Quick Kicks: Cardiff - There’s no unity at Sunderland; Cattermole & Kone were appalling

Unity? What Unity?

For me, it's not about the money spent or lack thereof.

Obviously, you've got more chance to go up if you've got money. Throw enough shit at the wall and some of it will stick. A lot of clubs get out of this league because, from top to bottom, they know who they are, what the plan is, how they're going to run the club and everyone buys into it.

It's not that people don't buy into it here - it's that there's fuck all to buy into in the first place.

Everyone is working independently and there's no unity. It doesn't matter what hashtag they come up with, they've overseen a wholesale dissection of any purpose and clear direction this club had. How you put that back together I have no idea, but it's obvious these guys can't and won't do it.

— Callum Mackay.

Kone - Shocking

For both of Cardiff’s goals we saw Lamine Kone doing his best impersonation of a bad footballer again and I’m really starting to grow tired of him and his bullshit.

For their first he was half asleep and outdone by a long ball, and then for the second he gives away an absolutely terrible penalty, one that was needless and avoidable.

Does the guy want to be here? He certainly doesn’t look like he does. Putting a captain’s armband on him seems to have done him no good.

And, dare I say it... is it time to press the emergency button and to start playing John O’Shea in the centre of defence again? Surely he cannot do any worse.

Cattermole & Ndong cannot play together

I’m going to keep saying it until I’m blue in the face - Lee Cattermole and Didier Ndong cannot play in the same midfield at the same time, and it’s hurting us.

Both players had absolute shockers today in my opinion but Cattermole was perhaps the worst player on the pitch. He’s been bad at times this season but today was the first time I’ve actually felt disappointed in him. He wasn’t putting the effort in like he usually does and he was a mile off the pace - he looked like a knackered, useless old clogger incapable of keeping up with the average, plodding midfielders that currently occupy the centre of the park for Cardiff. It was quite frankly embarrassing.

Grayson’s lack of self-confidence is telling

Playing five at the back is, in itself, a strange move when you’re at home and your attacking players lack the pace and ingenuity to hurt teams on the break.

We played the same system against Sheffield United without proper attackers on the pitch and looked exposed, and it was pretty much unanimously agreed that we should probably shelve it for a while. Yet, today we went out in a similar fashion and repeated the same mistakes that we did two weeks ago - and the consequences were almost identical.

After a matter of minutes we were behind, and then at around the 20th minute mark we changed our system again to try and get back in to the game. The result was that we had players out of position, all over the place, with many of them clearly unsure of what role they were supposed to be playing.

That, to me, falls mostly on the manager. We looked under-prepared - and he clearly isn’t confident in his own ability or that of his players.

The players have to be better, but recent results show that regardless of how many ‘big names’ are in there, most of them just aren’t very good.