Bleary-Eyed Statto

A Stateside Cardiff City Weblog / John Heyda / Middletown, Ohio USA

Email Bleary-Eyed Statto

15 Top Cardiff City Web Sites

Cardiff City News Now

Cardiff City Online

Cardiff City FC's Official Site

BBC Sport - Cardiff City

Bluebirds Downunder

Bluesy's Blues Blog

Cardiff City, Clarks Pies and Curry

Cardiff City Mauve and Yellow Army

GTFM 106.9 Pontypridd / City Phone In

ICWales Cardiff City Page

1927 Club

TeamTALK Cardiff City Page

Urban 75's City Home Page

Valley Rams on YouTube

Yahoo! Sports City Page


More City Sites

Bluebird to the Bone

Bob Bank Hero Online Fanzine

Bobbing Along With Cardiff City

Cardiff City Bigger Than Barcelona

Cardiff City Cards

Cardiff City Kits

Cardiff Norway

Cardiff City Supporters Club

Diary of a Cardiff Exile

I Saw Magic Score

Ledroyd Chopmack

Life is TOOSHort

SvenskaFans.com / Cardiff City


Welsh Sites

BBC Wales

Cardiff University

Coal Mining History Resources

Dragon Soccer

ICWales.co.uk

Red Dragon Radio

This is South Wales

Tiger Bay Oral History

Tribute to the Rhondda Valleys

Welsh Football Data Archive

Welsh Football Bibliography

Welsh Football Magazine

Welsh National Anthem

Welsh Photo Links

Worldwide Welsh


World Football Sites

About a Ball

Abseits German Soccer Guide

Albion Road

Andy's Stats

Claudio Nicoletti's Web Site

EUFO.de

EuroFussball

Football Crests

Football Derbies.com

Football LinX

Football Results

Football Squads

Football Transfer League

French League

The Global Game

IFFHS.de

Kicker.de

National Football Teams

Political Economy of Football

Rivals Index

Soccer Blogs

Soccerbot

Soccer Directory

Soccerlinks

Soccerlist

Soccer Search Engine

Soccer Statistics Net

SoccerSTATS.com

Soccer365.com

Soccerway

Sportpress.com

Statto.com

Tribal Football

UEFA.com

Very Quiet News Football

World Football Organization

World Soccer

World Stadiums Database


Bleary-Eyed Statto is back. Wahey! After a year and a half away, total dedication to all things Cardiff City resumes for the 2009/10 season, offering notes and stats on City matches and maneuverings, along with reports on and reactions to City goings-on from the message board and chat room at Cardiff City Online and from the mailing list, still the world's best. To join the list, type "cardiffcity" in the search box at groups.yahoo.com) and go from there.

THIS WEEK'S ENTRIES. For the latest bleary-eyed entries, scroll down just a bit.

TWITTER. You can follow our pointless ramblings on Twitter as well. That link's right HERE.

ARCHIVES. Click HERE for the archives to this site, which include well over 600 entries as well as links to roughly 130 web sites. For coverage of the latter stages of City's 2003-04 campaign, visit Bleary-Eyed Statto 2, which soared up, briefly, to take over for this site toward the end of that season.

SCHEDULES. Cardiff City's schedule for the rest of the calendar year looks like this:
Sat., Nov. 7 - Swansea City (A) 12:45pm
Sat., Nov. 21 - Barnsley (A) 3:00pm
Sun., Nov. 29 - Ipswich Town (H) 3:00pm
Sat., Dec. 5 - Preston North End (H) 3:00pm
Tues., Dec. 8 - West Bromwich Albion (A) 7:45pm
Sun., Dec. 13 - Middlesbrough (A) 1:15pm
Sat., Dec. 19 - Leicester City (H) 3:00pm
Sat., Dec. 26 - Plymouth Argyle (H) 1:00pm
Mon., Dec. 28 - Peterborough United (A) 3:00pm

For the full fixture list beginning with the August 8 opener v Scunthorpe United, go HERE.

ONE MORE NOTE. A bit of background. During the 2001-02 and 2002-03 seasons, this weblog hit its peak, offering daily coverage of Cardiff City FC, easily the greatest football club the world has ever known. We're talking about the winners of the 1927 FA Cup, and the only club to take the FA Cup out of England. Coverage has been spotty at best of late. Full coverage from July 2001 to August 2003. Then a dip in form for the 2003-04 campaign and only a handful of entries for 2004-05. Followed by nothing at all for 2005-06 or 2006-07. Day-to-day coverage for the better part of 2007-08, then nothing for 2008-09. Can we be trusted, then, this time around? One can only hope.


Mailing List Reactions to City's First Home Loss of the Season


Monday, September 14, 2009

Cardiff City Mailing List members wasted little time weighing in with their thoughts on yesterday's 1-0 loss to Newcastle, the club's first setback at their new stadium. Within a hour of the final whistle, verdicts came pouring in on City's performance. Here is a sampling of supporters' reactions to the defeat:

* Scott Thomas claimed that by no means was Michael Chopra the problem; rather it was "Quinn, Hudson, Quinn, Gerrard, Quinn, Ledley, Quinn and Quinn. They were hopeless." He added, "Oh, Jones too. No change of shape and one change in personnel in a game where we were being crowded out of midfield from the off and had one teenage striker on his second start for the entire back four to deal with."

* David Abse wrote, "I've seen Quinn twice now, and he's been lousy both games. Comminges would be better, no?" He added, "I thought Gerard looked poor today also, and Hudson not much better. Ledley clearly was having a poor game too - as well as Whittingham." Still, Mr. Abse claimed, "i didn't think we deserved to lose. We should have had a penalty, and Smith was lucky to stay on for as long has he did. He is such a dirty player - always leaves his boot in where it isn't necessary, elbows always up. Just horrible."

* Marc Thomas noted, "Newcastle were just better than us and better organised. Disrupted us so that we couldn't settle on the ball and were harder working in defence and in the midfield. How many free kicks were charged/hit straight into the wall?"

* Michael Morris had this to say: "we should have ripped into them today and we tippy tapped and pussyfooted around and they were strong enough to keep us at bay. a disappointing effort against a team i think we could have beaten if we'd shown some more ambition."

* Summing things up, Scott Thomas observed that "the balls never got delivered up front well enough because Newcastle were very well organised with that 4-2-3-1 that a lot of top flight teams also favour." He added, "We were choked out of the game in midfield and our only response was an individual one from Chopra to try and come deep to even out the numbers in the middle third."


City Fall to Newcastle 1-0, Remain 8th


Sunday, September 13, 2009

Newcastle United ruined Cardiff City's perfect record at Cardiff City Stadium today, beating the Bluebirds 1-0 before a crowd of 25,630. Fabricio Coloccini's header in the 18th minute of play was the difference as the Magpies moved to the top of the division table with the win. City remain in 8th place. The Bluebirds best chance at a goal came in the 82nd minute, when a Michael Chopra shot appeared to strike the hand of a Newcastle defender Steven Taylor, but referee Andy Hall declined to give the penalty. The Magpies had a nervy moment or two as well after Alan Smith was sent off in the 90th minute.

City had no less than 16 attempts on goal to two for Newcastle. In the attempts-on-target department, City had 14 to two for Newcastle. Despite these advantages, "the Bluebirds found it difficult to unlock a solid Magpies defence," as noted in the BBC Sport report on the match. In "Newcastle United Just Too Class for Battling Cardiff City," his report for the South Wales Echo, Terry Phillips observes that "Newcastle certainly didn’t blow the Bluebirds away with free-flowing, passing football, but they were superbly organised and kept City at bay thanks to their know-how, experience, quality and sheer defiance."

In "Chris Hughton Continues to Inspire Newcastle with Win Over Cardiff," his report for the Guardian, Spencer Vignes claims that City "Cardiff probably deserved a point, United taking it far too easy after the break and almost paying the price during a tense finale." Still, as James Corrigan notes in his report for the Independent, "as much possession as Cardiff commanded, the opportunities were scant.

Russell Kempson's report for the Times Online, "Coloccini Heads Up New-look Grafters," notes that "Cardiff huffed, puffed and could find no way through." The Telegraph's report, by Jed Pitman, has it that City "looked in awe of their opponents."


Bleary-Eyed Navigation


You can get to the top of Bleary-Eyed Statto's front page by clicking here.

To get to the previous week's entries (September 6 to September 12), go here. For the next week's (September 20 to September 26), go here.


15 Top UK Footy Sites

BBC Sport / Football

Football365 Stats Pages

Football Unlimited

Livescore

RSSSF Archive

Sky Sports Live Score Centre

Soccerbase

Soccernet England: Clubs

Sporting Life

Sportbox.tv Football

TeamTALK.com

Times Online Football

Tony Kempster's Web Site

Vital Football


Sights & Sounds

Andromeda Net Sports Channels

ATDHE.Net

Blitz Corner Videos

Calcio Link

Fox Soccer

Free Soccer Highlights

Hqsportz.net

Leia's Sports

MyP2P.eu

P2P4U.Net

Radio Wales Sport

Rajangan TV

Talksport.net

TV Gol

Video Soccer


More UK Footy Web Sites

Back Page Football

Clubcall Football

Composite Titles & Cups Chart

ConfGuide.com

A Different League

Eat Sleep Sport Football

English Football Archive

Fanbase Links

FansFC.com

Football Conference

Football.co.uk

Football History Links

Football Transfers

Football Webpages.co.uk

FootyMad.net

4theGame.com

FSF Ground Guide

ITV Football

Kit Classics

Metro.co.uk Sport

My Football News

Non-League Daily.com

Non-League Directory

Non League Football Live

The Pyramid.info

Shankly.com

Soccer Stand

Square Football

This is Football

When Saturday Comes

Zamaretto League


UK Media Sports Pages

Express & Star Sport

ICBirmingham Sport

ICLiverpool Sport

ICNetwork Local Links

Independent Football

Lancashire Evening Post Sport

Manchester Evening News Football

Mirror Sport

Press and Journal Sport

The Scotsman Sport

The Star Sport

Telegraph Sport

This is Bristol Sport

This is London Sport

Western Gazette Sport

Yorkshire Post Sport


Football Blogs & Fan Sites

All Grounds Lead Somewhere

Clubs in Crisis

Dub Steps

Each Game As It Comes

EPL Talk

Extreme Groundhopping

Flat back Four

Footblog

The Groundhog

The Groundhopper

Local Bus Driver

Losing the Dressing Room

The Offside

100 Football Grounds Club

Pies and Mushy Peas

Pyramid Passion

Six Tame Sides

Soccer Lens

Soccer Shout

Sound of Football

Tim's 92

Who Ate All the Pies

Soccerlinks - the soccer website directory

Pitas.com!