Poor decision cost Cardiff dearly but it wasn’t the ref who got it wrong
By Carl Curtis
Yes this season has been soured by all that has gone on off the pitch but seeing us get beaten in such a high stakes game and face certain relegation is still bitter to swallow. It is the first time that my daughter will experience this feeling and looking at her staring out to the pitch at the end, knowing what she was feeling, probably hurt me as much.
I thought City did well in the first 15 mins to weather the Sunderland storm, after that we started to play decent football, everything was played on the floor, we didn’t lump the ball forward, we kept a good shape and were pretty tight at the back, Mutch was linking the play between midfield and Campbell in attack.
That said we didn’t create any goal scoring opportunities despite our good build up play, we were set up for the classic counter attack football and as the first half was wearing on, I had genuine belief that we were growing stronger in the game and were frustrating Sunderland when they had the ball.
To get done on the back stick at a corner was disappointing and it felt that once Sunderland took the lead it was imperative we didn’t concede the next goal.
THE POOR DECISION THAT COST US THE GAME :
Now I have not seen a replay of the penalty incident but whether it was inside or outside the box the referee called the sending off correctly, Cala made a mistake and a poor decision in trying to atone his error he pulled the attacker down and Cala was the last man. The ref played an advantage and it appeared that Marshall obstructed the attacker and I thought that was why the penalty was given and believed that the red card was shown to our keeper.
When Cala marched off that is when I questioned whether it was indeed a penalty but as I say I have not seen a replay but plenty of texts I received state the initial foul by Cala was outside the box, if that is the case then that is the mistake Phil Dowd made but it was still a sending off.
The fact Dowd gave a penalty effectively killed our chance of pulling anything from the game especially now we were a man down too. Whether City would have improved their final third play was questionable anyway but at half time there was no coming back.
Ole went a bit gun ho in the second half, switching Cowie for Zaha and playing with 2 up too, Medel dropped to centre half and played without a right midfielder, as the click wore on, Ole made one last tactical change and replaced Fabio with Kenwyne Jones to play a 3-3-3 at 2-0 down.
The truth is Sunderland weren’t 4 goals better than us but the sending off and the fact we were chasing the game resulted in the game opening up which suited Sunderland’s cause, they exploited the space we were leaving behind and left us exposed to conceding more goals.
Did Ole get his tactics wrong?
I don’t think he did to be honest but he has got it badly wrong in previous games but today I thought we were doing ok, got done on poor marking on the corner, a poor back pass by Cala which led to him bring sent off and then two further goals when we were chasing the game.
Well it is off to Newcastle on Saturday with just the slimmest of chances of escaping relegation but I doubt anyone believes we will stay up but be there I will.