If Cardiff can lose to this lot, they’re dead and buried
THERE was a moment last night when Neil Warnock let off the sigh of a bruised man who knows more heavy punches are coming.
He had been putting a brave face on it for a few minutes — Cardiff should have had a penalty, he said — before explaining the many and varied ways that Burnley had been played off the park. And then he touched on his club’s supporters. No group quite like them in the league.
And all of that might well be true. But the giveaway, the real indicator of what this season is becoming, came when he mentioned that Cardiff’s next three games include trips to Tottenham and Liverpool. He couldn’t help but chuckle the chuckle of the damned.
Bleak doesn’t really begin to cover it, not when October comes around and there’s still a big round zero in the win column.
Of course, it was always going to be hard, and nothing illustrated that quite like the run of three fixtures against Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester City before this one.
Three games, 12 conceded, three scored. An unforgiving place, the Premier League. But that is why defeats like this one sting and sap the resolve of squads.
Giants are meant to beat you. Yet home losses against Burnley, in a sticky season of their own, are far tougher to shake off, because it is always the matches like this one that determine whether survival is an uphill task or an impossible one. Right now, it is hard to argue for anything other than the latter with Cardiff.
They dominated this match, they really did, and ultimately lost to a side that frequently gave off the impression they were looking for a draw. Consider a couple of the statistics: Cardiff had 19 shots to Burnley’s three, 10 corners to the visitors’ two.
And still Burnley won, landing second- half sucker punches through Johann Berg Gudmundsson and Sam Vokes either side of Josh Murphy’s equaliser.
The man of the match? Joe Hart. And that told a tale of the game, as Warnock was quick to flag up. Fair enough. It was also fair for him to question why no penalty was given against Matt Lowton for handball in the first half.
But none of that should detract from Greg Cunningham’s loose marking and the wasteful finishing that made defeat possible. In credit to Warnock, he didn’t try to make excuses and nor could he, because those are the errors that, allied with questionable recruitment in the summer, are making a hard challenge a harder one.
‘It is a cruel game sometimes,’ Warnock said. ‘I am disappointed to concede from the only two opportunities they got. At this level you shouldn’t concede like that.
‘ We haven’t been beaten by quality, we have been beaten by two lapses of concentration. Even
i was clapping Joe Hart. it epitomised the game that he was the man of the match.’
it probably did. And yet Sean Dyche probably won’t care a jot. His side have already had a long, difficult season courtesy of the europa League, but at last there are flecks of hope. the win over Bournemouth last week got them moving and two in a row suddenly has them looking upwards.
As Dyche put it: ‘A week ago there were a few stories knocking about and now we have one win at home and another away and the story changes.
‘it is pleasing to get home and away wins because the belief comes back into the group. We couldn’t get a foothold in the game. But we did calm it down a bit in the second half and scored two good goals.’
the odd thing is, a win appeared to be so far from Burnley’s sights in what was a truly awful first half.
For the entirety of those opening 45 minutes, Burnley offered nothing. No chances, no ambition, precious little sign of a pulse on their few expeditions into Cardiff’s half. their only recordable effort came on 13 minutes, when Matej Vydra had a look from outside the area and lashed a shot in blind hope. Over it went, not even remotely close.
And yet that was as good as they managed. if the game plan was to save their powder for the second half, then what a delightful bit of foresight. But how incongruous it felt to see an attack as limited as Cardiff’s shown such respect.
the home side had the rare liberty this season of being free to attack. Murphy hit a post, Kenneth Zohore had a shot well saved by Hart and Murphy had a goal correctly disallowed from the subsequent corner because Sean Morrison had climbed over Kevin Long.
there was also the penalty shout, when Lowton handled from Callum Paterson, and another excellent save by Hart from Murphy in the second half. the former england goalkeeper’s season is looking increasingly impressive, just as Cardiff’s is looking increasingly troubled.