Sun Dec 13, 2009 4:14 pm
Marshall - 9
Quinn - 5
Gerrard - 9
Hudson - 8
McNaughton - 6 Substituted for: Matthews - 7
Burke - 10
Rae - 6
Ledley - 6
Whittingham - 5, Substituted for: Etuhu - 8, Substituted for: McCormack - 5
Bothroyd - 8
Chopra - 7
A very fine performance away from home, yet again, from the Bluebirds. Burke was absolutely outstanding, inspirational in fact to his other team mates. When Whittingham went off I thought our threat to Middlesbrough was no more, but Etuhu silenced my thoughts with an amazing performance, didn't stop running and made no mistakes whatsoever.
Our centre halves again played absolutely outstanding, we defended expertly like we did against West Brom to secure 9 points out of 9 in the last three games.
Considering this was undoubtedly a midfielder's game, Ledley and Rae didn't make as much as an impact on the game as we'd have liked, Ledley was now and again showing he has terrific vision and work rate but he and Rae were almost invisible for the majority of this fixture.
Marshall is without a doubt our best keeper since Alexander, maybe even better - who knows. What I know is that he made brilliant saves today, especially his save against Yates' free kick which looked bound for the back of the net. He came a close second for man of the match in my opinion.
Dave Jones has given me great confidence in my team lately to push for automatic promotion, and seeing as it is almost the new year it shows that we deserve to be up there with West Brom and Newcastle. What worries me though is our lack of consistency, we lose three, we win three, it is quite alarming because without consistency we will never get automatic promotion.
But today was a great win, I would have been extremely happy with a draw away to Middlesbrough who were hoping to bounce back from a 3-0 defeat to Blackpool, but a win will do. Hopefully we can carry on with our current form, and not have a streak of losses again.
Come on Cardiff.