Saturday 30 July 2016

Paul Trollope will see how close Cardiff are to AFCB

Paul Trollope may not have managed a team in the Championship before this season but his Cardiff City side are ones to watch in the race for the Premier League. Cardiff will take on AFCB in a pre-season friendly wondering how they match up against a side that has not long been in the Premier League. It will be a great work out for the Blues and should give them something to aim at if they are to mount a promotion-winning season. But for AFCB it is a game that might give them less time on the ball than they could enjoy in many games next season.

Cardiff City may do well to hold on to Aron Gunnarson though who gave England's Euro squad such a tough time over in France. However, if they do he and Peter Whittingham will be players that need big seasons for Cardiff to get up. Great things will also be expected of Lex Immers who was a major summer signing from Feynoord.
AFCB players will be needing to impress in the last two home warm up games.
They have also bought in Belgian striker Frederic Gounongbe who is 28 and scored 22 goals in the Jupilier Pro League for De Kemphanen last season (I'll be honest - I have no idea how good that league is!). Danish-born Kenneth Zohore is another new striker from KV Kortrijk in Belgium, but he had already been on loan at Cardiff.

Cardiff still have David Marshall in goal who is as good as any of the top keepers in the Championship, but Hull City were rumoured to be tracking him while Steve Bruce was still at the club. Like AFCB, Hull are probably in search of some new defenders.

So we can expect a hard fought game and plenty of players from Cardiff that need to stake a claim to a place in their starting line up, but Eddie Howe may have to consider his options carefully with the players having to take on Valencia in four days time.


Enjoy the game if you are there today. I'm missing this one out so send in any images of fans or players to CherryChimesblog@gmail.com and I'll put the best ones up in Match Day Gallery.

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