Source: FOOTYMAD
A Fan's View: Cardiff 1 Albion 1
SussexBaggie gives his verdict on Albion's draw last night A workmanlike performance saw a patched-up Albion side return to the top of the Championship as Gianni Zuiverloon’s goal sealed an encouraging point for the Baggies. With the opportunity to visit Barry, home of sitcom Gavin & Stacey too good to pass up, the three SussexBaggies departed at 10am to see “what’s occurrin” in the small town. However, the real reason we were there was to watch Albion try and extend their unbeaten away record to 13 games, with their last away defeat coming at Barnsley way back in September. This was a depleted Albion side, with nine players missing from the squad. Roberto Di Matteo had to bring Gabriel Tamas, Andy Slory, Frank Nouble and Luke Moore into the side to replace Abdoulaye Meite, Gonzalo Jara, Simon Cox and Roman Bednar, despite only Moore featuring at Reading. The substitutes’ bench was predominantly made up of youth-team players. First half Albion started brightly, with Moore dragging his half-volley wide after an excellent long-ball from Gabriel Tamas. Despite looking comfortable in the opening exchanges, Jonas Olsson presented Cardiff with an ideal opportunity to open the scoring after a reckless challenge on Jay Bothroyd. Peter Whttingham scored emphatically from the spot to put the hosts 1-0 up. Albion soon came back into the game, with Slory seeing a close-range shot hit the post and Frank Nouble seeing a couple of dangerous crosses cleared from the Cardiff penalty area. Whilst some people may have the view that we held our own in the first half, Cardiff looked dangerous every time they broke into the Albion half with Olsson having an unusually poor game at the heart of the defence. Just as some Albion supporters seemed resigned to going into the break 1-0 down with very few positives to take from the game, we equalised. The goal came courtesy of Zuiverloon, who latched onto a perfectly-weighted through-ball from Graham Dorrans to scramble the ball home, despite the best efforts of David Marshall in the Cardiff goal, the post and two defenders, much to the delight of the vocal travelling contingent. The mood was helped when The Liquidator came on at half-time over the loud-speaker. One thing’s for certain, Cardiff won’t be doing that if we go to their ground again! Second half In truth, we were the better side in the second half, but weren’t able to make our pressure tell. Some of the papers today say that we missed a “glut of chances”. Rubbish. We created a few decent opportunities in the second half, but only one or two of them could be described as genuine goal-scoring opportunities and Cardiff also had chances to win the game, so I was very surprised to read various reports that stated otherwise. The second half started brightly for the Albion, though, with Chris Brunt, who had an impressive game in a more central position than usual, seeing a low right-foot shot hit the side-netting. We were beginning to show the class that everyone knows we have in our squad with Dorrans taking the game by the scruff of the neck and dragging us forward at every opportunity. However, with Michael Chopra constantly winding our players up and looking dangerous when he dropped deep to receive the ball, we had to be alert defensively, which we were, mainly due to the solid performance of Tamas. Our best chance fell to Chris Wood, who had replaced the ineffective Slory. Unfortunately for Albion, Wood sent his near-post header just wide from Zuiverloon’s cross when he seemed certain to score. The best chance of the second half fell to Cardiff, though. However, Chris Burke, who scored an outstanding goal at The Hawthorns back in December, saw his close-range shot go just wide. The Albion supporters sensed that this average Cardiff side were there for the taking, and we nearly scored a dramatic late winner when an effort from substitute Simon Cox was cleared off the line by Burke. On reflection Before the game, there was no doubt I would have taken a point. But, based on the amount of possession we had in the second half, there was still a small sense of disappointment that we weren’t able to push on after our equaliser and claim all three. Something that we need to sort out soon is the fact that so many of our players are playing poorly at the moment. Zuiverloon had a very poor game at right-back despite scoring our equaliser, as did Olsson, who has been rather inconsistent of late. It is clear that we need cover in central midfield as well, because Dorrans could well end up burning himself out due to the amount of running that he does. Despite these negatives, if the likes of Jerome Thomas and Roman Bednar had been available last night, I believe our superior quality would have shown and we would have ended up winning the game. Boing Boing!
