Cardiff City vs. Everton: Skor Bars and Scores Barred

When I was growing up, my grandfather was the landlord for a set of apartments he had created out of the upper levels of his house.  He and my grandmother lived on the first floor and when I visited them I would run throughout the building knocking on tenants' doors just to say hello.  One of the tenants was really awesome and used to give me candy.  But not just any candy...Skor bars.  

For the uninitiated, Skor bars are basically rectangular slabs of toffee covered in chocolate.  I can hear you all collectively grimacing; I've come to realize that I'm pretty much the only person in America that likes Skor bars.  To anyone from Britain who may be reading this blog, I believe the closest equivalent to a Skor bar is the Daim bar.  Feel free to comment and let me know if these are popular in your countries!

This childhood memory was dredged up earlier this year when I discovered that Everton's nickname is...you guessed it...the "Skor bars".  No, I'm kidding.  It's the "Toffees".  The nickname derives from a candy called the "Everton Toffee" sold near the original Everton stadium at "Ye Anciente Everton Toffee House" in the 1800s.  Later when Everton moved to a new stadium, the eponymous owner of the nearby "Mother Noblett's Toffee Shop" tweaked the Everton Toffee recipe, called it the "Everton Mint", and started giving it out for free at the soccer matches.  

Everybody loves free candy, and thus Everton fans adopted the nickname of the Toffees.  Fast forward one hundred years to this past Saturday when the Bluebirds collided with the Toffees.  I guess you could say it was a...sticky mess.

Cardiff City 0 - Everton 0

• <crickets chirping>

That's right ladies and gentlemen, a zero-zero draw.  In my very first post I pondered, "...the rest of the world must know something that I don't which could possibly make sitting through a ninety-plus minute game, only to end in a zero-zero draw, worthwhile."  So did I discover that secret?  Maybe.  

Last year, the Toffees placed sixth in the league.  Their roster is filled with talent, and after last week's wake up call to Manchester City no one is going to walk into Cardiff City Stadium underestimating the Bluebirds again.  The fact that the Cardiff City defense managed to hold Everton to zero goals was a minor miracle.  

In the Premier League standings, a win is worth three points, a loss is worth zero points, and a draw is worth one point.  If we're being honest, Everton on paper at least should have beaten Cardiff City.  So I think that the Bluebirds were more than happy to walk away with one point from this snoozefest.  

And this, as best I can tell, is the secret to tolerance of (I still can't imagine saying "enjoyment of") a tie game.  When you're the underdog and you manage to keep up with your opponent for a full game, you take your one point and you do the Scooby Doo run out of that stadium.

Let me be clear though, ties are an abomination.  They're great for keeping you moving up the standings table, but as a competitive person I view a game where nobody wins as a game where everybody loses.

Just for kicks, I did a little digging into the 2012/13 season results.  Apparently, 216 of 380 (57%) matches ended in a tie.  Alarmingly, 35 of 380 matches (9%) ended in a 0-0 tie.

I want you to digest that for a moment, then I want you to imagine the NFL having 57% of its games end in a tie, then I want you to take some Rolaids so you don't get ill.  

If ANYONE is confused about why soccer hasn't taken off as a professional sport in America, this is the reason:  ties are shameful things that happen and we never speak of again.

Enough soccer bashing.  I have been having a blast following this team and ties or no ties I plan to stick with them through the season.

I was only able to watch the first half of the match, but obviously I didn't miss anything.  Cardiff City lost the war of possession yet again, but their defense was strong enough that it didn't matter.  And in fact, I did manage to catch the only moment of the match that the media is actually talking about.  Around forty one minutes into the match, Cardiff City's Gary Medel slide tackled Everton's Leighton Baines (one of my fantasy All Stars I might add).  

I don't know anything about soccer fouls, but apparently you need to at least pretend to be aiming for the ball when you slide tackle someone.  As you can see from the picture below, Medel was nowhere near the ball when he assaulted Baines MMA-style.  Long live Medel!

But here's the catch...the referee didn't call a foul.  Had he done so, Baines would have been awarded a penalty kick and Everton may have gone up on Cardiff City 1-0.

I say may have, but Everton coach Roberto Martinez has not stopped bitching about this missed foul call as if it were a 100% certainty that his team would have gotten a goal from the resulting penalty kick.  I say Roberto needs to shut the hell up.  Here's the Everton record to date this season:

• 2-2 against Norwich City
• 0-0 against West Bromwich Albion
• 0-0 against Cardiff City

Apologies, but if you're team is so crappy that you have to sit around and wait for your opponents to foul you to get a goal, then you need to find a new job.  Baines may or may not have scored on his own if Medel had not slide tackled him.  He may or may not have scored if the referee had awarded a penalty kick.  Who knows?  But what the hell was going on in the other 90 whatever minutes?  One would think that 2012's 6th best premier league team wouldn't have to count on a potential successful penalty kick to be their only source of offense against a newly-promoted team.  

Grab a tissue Martinez, you cry baby.

Cardiff City is now in 11th place, and for the moment out of the relegation discussion.  The table below captures the full Premier League standings as of 09/03/13.  The table columns are:  Club Name, Matches Played (Pld), and Match Points (Pts).

In other news, the Transfer window is now closed.  In a last minute flurry, Cardiff City picked up three new team members:

• Maximiliano Amondarain (Defender)
• Kevin Theophile-Catherine (Defender)
• Peter Odemwingie (Forward)

Odemwingie I get.  Cardiff City have only scored in one of their three games.  And you could fairly argue that, since all of the Bluebirds' goals in that game were at the expense of a clearly disinterested MCI, that future goals will be harder to come by for Cardiff City.  They need all the firepower they can buy.

I'm less clear on why they needed to pick up more defenders, but we'll see how these new guys play into the rotation as the season progresses.  

There will be no blog post next week, the Premier League is on what's called the "International Break".  Basically, this is when players return to their home countries and compete with their national teams for places in the World Cup.  We'll pick back up again with a new post on September 17th.

I suppose the final piece of business is to update you on my woeful fantasy team, the Cardiff'rent Strokes.  After three weeks, we've amassed a total of 124 points.  That's an average of 41 points per week.  For perspective, the leader of the private league I'm in is averaging 63 points per week.  And the leader of the formally-sponsored global league is averaging a whopping 87 points per week.

Obviously, I'm doing something horribly wrong.  Hopefully, I'll have better news to report on that front when next we meet.  FYI, Cardiff City's next game is against Hull City on September 14th.

Thank you as always for reading Dragon and Bluebird!  You can find me on Twitter as well, @dragon_bluebird.