One To Watch: Kenneth Zohore

Cardiff City are Birmingham City’s next opponents and it is getting even more crucial for the blue boys to win and gain 3 points. Obviously as fans, we want the team to win every week but realistically obviously this can’t happen. But it would be nice to win at least a couple of times a month. We have forgotten what it feels like to be confident going into a game; for me, the feelings of the Lee Clark era are back and we all know how close we came to relegation that time. So the bluebirds vs the blue boys and it has to be a must win for Gianfranco Zola.

Cardiff stand in the way though and despite a low league position at the start of the season, they have had some good results in the league which means that they are actually above Birmingham City going into the league fixture. They have also kept a clean sheet in the 4 victories that they have had at home in their last 6 fixtures at their place so it’s not going to be easy.

Despite the strong defensive record, I have selected Kenneth Zohore as the oppositions best player. At just 23, the Danish international, has been one of the main reasons for the rise in form of Cardiff City. He has scored 8 times in 20 games; one in the last match against Blackburn Rovers and also twice against Fulham so he clearly has an eye for goal recently and he’ll hope to carry that form on. He looks prolific and considering we keep changing the back four due to various reasons as well as having an inexperienced Josh Cogley and ageing Paul Robinson, Zohore may have a field day. If you can’t tell, the positive outlook I once had is slowly dying.

At 6 foot 4 inches tall, it’s not hard to see that he is a threat in the air. He has a good leap on him too so even if the winger over hits the cross, Zohore is usually able to get to it and this makes him incredibly hard to mark. Especially if he pulls onto the fullback which is a tactic that a lot of tall strikers use. He reminds me a little but of the Middlesborough striker, Rudy Gestede. Which isn’t great considering he has a pretty high success rate against us.

Zohore also has a very good work ethic and will put the back 4 under immense pressure for sure. He has committed 28 fouls this season which is very high for a striker and it shows that he is willing to track back and foul in order to buy his team a little bit more time. It’s a good quality to have so we will have to be aware of this and play the ball smartly at the back. Another thing that he brings is strength. He is a bulky centre forward who holds the ball well and brings others into the game. This does mean that he lacks pace which is probably a good thing considering we don’t have anyone to rival Usain Bolt in the back 4.

Overall, he is their danger man. But we do need to cut out the crosses from Junior Hoilett and co so that Zohore doesn’t get onto the end of them; this is crucial if we are to keep a clean sheet.