Bluebirds’ boss Omer Riza frustrated by Cardiff draw at Plymouth

Cardiff boss Omer Riza was disappointed his side did not put more chances in the back of the net as they dropped down to 21st in the Championship as a result of their 1-1 draw with relegation rivals Plymouth.

He said: “It was a frustrating game. Some things you can’t account for in games. Everything that can happen in a game probably happened.

“So we are happy to come away with a point at the end after playing with 10 men for 50 minutes. I felt we had the control of the game we were looking for from the start.

“We are disappointed we weren’t able to keep 11 men on the pitch and win the game but coming away with a point would be fair.”

He added: “We probably need to finish some of the chances we created and it is something we need to do better. But I still feel we came in at half-time in good spirits and we knew we could do more of the same and put the chances away in the second half.

“But we needed a second goal and the red card came against the run of play and put us on the back foot.

“I have not looked at the sending off again. My initial thoughts was that he (Bali Mumba) just nipped in front of Dimi (Dimitrios Goutas) and he has caught him. I have not seen it cleanly enough to comment on it.

“I just think, obviously, you want to win these games and take three points and try and open up a gap between teams in and around you.”

Plymouth boss Miron Muslic was in positive mood after his struggling side earned a draw at home.

The Bluebirds swept into a 14th-minute lead through Yousef Salech but they were reduced to 10 men – eight minutes after the break – when Dimitrios Goutas was sent off, before Muhamed Tijani came off the bench to earn a share of the spoils.

Muslic, who side moved up to 22nd as a result, said: “We have gained another place in the table so we will take the positive from this.

“I have mixed emotions and feelings because I simply think we threw away the first 45 minutes and in our situation, we cannot throw away four-and-a-half seconds.

“The first 45 minutes was very negative but how we came out of the locker room for the second half was very positive.

“We had the energy we wanted to have from minute one. We had this immediately and suddenly you can put pressure on the opponents and suddenly you can create goalscoring opportunities.

“It was very important for us to get this energy that (substitute) Bali (Mumba) gave us.

“Bali was just on it from the first whistle. His first action was a good shot on goal, his second produced a red card for Cardiff.

“It was just the momentum for us to stay on it. The next stage for us was we knew we had to take advantage of this red card.

“Muhamed gave us exactly just the boost we needed but then I am just a little bit disappointed because we left the script a little bit.

“We had the red card, we had the goal, when we have that advantage, we must stick to the plan but we didn’t do that.”