Cardiff City and Newcastle United played out a 0-0 in the Premier League earlier today. For many of those that viewed the encounter they’ll want to forget about it as soon as possible.

One player that will definitely want to move on as quickly as he can will be Newcastle Utd midfielder Kenedy.

When the best thing you can say about a player’s performance is that they were lucky not to get sent-off, then you know it’s been a bad one.

Although maybe the Magpie support would have preferred seeing their boss Rafa Benitez subbing Kenedy during the game and protecting the player from himself.

The Chelsea loanee ended the match with a 57% passing success rate, that’s after he went though the entire first half without successfully passing to a teammate.

The Brazilian would then take a free-kick in the second half and it was extremely poor. It hardly left the ground and timidly hit the Cardiff City wall.

His sullen body language suggested as the game went on that he didn’t feel up for the fight. His head was down and at times the ball was on the left wing and he didn’t go to offer himself to his teammates who had the ball. That’s a sure sign that the Brazilian wasn’t at the races.

Then as the clock ticked down, The Toon were awarded a penalty in stoppage time.

Kenedy to his credit stood forward to take the vital spot kick, that at least showed guts and a determination to put things right.

But unfortunately football and life doesn’t often work out that way.

If you’ve had a pretty terrible day of it, especially when you can’t get the basics right, then the chances are that your head won’t be in the right place to take such a big spot kick. You’re probably over thinking things and angry with yourself.

That’s too much negative emotion to put to one side and take a penalty.

At that stage Benitez and/or his players should’ve intervened and taken the decision out of Kenedy’s hands.

After the game, Rafa stated:

“It was a poor penalty, he’s not happy he missed a good chance. We win as a team and lose as a team. I am not concerned about the fact he missed a penalty – he has to take responsibility.”

For me, the manager has to take his share of the blame, he had a responsibility to the club to change the taker of the pen, when he knew Kenedy had had a shocker.

Someone liked Jonjo Shelvey or Joselu should have taken the ball and taken the resulting penalty.

Alas they didn’t and the twenty-two year old looked nervous before he tamely hit the kick and it was easily saved by Bluebirds keeper Neil Etheridge.

Football can be as simple as reacting properly and Newcastle United didn’t do that this afternoon. No way should Kenedy have been allowed to take that spot kick!

Posted on August 18th, 2018 by scott
Filed under: Article