Shearer Shocker As CCFC Lose....

By CCFC Sid
October 19 2003

The old saying `never change a winning team' was ignored by temporary manager Eric Black, and todays Coventry City XI crashed to defeat in front of the TV cameras against Cardiff, with Suffo and Doyle replacing Mansouri (Ill) and Barrett.

It was hard to decide whose performance was the worst today out of Scott Shearer, the rest of the Coventry defence, or the referee, but between them they helped Cardiff to a fairly easy 3-1 victory - and it should have been more....

CCFC started brightly enough, and might have taken an early lead, with Whing and Suffo both going close to breaking the dead-lock. After 10 minutes Coventry City did go ahead, thanks to a cracking strike from the re-called Michael Doyle, who started and finished the move (Momentarily justifying his re-call to the side).

Minutes later Shearer made a good save after Earnshaw trickery had created a scoring chance for Cardiff - but that was the end of the afternoon as far as Shearer looking anything other than very poor was concerned. His performance in goal for the majority of this match really did say it's time for Ward or Arphexad to come in. One or two errors can be excused, but today he looked every inch a Scottish D3 goalkeeper....

A Suffo effort hit the inside of the post after 23 minutes, and with that miss went CCFC's hopes of taking all three points....

Whalley equalised for the visitors after 28 minutes, and Shaw stopped Cardiff from making it 2-1 a minute later. After 31 they did take the lead, with Gordon (Not for the first time) being given the freedom of the penalty area to head home.

Coventry City were denied a blatant penalty after 37 minutes, and seconds later Cardiff were given a highly debatable penalty themselves. Shearer was booked for his troubles - though the referee sending him off would probably have done CCFC a far bigger favour.

Wednesdays match-winner Craig Pead was brought on at half-time for the extremely disappointing Jorgensen - though Coventry could quite easily have substituted the majority of the starting XI.

Adebola spurned a chance to get Coventry back into the match after 48 minutes, picking out the back row of the stand from about five yards out when it looked far easier to score, and Earnshaw should have added to Cardiff's lead 10 and 15 minutes later, missing two easy chances - again, following Shearer errors.

In a bizarre substitution (On a par with playing Jorgensen on the right, rather than his favoured position on the left), Barrett replaced Whing, but this change had absolutely no effect on the match.

Coventry's afternoon was summed up in the 78th minute, with Doyle seemingly in a good position for a shot, hitting his effort so wide it actually ended up going out for a throw-in

Finding a Man Of The Match for Coventry City, on this performance, would have been virtually impossible, as every player gave their worst performance of the season. Morrell was virtually anonymous, Safri's passing ability was on a par with Shearer's goalkeeping, and any Coventry player in a position to try and reduce the deficit seemed far to bothered about trying to walk the ball into the net rather than just hit it.