Team

Last season, Cardiff City secured the Tier 2 championship by a comfortable eight point margin.  But now that they're in the Premier League, will the same style of play and personnel be enough to survive relegation?  Let's take a look at some statistics from 2012/13 to get a sense of how they won the championship and what to expect from the Bluebirds in the upcoming season.  

2012/13 high-level season stats:

• 46 matches played (25 wins, 12 draws, 9 losses)
• 72 goals fielded, 45 goals allowed
• 1.57 average goals fielded/match
• 0.98 average goals alllowed/match

These stats didn't tell me too much, so I dug a little deeper and found myself thoroughly confused.  When compared to the other twenty three clubs they played in Tier 2:

• Cardiff City did not field the most overall goals (that was Watford with 85)
• Cardiff City did not allow the fewest overall goals (that was Brighton and Hove Albion with 43)
• Cardiff City did not have any player score more than 8 goals (Crystal Palace had best with 30)
• Cardiff City did not have any player in the Tier 2 top twenty goal scorers
• Cardiff City did not have any player in the Tier 2 top twenty for assists

Ok...so how the heck did the Bluebirds end up winning the Tier 2 championship?  Well there are three stats that I found that I believe help explain the situation:

• Cardiff City had the most "clean sheets" (i.e. opponent shutouts) at 18 times (39% of matches)
• Cardiff City had the highest goal differential (i.e. goals fielded minus goals allowed) at +27
• Cardiff City had a well-distributed set of 17 different goal scorers

That last bullet might need some explanation.  Cardiff City's two highest scoring players fielded only 16 of the club's 72 goals (i.e. 22%).  In contrast, Watford's and Crystal Palace's two highest scoring players fielded 42% and 50% of their respective club's goals.  To be blunt, Cardiff City has no scoring stars, but they do have a lot of potential threats.

Phew, ok enough with the statistics.  My takeaway from all this is that Cardiff City won the Tier 2 championship because they frequently shut out their opponents, they beat their opponents by high margins, they lost to their opponents by low margins, and they had a large number of potential goal scorers instead of one or two stars.  Feel free to throw eggs at this amateur analysis, it's worth what you paid for it.

Next let's look at the projected 2013/14 roster based on the 2012/13 roster and known player acquisitions from the transfer window.  A quick note about soccer positions and formations before we get started.  I'm not yet invested enough in soccer to care about specific positions, but broadly speaking you have:  Goalkeepers, Defenders, Midfielders, and Forwards.  You can shift the number of players in each role into different formations, as long as you have only one Goalkeeper and a total of eleven players.  

Last season, Cardiff City used a 4-4-2 formation roughly 70% of the time.  That means 4 Defenders, 4 Midfielders, and 2 Forwards.  The Goalkeeper is not mentioned in this notation, since you have one and only one no matter how you arrange the rest of the team.  For the sake of discussion, I'm going to assume Cardiff City will continue to predominantly use the 4-4-2 formation.

Below is my projected 2013/14 starting eleven for Cardiff City, and the substitute players that will see the most play time.  The new transfers are in bold, and I've indicated in parentheses any players with prior Premier League experience.

Goalkeeper:

1.  David Marshall

Defenders:

2.  Andrew Taylor (three seasons)

3.  Matthew Connolly (three seasons)

4.  Mark Hudson

5.  Steven Caulker (two seasons)

Midfielders:

6.  Peter Whittingham (one season)

7.  Aron Gunnarsson

8.  Craig Noone

9.  Kim Bo-Kyung

Forwards:

10.  Craig Bellamy (five seasons)

11.  Andreas Cornelius

Substitutes:

12.  Kevin McNaughton (Defender)

13.  Jordon Mutch (Midfielder, two seasons)

14.  Craig Conway (Midfielder)

15.  Tommy Smith (Forward, three seasons)

16.  Ben Turner (Defender)

17.  John Brayford (Defender)

18.  Simon Moore (Goalkeeper)

I've only listed Simon Moore in the Substitute list for completeness.  He's going to be either the first or second backup goalkeeper for Cardiff City.  But last season, the Bluebirds' starting goalkeeper David Marshall played every minute of every league game.  So unless Marshall gets hurt, Simon Moore will be riding the bench all season.

Of the four new additions, Andreas Cornelius is the most promising.  He was the leading goal scorer in the Danish Football Association.  You can make of that what you will, but Cornelius did score eighteen goals last season, which is ten more than anyone on Cardiff City scored so that's got to be a plus.

The transfer window is open until August 31st, and there are still several players who Cardiff City is actively pursuing.  The most widely-reported of these are:

• Peter Odemwingie (Forward, West  Bromwich Albion) - replace or sub for Bellamy
• Tom Huddlestone (Midfielder, Tottenham Hotspur) - replace or sub for Gunnarsson or Kim
• Jefferson Montero (Midfielder, Mexico) - replace or sub for Gunnarsson or Kim
• Etienne Capoue (Midfielder, France) - replace or sub for Gunnarsson or Kim
• Hector Moreno (Defender, Mexico) - replace or sub for Connolly or Taylor
• Anthony Reveillere (Defender, France) - replace or sub for Connolly or Taylor

It's very difficult as a new follower of soccer to assess how Cardiff City's current roster will fare in the Premier League.  From everything that I've read, it seems like the club is decent enough to survive relegation from a defensive perpsective.  But this season will be long slog for every point unless the Bluebirds pick up some higher-quality scoring Midfielders and perhaps a true star Forward.

Next week will be my final post of the off-season.  I'll be doing a gut check as to where I'm at in terms of actually enjoying professional soccer.

Thanks as always for reading, and see you next week on Dragon and Bluebird!