CCFC 1 v 1 BARNSLEY

The Barnsley fixture always brings with it a warm glow of nostalgia and an appreciation for their unlikely victory over Chelsea in the 2008 FA Cup quarter finals which made our path to the final that much easier. Our semi-final victory over the Tykes with the winning goal scored by a Fairwater boy was pure Roy of the Rovers copy (without the comically restrained crowd speech bubbles: 'Cripes! That's a marvellous strike from Ledley. Good goal Cardiff. Hurrah! etc.) and was celebrated with an intense euphoria that almost matched the anguish that followed the subsequent hat-trick of Wembley Final defeats.

In recent years hope turning to despair and events beyond our control conspiring to defeat expectations has been a recurring theme. And so it was again tonight.

(This isn't the introduction I'd prepared. That light-hearted, frivolous, slightly sneering one has been put aside for another day as the ultimate prize continues to dangle tantalisingly beyond our grasp.)

The run of three homes games in a week held out the prospect of clinching promotion at home to Forest next Saturday should Watford slip up at Peterboro. The victory celebrations had been planned, the tour of Pontcanna's finest hostelries and ethnic eateries had been pencilled in; much jolly banter and joyous swigging of Mr Brains' finest ales would ensue.

Back in 1570 a certain Thomas Howell recorded his own thoughts on such matters:

Counte not thy Chickens that vnhatched be,
Waye wordes as winde, till thou finde certaintee

Barnsley are also a team on the brink. Not within sight of the land of milk and honey; the view beyond their threshold is one of oblivion. Their recent resurgence has however given them real hope of avoiding the drop. Victories over Watford, Brighton and Leicester and last weekend's goalless away draw at Palace has helped our cause but also provided a warning that this was unlikely to be a Champs v Chumps mismatch.

From the start it was clear that Barnsley's strategy was based on their ability to manoeuvre the proverbial bus into position and invite us to find a way around it. Unfortunately despite total domination in the first half with Kim and Mutch getting forward looking for openings we lacked the tactical nous and initiative to find a way through. Time and again the final ball was clumsy, dead ball situations were wasted (Bellamy's radar was way off beam) and the closest we came was from speculative punts outside the box. It was all a bit too obvious; a situation crying out for an in-form Whittingham to execute one of his trademark defence-splitting assists. Unfortunately that's not so easy from the bench.

The crowd, if not voicing their frustration, were fairly subdued waiting for the team to spark them into life. But the game was following much the same pattern as the Blackburn victory and there was every expectation that a goal would ease the tension.

When it finally came it was from an unexpected source. On the hour Turner threw his considerable bulk behind a deep Kim corner and fumbled the ball over the line. 1-0.

Barnsley's surprisingly enterprising response was a succession of positive substitutions that gave them three options upfront and held open the prospect of gaps aplenty in midfield. The game began to open up. We sat deeper, allowing the resurgent Tykes to take the initiative but we were comfortably soaking up the pressure.

Helguson, who had replaced Mason on the hour in a sensible move that some of us had thought might have been made at half time, kept the Barnsley defence busy anticipating the breakouts from defence. He had a number of opportunities late on to settle the outcome including a one-one with the keeper. The stage was set for the Icelander to stage a dramatic denouement. Unfortunately he fluffed his lines. The closest he's likely to get to the Premiership next season will be a large screen in a lounge somewhere in downtown Rejkjavik.

The fourth official's board went up indicating a worrying and inexplicable five minutes of extra time which on the back of Helguson's failures seemed to breathe new life into the opposition. The referee allowed play to continue into the 97th minute, advising Malky after the game that four seconds remained when Barnsley's deflected goal forced a rapid rescheduling of the promotion party. Do the math!

Malky's post-match interview was in sharp contrast to the crowd's dark mood; devoid of incrimination and blame he provided a reassuringly upbeat assessment of our position ie. one point closer to promotion, nine points clear of 3rd, each team with five games to play. He's right of course. It must be so much easier being the manager.

As Phil said in the car on the way back 'I could have done with a good night's sleep tonight'. Well that' s not going to happen anytime soon...

CCFC 3 v 0 BLACKBURN

The last couple of years in the history of Blackburn Rovers read like a naff Channel 5 documentary, along the lines of 'When Football Clubs Go Wrong'. It's a stark warning to football fans everywhere of the potential disaster that looms when a cash-rich foreign entrepreneur decides for reasons of greed and ego to take a punt on your club.

The story goes that the Venky family saw the purchase of a Premier League club (any old club would do) as a way of promoting their brand of downmarket sub-KFC fast food outlets. £23 million represented little more than the advertising and marketing budget for the £multi-billion business.

For the Venkys the episode has proved to be a salutary lesson in sticking to what you know. Their first mistake on assuming ownership was apparently being unaware that it is possible to be relegated from the Premier League. Of course this could be apocryphal but it seems entirely plausible when placed against subsequent events:

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•  November 2010. Sam Allardyce is sacked within a month of the takeover. The team is 13th in the table.

•  Steve Kean with no managerial experience is given the job until the end of the season but within a month is handed a 3 year contract after an indifferent start.

•  One year later, having narrowly survived relegation with a win on the last day of the previous season the club is struggling again and the Rovers fans announce a 'Week of Mourning', laying wreaths at the ground, marking the death of their club. Kean's contract is extended despite his protestations to the owners that actually it probably isn't a good idea.

• Kean sells fans' favourite Christopher Samba and hires a bodyguard as the Rovers fans continue to struggle to gain a proper perspective of their predicament, issuing death threats.

• May 2012. Relegated to the Championship.

• Season 2012/13. After a poor start to life in the lower leagues Kean falls on his sword. Enter Hening Berg. 57 days later Berg's off. Enter Michael Appleton with a distinguished managerial record to rival that of the much-maligned Kean - in his twelve game tenure at Blackpool he achieved a staggering win ratio of 16.67%. After 67 days the Venky's decide that Appleton is rotten to the core.

• Rovers currently lie just 4 points clear of the relegation zone.

It's tempting to have a wry smile at the misfortune of rival clubs but a recent fan's article in The Independent includes the following ominous condemnation of the owner's failure to appreciate the club and its fans: ' Venky's have yet to understand that a major English football club is not A.N.Other franchise...but a unique entity to which their followers (their 'market' in other words) are viscerally and permanently attached'.

Imagine. Asian owners using a football club as a tool to promote their global enterprises, deaf to the fans' pleading and prepared to ride roughshod over generations of tradition, treating their affiliation and lineage as little more than capital stock.

And so..... we face our opponents today knowing that a mere 14 points from our remaining games will secure promotion. We knew that before Saturday's game against Peterboro. It didn't help us. But 4 wins and 2 draws from 8 games (and that's assuming Watford win ALL their games) isn't beyond even us. Surely. Is it??

The recent run of disturbingly unconvincing jittery performances have understandably led to much debate about how Malky might make best use of his engorged squad. Certain players look jaded (Whittingham, Smith) others are playing under the weight of unrealistic expectations (Campbell, Bellamy) and others fail to convince regularly enough to justify selection (Helguson, Cowie). It's been apparent to many of us that fringe players like Kim and Mason deserve a chance and if Whittingham is not to be allowed to play in a position that allows him to dictate the game, perhaps it's time to reshape midfield to freshen things up for the run-in.

In a rare outbreak of consensus between fans and manager Malky chose today to do exactly that. As the pre-match singalong concluded with The Smiths contemplating what difference a few changes in the starting line-up would make and warning that the fans would stand for 'no more apologies' Kim and Jordan Mutch took their places in a new look midfield with the previously indispensible Whittingham sitting it out.

What we really needed today was a performance as convincing as the one at Ewood Park when we eased to a 4-1 win back in early December. Performances of that quality since have been as rare as a bluebird in British springtime.

It was apparent early on that both the shape and commitment of our reinvigorated midfield was going to be key to our success as Blackburn, devoid of any creative ideas sought to impose themselves on the game with a series of vicious tackles that were if not cynical then were certainly deployed with a heavy sarcasm displaying a certain world-weariness. The referee was pretty much out of his depth, allowing six bookable tackles in the first 30 minutes before finally showing his first yellow. For dissent.

The resurgent Bluebirds were closing down the opposition, panicking them into mistakes, always first to any loose ball and in total control. After a series of corners, near misses and shots cleared off the line we finally made the breakthrough after the sixth corner of the first half as Campbell was allowed to find space at the far post stooping to conquer, placing a low header into an undefended net.

The second half was a slightly more even affair, albeit with only one side ever likely to come out on top. Blackburn rang the changes but even a squad containing names to which the epithet 'household' might reasonably have been attached in recent times - David Bentley, Leon Best, Morton Gamst Pedersen, Jordon Rhodes - failed to make a mark as we continued to dominate.

The sub-heading under the 'Cardiff 3' column reads Mason 85, Whittingham 90 (pen) but those bare statistics do little to emphasise the true nature of this convincing victory. Far more insightful are the 'Shots' and 'Shots on target' columns which show 20 - 2 and 15 - 0 in our favour.

At this stage of the season the average bi-polar Bluebird exists in one of two states of mind that are equally irrational and opposite - despair or hope. With a mere 11 points now required we should be brimming with optimism but, in the words of the old sage and reflecting the experiences of City fans down the ages 'Hope is nearly as strong as despair'.

CCFC 1 v 1 LEICESTER

Well here we are with (after tonight's game) only 10 stomach-churning, gut-wrenching, buttock-clenching, fingernail-chewing, toe-curling, eye-watering, oesophageal-refluxing, stress-inducing, heart-fibrillating, follicle-desaturating, sanity-questioning, morale-sapping games left. Time to take stock. To put superstition, irrational thought, blind panic and defeatism to one side and take a long hard look at the facts:

(At this point I was going to trot out a number of nerve-settling statistics. Problem is there are so many out there and I'm not qualified to interpret them so take a look at http://www.statto.com/football/teams/cardiff-city and select the ones that suit your mood and general disposition).

One for the optimists: In the last 5 seasons, the average number of points required to finish in the second automatic promotion spot was 85. The lowest points total was Stoke's 79 in 2008. We've already got 71 for goodness sake! So promotion will be ours should we manage a paltry 0.72 points per game from now on, or something less than one win in four.

One for the pessimists: In 2010 West Brom required 91 points to secure 2nd place behind Newcastle. If we were to lose tonight we would require an average of 2.00 points per game. A defeat tonight will mean that our current points average over the last four games will be 1.00

One for the realists: After tonight's win, just 5 more wins and two draws from the remaining games would give us 90 points which would have been sufficient to gain automatic promotion in 26 of the last 30 seasons.

So as the desperate, the dangerously deluded and the plain daft gathered again within the walled enclave to bear witness and play out their strange medieval rituals, to chant their obscure ambiguous songs and wait in vain for the sweet white smoke of certainty to rise from within, it was with some relief that both captain Hudson, Malky's chosen one, and the prodigal son Bellamy both returned to the squad.

It was a bitterly cold evening. The incongruous strains of dead disco diva Donna Summer's 'Hot Stuff' ('I need some hot stuff baby this evening etc...') faded away and the game soon settled into a pattern of early City territorial advantage but without any obvious signs of a breakthrough against the meanest defence in the league. True, Conway's pace and trickery brought two early bookings but an organised back four, marshalled by the imperious Wes Morgan, showed few signs of being breached.

The Foxes played a central three across midfield which was sufficient to dominate against the guileless Gunnarsson and witless Whittingham. Their potent strike force of former England international David Nugent and the free-scoring Chris Wood were however unable to get the better of a much-improved and disciplined City central defence.

Worryingly on 30 minutes the man responsible for that solidity, Hudson, required treatment and returned to the fray with a heavily strapped ankle to see out the half.

We continued to pepper the opposition box with long throw-ins, corners and free kicks but the final delivery showed little invention and keeper Schmeical was rarely troubled.

So the first forty five drew to a close and as top half-time tune 'All Along The Watchtower' emphasised, there was 'no reason to get excited' but it at least held open the hope that 'there must be some way outta here...' Unfortunately the way became less clear with the failure of Hudson to appear after the interval. This meant we had to see out the game with a patched up pairing of Nugent and Connolly; McNaughton coming on at right back.

On the plus side, Bellamy replaced Noone. On the down side, a clearly unfit Bellamy replaced Noone.

Leicester began to take control but on the back of a poor run of results were similarly unconvincing in search of a breakthrough even against a seriously vulnerable City defence where Nugent was as plausible as the hackneyed prose of an amateur football hack.

Twenty minutes in there was at last a period of goalmouth incident as Woods latched onto a ball from Nugent but was denied by the advancing Marshall and at the other end three consecutive corners followed a Frazer Campbell lunge at a crisp Smith cross.

On 70 minutes Gestede was introduced, replacing Conway. Shortly after, the home defence failed to deal with a corner which rebounded back off the upright, the relief only brief as the ball was returned into the box to be dispatched by efficient urbane Fox defender Keane (on loan from Man Utd). 0-1 and the ground shook at the weight of despairing heads falling into hands.

Our response was at best muted until the final few minutes. Despite their failings it cannot be denied that this team will continue to fight to the death, when all hope amongst the steadily dwindling home support has gone. We had two chances to level the game just before the board confirmed four minutes of Pro Supplements - sponsored injury time. Gestede knocked down to Whittingham who pulled his shot just wide and Campbell should have done better, just failing to latch onto an incisive Bellamy cross.

Deep into Pro Supplemented time, Man of the Match Taylor fired in a cross from the left and Rudy rose above a tired Foxes defence to head down into the corner for an unlikely equaliser, received with rapturous relief.

And so the faithful walked away after another inconclusive conclave, into the cold night air, still and clear but for the faint whiff of that all-too-familiar acrid stench arising from the pyre of unfulfilled premier ambition as our dreams turn to smoke.

On the plus side, we're 5 points clear of 3rd with a game in hand. Keep the faith!

CCFC 1 v 1 DERBY COUNTY

Not That Vincent Tan Interview:

(An extract from a 'News Asia' report)

The 60-year-old tycoon, who earlier in the year retired as chairman of Berjaya Corporation (BCorp), also told the crowd how he squarely believed in the law of averages, a principle that has guided him for much of his business and investment life.
“If you ask 10 girls to go out with you, no matter how ugly you are, I bet you that one will say yes to you,” he quipped.
The law applies even to the Welsh football club Cardiff City FC he recently bought.
“Recently, I was talking to my football coach and asked him to tell players to make more attempts at goal. I want them to shoot the ball into the net and not to pass the ball so much because I believe the increase in goal attempts was in line with the law of averages. So if we had 20 goal attempts, at least two will go in!”

The great tactician has spoken.

C'mon Mister Malky, shoot the soccerball up into the net more times. And we score more goals and win more points for Cardiff. Sign more strikers. Sign more ugly players. Here, Mister Malky I give you 25 millions. Buy ugly. Win ugly! We buy 10 ugly strikers - we find one good one. One day we have Beast and soon we have Mister Joe Frazier Campbell. Very good goal man. Very handsome! M U they have lots of ugly men like Mister Wayne Potatoes and manager Sir Fergies. Big Sam, Mister Harrys Redsnap, Arse-ends Wenger, so many uglies! Mister Malky will be most handsome man in Premiers League. Law of averages!

The Law of Averages also suggests that not all owners will be deranged, self-important, delusional megalomaniacs but will occasionally have an understanding of the club, its history and fans and will make sound decisions based on a well thought out long term strategy.

Unfortunately that man decided to invest in Swansea.

The evening didn't start well. Bellamy and Hudson were notable absentees from the starting line-up which partnered Campbell with Helguson up front and saw both Noone and Kim loitering on the bench. An evening of long-ball-Route-One-strikers-feeding-off-scraps was promised.

For a team with little to play for other than Pride, The Rams made a bright start, with strikers Connor Sammon and Chris Martin looking to take advantage of a shaky central defence which, without the calm controlling influence of captain Hudson, looked vulnerable. Nugent, at 19 and still very much learning his trade has plenty of natural ability but cannot be expected to easily slot into such a strategically important position at such a vital stage of the season. Turner is normally the junior partner at the back and doesn't possess the organisational skills of his vastly experienced captain.

Apart from one breakout from Smith and Campbell which might have settled the nerves, the early chances fell to the visitors. A loose clearing header from Nugent was pounced on by Martin, forcing a fingertip save by Marshall. Shortly afterwards Turner was beaten for pace by Sammon and the warning signs were clear for all to see.

In midfield Gunnarsson and Whittingham failed to steady the ship. Rushed in possession and guilty of too many aimless misdirected passes, they were guilty of standing off when defending, allowing Derby to control the game.

There haven't been too many reasons to question Malky's decisions this season but handing the captain's armband to the out of sorts, short on confidence Whittingham is perverse. He offers nothing in terms of leadership and is clearly uncomfortable in the role he's been asked to play sweeping up just in front of the back four. At his best when getting forward and being given the opportunity to change the course of the game with a sublime defence-slitting pass here and a dipping volley there, he hasn't scored now for 22 games and it's many months since the 'He does what he wants' tribute was sung with any validity. If the season does end in recriminations and inquests his name will be prominent.

On the half hour Derby had the ball in the back of the net only to be denied by the linesman's flag. We were in line with play and I think the consensus was that the visitors might reasonably feel more than a little aggrieved.

So we went in level at half time but with plenty of options on the bench gifting Malky the opportunity to shake things up - Noone / Kim to provide width, Mason to provide pace, Gestede to provide height and muscle - surely it wouldn't be too long before changes were made.

Unfortunately it would was to be another 30 minutes before the penny (along with the prospect of 3 points) dropped. By then we were a goal behind after Conway gifted the ball to the opposition with our defence moving out, allowing Sammon to poach (apologies but he could have 'leapt' or returned home to spawn...) Noone had only just come off the bench and now Mason replaced Helguson.

Immediately we looked a more potent force playing with greater width and causing panic in a hitherto comfortable Derby defence. On 82 minutes Taylor got down the left wing and delivered a deep cross over the keeper into the path of Noone who met it at the far post to head into the top corner. 1-1. Gestede now replaced Conway as we went in search of an unlikely winner which, if Rudy had kept a level head instead of going for glory may well have come our way in the dying moments.

So another 2 points dropped. Or is it 1 point gained? After all, with Hull losing heavily to Palace we're 6 points clear of third with a game in hand. We won't be able to sustain this line of argument for much longer. It's still a healthy position to be in but in the absence of a rapid return to form the coming weeks could be very tense.

Will we be saying in a month's time 'Well we'd have taken the play-offs at the start of the season!? Presumably Mr Tan would consider this to be no bad thing. After all, by The Law of Averages...