Good read taken from a Cardiff blog...

I was most impressed with Barnsley’s pace and penetration going forward when I watched them in the League One Play Offs last season and the step up in standard has not seen those abilities being diluted either based on yesterday’s evidence. However, it’s not just speed that Barnsley possess, it’s players with the technique and composure to get things right while playing at pace.

There are some signs that Kenneth Zohore may have a bit of that to his game, but, sadly, I don’t see many of his team mates with those abilities – I mentioned earlier that we don’t score goals like Barnsley’s second and third (or fourth, for that matter) ones, but it’s not just pace our squad lacks, it’s also the reliable feet and calm, clear, minds that enable you to cash in on the opportunities your speed has won you.

It’s only fair to say that we played some good stuff going forward in open play and twenty two goal attempts to Barnsley’s ten may tell a story about our profligacy, but it also tells one about the “flow” of the game. However, where Barnsley looked like an attacking unit, we seemed like a team that was benefiting from moments of quality from individuals.

Only Newcastle have scored more than Barnsley’s thirty eight goals from twenty two matches in the Championship this season and so the attacking potency they showed yesterday was not a one off. The Yorkshire club have put together a squad that plays good, modern day, football in an entertaining manner consistently, largely, of players signed for modest sums from the lower leagues, many of whom know what it feels like to be rejected by so called bigger teams.

Speed of body and mind appears to high on the list of attributes that manager Paul Heckingbottom looks for when recruiting players and, watching his team yesterday and comparing it to the character and make up of our squad and the things that many supporters will tell you we’ve lacked for years, I couldn’t help but think that for “speed of body and mind” at Barnsley, read power and physique at City in recent years – in fact, while it would be wrong, to say it has been forever thus at Cardiff, it sometimes feels like it.

 

Reads so much better than the annoying "we should be beating teams like. . . . . "

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