Some old-school medicine works wonders for Cardiff
NEIL Warnock went back to the old school this week, and he felt he needed to after Cardiff City’s abject display against Reading on Sunday.
The Bluebirds whimpered to a 3-0 defeat at the Madejski Stadium and, all told, it could have been four or five.
They were disorganised and undisciplined in defence and utterly feckless in attack and the manager fumed about the manner in which they conceded the goals after the match.
It meant Warnock took drastic measures. Instead of training on Tuesday, the eve of the Huddersfield clash, the manager ordered his players to report for a meeting at the club’s training base.
And it appeared to work, with Junior Hoilett popping up with the crucial 88th-minute winner to earn the Bluebirds a welcome three points against Huddersfield on Wednesday night.
“We trained this morning (Wednesday), which we’ve never done before,” Warnock said after the game.
“But it wasn’t the training this morning, we trained this morning because yesterday (Tuesday) was dealt with just having a meeting.
“I thought it warranted it, because we let everybody down on Sunday. We let the fans down, Vincent (Tan), Mehmet (Dalman), everybody. That wasn’t one of my teams really, that. That was passive.
“And tonight, I look at that and that’s the best performance of the season. Can we go to Blackburn without conceding three goals? I don’t know. I didn’t know how we were going to play tonight, but I’m glad we played like we did.”
Though Warnock comes with three decades of managerial experience, he revealed he took inspiration from a manager he once played under at Hartlepool.
Len Ashurst, who later in his career would go on to manage the Bluebirds, read the riot act to the Hartlepool squad of the early 1970s amid a poor run of results and it was a moment which, despite being almost 40 years ago, still stirs strong memories for Warnock.
“I remember my old manager, Len Ashurst, when I thought he was going to resign, gave everybody a few words of what he thought of every individual performance,” Warnock added.
“He did that against us – I think we got beat non-league when he was Hartlepool manager.
“Instead of resigning, he gave us a few words and we came back and had a great run.
“I rang him yesterday, to tell him what I’d done and he was really pleased. Because he’s not well at the moment, Len, but you remember things like that.”
After drawing inspiration from Ashurst, Warnock will be desperately hoping it sparks an upturn in results for the Bluebirds following the muchneeded triumph over the Terriers.