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Coca-Cola Football League Championship
Game 22: Saturday 10 December 2005
Leeds United 0 - 1 Cardiff City
(Half-time: 0 - 1)
Crowd: 20597
Referee: G Salisbury (Lancashire)
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 |
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The Times, Sunday Times and Telegraph now seem to
require registration to view articles on their sites, with the
Times and Sunday Times charging readers outside the UK. The
Times/Sunday Times has also moved some of the older articles into
an archive which requires separate registration and requires you to
pay to access the content. The Independent now charges for access
to articles more than a week old.
As a breed, managers do not really relish singling out skilful
players for particular praise. They prefer to highlight the
contribution of the unsung hero, men who, like the Cardiff
midfielder Kevin Cooper, return from injury to run themselves into
the ground for the collective good. Or the 34-year-old Neil Cox,
who clambered out of his sick bed to organise a defensive line that
fended off Leeds United's clumsy thrusts with barely an alarm all
afternoon.
Without Cox at the back and Cooper and his ilk to sweep the
stage - or "retain the ball in areas which allow us to go forward",
as Cardiff's manager Dave Jones put it - players like Jason Koumas
would be an irrelevance, and of course that is true. But so too is
the fact that without individuals with the ability of Koumas and
the hugely promising Cameron Jerome, City would be a team of
journeymen; honest, solid and going nowhere. With them, they may be
heading for the play-offs. They are now back in fifth place.
Koumas, on a season's loan from West Bromwich after falling out
with Gary Megson and Bryan Robson, may still have something to
prove in the Premiership, but at this level he is a class apart.
Roaming intelligently behind the hard-running Jerome, he was the
dominant figure of a first half in which Cardiff were so superior
that Leeds, despite coming into the match on a four-game winning
streak, did not muster a single attempt on goal worthy of the
name.
Read the rest...
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