Soaring, scoring Zohore leads the charge again
IT’S already been accepted that Cardiff City under Neil Warnock are a team transformed. How else can you describe the Bluebirds having gone from worrying about relegation to – as underlined in an impressive 90-minute display against Ipswich Town – dreaming about promotion possibility next season.
But, led by Kenneth Zohore who added another two-goals to his tally and burgeoning reputation as one of the best strikers in the Championship here, what shouldn’t be ignored is that Cardiff are also becoming a team of players transformed.
Zohore is the obvious place to start, winning admirers as an increasingly ruthless finisher who’s metamorphosis is so dramatic it ought to be turned into a film.
A “waste of time”, a “disgrace”: with a manager rarely afraid to mince his words, it’s clear what Warnock thought about Zohore on first impressions in October.
The now-legendary pep talk during half time of a home clash with Wolves is the moment Warnock signposts as Zohore’s epiphany.
The Dane has been unstoppable ever since; at first displaying a terrific work rate and unselfishness with his movement, but has now added goals to his game. Two cracking goals against Ipswich to put Cardiff in command after Luke Chambers’ opener for the visitors, two more put in the scrapbook, three more points to take Cardiff past the 50-mark Warnock had long talked about.
The 23-year-old will now jet off to feature for Denmark’s Under-21s, with Cardiff fans crossing their fingers that he comes back injury-free, but regardless his transformation is symptomatic of the Warnock Effect and is a big factor in the good feeling bubbling towards next term.
“There wasn’t a player here like that when I came (to the club),” said the Cardiff boss of the change in attitude and options for a striker to at long-last spearhead attacking hopes and place a goal-scoring burden upon. “He’s got every attribute. You can’t coach what he’s got and you wouldn’t swap him for many in our league, would you?”
When Warnock has spoken about tight budgets, the fact he doesn’t need to splurge on a frontman underlines the importance of improving what is already at his disposal.
Yet it is not about Zohore alone. Kadeem Harris had looked to have been another young Cardiff player set to fall by the wayside, another unfulfilled potential.
But this second-half of the season has proven Harris needed an arm around those shoulders that carried some weight of expectation when he was first brought to the club as a rookie, still young now at 23 and still with more developing to do. He’s scored four goals, all of them in 2017. That tells its own story.
Warnock gave the winger an ultimatum. It was time to step up or step away... and how Harris has flourished in recent months.
His pace is his primary weapon, but you can’t survive on speed alone in the unforgiving world of the Championship and Harris showed a real tenacity when jinking his way down the flank, squaring the ball at the perfect moment for Joe Bennett to sweep home for Cardiff’s deserving third.
Stationed on the left wing with licence to cut inside, Harris allowed the rampaging Bennett to stride forward on the overlap, with Craig Noone and Jazz Richards doing the same on the right.
Warnock called his team selection a “gamble” — and perhaps putting so much faith in Harris was a gamble too, but, like with so many other players at the club right now, the manager is being richly rewarded.
The same can be said of full-back Richards, who could push for a starting spot with Wales when the national team meets this week for Friday’s key World Cup qualifying clash with the Republic of Ireland. A mixture of injury and patchy form plagued the arrival — not to mention hurdling the tricky obstacle of his Swansea City past – but Richards is finally becoming the player that national boss Chris Coleman has long had faith he can be.