Originally Posted by
the other bob wilson
I thought our younger players (Drameh, Bagan, Doyle, Colwill and Davies) were varying degrees of poor yesterday - as is often the case, Drameh was the best of them. McGuinness didn’t get on, but he’s coming off what I thought was his worst display of the season at Hull and has not been playing that well for a while. McGuinness played a fair bit of League One football for Ipswich last season, so this doesn’t apply as much to him as it does to the others, but they are all ending a season in which they’ve played more senior football than ever before in their lives in a league where the games come thick and fast and, for Davies and Colwill especially, nearly all of the first team football they’ve played has been with the very real threat of relegation hanging over it.
I think it’s understandable that the younger players are struggling a bit now because they’ve never experienced a season like this one before in their lives and I think it’s a struggle to get themselves up for these dead rubbers to end the campaign. Doyle frustrates me because his dead ball delivery is not as good as it was cracked up to be and he can be careless in possession at times for someone with his raw ability, but I’d have him and Drameh back like a shot next season if their clubs were agreeable to them coming here because I’m convinced that, like the other players I’ve mentioned, they’ll be better, more effective, performers after what they’ve been through this season.
While I can understand the criticism of Colwill when it comes to physicality, I’d say there has been a slight improvement in that department as the season has gone on and, as the youngest of the group, it should be a little while yet before he becomes a “finished product” physically.
These youngsters aren’t the problem in my view, Colwill especially, it’s the older players - I don’t believe we have many of them who are clearly not up to Championship standard overall, hence why, this season, and one other (04/05) apart, we’ve not been in serious relegation trouble we’ll into the second half of a season since returning to this level nineteen years ago.
The problem which the club have been unable to shake off for nearly ten years now is that the “Cardiff City way” that has evolved under Vincent Tan’s time in charge over relies on physically imposing players with limited basic technique and passing ability which invariably results in teams that are limited in those respects for a side at this level.
There clearly is a desire to change that at the club, Paul Trollope was an attempt to change things, but, perhaps understandably, the club reacted a month to six weeks quicker than they needed to in my book. Would Trollope have been able to turn things around if given the time? Maybe, but Warnock# signing of Hoilett and Bamba made a big difference while him managing to get Zohore playing like he did for his first year in charge was probably the biggest single factor in us eventually staying up comfortably that season.
However, as I’ve mentioned before so often, Neil Harris decided to give up on what I thought was a bit of a half hearted attempt to change the way we played as he went “back to basics” to bring about a short term improvement that still wasn’t enough to save him in the end.
With Steve Morison, I think the desire to change is stronger - right from his first game, he tried to change things and I found the football more enjoyable to watch even if the improvement from a very low starting point was not strong enough to produce the consistency to pull us clear of the drop zone. To do that, he had to do the same as Harris and play in a way more suited to the experienced core of the squad he had and bring in strikers especially who were at home playing in what had become the Cardiff way.
Reading offered hope that Morison can make us a better and much watchable team, yesterday was an attempt to repeat that formation and display, but it didn’t work because the usual limitations were more apparent. I’d say that, once again, there was proof that we’re a better side with the increasingly injury prone Joe Ralls in it and I’d argue that the two players with the most composure and poise in the current squad may well be the pair bought up by Crewe Alexandra (even if, occasionally, this catches out Perry Ng).
I don’t get how Steve Morison can truly believe his post match comments about us dominating yesterdays match from start to finish and having all of the real chances to score apart from one, but I do have confidence that he is going to try to make the changes to the Cardiff way in the summer that he has been unable to achieve so far. Whether he can succeed is certainly debatable Id say, but those younger players I mentioned give him a better chance of doing so in my book - I don’t like the way he tends to have a go at the younger players while saying nothing about the clear failings of some of the more experienced ones at his disposal, but I’m hoping that this is because he knows there is scope for a big improvement in the first group, whereas a lot of those in the second group are beyond saving when it comes to the sort of football he wants us to play.