Stop me if you think you’ve heard this one before.
Another South Wales derby has brought with it another impotent Cardiff performance and it was all too familiar. Cardiff fans have become accustomed to the club either challenging at the top end of the Championship or struggling to stay in the top flight, so a season with very little riding on it by April is uncharted territory in their recent history.
As a result, the derbies probably take on added significance and Cardiff have lost all of them this season. The inquest is well and truly up and running, again, but there never appears to be any sort of conclusion drawn.
We’ve all seen this movie many times now. Swansea turn up with a gameplan, and it's always the same gameplan. They pull Cardiff all over the pitch at will, treasure the ball, exploit the space and punish their fiercest rivals. At will, over and over again. Its painful to watch and it never changes, regardless of the manager in the dugout or the players left chasing shadows.
The atmosphere was fantastic, the sort of crowd we’ve all craved all season, but Swansea killed it with an early goal, as per usual. When Cardiff lose to Swansea, its like they lose twice. Not only do they lose local bragging rights, but they also lose a beauty contest.
Cardiff and their supporters have a very complex relationship with aesthetically pleasing styles of play. When Cardiff are winning, no one really seems to care how they do it. Their brand of football is always different degrees of functional and as we know all too well, that only takes you so far once you reach the Premier League.
When things start to go pear-shaped, the cries for an evolution in style begin. The truth is that Cardiff are not equipped for tiki-taka or an expansive passing game. It’s not in the club’s DNA and to change that would require a top to bottom reform. Basically, a plan.
Conversely, when Cardiff beat Swansea, they win twice. Not only do they get one over on them down the road, but they also beat the odds.
Some sneer at Swansea’s desire to dominate the ball and claim its often sterile possession. That may at times be true, but at least they stand for something and have a clear identity. Keeping the ball is a noble pursuit and should be the goal for all teams. If you have the ball, your opponent can’t hurt you, after all. When it all syncs up, and it always does against Cardiff, it can also be devastating.
The truth is that Swansea are Cardiff’s worst nightmare. If you pit a technically gifted boxer against a big puncher, chances are that brains will more often than not overcome brawn. There is always the chance that a knockout punch will land, but usually the puncher will never get close enough to land that blow. Cardiff never lay a glove on Swansea.
Cardiff rarely play as ugly as their reputation suggests, but against Swansea, they look basic and fatally flawed. That is partly due to the contrast between the two styles, but also because Cardiff seem to shrink for these encounters. They look almost as embarrassed as the rest of us at the disparity between the two sides. Cardiff stop doing what they do well and instead fall into the clearly marked trap laid for them.
There is also the belief that Cardiff just don’t get these games. The build up always feels like the occasion is played down and dismissed as just another game. That does not appear to be the case at Swansea, where their social media accounts play up the game. There are reports that former players give motivational speeches and fan videos are shown to the players. They are left in no uncertain terms of their responsibility and what this means to the community.
This was always going to prove a test of Steve Morison’s soft skills and when he says “hopefully we don’t dwell on it too long because the remit when I took the job was to keep this club in the Championship next year, not to win certain games,” it only adds fuel to the fire.
Social media is ablaze with people ripping into the players, manager and club, but I can’t get too worked up about a game as predictable and one-sided as this. Cardiff were comprehensively outplayed and outmanoeuvred. I was far more frustrated by the defeat at Bristol City because I felt like Cardiff should have got something from the game and blew it.
Morison has done a great job at Cardiff and while he must shoulder some of the blame for this defeat, the problem is far bigger than just him. It’s institutional. He has made real progress this season, but that is about to be ripped up when up to 15 players walk out the door at the end of June, never to return.
What happens next? Morison, like all Cardiff managers, began with the best of intentions and wanted his players to love the ball, but he soon discovered what all of his predecessors eventually learned; that Cardiff play better without the ball. Possession then dropped and results picked up.
Does Morison now target players to play with or without the ball? If he brings in players that are comfortable playing with 50% of the ball, but results take a turn for the worst, do things revert back?
If they don’t, it may cost him his job. It’s the catch-22 situation that Cardiff endlessly wrestle with and as long as they continue to chase their own tail and perpetuate their own inferiority complex, the derby will continue to be Swansea’s easiest game of the season.
