Cardiff City 0-3 Portsmouth: Bluebirds hit with second-half goal flurry and red card in nightmare Carabao Cup defeat

Cardiff City were hit with a flurry of second-half goals to consign them to a disappointing 3-0 defeat at the hands of League One side Portsmouth in the Carabao Cup first round.

The Bluebirds dominated the early exchanges of the game, but individual errors, two of which came from the under-fire Curtis Nelson, saw the visitors net three goals in 14 minutes, from which City never recovered.

Joe Pigott, Ronan Curtis and Colby Bishop all got themselves on the scoresheet as an exasperated Steve Morison looked on in disbelief from the touchline. Even more so when Vontae Campbell's rash late challenge on Joe Rafferty saw him receive a straight red card. Some way to mark your competitive debut.

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Morison promised a much-changed team from the one which took the field at Reading on the weekend and, boy, did he deliver. Ten changes in all, with Nelson the only player to start both games, which included debuts for Jak Alnwick, Ollie Tanner, Campbell and a full debut for Jaden Philogene, who came on as a substitute at the Select Car Leasing Stadium.

But it was almost a nightmare start for City's changed XI, when, just one minute into the match, Eli King was dispossessed on the edge of his own area. The ball fell into the path of Pigott, who probably rushed his effort when he had time on his hands, and fired off a shot immediately, forcing Alnwick into a smart early save.

However, that would be the outlier, rather than the norm, because the hosts utterly dominated proceedings in the first half after that. In fact, they ended the first period with almost 80 percent possession. You'd be hard pressed to find that statistic in the recent past.

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