Opposition View: Cardiff City
Forget the term ‘six pointer’ – Brighton v Cardiff City at the Amex Stadium is looking like a straight shoot-out for survival.
That’s what Paul Evans from Cardiff City Mauve and Yellow Army reckons anyway, and it’s hard to disagree with him. Victory for the Bluebirds would put them two points behind the Albion but with momentum and confidence ahead of games against Fulham and Crystal Palace.
It would also be catastrophic for the morale of a Brighton side that already look to be at rock bottom following Saturday’s 5-0 defeat to Bournemouth. On the other hand, if the Albion can somehow pick themselves off the ground and get three points then they’d move eight clear of City which would surely prove to be a gap too far to bridge for Neil Warnock’s side.
Away from the relegation battle, Paul also shared his thoughts on Cardiff’s season so far, the tragic events surrounding the Emiliano Sala plane crash and how Russell Slade – master of the Albion’s great escape from League Two a decade ago – is viewed by the locals at the Cardiff City Stadium.
Let’s dive straight in with the big question as it is pretty much a straight shoot out now for survival between yourselves and the Albion – do you think Cardiff can avoid relegation come the end of the season?
Yes, but it’s going to be tough. People down here are saying that, in light of what happened to you, our defeat at Burnley at the weekend makes no difference to our survival prospects – I can’t agree with that. Before Saturday, I thought there were three teams we could possibly catch and overhaul, this morning there is just one. Also, our options are becoming more limited – any realistic appraisal of what would happen in our remaining games carried out by City fans had to include a couple of defeats by Liverpool and Manchester United, because we’ve not taken a single point off the top six in our ten matches against them so far. If we accept that to be the case, a draw on Tuesday would leave you needing just one more point from your last five games to put us in a position where we will need to take something off the two big clubs.
What have been the best moments of Cardiff’s season so far?
Although I reckon we’ve generally been more competitive in our second Premier League season than we were in our first, I’d say that the 2013-14 campaign had more memorable moments. Winning at Southampton and Leicester with very late goals was great, but it’s hard to think of many real highlights at home. Going by league position, Wolves are the best team we’ve beaten at Cardiff City Stadium, but scoring four against Fulham to get our first win was a personal high spot and beating sides like Bournemouth and West Ham as comfortably as we did showed that we do have a bit of quality to us as well as the other things you’d associate with a Warnock side.
Depending on what division you are in next season, what do you think you need to do in the summer to progress as a club?
Although we’ve not been the paupers that Neil Warnock sometimes makes it sound like, we have been pretty careful in our spending compared to many in this league. However, if we are still in the Premier League, we are going to have to spend at the level of a more “established” team and if we go down, we are going to have spend a good portion of the first season’s parachute payments. I say this because our first choice central midfield consists of one player who has already signed a contract for another club – Aron Gunnarsson – and two who are on loan. Whilst I could see Harry Arter signing for us if we stayed up, Víctor Camarasa could well have more attractive options than us whatever division we are in. We also have an ageing defence and, even at Championship level, we’ve not had a reliable goalscorer in ages – there are also issues in my view about how we need to value possession of the ball more and our complete inability to produce first team players from our academy in recent years.
We’re three months on from the tragic events surrounding Emiliano Sala. How are City fans feeling about the whole situation now and the wrangling over money that seems to be going on?
I’ve said to supporters of other clubs that the whole Emiliano Sala thing is strange if you are a City fan because it’s as if he was our player, but he wasn’t. We have absolutely nothing to remember him by in a City shirt and so, for me at least, although his death was a massive shock, I’ve found it hard to think of him as “one of us”. Purely in playing terms, we spent a club record fee on someone who played in a position where we are pretty weak and we are going to have nothing whatsoever to show for it, so any analysis of our season has to say that we were unlucky on that score. As for the wrangling, it’s sad, but typical of modern football I’m afraid and I fear we’ve not seen the half of it yet.
Seeing as it’s a decade since Russell Slade wrote himself into Albion folklore by overseeing the greatest of escapes from relegation to League Two, we’ve been looking back all misty eyed at his spell in charge. He also managed Cardiff. How is he viewed by City fans?
Not very well at all! To be fair to him, Russell Slade came in at a time when we needed a steady hand at the helm to oversee a period of austerity following the free spending under Malky Mackay and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer. Slade did pretty well in terms of league position and results given the restrictions he operated under, but it also seemed to me that he was almost in awe of being given the chance to manage in the Championship, so everything was done very much by the book and we always seemed to be operating with the hand brake on so to speak. The football was so dull under Slade with a midweek 0-0 draw with you lot in February 2015 being a real contender for the worst game of football I’ve ever attended – he is also the worst manager I’ve seen at Cardiff in terms of youth development.
Looking ahead to the game, what can we expect from Neil Warnock and Cardiff on Tuesday night?
A pretty cautious approach to start I’d say with the game plan probably being to win the game by the odd goal late on. We are shorter on game changers than almost any other side in the division, so we don’t carry the sort of counter attacking threat that a side like Bournemouth do and our inability to retain possession for long periods means that we struggle to put opponents under sustained pressure. We are a team of grinders under Warnock and that, along with some luck on big decisions, was how we managed to win the game between the sides at Cardiff City Stadium in November – even with your shaky confidence levels currently, I’d be absolutely amazed if we came to the Amex and blew you away like Bournemouth did.
Who are the main threats that Chris Hughton and Brighton should be aware of?
As I mentioned, we don’t have many game changers, but Camarasa is one of them. He is the one player who has provided good technique and creativity on a consistent level. Others such as Josh Murphy and Junior Hoilett can come up with something eye catching occasionally, but general speaking, our wide players have been inconsistent and none of them have had a major impact in away games – based on what’s happened so far this season, if we win on Tuesday, it will be through disciplined defending, hard work in the middle of the park and the ability to nick a goal.
Finally, a prediction for what’s going to happen?
The first thing I’d say is that I believe we’ll probably survive if we win. That’s as much down to where you find yourselves after Saturday because I feel that, following on from that pounding, a loss to Cardiff would be totally devastating for you, whereas we’d have momentum which I believe may be enough for us to come out of the Fulham and Palace matches with six points. I’d really fancy our chances if we scored first, but the reality is that we are lowest away scorers in the Premier League and, for all of the talk of penalties we should have had yesterday, we created barely anything from open play – when it comes to heart and head, I always tend to follow the latter more and currently the former is saying 2-1 to us, but the latter is saying 1-0 to you or possibly a 1-1 with us equalising.
Thanks to Paul for answering our questions. Don’t forget to have a look at his brilliant blog Cardiff City Mauve and Yellow Army. If anybody from the Albion is reading this, we’d love a yellow and mauve away kit next season as well.
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