Can Town Make A Point Of It At Cardiff?

It is a familiar mantra that we have heard from manager Mick McCarthy on many occasions over the last three years. A point away is always a good result and who knows where it might take you at the end of the football season when promotion can be lost for less.

The trouble with that particular argument is that what if this philosophy could also be applied to the games we should have won?

At Brentford away at the start of the season when we threw a two goal lead in injury time – or on Tuesday night at Bolton ,when we gave away a two advantage in the last fifteen minutes and worse still, the prospect of gaining all three points was annulled by conceding a penalty in the seventh minute of injury time!

Interestingly, Kevin Bru scored two wonderful goals in both games but all to no avail as it turned out.

Of course it is reasonable to argue as our manager does that during the course of the season there will be plenty of ups and downs and we should not trouble ourselves with the semantics.

At the end of the day, it is where we are at when the final whistle blows on our marathon 46 game adventure that is the only thing that really matters and where we find ourselves then?

Once again pragmatic Mick makes a persuasive argument but if things start to go bottoms up again then the natives will get decidedly restless once more and perhaps for good reason?

In the modern game it seems that winning is everything. It matters far more than playing attractively and losing and we are all collectively so much more forgiving if we sneak a win away at say Bolton, even if it is against the run of play.

But if we are losing and playing lousy football in the process, forgiveness is not a word that comes naturally and the fickle nature of the modern day football fan rears its ugly head again!

Meanwhile back to our visit to Wales and I would be more than happy with a point from this one.

Cardiff were desperately unlucky to lose to Leeds United in midweek and they know if they beat us they could seriously dent our hopes of a play-off place whilst at the same time enhancing their’s so there is much to play tomorrow afternoon.

The general consensus of opinion is that McCarthy will bring back Cole Skuse and Daryl Murphy and perhaps at the expense of Kevin Foley and Brett Pitman.

This is a shame but at the same time we should be grateful for a stronger squad and even if Brett is not a lover of the idea, he seems to be a very good impact player and manages to score most of his goals by coming off the bench!

Getting anything from this game though will be a very big ask but with two home games coming up afterwards, a draw would keep us in contention for a play-off place because we are blessed with a game in hand and that in itself is room for some optimism.

Let us hope that Bartosz Bialkowski plays like a man possessed once more and then anything is possible and if we play to our full potential then we could still get something from this game.

The bad news however is that Cardiff have a great home record and only Hull have lost fewer games at home.

That said, only Burnley have gleaned more points away from home than the blues so it is not all bad news thankfully.


Frank Weston – editor of Vital Ipswich