Out-of-sorts Osho needs support, says Barry-Murphy

Nigeria international Gabriel Osho played for Luton Town in the Premier League

Cardiff City must support Gabriel Osho to get the struggling centre-back through his "difficult" run of form, head coach Brian Barry-Murphy says.

Osho was taken off at half-time during Saturday's 2-1 League One win over Reading after an error-ridden individual display which almost gifted their opponents several goals.

That followed a similar performance in the 4-3 victory against Leyton Orient a fortnight earlier, where one of his many mistakes led directly to a goal.

"I just don't think he played well," Barry-Murphy said of his decision to take Osho off against Reading.

"I think Gabriel in his home games so far has made a lot of mistakes that I would never associate with him and he's not in a great rhythm yet.

"He'd be disappointed. He's a player who's played at the highest level, but it doesn't mean when you play at the highest level, you're going to come to games in League One and have flawless performances where you don't make any mistakes.

"The opponents have quality too and you saw how dangerous they were when they put the ball in behind. And I've seen him defend those situations perfectly time and time again, but in this moment, football is about ups and downs and he's finding it difficult.

"We have to support him and really make him feel better in those situations and simplify his game so he's not taking unnecessary risks."

Former Luton Town defender Osho joined Cardiff from Auxerre in August and was making his fifth appearance for the Bluebirds as they beat Reading to return to the top of League One.

"He's missed quite a lot of training with different niggles, so he came back into training on Thursday and I'm putting him in the team pretty quickly," Barry-Murphy added.

"I just thought in the first half, he made some obvious mistakes that I thought could have an impact on the scoreline. So I thought it was best for him to come off and for Will [Fish] to come on.

"But we have some problems in that area of the pitch because Will Fish, as you might have seen, his knee was pretty heavily strapped. He hasn't really completed training properly this week.

"Dylan Lawlor isn't fit to play today based on his time with the Welsh squad and Gabriel came back in training on Thursday. So Calum Chambers was our only fully fit centre-back."

Barry-Murphy 'didn't like' substituting substitute Ashford

Barry-Murphy also took the unusual step of substituting a substitute during the game against Reading.

Having made numerous attacking changes to help Cardiff come from behind to lead 2-1, the Irishman felt he needed to bolster his defence in the closing stages.

So 11 minutes after bringing on Cian Ashford, Barry-Murphy replaced the young forward with full-back Perry Ng.

"I didn't like it [having to make the change]. We'd made all of our changes to try and win the game," Barry-Murphy said.

"The game was chaos and we have an obligation to try and win the game to be at the top of the table.

"For me, it just looked inevitable with all those attacking players on the pitch that we were going to concede chances and obviously Yousef [Salech] could have come off, but they [Reading] were so dangerous with their set-pieces, free-kicks on corners that, for us, that would have been a huge problem.

"At that point, I made a decision that I thought it was best for us to win the game. Cian was the victim of being taken off. It's not something that I enjoy based on the value we hold Cian in."