Colwill enjoying Cardiff freedom to take risks

Rubin Colwill has started the past five games for Cardiff City

Rubin Colwill is enjoying his best spell for Cardiff City and the attacking midfielder puts it down to being allowed to express himself without fear of being punished for mistakes.

The 22-year-old, capped nine times by Wales, has started the last five games under interim manager Omer Riza and impressed in an attacking role, having been limited mostly to substitute appearances under predecessor Erol Bulut.

That has coincided with an upturn of form, with last Tuesday's 2-0 win against Portsmouth seeing Cardiff climb out of the relegation places having collected 10 of the last 12 points on offer.

"The type of player I am I'll take risks and make mistakes and he's [Riza] almost letting me make those mistakes and take the risks, obviously not to a crazy extent - he's sort of reined it in at times - but it just gives me that freedom," Colwill said.

"[I can] make mistakes but then it gives me the freedom to do the good things because I'm not afraid to do things wrong.

"I think the confidence comes with playing and especially the match fitness, I don't think I've played this many games in a row before.

"But my body is used to it now; we played only two days ago and I feel fine today, it's just getting that experience of playing loads of games. I'm just enjoying football, Omer Riza has given me a lot of confidence, he's put a lot of belief in me and I'm feeling good because of that."

Cardiff go to fourth place West Bromwich Albion on Saturday in what promises to be a stern test of their good run of form, but Colwill says they are eager to test themselves at the Hawthorns.

"It's nice to be winning games again and getting good results, everyone's full of confidence now and there's that buzz back in the building, it's just a really good place at the minute," he said.

"Small changes can make big differences on the pitch and that all leads into confidence, you're feeling good, playing well and it's those little changes that make all the difference.

"It's [the wins] been against teams close to us in the table, but we don't want those to be our competition all season, we want to be climbing up the table and we want to be competing with teams like West Brom and Norwich, who we've got to come - the teams we're going to need to beat if we want to be up there this season."

Despite the upturn in the Bluebirds' playing fortunes, the Cardiff City board has yet to make a decision on the club's next permanent manager.

Riza has been clear he would like the role full time and Colwill said that he would be a popular choice among the players.

"I think the results speak for themselves, we've been really good the last couple of weeks," Colwill said.

"The last couple of months the training has been really good... I think everybody has got respect for Omer, the way he goes about things I think everybody likes it and it shows on the pitch.

"You can see we're all working hard for him, fighting for him. He's been really good to be fair."