Marked for Alex Robertson
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Match28 Nov 2026
Northampton Town will want this one forgotten quickly: 4‑0, every duel lost, and a long ride home. Cardiff City were ruthless in the way good sides are ruthless.
Player ratings30 Nov 2026
Two goals and a mark of 8.18 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
Match28 Nov 2026
4 wins on the spin now, and the question has changed from whether the run ends to who ends it. Confidence like this cannot be bought; it has to be earned exactly this way.
Squad30 Nov 2026
Yousef Salech was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Squad30 Nov 2026
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Gabriel Osho was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Match28 Nov 2026
Cardiff City make home a hard place to visit
9 without defeat on their own grass. The pitch has not changed; the crowd has — louder earlier, and quicker to sense when the opposition would rather be somewhere else.
Squad30 Nov 2026
13 goals and a season average of 7.24. Form like that gets noticed well beyond this town.
The terraces30 Nov 2026
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 23-year-old it feels ownership of. Alex Robertson has it now, and everything he does for the rest of his time here will be measured against the goodwill he was handed for free.
Player ratings30 Nov 2026
There is a version of this player everybody suspected was in there, and on this evidence it is. 8.35, and no argument anywhere in the ground.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Triumph
Player ratings19 Oct 2026
Successful dribbles: 26. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Match17 Oct 2026
Momentum is a hard thing to buy and an easy thing to lose, and right now Cardiff City have 4 straight wins of it.
Squad19 Oct 2026
Caden Voice is a better footballer than he was
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 20 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
Squad19 Oct 2026
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Gabriel Osho was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Squad19 Oct 2026
Joel Bagan was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Match17 Oct 2026
Blackpool made Cardiff City work for it, but the scoreboard read 1‑0 at the end and the table does not ask how.
Squad19 Oct 2026
Matthew Turner has improved at 24, which nobody expected
Careers are supposed to plateau and then decline, and the players who ignore that are always the ones who were listening on the training ground. 4 points of it, over months, at an age where the direction normally only goes one way.
Player ratings19 Oct 2026
Alex Robertson was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.20. There are performances a supporter describes to somebody who was not there and cannot quite convey; this was one, and the number does not help either.
The dugout19 Oct 2026
Somebody else is better right now than Nathaniel Clyne
The team sheet says it in public every week until it changes. The only version of being dropped a footballer cannot argue with, and the one he takes hardest.
In brief
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The dugout
The view from the dugout
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The dugout
Calum Scanlon gets picked when it counts
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Looking ahead
A reunion for George Evans
From our football correspondent
Triumph
Match26 Sep 2026
Hard to beat is not the same as winning, but 8 matches without defeat is a foundation Cardiff City did not have in the autumn.
Squad28 Sep 2026
Gabriel Osho in a row with a teammate
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Cardiff City this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
The terraces28 Sep 2026
At 23 he is being sung about by people twice his age, which is an affection a signing has to earn over years and a local kid gets for turning up. It is also the hardest thing in football to live up to.
Player ratings28 Sep 2026
Successful dribbles: 19. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Match26 Sep 2026
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Cian Ashford. 1‑0 against Huddersfield Town, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
Player ratings28 Sep 2026
There is a version of this player everybody suspected was in there, and on this evidence it is. 8.01, and no argument anywhere in the ground.
The dugout28 Sep 2026
The manager’s verdict
“I am not going to get carried away and I will not let them either. It was a good day. There will be harder ones.” Richard Reid kept it short after the 1‑0 win, which is what managers do when they are happy.
The dugout28 Sep 2026
There is no complaint available here and everybody involved knows it, which does not make the walk to the bench any shorter. Form is the only currency in football that cannot be borrowed against.
Squad28 Sep 2026
One yellow too many, and a match watched from the stand. The most avoidable absence in football, and Cardiff City will feel it on Saturday.
From our football correspondent
Triumph
Match12 Sep 2026
The board had gone up, the arguing had started, and then the ball was in the net in the 94th minute. Mansfield Town will replay every second of the added time for a week.
Match12 Sep 2026
Momentum is a hard thing to buy and an easy thing to lose, and right now Cardiff City have 4 straight wins of it.
Market14 Sep 2026
Gabriel Osho wants to know where this is going
“I want to win things, and I would like to do it here.” Nothing has been demanded and nothing has been threatened — but a boardroom at Cardiff City hears a sentence like that exactly as it was built.
Squad14 Sep 2026
Words at Cardiff City training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Gabriel Osho is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
Squad14 Sep 2026
Rubin Colwill was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Player ratings14 Sep 2026
David Turnbull was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.00. There are performances a supporter describes to somebody who was not there and cannot quite convey; this was one, and the number does not help either.
Squad14 Sep 2026
100 games in the shirt. Nobody sets out to build a record like that; it happens to a certain kind of player at a certain kind of club, and this town knows what it has.
Player ratings14 Sep 2026
Successful dribbles: 17. There was always a defender in front of him and there was never a defender in front of him for long.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Market3 Aug 2026
The interest is real enough to have reached print. Cardiff City have said nothing, which in a transfer window is its own kind of answer.
Squad3 Aug 2026
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Alex Robertson and Cardiff City agree another 4 years.
Squad3 Aug 2026
Yousef Salech was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Market3 Aug 2026
“I want to be playing for trophies while my legs still let me.” Nothing in that sentence is a transfer request, and nobody at Cardiff City heard it as anything else.
Transfer targets3 Aug 2026
Cardiff City asked and FC Copenhagen said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
Squad3 Aug 2026
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Gabriel Osho was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Market3 Aug 2026
“There is a gap, and pretending there is not helps nobody.” Neither side has moved, and the calendar is working for exactly one of them.
Market3 Aug 2026
The clock runs on Alex Robertson's contract
49 months left and silence from upstairs — no offer, no talks, nothing for his people to answer. Clubs that let a calendar do their negotiating usually end up negotiating with the calendar.
Transfer targets3 Aug 2026
Hammarby have been asked whether they would lend him. Loans are agreed quickly or not at all, and this one will be one or the other by the weekend.