CARDIFF CITY v WATFORD | THE OPPOSITION VIEW

Watford head to Cardiff on Tuesday night for the third instalment of our Welsh trilogy, and we catch up with old friend Ben from View from the Ninian to find out how life is treating the Bluebirds. After a brief excursion into League One, Cardiff are back in the Championship with a manager in Brian Barry-Murphy who appears to have performed something approaching a footballing personality transplant. Gone is the traditional approach of launching the ball forward and seeing who survives; in its place is a young, ambitious side playing football that Ben can barely believe he's watching.

We discuss Cardiff's return, the growing influence of their academy players, and why results haven't necessarily reflected performances. There's also a look at a Championship where almost everybody appears capable of finishing either sixth or sixteenth, and the rather unusual spectacle of three Welsh clubs sharing the division. Ben explains why Wrexham are regarded as an irritating younger brother while Swansea remain an entirely different proposition, which inevitably leads Peter to recall Watford's own adventures in compulsory coach travel to Luton — including the occasion when the club apparently decided that the ideal transport into enemy territory was a bus from the Harry Potter studio tour.

And then the Completely Rubbish Prediction League returns, with its two most artistically ambitious contributors taking the competition to previously unexplored depths. Brett conducts a forensic examination of his Airbnb, apparently convinced that TripAdvisor ratings and Wi-Fi passwords contain the secrets of Championship football. Meanwhile, John visits the Guinness factory in Dublin and produces something resembling an Ingmar Bergman film, if Bergman had developed a considerable enthusiasm for stout and rather less enthusiasm for color cinematography. It's Scandinavian existential cinema meets Irish drinking culture, with football predictions somehow emerging from both. The rest of the league attempts to compete using the increasingly outdated method of actually thinking about football.

COYH!!

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