Rubin Colwill started Sunday’s Severnside derby on the bench. He began getting stripped off just after the hour, with Cardiff City a goal down. By the time he made it onto the pitch in the 66th minute, Bristol had doubled their lead.
In the 67th minute, Colwill received possession near halfway on the right and immediately chopped a pass between two Bristol players and around another, into the path of the onrushing Mark Harris. He attempted to round Wes Bentley, but the Bristol goalkeeper dived at his feet, stretching out a hand that just about pushed the ball away from danger.
It was the closest Cardiff came to reducing the deficit and finding a way back into the game and it was something out of nothing. All due to Colwill’s instinctive brilliance.
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Cardiff look to be in pretty good shape, but they have developed certain inadequacies. The one most apparent and widely discussed is a lack of goals.
Max Watters is having a tough old time all on his own up top. Despite Cardiff’s increased appetite for the ball, it has yet to translate into more goals. Watters toils away, closing people down and making smart runs, but the ball is rarely forthcoming. When presented with the odd chance, he has thus far failed to make them count.
Watters was recalled from a fruitful loan spell at MK Dons last January and has a solitary goal to his name since. It was all hands on deck at the time, as Cardiff attempted to steer clear of the Championship relegation places, but in retrospect, maybe he would have benefitted from a longer spell in League One.
A lack of goals is actually a symptom rather than the underlying problem though. A lack of chances is the primary concern.
My personal opinion is that this is down to teething problems and may cease to be an ongoing concern soon enough. Steve Morison has brought in plenty of talented attacking players, who are still finding their feet. Once he finds the right blend, within the right shape, I expect that things will click in to place in an attacking sense.
Finding room for Colwill would surely accelerate that process.
Morison has tried a few different shapes during his tenure and it’s encouraging to see a Cardiff manager finally mix things up in this way. He inherited Mick McCarthy’s 4-5-1, which started of as a lifeboat and became a straitjacket over time. This evolved into a 3-5-2 and Watters certainly misses having someone like Jordan Hugill up top with him to share the attacking burden.
This season, Cardiff look to have played a variation on 4-3-3, or 4-2-3-1, presumably at least partly in order to accommodate a surplus of talented central midfielders. The latter allows Cardiff to play with someone as a traditional number 10 and that appears to be Colwill’s strongest position. The role and area that allows him to dictate play and inflict the most damage.
I like Romaine Sawyers and he’s made a good start to his Cardiff career, but Colwill is surely the future of this football team. If that is indeed the case, he needs to feel it and so do we.
Colwill’s Bristol cameo was actually a good indication of where he is in terms of his development and it wasn’t all sunshine and lollipops. He wasn’t always where he needed to be, he gave the ball away cheaply on occasion and when presented with a decent chance, he shanked it into the stands. He always gets up and goes again though. He never hides and continues to try things.
Still only 20, Colwill is a precocious talent and he’s still learning his trade, but every obstacle he’s faced to date, he has navigated. He made his Cardiff debut and thrived in his breakthrough season, finishing as joint top scorer. He made the jump to international level and already has a goal to his name.
It looks like Colwill may still be growing too, which can affect your coordination and I appreciate that he may not yet be physically ready to play twice a week, every week, but it still feels like he should be playing more than he is. Holding Colwill back may in turn be holding Cardiff back.
You can’t hold him back forever though because sooner or later, someone else might produce an offer too good to refuse and he may instead fulfil his promise elsewhere. Middlesbrough are believed to have a long-standing interest and they won’t be alone. It's unlikely that your progress will go undetected in the Championship, but it certainly won’t at international level.
The same applies to Isaak Davies, who signed his most recent Cardiff contract on the same day as Colwill. The pair are inextricably linked and Davies has just had his first brush with transfer speculation. Craig Bellamy, who oversaw his progress in the Cardiff academy, was presumably the driving force behind Burnley’s rebuffed approach.
Colwill and Davies were undoubtedly the success story of last season. A pair of young Welsh prospects who look capable of not only holding their own in this Cardiff side, but propelling them to greater heights. They’ve rarely featured together yet, but they dovetailed to great affect to create and convert Cardiff’s goal at Liverpool last season and whet the appetite for a future partnership.
Both missed out on pre-season and Davies is behind Colwill in his recovery, but this season is surely where Cardiff either use or lose them. Hopefully any interest will be discouraged in the final days of the transfer window and they will go on to get sustained playing time together this term.
If they are indeed the future of this football club, let it be known, to the pair and to the supporters. Tie them down to long-term deals and proclaim to potential suitors that they are not for sale.
No one since Lee Tomlin has had the audacity or vision to play that pass on Sunday with more or less their first touch, but Colwill is a prodigious talent and his return could prove to be the missing link.
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