We ask rival fans to predict outcome of West Brom’s visit to Cardiff City Stadium tonight
CARDIFF City take on table-toppers West Bromwich Albion in tonight’s Championship fixture with the hosts looking to close the six-point gap to the last play-off spot.
Neil Harris’ men have struggled in the league since the turn of the year, with two draws and a loss so far in 2020 and will be looking to turn it around against the league leaders tonight.
Kevin Davies, 51, has been a season ticket holder at the Hawthorns since 1978 and believes the game at the Cardiff City Stadium will be tight.
“It was a great result on Saturday (in the FA Cup against West Ham), but Cardiff will be a very different test,” Mr Davies said.
“They are on a great run of form at home and like many games in the Championship, this will be another tight game which could go either way.
“Unfortunately against Cardiff we will be without the creative talents of (Matheus) Pereira and (Grady) Diangana so we need (Filip) Krovinovic to step up like he did against West Ham.
“I fear for us against Cardiff. They seem to always score a goal at home so we go there needing to score two I think, as we rarely shut teams out. I hope I’m wrong!”
Cardiff currently sit six points behind rivals Swansea who occupy the last playoff spot and Harris will be hoping for a first win in four games.
James Owens, 22, attends most of Cardiff’s home games and says City will have to be on top of their game to get a result.
“If we could get a win against West Brom it would certainly show a lot of intent to the rest of the league that we still have some ambition in the side to challenge for the play-off spots.
“Neil Harris needs to set the team up perfectly from the get-go which he has struggled to do lately.”
The Bluebirds’ poor league form has coincided with a build-up of fixtures due to their involvement in the FA Cup.
A 1-1 draw at the Madejski Stadium on Saturday secured Cardiff’s name in the draw for the fifth round, with Reading travelling to the Welsh capital on February 4 for the replay.
Callum Paterson put the Bluebirds in front with five minutes on the clock but just three minutes later a Yakou Meite goal levelled things up.
Cardiff mustered 15 shots to Reading’s five across the 90 minutes but failed to find the breakthrough, despite the Royals being down to 10 men for the final minutes.
Tonight’s opponents were also in FA Cup action on the weekend, putting in an impressive display to knock out Premier League opposition West Ham.
Conor Townsend’s sweetly struck drive came just nine minutes in as West Brom dominated the majority of proceedings, even after Semi Ajayi had been dismissed with 20 minutes to play.
Similarly to Cardiff, West Brom have struggled in the league recently, picking up just three points in their last five outings.
Both sides are enduring a barren spell in front of goal but that wasn’t the case when the two sides met in the reverse fixture, with West Brom running out 4-2 winners.
Cardiff fans will be hoping that it’s their team that come out on top tonight (kick-off 7.45pm) to secure their first three points of the new year.
