QPR fans hate Chris Willock. They hate him because they loved him and he left. There is rarely scorn for players that were average or you felt indifferently towards. Willock left in his prime and they’ll never forgive him for it.
Their loss is Cardiff’s gain, or at least it should be.
Willock has not yet found his feet at Cardiff and the blame for that is shared, as he’s not made the most of his opportunities, but the unstable environment at the club has certainly not aided his cause either. He’s not alone in that regard, as Jesper Daland started well, but got injured. He’s now in and out, while Will Fish is almost exclusively out. Alex Robertson was signed by Erol Bulut, who then didn’t appear to fancy him.
Willock was one of the very few positives from the catastrophe of Bulut’s rapid early season demise and his combination down the left with Callum O’Dowda looked rich in promise. You then expected that he would be right up Omer Riza’s street, but that proved to be far from the case. In fact, at times it felt like anyone but Willock was favoured.
Embed from Getty ImagesRiza made a point of saying that he had told Rubin Colwill and Ollie Tanner they would play every week and he wouldn’t replace them for making a mistake, only if they were flagging. The pair thrived and so did Cardiff. Anwar El Ghazi completed the trio and they played every game. You never want to change a winning team, but Cardiff soon began to tire, while Tanner and El-Ghazi inevitably succumbed to injury.
Rotating Willock in probably would have helped, but he couldn’t even get a game with those two absent. Every manager has a blind spot. Bulut evidently didn’t rate Andy Rinomhota, despite Cardiff often lacking in both intensity and physicality. He has returned to prominence with Riza, but his contract extension felt like bad news for Willock.
Fortunately, opportunity knocked at Stoke and Willock answered. It was certainly his best performance for Cardiff and he had a hand in both goals. He’s not a player that will dominate games, but instead provide moments of real quality. Unfortunately, Cardiff have a few of those and could do with someone like Karlan Grant, who was maligned by some for not notching up enough goals and assists, but got through a tonne of work and it’s a shame that he hardly featured next to O’Dowda.
The problem is that patience is always in short supply, especially when you’re hovering perilously close to the foot of the table, and understandably so. Flair players need to find their groove though and seven starts in five months is far from ideal at a new club.
Embed from Getty ImagesJaden Philogene was written off by some after a matter of weeks when he joined Cardiff on loan from Aston Villa, despite being only 20 and very much a rookie at the time. Slightly built, he initially struggled with the physicality of the Championship, but adapted and started to thrive as the season progressed. After flourishing at Hull, he returned to Villa and is now playing Champions League football.
Willock is established in the Championship and has the highlight reels to prove it. You don’t often get the chance to sign a player of his quality at this stage of his career as a free agent, so it represented a significant, impressive capture for Cardiff. Of course, the other way to spin it is that its probably telling that he didn’t end up at a play-off contender and he made a sideways move of sorts, but the expectation was that Cardiff were set to kick on from their mid-table finish last year.
Willock, like Cardiff, needs to find form and both can help each other get to where they aspire to be. He finally has the shirt and with Tanner currently sidelined, El Ghazi is needed on the right, so this is Willock’s chance to cement his place. Joel Bagan is his only real competition at present, but O’Dowda fares far better driving forward from deep and the fact that he can marshal the whole flank will allow Willock to drift inside and aid the attack.
Singled out for abuse by QPR fans in the recent limp defeat against them, his ego will be bruised and he won’t have enjoyed watching so many games from the sidelines. His task now is to prove Riza and the early doubters wrong by seizing his belated opportunity and hopefully securing his own show of faith from the manager.