Ian Evatt may have wondered what might have been as he stood on the touchline at Cardiff City Stadium.<\/p>\n
The Blackpool boss was in the frame to take over at Cardiff last summer, but the Bluebirds entrusted former Manchester City academy coach Brian Barry-Murphy with the job of taking them straight back up to the Championship.<\/p>\n
Despite their recent wobble, Cardiff were still on track to accomplish that mission and came into this encounter 10 points clear of the chasing pack outside the automatic promotion spots.<\/p>\n
Blackpool, meanwhile, beat bottom side Port Vale on Tuesday to end a run of five games without a win and move within a point of safety.<\/p>\n
That was only their second victory in 11 games, and they set up defensively in the Welsh capital in the hope of building on that rare triumph with a point on the road.<\/p>\n
Their efforts to disrupt the game proved effective as Cardiff bossed possession and created numerous chances but were thwarted by Blackpool players throwing their bodies in the way of efforts on goal.<\/p>\n
For all their dominance, Cardiff only forced opposition goalkeeper Bailey Peacock-Farrell into a couple of saves before the interval, with the best denying Kellyman’s downward header.<\/p>\n
There were grumbles from the home fans as the half-time whistle blew \u2013 rare murmurs of discontent in a season which has provided plenty of entertainment and success.<\/p>\n
The atmosphere picked up in the early stages of the second half as Cardiff played with more urgency, Ashford having a shot deflected wide before Kellyman was denied by a fine low save from Peacock-Farrell.<\/p>\n
Blackpool had a big opportunity against the run of play as Bloxham prodded wide from Ashley Fletcher’s through ball, then Bowler’s powerful drive was tipped over by Nathan Trott.<\/p>\n
When the one-way traffic at the other end resumed, Peacock-Farrell was again called upon to palm away Chris Willock’s shot and the keeper made a brilliant save from Ryan Wintle’s late header.<\/p>\n
Barry-Murphy turned to his bench but no amount of substitutions could change the course of the match as the Bluebirds’ promotion push lost further momentum.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ian Evatt may have wondered what might have been as he stood on the touchline at Cardiff City…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":841038,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[13,12,14],"class_list":{"0":"post-841037","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-stories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116268163851483007","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/841037","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=841037"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/841037\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/841038"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=841037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=841037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=841037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}