Ole had a thing about playing strikers out wide too, le Fondre for the first team and Danny Johnson for the DVP team spring to mind (Johnson got a late equaliser for Motherwell against Celtic last night, every dog has its day) but I don't get it. Bellamy seems to have done a great job turning two similar players into an effective front two, no idea why he'd want to change that.
I don't want to keep banging the same old drum against a brick wall (if you'll excuse the mixed metaphor) but if we've got two good strikers at that level and none at DVP level there does seem to be a simple solution if Bellamy doesn't want to use them both up top.
Here's the club's match report from last night.
https://www.cardiffcityfc.co.uk/news...-cardiff-city/