Weekly review 27/6/26.

Posted on June 27, 2026 by The other Bob Wilson

The week just ended saw the announcement of what I would call the most attractive pre season friendly game we’ve had in years. Italian giants AS Roma will visit Cardiff City Stadium on 1 August (they also face Newport County a few days later).

A week later on the eighth, City will entertain Swindon in the Caraboa (League) Cup which is a repeat of last season’s First Round tie which we won 2-1 thanks to goals by Cian Ashford and Rubin Colwill. There will then be a nine day wait before our league campaign gets under with that most bizarre of fixtures -a so called derby game where the two teams involved are one hundred and thirty eight miles apart!

Nevertheless, Wrexham at home is a very enticing way to start out back in the Championship after a season’s absence. Our visitors are probably the most high profile team outside of the Premier League and will, no doubt, have spent heavily as they make another attempt to attain what seems inevitable eventually – promotion to the Premier League.

Google says that it’s a three and a quarter hour drive to Wrexham from Cardiff and, speaking as someone who regularly made that journey in the late eighties to visit my brother who spent a few years living there, I would say that’s on the optimistic side, particularly when you consider that there was a fair bit less traffic on the roads circa 1987 compared to now.

So, I have a problem with the description of the fixture as a derby. It’s all because of us being in the same country of course, but we won’t hear our games with Birmingham, Wolves and West Brom being described in the same way even though all of these places are closer to Cardiff and involve a lot less travelling time.

That said, I’ll concede that our deserved 2-1 win at the Racecourse in the League Cup last October was, for me, one of our most satisfying of the season – albeit it was against what Wrexham fans said was nothing like their strongest team.

The rest of our league fixtures can be accessed here (apologies for the oh so clunky format that, for reasons I cannot begin to understand, has become very popular in recent years). Finally on fixture lists, the under 21s appear to be facing a lot more Category One Academy sides than usual in their warm up fixtures.

A familiar voice to many City fans for his commentaries on our games down the decades, Richard Shepherd was also the club’s historian for a long period and, on a personal level, he offered some very helpful advice regarding the putting together of “The Journey Back”, the book Richard Holt and I co wrote back in 2013. Sadly, Richard passed away this week at the age of 82 – my commiserations to his friends and family.

It’s a commentary on how quiet things are on the transfer front that the only story I saw last week on the subject was this one which relates to an off field appointment – while “coup” may be a bit over the top, Dominic Newton’s appointment does seem to be a step in the right direction when it comes to recruitment policy.

Before moving away from club football, I’d like to wish possibly Cardiff City’s best ever home grown player, Aaron Ramsey all the best in his new role as Manager/Head Coach at Oxford United.

A very short mention. of the World Cup – England have had their qualification to the next stage confirmed overnight after they were far less impressive in drawing 0-0 with Ghana in their second game than they were in beating Croatia 4-2 in their first. Scotland are hanging by a thread now after they followed up their 1-0 win over Haiti in their opener with 1-0 and 3-0 losses to Morocco and Brazil respectively. It’s beginning to look like the Scots will be repeating what happened to them in 1974 when their failure to beat the group minnows (Zaire) by a big enough score cost them dearly in a group which also included Brazil again and Yugoslavia. Initially, it was claimed following their brazil defeat that Scotland had a 42 per cent chance of qualifying in 2026 as one of the eight best third placed finishers, but their minus three goal difference is hurting them a lot and it seems that chance is down to just 5 per cent after the overnight games in other groups.

The biggest news for Welsh fans was that national team manager Craig Bellamy was, apparently, a dead cert to take over as manager of Burnley on a contract which, if you believe the speculation, was three or four times more lucrative than his one with Wales. However, all of a sudden in midweek it emerged that the whole thing had fallen through and Bellamy would be staying with Wales – although there’s been no official confirmation of this, the speculation is that the deal floundered on Bellamy’s insistence that some members of Burnley’s current coaching staff made way for two or three of his own choices.

So, where does all of this leave Wales and their manager? Broadly speaking, I’m still in favour of Craig Bellamy, but, if you take the dubious example of social media as a yardstick, I’d say I’m in a minority. There are many who turned against him after the game with Bosnia in particular and to quote his former Norwich team mate Iwan Roberts, there are plenty who are saying that Bellamy’s willingness to talk to Burnley following earlier comments to the tune of Wales being the only job for me, means that he has effectively “burned his bridges” with Wales.

Even as a backer of Bellamy, I have to confess that my support is qualified. Although it was a throwaway line not to be taken wholly seriously, his comment after an impressive 0-0 draw with Turkey in his first game in charge that this is “the worst we’ll be” has always stuck with me. Yes, it was a clever and effective line at the time, but the fact of the matter is that there have been plenty of occasions under Bellamy when we’ve been worse, often a lot worse, than we were that night against the Turks.

I wrote on this after our defeat to Romania earlier this month, so I’ll not repeat myself here, I’ll just say that, in terms of both results and performances, Bellamy’s Wales were travelling backwards in 25/26 compared to 24/25. I try, but don’t always succeed, not to make Bellamy’s apparent antipathy towards Rubin Colwill affect my judgment and I can see that competition for places in the squad in the positions Rubin specialises in is probably as tough as anywhere on the pitch, but, even if we leave Rubin aside for now, some of Bellamy’s tactics, selections and substitutions have failed when it mattered most.

More important than what I feel, the big question will be how will the manager, his squad and the national support react going into a set of Nations League fixtures which you have to think will see the poor spell of results through last season continue into the new one? Will Bellamy still have the same authority? Will the squad be as prepared to go the hard yards for him as they once were?

I don’t know the answers to those questions, the surprise for me is that they are realistic ones to be asking just over six months after that 7-1 thrashing of North Macedonia.

Finally, Wales begins its stint as hosts of the European Under 19 tournament today, with them making their bow tomorrow with a 6.30 pm kick off against Spain at Wrexham. Our other opponents in a very strong looking group are Germany and Denmark and so, realistically, expectations have to be tempered – for myself, I think anything other than three defeats has to be viewed as a success.

As mentioned before Jac Thomas, Noah Willians and Rob Tankiewicz are the three City players in the squad for the competition, although I have read in the last day or so that Paul Moreno has been seen training with them – I presume this is just for experience, as opposed to him formally joining his team mates over the next week or so?

Posted in Out on the pitch, R.I.P., Wales | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Weekly review 20 June 2026.

Posted on June 20, 2026 by The other Bob Wilson

I notice the fixtures for next season’s Premier League were released yesterday which served as a reminder that the EFL fixtures would normally be out by now. No doubt the authorities will have their reasons, almost certainly financial, why they are late this year, but it all adds to a feeling that we’re still in the wind down from the old season as opposed to the build up to the new one.

There is very little coming out of Cardiff City suggesting that we’re building up for the new campaign. BBM and his staff are back working after their holidays apparently which is something to make you think it’s not too long before we see the team in friendly game action I suppose. Also, the transfer window has been open for a while with some clubs (e.g. Southampton, West Brom, Burnley, Wolves and Bolton) being active in the market already. Apart from the last named, I’d say these teams have spent the sort of money on players in terms of transfer fees and wages that, I suspect, will be beyond us in the coming weeks. Meanwhile, I’m not aware of any what I’d call worthwhile rumours of players arriving or leaving the club that have broken in the last week.

I’m not too bothered about that – as I say, it still doesn’t feel like a new season is imminent and, with there still being ten days to go before the date when players’ contracts traditionally run out, I’m not expecting much to happen in terms of arrivals until the end of the month.

There has been one big story which is still in the all but officially confirmed category for now. That said, I’ve had an acknowledgment this morning from Companies House that appropriate documents seem to have been received by them even though this cannot quite be confirmed yet because they’re still not available for public inspection and so it’s conceivable that they may relate to other matters.

To clarify, a couple of weeks ago I mentioned there had been messageboard talk about Vincent Tan turning more of the club’s debt owed to him into equity. It was said that the sum involved was substantial and this week brought confirmation in the local media that it was £42 million.

I will be explaining why I can’t get as enthusiastic as some have about this news shortly, but, first, I should say that my opinion of our owner has reached a stage where I now am only critical of him for two things. The first is the rebrand about which there’s been more than enough said down the years, so I won’t add any more to it today. The second thing is Mr Tan’s stubborn refusal to surround himself with people on the administrative side of the club with a better knowledge of the game, both on and off the field.

No doubt, Vincent Tan would point to what he would see as bad experiences with “football people” in his early years at City and, to an extent, I can understand that, but in the decade or so since then, it’s my opinion that he’s been cutting off his nose to spite his face. Hence, the club has suffered both on and off the field and Mr Tan has, I would argue, had to pour more of his own money into the day to day running of the club than might have been necessary if we’d had more football expertise in the Boardroom.

Remember the time (I would guess it was five or six years ago) when the line was that, although our debt is huge, it’s all owed to Vincent Tan who, again much to his credit, does not charge the club interest on most of the loans he’s made to it down the years? If we were still in that position, then I would be celebrating a lot more than I am about this latest debt to equity conversion.

As it is, City still owe Vincent Tan £55 million I believe – a substantial figure of course, but, in terms of typical Championship club debt levels, I’d guess it would put us in something like upper mid table if top of the league was the club with the biggest debt.

What’s happened in recent years though is that we’ve lurched back into the sort of territory we got used to being in back in the days of Sam Hammam and Peter Ridsdale with substantial debts to other parties besides the club’s owner.

True, the large bulk of the present day additional debt (around £37 million I believe) is to a company that Chairman Mehmet Dalman has strong connections with, so you’d like to think they won’t be rushing to the courts in an attempt to get their money back. However, my understanding is that this is a secured debt upon which 7 per cent annual interest is due – we’re back in the unfortunate position where we’re paying millions annually solely in interest.

The last club accounts filed at Companies House were for the period year ending 31 May 2025, so I daresay things have moved on a lot since then. When you consider that we’ve spent all of our time in a lower division with a reduction numbering millions of pounds in TV money, it’s hard to see how our debt levels could have improved even if you’d like to think our wage bill would be a lot lower and our transfer spending pretty modest.

Rather than speculate on our current debt levels though, I’ll fall back on the 24/25 figures which puts club liabilities at £161 million. Therefore, a basic calculation tells you that, even after £42 million worth of debt to equity conversion, liabilities would still be just short of £120 million.

Just to repeat, thank you for this latest conversion Mr Tan, it’s more evidence that you have not been the complete disaster as club owner that many would say you’ve been. Indeed, although I suspect others may be able to put me right here, I’d say that Vincent Tan is second only to the owners at Leicester City in terms of the amount he’s converted into equity from debt and, I don’t think there’s much doubt that, as of today, your average Leicester City fan would rather be in City’s position than their’s!

I suppose my concluding remark on all of this is to warn anyone thinking that BBM will have £42 million more to spend on his team than he was expecting to consider the wider view that we still have liabilities which I’d guess puts us in the top six of that Championship debt level table I mentioned earlier. I still expect our level of transfer spending this summer to be modest by the standards of this league.

I mentioned earlier that there’s been just one big City related story this week, but I’m sure the more fashion conscious supporter of the club would say there’s been two in fact – yesterday also saw the playing kit for 26/27 revealed. I’m sure I’ve said on here before that, as someone who couldn’t get too worked up about City kits when I was a third of the age I am now, I can’t see anyone being particularly bothered, or interested, in my view on the new one, but here it is – I’m always in favour of white shorts instead of blue, but, that apart, it all strikes me as very five out of tennish, pretty nondescript really.

I’ll finish with a few words on the World Cup. I’ve not seen much of it so far, but I must say that, from what I have watched, the football’s been better than I was expecting given the increase to forty eight teams. I must admit as well that England have been as impressive as anyone so far – it’s always worth recording that teams which start a World Cup in really good form, don’t tend to end up winning it and surely this applies more in an event where, this time, you’ll have to play an additional game to end up victorious, but I’ll be surprised if England don’t make the last four at least.

As for Scotland, they followed an unimpressive 1-0 win over Haiti up with a 1-0 loss overnight to dark horses Morocco which left them with no shots on target, but plenty of complaining about two penalties they could have had. Now, as a Welshman old enough to remember Anfield 1977 and, to a lesser extent, Ninian Park 1985, I can’t get too sympathetic about Scottish moaning when it comes to penalties. However, with them, seemingly, in a position where a draw or even a narrow defeat in their remaining group game on Wednesday would see them qualify for the knock out stages, I’d be quietly confident if I were a member of the Tartan Army of Scotland doing this for the first time in their history given that their opponents, Brazil, have been pretty unconvincing so far in drawing 1-1 with the Moroccans and overcoming Haiti 3-0.

Posted in General, Up in the Boardroom | Tagged | 2 Comments