 Tuesday, 29th Jan 2008 09:24 Two of the division's form teams meet at Ninian Park on Tuesaday night as QPR get back in action with a trip to Cardiff City. Cardiff City (9th) v Queens Park Rangers (18th) Due to not playing in the 4th round of the FA Cup, we’ll have had a ten day break since our last game when going into the match against Cardiff City. The Bluebirds on the other hand will have had just 48 hours since their last game (Hereford in the cup on Sunday) for our encounter so I’m hoping that they’ll be suffering from a bit of cup lethargy that will help us to catch them on the hop. Ninian Park is always a hostile place to go, both on and off the pitch – in fact when I mentioned to one of Emma’s ex teacher’s whilst at Underhill on Saturday where we’d be going on Tuesday night, his comments were “that will be nice for you, got your armour at the ready?”, and this from a Swansea man born and bred. It will be interesting to see how our group of new players adapt to playing at a ground which will be in stark contrast to Loftus Road in regards to how the atmosphere was against Barnsley. Five minutes on Cardiff City We were greeted by a baying mob and went on to win the game 2-1 thanks to goals by Clive Allen and Gary Micklewhite. That season Cardiff went down, so we didn’t play them in our promotion year the following season, and so the next time I went to Cardiff City (in fact I think it was the first time we’d played each other since that particular encounter in 1982) was in the season of 1999/2000 when we drew the Bluebirds in the League Cup. That was during the days when the League Cup were two-legged affairs in the early rounds and the first round was at LR which we won 2-1 thanks to goals from Gavin Peacock and Richard Langley. The second round at Ninian Park was on a Tuesday night, my girls were very young and little at the time, it was the summer school hols, so, with the car replenished with the younger one’s Barbie dolls, we took ourselves off to a trip to Cardiff City. Of course by that time we’d been relegated from the Premier League but were a Division One side, whilst Cardiff were playing in the division below. The game finished 2-1 to the home side (Peacock scored our goal) and so it went to penalties, and we went onto lose the shoot out. Our next game against them was in the 2002/03 season in November. We’d just been dumped out of FA cup by Vauxhall Motors and we were soundly beaten 4-0. Of course that season we went on to reach the play off final……..against Cardiff City at the Millennium Stadium in the city of Cardiff! I swear only these kind of things happen to us. Anyway, we all know what happened there, and it’s best not to dwell on the sadness of that day, though it’s fair to say that the behaviour of some of the Cardiff fans towards QPR supporters making their way out of the stadium towards a glum journey home left a lot to be desired. The next time we played there was in the 2004/05 season, our first as a Championship club after going up automatically the previous season. We played Cardiff on the last day of the season and lost 1-0 in what was if I recall correctly a rather volatile game, whilst the next season the same fixture was played out to a 0-0 draw. Which brings us to last season’s encounter between the two sides at Ninian Park. Played on a Friday night in November in front of the Sky TV cameras. City were riding high, on an unbeaten run and 13 places above us in top spot at the table. Due to the bad traffic on the M4 on a Friday evening, we didn’t get inside the ground until about 15 minutes into the game and so missed Gareth Ainsworth having to go off injured and being replaced by Nick Ward. Of course it was Nick Ward who made the run and superb cross over into the Bluebirds area late on in the game which led to Ray Jones’ late and dramatic goal for us. It was pandemonium and one of my lasting memories from that game will be the way Ray came over to us at the end clearly overjoyed and kissing his shirt. So 25 years after seeing our last win there, it was all thanks to Ray’s goal that secured our first win at Ninian Park in a quarter of a decade, and of course put a spoke in the wheel of the Cardiff wagon which went right off the rails after that game. God Bless you Ray. As for the Bluebirds this season, well, after getting off to a poor start, manager Dave Jones has done well to pull them back onto the straight and narrow and as we go into tomorrow’s game, they are now pushing for a play off spot in the table. The thing about them is that one minute they’re bleating about being skint and having no money, when the next, they’re making signings of the likes of Robbie Fowler and Jimmy Floyd, and we’ll have a look at their squad in more detail below. This season has been rife of rumours and various statements of problems between the club and former owner Sam Hammam and any monies owed to him. Current Chairman, Peter Risdale is adamant that any problems will be solved though he has mentioned legal action in a couple of his statements. Whilst all this has been going on, there’s also been movement as regards Cardiff City’s new ground. They are having a new stadium built for the club on a site which currently hosts the city’s Leckworth athletics stadium, and whilst last year there appeared to be a hitch concerning the atheletics stadium, this has now seemingly been resolved as construction work started before Christmas. The aim is for the site to host Cardiff City’s new stadium, a new athletics track, and the seemingly obligatory retail park which is part of the norm these days when building a new football stadium. The latest news is that they are aiming for the new stadium to be opened in time for the start of the 2009/10 season, and most recently have announced plans for a premier type membership. So it would seem exciting times ahead for the Bluebirds and it will be interesting to see how things pan out for them in the future. Dave Jones was regarded as one of this country’s best up and coming managers during the mid 1990’s after he had just had one season in charge there, had taken Stockport County up to the then old first division in the 97/97 season. Southampton decided to poach him and he went on to be named as the managers’ manager of the following season. He had a successful couple of seasons there but then at the turn of the new Millennium parted ways with the Saints, and indeed football management for a year, whilst he took time out due to circumstances outside of the game. He popped up at Wolves at the start of 2001 but three years later had again parted ways. He’s been at Cardiff for almost two full seasons now and back in November was coming under fire from impatient Bluebirds fans who were alarmed at the record of their beloved club having won only 11 of their last 49 games but Risdale stood firm, giving him the board’s vote of confidence, and after having steered the club away from a lowly position of 20th in the table at the start of December, some almost eight weeks later, the club are now setting their sights at the play off’s following a run of six wins and two draws from their last nine games. So it looks as though Risdale and his board were right to stick by their man. Who to watch out for In defence, full back Kevin McNaughton can play on either side and he scored their opening goal for Cardiff against Hereford, so he sounds quite versatile. He signed for the Bluebirds at the start of last season and has featured in most games since for them. Another regular in the Bluebirds defence is centre half, Glenn Loovens. Glenn also has plenty of experience in Europe playing with his former club Feyernoord, in European competitions. He joined Cardiff during the 2005/06 season initially on loan, and signed for them permanently last season and again, he’s been a regular in the team. In midfield Cardiff have some useful players. Peter Whittingham is a former Aston Villa trainee who has a reputation for being pacy on the wing. He signed for Cardiff at the turn of last year and was one of the group of players that went with Stuart Pearce and his England under-21 squad to the UEFA under 21 European championships last spring. Steve McPhail is one of those players’ whose name you are familiar with but can’t recall much about him! Looking at his stats he’s a bit of a journeyman, having played for Leeds, Millwall, Forest and Barnsley previously. He’s also been a Dave Jones regular this season. Paul Parry is currently Cardiff’s top scorer, on six goals, a tally he scored throughout the entire of last season. He’s been with the Bluebirds for around three seasons now, having signed for them from Hereford United. He can play wide on either wing, and has also been known to have been utilized in a more central role too. Up front is where Cardiff appear to be lacking. With Fowler out injured, and Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink blowing hot and cold (though injury problems have been hampering him on and off so far this campaign) the goal machine that perhaps Cardiff fans hoped Jimmy might prove to be has not yet paid off. Let’s hope I haven’t spoke too soon. Of course we all remember him most for his time at Chelsea (sigh) when he would score for the fun of it, but the sulky Dutchman is getting on now (36) and I get the feeling that One Size will be more than up for any possible encounter with him. Steve Thompson joined Cardiff at the start of 2006, signing for them from Glasgow Rangers. He hasn’t featured much for them so far this season due to a thigh injury but is now gradually making his grade. 4 goals in 8 recent games is not bad for a player that has been out for a long time with an injury. *Tracy’s star man Predominantly a left-footed player, Ledley has been working on his set pieces over the past year and this looks to have helped him improve his all round game according to some. He recently ruled out any speculation linking him with a move to a premier league side, saying all he is interested in at this moment in time is playing for Cardiff City in helping them to achieve their aims of play off’s for this season. Previous Meetings 2007/08 QPR 0 Cardiff 2 Head to Head What’s the team news? For Cardiff, Jimmy Floyd will probably start as he was on the bench for their game against Hereford. Long term injury casualties Robbie Fowler and Trevor Sinclair will not feature, whilst as with us, Dave Jones has no worries with any suspensions. Referee What’s going on elsewhere? Form January form has brought them two wins and a draw in the league, whilst sandwiched in between have been two wins in the FA cup and a win over Welshpool in the Welsh Cup. They’re currently ninth in the table and have 40 points under their belt, four points away from a play off spot. Our recent form hasn’t been too bad either with two wins and one defeat so far in the league in January for us. We’ve slowly began to claw our way from the bottom three in the table and if we were to compare with Cardiff against our last seven games in the league then our record stands at drawn one, lost twqo, and won four. We’re currently 17th in the table and on 33 points, seven points away from Cardiff. Prediction Photo: Action Images Please report offensive, libellous or inappropriate posts by using the links provided.
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