The Times, Sunday Times and Telegraph now seem to require registration to view articles on their sites, with the Times and Sunday Times charging readers outside the UK. The Times/Sunday Times has also moved some of the older articles into an archive which requires separate registration and requires you to pay to access the content. The Independent now charges for access to articles more than a week old. Koumas is a class act and wants Cardiff to benefit in longer term - Richard PolkeyCopy from Football Unlimited of 12/12/2005.
As a breed, managers do not really relish singling out skilful players for particular praise. They prefer to highlight the contribution of the unsung hero, men who, like the Cardiff midfielder Kevin Cooper, return from injury to run themselves into the ground for the collective good. Or the 34-year-old Neil Cox, who clambered out of his sick bed to organise a defensive line that fended off Leeds United's clumsy thrusts with barely an alarm all afternoon. Without Cox at the back and Cooper and his ilk to sweep the stage - or "retain the ball in areas which allow us to go forward", as Cardiff's manager Dave Jones put it - players like Jason Koumas would be an irrelevance, and of course that is true. But so too is the fact that without individuals with the ability of Koumas and the hugely promising Cameron Jerome, City would be a team of journeymen; honest, solid and going nowhere. With them, they may be heading for the play-offs. They are now back in fifth place. Koumas, on a season's loan from West Bromwich after falling out with Gary Megson and Bryan Robson, may still have something to prove in the Premiership, but at this level he is a class apart. Roaming intelligently behind the hard-running Jerome, he was the dominant figure of a first half in which Cardiff were so superior that Leeds, despite coming into the match on a four-game winning streak, did not muster a single attempt on goal worthy of the name.
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