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Second leg on sky sports now.
What a team, it's been said before but how did we not get promoted that year!!
Whittingham was class, gutted we haven't been in the stadium to show our respect to this legend. I hope we and the club can do something when we are back. Invite his family, invite some of the players he played with etc.
I'm watching it for first time. I was away when it was on and only ever seen the goals.Originally Posted by mbatte
Agree with everything you said, this team was far better than the ones that went up apart from maybe the defence.
Whitts was far too good to have spent so much time in the championship. He's created so much and even when didn't have a good game would create 2 great chances.
It's no wonder Bothroyd wasn't fit he's been booted everywhere.
Watching that game again, you’ve got to wonder if the standard in the championship is getting worse yr by yr.
That City team would have pissed the title this season.
Chopra, McCormack and Bothroyd would have run riot.
The only stand out team in the last few yrs were Wolves.
We didn’t go up because we were way too reliant on bothroyd and DJ had no plan B
So when Jay limped off in like the 15th minute the writing was on the wall
Can I borrow your rose tinted glasses?
I think the division is getting more competitive and teams are more cancelling each other out. 5 in midfield is more common than ever, teams are more organised, having a strike partnership is almost from a bye gone era and we're seeing more players coming down from the Prem. Sides like Newcastle, Bournemouth, Sheffield Utd, Watford, Palace, Brighton, Swansea have enjoyed decent stays in the top flight.
Jones' sides never had a plan B or ever made much consideration for the opposition. Jay Bothroyd once said in a radio interview that they tended not to worry much about what the opposition could do, it was for the opposition to worry about what Cardiff could do. Move on to Malky, who had extensive dossiers on the opposition. He did far more with a poorer squad than Jones did with all of the attacking talent he had. For all of that, Jones could get things spectacularly wrong. Shame, as his side would have done ok in the Prem.
I was thinking EXACTLY the same.
The style of football that we played back then was so different and so much more pleasing on the eye. Nearly all on the floor and to feet. A
complete and utter contrast to now.
That said, the game was SO open and we looked pretty frail. The defence looked wobbly and we appeared to have no defensive midfield capability. Maybe that is why we didn’t go up.
But it was so refreshing to see Cardiff City playing passing football rather than the turgid combative style of football that we have had to watch over the last few years, which I personally find very ugly and frankly boring to watch.
We were often a long ball side under Jones.
Didn’t see that during the game against Leicester though.
(I don’t remember it being a big part of his tactics either, certainly not to the extent that Warnock and to a lesser extent Harris use it, but of course my memory may be failing me)
Your dislike of Jones has always been very clear Eric. You're not really suggesting that the quality of this seasons championship is anywhere as near as good as back then are you?
Weak 2 man central midfield.
Team struggled without Bothroyd.
Dave Jones.
Thats why we failed to go up.
I’m just looking at the team:
Did we have Burke and Whitts out wide and McPhail and Ledley in midfield, as that is putting a big defensive load on Ledley (or someone!) if that was the formation?
I think that was it.
Loads of games our central midfield was dominated.
But we could hit it long to Bothroyd who was different class.
That play off final was so gut wrenching , we got off to a great start then it all started to go wrong, the referee gave them a soft free kick against McPhail for hand ball , Adam scored then Bothroyd limped off minutes later.
we retook the lead Near the end of the half only to concede 2 soft goals in the remaining 8 minutes of the first half!!
Without Bothroyd , we just didn’t really look like winning !
I remember sitting on the coach thoroughly miserable watching so called Blackpool fans walk past as if they were out on a Sunday stroll, completely emotionless ! I just wanted to get out of Wembley ASAP and then got a message from my wife to join her at a friends bbq when I got back ......I declined , I didn’t want to talk to anyone !
There's an account on Twitter called the Coach's voice (I think it's a website too) where they interview pro coaches and there are a couple of clips of Ian Holloway talking about that game. Basically they outnumbered us in midfield, pushed their full backs up and used their forwards as wingers to get inside the full back (as Omerod did for the winner). Bothroyd got a mention for his lack of effort (Holloway seems to have forgotten he went off early but I don't Etuhu put a shift in either). They did their homework, got their tactics right and we blew it.
As if by magic this just popped up on my twitter feed (if you can bear to listen)
https://twitter.com/CoachesVoice/sta...95419996798976
That was generally it. Rarely did we play without a target man.
In Craig Bellamy's first game, at home to Doncaster, Chopra went off injured in the first half. McCormack was on the bench but had dropped right down the pecking order, so Jones decided to bring on Chris Burke and dropped Whitts to a deep, central defensive midfield position.
Until the substitution, Donny had run us ragged with their 5 in midfield. After the enforced change, we took control of the game and won very easily. What looked like a useful formation that deserved a run of games didn't last long as Jones went back to 4-4-2.
My dislike of Jones? Really? I've only met him the once so it's a bit difficult to dislike someone you don't really know.
If, by dislike of Jones, you mean a dislike for him as Cardiff City manager, you'd again be wrong. Only a couple of months ago I wrote a few posts about my favourite moments/games. Many of my favourite memories as a City fan of over 25 years were games where he was manager. When we played well, we were as good as anything in the division and I believe we could have held our own in the Premier League.
However, Jones is also responsible for some of my worst moments as a City fan. Many believe he got the cup final team wrong. I would have sacked him in 2009 when we missed out on the playoffs from an almost uncatchable position - it had been the third time we'd folded as the season drew to a close. Lessons not learned. When we finally got to a playoff final, we blew it in the main due to his lack of plan B. It was no surprise that we failed again in 2011. There were so many big moments where we froze and didn't deliver.
Jones should have got us promoted. I don't know many City fans who disagree with that. TOBW, I think, was the first to use the phrase 'flat track bullies' to describe us - devastating when we were on form and wanted it, and we did hand out some fantastic beatings, yet when the going got tough, we often went hiding and, as Hilts said, we'd spend the game whacking it aimlessly long in hope. We never found a way to make our C game good enough. Somehow, some rewrite history and make it sound like we were always this fantastic footballing team under Jones. We could be at times. We weren't often enough. We could be as dreadful as anything we've seen under Mackay, Solskjaer, Slade, Trollope, Warnock or Harris since. There's also that opinion that Jones kept finding bargains that he turned into millions. That wasn't entirely true, either.
I was relieved when he was finally sacked. I was in New Look in Glasgow when I read it on my phone. Mrs HaB was looking for some clothes. I gave quite a loud fist pump and had a few strange looks. It wasn't that I disliked Jones, but I felt that, for all the good he did, he made too many mistakes, got things wrong and I believe he cost us promotion more than once. For all the great games and memories, he should be judged on not getting us to the Premier League when we were good enough.
Last city manager to play exclusively on the carpet was Lennie Lawrence.
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