As you may remember from the thread for the home game against Cardiff, I am a season-ticket holder at Cardiff. But to be clear, I don’t support them and will be fully behind Saints from the home section on Saturday which will be a weird experience.
Anyway, here is my perspective on what we can expect.
The good news for Saints is that when we played at St Mary’s, Cardiff had a good home record and poor away record. They have since completely reversed this and although their league position looks reasonable, this is based entirely on scrapping a few 1-0 away wins. At home they have a dreadful record and it’s fully deserved, they look completely bereft of ideas and opponents with less quality than Saints have been able to take advantage.
The typical pattern is that will try to play it out from the back and through midfield, but then run out of ideas. They have a reasonable scoring record from set pieces, but in open play they find it almost impossible to create anything. Look at their top scorers list: 2 of their top 4 are defenders.
You have to remember that last season Cardiff were garbage and only just escaped relegation with agricultural football and a big man up top. Erol Bulut has come in as manager and tried to make more of a possession based game, but the players are not at the level to really do this effectively against good sides.
The Ipswich game was an exception when Cardiff played ok and capped it off with 2 stoppage time goals to win 2-1. But the games against Leicester and Leeds in December/January can give Saints a template to work from. Both times the away side won 3-0, very easily – in both cases 5 or 6-0 would have been fairer reflections of the game. Leeds missed a penalty and Leicester wasted several late chances. Swift passing cut through the Cardiff defence, exactly the type of thing Saints were doing against Preston. Meanwhile, Cardiff offered no threat in attack, even early on they didn’t seem to have much of a ‘let’s get at these early on and try to rattle them’ approach that you might expect against those big sides.
Against both Leeds and Leicester they still tried to pass it about, but would make mistakes and give it away and their opponents could pounce.
This style has though given some decent results against weaker teams and in comparison with last season they have not been threatened with relegation at all, which considering they have been under a transfer embargo up until the January window just gone, it’s a success as they have been built on free transfers and loans. Still, many fans are unhappy with the manager as the football is very boring. They have a reasonable back 4, boosted by Nat Phillips on loan from Liverpool, and the keeper Horvath is very good in 1 on 1 situations. When they cross the half way line, the weaknesses become apparent.
They have a few central strikers who can put themselves about but none of them have any idea how to score a goal, Etete is their most prolific with a total of 3 this season.
Aaron Ramsey was meant to provide the spark and although he had a reasonable start to the season, he has been injured most of the rest of the time- he made a comeback recently but got injured again and I think that’ll be the end of his career.
The most likely exception is Josh Bowler who is a tricky winger on loan from Nottingham Forest- he can beat his man with a trick but with little support alongside he gets crowded out more often than not.
For Saints to win, we just need to follow what Leicester and Leeds did. Try to start on the front foot and get hold of the ball. Do much as we did against Preston in the week, work the ball patiently, try give and gos, their defence will crack eventually.
When Cardiff get it, put them under pressure because they will make mistakes. Keep an eye on Bowler, and stay awake when defending set pieces, but they are not going to tear through us.
Also, you may find the atmosphere is very flat. Ninian Park was an old fashioned Dell-style ground that was quite an intimidating place for away teams. The new Cardiff City Stadium has none of that. Cardiff fans are regularly outsung by the opposition, the most common chants from the away section are ‘Is this a library’, ‘shall we sing a song for you’ and ‘we forgot that you were here’ when Cardiff fans do wake up. The dull football doesn’t help, but apart from the derbies against Swansea and Bristol City, the crowd doesn’t really get behind their team. A bright start will stamp out any positivity from the Cardiff fans and the Saints fans can make it feel like a home game.
I really feel confident about this game and have been looking forward to it all season. This is Saints though, and you never know what you are going to get. But the team is currently playing as well as we have all season probably and there is no reason to expect anything other than a win. I’ll go for a repeat of Leeds and Leicester’s results here, 3-0 to Saints!
See you here on Monday when all of this positivity comes back to bite me.
