Tucker's Cardiff City analysis

Cardiff City analysis: Bluebirds 'deeply unsatisfactory' again but how did we get to Championship survival talk?

Cardiff City slumped to their fourth straight defeat against Derby County and our man Steve Tucker was there. Now he takes a look at where it leaves the stuttering Bluebirds.

Taking all things into consideration, you would have to conclude Cardiff City should at least stay up this season.

That, I’m afraid, is only a slightly tongue in cheek comment as the Bluebirds again lost out on home soil, this time to Derby, and were again booed from the pitch by their increasingly confused supporters.

The perplexity and scratching of heads in the stands is understandable, let’s face it, who at the start of this campaign would have dreamt such assurances about the Bluebirds’ Championship status would be needed?

It seems an awfully long time ago now that Cardiff were installed as bookies’ favourites to bounce straight back to the Premier League, boasting the strongest Championship squad in recent memory allegedly and were under the auspices of their hip, young manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer.

Sure the Bluebirds had endured a nightmare top-flight campaign, finishing rock bottom to send them crashing down to the second tier, but things were going to be so much better in the Championship, weren’t they?

Things are currently worse for the Bluebirds in the second tier than they were in the top flight last term.

Put it this way, in that cursed flirtation with the top flight of the English game, Cardiff did not lose four games on the bounce.

This deeply unsatisfactory reverse against Derby means that is now the case for the Bluebirds under current manager Russell Slade.

It is a run including three Championship outings and a tragic FA Cup exit at the hands of Reading.

Indeed as the atmosphere turns mutinous in the stands, one has to go back all the way to March and April of 2007 to find the last time the Bluebirds previously lost four games on the bounce.

So much for history, but the result of that awful run right now is that the Bluebirds stand just seven points above the division’s bottom three. They maybe in 13th, with plenty of sides still between them and the drop zone, but the problem is the way Cardiff are performing right now it is hard to see where their next three points might actually be coming from.

What is without doubt now is that February is set to prove absolutely pivotal in defining if the Bluebirds are going to get sucked down into a relegation dogfight or not. There are 18 games left this season and a third of them come in the shortest month.

The trip to Sheffield Wednesday next looks tricky, with the Owls three places and four points ahead of Cardiff right now. But it is the next home game against Brighton, currently 21st, and trips to Huddersfield (now 17th) and Wigan (23rd) that will decide whether Slade and his men end this month in the mire or not.

On the evidence of recent form, one win in nine league games now, anything is possible. A concern given greater credence by the manner of the Bluebirds’ performance against Derby.

Steve McClaren’s Rams are, of course, seemingly upwardly mobile this campaign with the promotion they came so close to last season theirs to lose this time around.

Cardiff could be forgiven for succumbing to the best the league has to offer and that is true up to a point except that Derby never really got out of second gear against the Bluebirds to earn the win, the unpalatable truth being they didn’t have to.

First-half goals, an own goal from Scott Malone and a header just on the stroke of half-time from Chris Martin, easily saw them take the points.

While the visitors cruised through the second period, the Bluebirds fretted.

The Rams even had the luxury of missing a penalty in the first period, Simon Moore further endorsing his credentials as he kept out Martin’s spot-kick in a moment that actually made you believe it might be the Bluebirds’ day after all. The trouble is Cardiff’s ineptitude right now makes such blind optimism foolish.

They barely mustered a chance on goal, their mix of direct and long-ball tactics are not only mind-numbingly boring to watch, but, most criminally, totally ineffective at the same time.

The home side’s best chance came on 65 minutes when Kenwyne Jones’ header was superbly saved by the hitherto under-employed Lee Grant in the Derby goal. The fact that Jones had just come off the bench tells its own weird story.

Now Slade is under pressure, OK, as he puts it, a football manager is always under pressure, but he is really up against it right now.

Of course when one is needing a win, and the goals that earn such victories, it would seem obvious to most that you put your top-scorer on the pitch from the start.

Jones has never been the most energetic of performers, but six goals in his last eight games in a under-performing team, at least shows that unlike the rest of his teammates he at least knows where the net is.

Slade’s decision to put him on the bench in favour of Alex Revell, who looks distinctly average in comparison, is strange and not to mention downright incorrect. Slade maintained Revell suited his formation better, well, the message is then, change the system to suit the guy who can actually put the ball in the net.

It is hard not to have sympathy for Slade, who is a good man operating under very difficult circumstances right now. Charged with slashing the wage bill and trimming the squad, the Cardiff manager is like a guy who moved into a palace only to find circumstances have changed and his grand manor is now being demolished to make way for a hovel.

The sympathy is real for the guy, but football does not deal in sympathy and it certainly does not lavish itself on a guy who decides to drop his top-scorer to the bench.

With debuts handed here to Lee Peltier, who looked OK, and Stuart O’Keefe, who looked not so OK, Slade had all his January signings in the starting XI when you factor in Malone and Revell too.

There was an improvement here on the second-half against Reading, but it would have been virtually impossible to have gotten worse than that anyway.

The current Cardiff side looks a shadow of what it once was, it looks a bang average Championship side, well, that is if they can survive a relegation dogfight of course.

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A lot of negative feeling about everything Cardiff City at the moment.

Austerity is the word of the day and that subject takes time. It does not happen overnight. It will help a lot of people if they can take that in.

However austerity is like most transitional events. You get a feeling how it is all going to turn out from the start. The overall feelings from our start is not comfortable at all. This is mainly going from promotion favourities to relegation fodder within a short period. It takes a brave person to speak out against this feeling.

My feeling are not so bad about it all. Certainly not good but I have not given up yet. As I have said earlier this month February will be defining. We will be playing against the relegation teams, Huddersfield, Brighton and Wigan. If we stop the rot of losing and at least get a point against these 3 we will give ourselves some breathing space. We might leave ourselves with them below us too much to catch up on. If we lose I feel we will go down. The gap will be gobbled up and we will find ourselves in a survival fight to stay up. Two consecutive fights will be too much for us.

So will we get the draws or even better a win here for there this month. Some are saying no chance. Me, its a fine line. The last 2 games I have seen we have shown character. Against Middlesborough in the first half most of us there thought we could go on to win it. Against Derby this weekend I felt we had a balance in the team, more than we have had for a while, and were starting to show that we can play as a team. Sadly against Derby the luck did not go our way as we let in one sloppy goal with the other being a lack of concentration. Fine lines as one or two of us are saying and I think people need to look a lot closer to what is going on the pitch instead of expecting us to win every time.

Of course there is the argument most teams are playing in first gear against us. Well I question that because when I have seen these teams play against others I have not seen much difference to when they play us.

This season is now about survival and we need the team to start getting it right for 90 minutes. If they don't by the end of the month we will be in dire trouble. I personally think it is there for us to survive and if we do we will be in a position to consolidate and see where our ability is. Then we can see what we need to go again.