Preview: Cardiff City vs. Pen-y-Bont – prediction, team news, lineups
Taking part in their third pre-season friendly in the space of a week, Cardiff City square off with Welsh counterparts Pen-y-Bont at the Cardiff International Sports Stadium on Tuesday.
After Joel Colwill‘s own goal condemned Cardiff to a shock 1-0 friendly defeat to Kidderminster on Wednesday, Bulut’s men succeeded at their second bite of the pre-season cherry on Saturday, where a Takuro Kaneko opener for Kortrijk preceded a Bluebirds onslaught.
Isaak Davies, Jamilu Collins and Rubin Colwill responded emphatically for the Championship outfit in Canton, where Bulut affirmed that he was satisfied with his side’s overall display, but not with the Bluebirds’ wastefulness in the final third.
However, Cardiff still have another six friendly contests to work on their final-third proficiency, as the visit of Pen-y-Bont precedes a jaunt to Austria for a summer training camp, where Hamburger SV, Mamelodi Sundowns and Hertha Berlin will provide a trio of opposition.
Cardiff’s preparations will then conclude on familiar territory against Reading and Bristol City, before Bulut’s men open their new Championship campaign at home to Sunderland on August 10, keen to right the wrongs of the closing stages of last term.
Finishing smack-bang in the middle of the rankings in 12th place, the Bluebirds’ defensive nous eluded them in their final two matches of 2023-24, where Middlesbrough triumphed 4-1 in the Welsh capital before Cardiff were embarrassed 5-2 by Rotherham United in a final-day drubbing.
In stark contrast, rearguard resilience was the theme for Pen-y-Bont in the business end of the 2023-24 Cymru Premier season, where Rhys Griffiths‘s troops recorded a sensational seven clean sheets on the bounce before their closing tie with Caernarfon Town.
That battle represented the final of the Conference League qualifying round playoffs, where the four teams who placed third to seventh engaged in their own mini-tournament for the right to enter the first round of Europe’s third-tier competition for 2024-25.
