For anyone who had not watched Cardiff in League One this season, this might have been quite a surprise.<\/p>\n
Gone is the robust, direct style of play favoured by Neil Warnock, Mick McCarthy and other previous managers.<\/p>\n
That has been replaced by a freewheeling, possession-based brand of attacking football carried out by a\u202fyoung team brimming with Bluebirds academy graduates.<\/p>\n
Admittedly, Cardiff are playing in the third tier of English football for the first time in more than two decades, but this season has been unusually joyous for a club who had lost their way in the Championship.<\/p>\n
Having seen off Premier League Burnley and ambitious fellow Welsh side Wrexham in previous rounds of the EFL Cup, this was a first chance for Barry-Murphy’s charges to test themselves against a real heavyweight.<\/p>\n
They rose to the challenge admirably, impressing out of possession with positional discipline and coordinated pressing, while also causing their illustrious opponents problems.<\/p>\n
Callum Robinson and Turnbull saw early efforts saved, while Isaak Davies was a nuisance on the left wing and his deflected low cross had Chelsea keeper Filip Jorgensen scrambling.<\/p>\n
The Bluebirds’ endeavour was rewarded when Ng cut in from the right and arced a beautiful left-footed cross for Turnbull, who shifted his bodyweight and headed smartly into the net to spark wild celebrations.<\/p>\n
The home crowd were baying for more at that stage and, although the giant-killing was not to be, this was a performance full of skill as much as heart to enhance the reputations of every Cardiff player and their boss Barry-Murphy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For anyone who had not watched Cardiff in League One this season, this might have been quite a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":350539,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[49,48,561,82],"class_list":["post-350538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=350538"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350538\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/350539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=350538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=350538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=350538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}