Last week I speculated on who might not be offered new contracts by City when their retained list was published. Well, the release of that list yesterday showed my success rate in predicting who would be going and who would was staying to be modest at best!
In my defence, I would point put that the link I used to find out the contract situation with our players, and so base my predictions on, provided me with some duff information.
The list as published by the club shows, for example, that Mark Harris and Loic Damour, two players I thought would be on their way out of the club, still have at least one year left on their contracts it would appear.
As it turns out, the number of players released by City was small and, even with the two “big” names among the departures, there has to be some doubt as to whether the club were minded to release them or whether the players concerned decided they would look elsewhere themselves.
That would certainly appear to be the case with Aron Gunnarsson who, before he signed his one year deal last summer, was making noises about how he didn’t feel he was up to the rigours of another forty six game Championship campaign. I think it was generally accepted among supporters that it was only our promotion, with its thirty eight game Premier League programme, that enabled Gunnar to delay his departure for a season.
With Gunnar having only turned thirty in April, my belief is that the club would have been happy for him to stay if he had given them any encouragement that he was willing to do so, but, as we have known for about three months now, he’d already committed to signing for Qatar side Al-Arabi.
The position is less clear cut with Kadeem Harris, but the situation arrived at seems to me to be the correct one – that is, he tries to further his career elsewhere after a stay of about seven and a half years at Cardiff where he came close, but never quite managed, to nail down a regular place in the first team starting eleven.
Whether Kadeem decided to turn down a new deal with City or one was never offered, he, surely, won’t have too many problems finding a new club. I wouldn’t be surprised to see him back at Cardiff City Stadium in 19/20 as part of a rival Championship team’s squad or, failing that, he should be able to find himself a top end League One club.
One surprise for me was the news that Brian Murphy has been offered another contract by City. Perhaps this has come about because of interest from elsewhere in Neil Etheridge which I’ll discuss further shortly, but, before I leave it completely, I’d like to make a couple of quick further points about the retained list.
Firstly, while you would expect the large majority of players offered new deals by the club to accept them, there may be a few who do not. As an example, I mentioned last week reports that Cameron Coxe had been attracting the attention of Manchester City and it would hardly come as a surprise if he was minded to accept any deal from them if there was any truth in that story.
Secondly, if all or nearly all of those offered contracts are still with City next season, then, with it being reported that Neil Warnock would like to bring a further six senior players in over the summer, it looks a very big squad which would be in need of some trimming.
I won’t name names here, but having just worked my way down that alphabetical list of players appearing under the “First team” heading on that retained list, I counted nine that I would guess the club would be either happy or not too bothered about losing if the right offer came along. Also, I would not be too surprised if they were amenable towards any approach for established first teamers if a decent, as opposed to good, offer was received for them.
One player who City appear to be determined to hang on to is Neil Etheridge. City’s Player of the Year was the subject of an £8 million offer from Aston Villa recently which was turned down (reports that Liverpool had also expressed an interest in the Philippines international have since been denied, but, one of his former clubs, Fulham, are said to be interested in him).
However, with Villa manager Dean Smith and goalkeeping coach Neil Cutler both having worked with Etheridge at Walsall, this has the look of a piece of close season transfer gossip that definitely has some substance to it. Indeed, with Cutler, pretty obviously, a big fan of our goalkeeper, as shown in this article, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a transfer go through in the coming weeks for something like the fee being reported.
The Etheridge story has been, by far and away, the most persistent one when it comes to possible transfers at Cardiff this week. In fact, judging from what I’ve seen, you could be forgiven for thinking it was the only one, but there was something in midweek about us, Bristol City and Barnsley being after St Johnstone’s Scottish Under 21 international centreback, Jason Kerr who can also play as a deep lying midfielder.
Kerr was the subject of a £250,000 bid from Barnsley in January that St. Johnstone turned down and, having recently signed a contract extension until 2022 with the Perth club, it can safely be said that it would require considerably more than that now to persuade them to part with one of their prize assets.
Finally, it was confirmed yesterday that Spanish team Real Valladolid, who finished sixteenth in the twenty team La Liga in the season just ended, will be our opponents in the game in Edmonton to conclude our visit to North America announced last week. Valladolid have been much in the news lately for reasons that they would prefer not have been and , with the piece linked to making it sound like the story originates from a usually reliable source, it could be that the side City face will be nothing like the one that played Valencia recently!
Good morning Paul – Thank you for the second of your weekly reviews. I find it difficult to get too excited at the moment with events at the CCS, particularly with the release of the City’s retained list.
You show great respect by not naming those nine players currently shown as being first team members that you feel the City would not be heartbroken should they depart in the coming weeks. My tally is only seven, so you clearly have a much more ruthless streak than myself!!! But, and it the accepted but, all players have a price and I am sadly resigned to us losing Etheridge, and possibly Bruno if he fancies a stab at European football with the Turkish side who are supposedly tracking him.
NW’s statement that he would like to sign six players would surely mean offloading at least the same number from the first team squad and it is quite possible that those departing will include those who have been out on loan last season, including some of the U23 group.
I believe that you have reservations on which youngsters are competent enough to advance to the first team, but surely Spence must be close to achieving some form of recognition for his efforts. And I would hope that over the summer months, one or two others may well advance their cause.
If we are to mount a challenge again next year, we need more athleticism from both midfield and defence. As has been proved on too many occasions, we find it difficult to defend against pace. I really do not know if the two players that we have been linked with recently, Vaulks and Kerr have these qualities, but if the City are serious about them, I would hope they fit my agenda.
Finally, I find it hard to become too excited about our pre season North American opposition. A good bonding exercise surely, but as football tests, I am unsure.
If a week is a long time in politics, I am intrigued as to what the next seven days will bring and look forward to your 3rd Weekly review.
Thanks for your reply BJA. I’ll stop showing respect and name the players who I believe City would not be too bothered about selling;-
Omar Bogle
Matt Connolly
Loic Damour
Rhys Healey
Gary Madine
Jazz Richards
Lee Tomlin
Danny Ward
Of those, I would guess that we would be quite happy to keep Ward and, perhaps, Richards, while Neil Warnock does appear to have quite a lot of time for Rhys Healey – Matt Connolly is also someone who can provide cover for a variety of positions at Championship level. That’s eight names and the other one I thought of was Greg Cunningham, who, provided we keep Joe Bennett, I could see us accepting an offer for which gave us most of the fee we paid for him back (he is a proven Championship level performer over a number of seasons and I would think there would be plenty of sides interested in him if it looks like he is facing another season of being a second choice here.
Given the attitude at Cardiff towards young players over a period of years now, I would say my attitude is more resignation that they won’t be selected for the first team than a feeling that they simply aren’t good enough. I say that because, no matter how they are performing for the Under 23s or Under 18s, the approach nowadays runs contrary to the attitude at the club for the first ninety one or two years of our ninety nine year existence as a Football League club. There seems to be a belief among recent managers that teenage, or slightly older, players cannot be trusted to be up to the job of playing in the senior side – the thinking looks to be “that way lies the sack”!
Thanks for your views again Paul, and my list included the first seven names from your numbers. Somewhat surprised to think that we might be prepared to let Cunningham depart, but as stated previously, everyone has a price, and knowing our lot, we could well accept some shillings.
I note from the retained list of U23, Willie McKay’s boys will still will be with us as will Brown and Mark Harris. Just what sort of a contract did we give this quartet for only Harris has appeared at senior level and his appearances were hardly inspirational. I note also that we are in discussions with young Coxe, but I seem to recall that he had a torrid time in the League Cup match against Burton I believe (and Man City are allegedly interested?).
I know that you probably watch more of all of the City players that appear regularly at U23 and Academy level than any other supporter, and you must be disheartened at the lack of opportunities that are given to the more talented of both groups. And that bothers me also. We could well save ourselves a whole fistful of dollars if we were shrewd enough to occasionally promote from within. There are surely times when this is possible, but then if City managers are fearful for their own futures, they perhaps do take the easy option. That attitude does not augur well for the next decade.
I have just read that the 22 year old Colombian winger Luiz has again been mentioned on the City’s radar. His Transfer Market value is £1.5 million, but we were reported as being prepared to pay £7 million at one time for this “South American wonderkid”. Plain daft. Is it another agent muscling in on our naivety?
Just what will the next two months bring!!!!
I can only think the McKay brothers and Brown were given two and half year contracts with us when they signed during the winter of 2017/18 BJA. My feeling is that efforts will be made to find clubs the twins can move to permanently, but, if this cannot be done, they will be sent out on loan for the new season. I can also see Mark Harris, who seemingly made little progress in his loan spells at Newport and Port Vale last season, also spending most of what will, almost certainly, be his last season at Cardiff out on loan. As for Ciaron Brown, I think having played some first team football in the Scottish Premier League during the second half of the campaign that he is the one out of the group of players we signed for the Development team who, at the moment, is most likely to play some senior team football for us and so I wouldn’t be surprised to see him offered another contract this time next year after, perhaps, spending some or all of the upcoming season out on loan.
I agree that the club’s woeful record when it comes to producing its own first team players does not auger well for the next ten years or so. I mentioned on the messageboard I use yesterday that the managerial appointment the jacks appear to be making means that there is a huge contrast in the approaches being adopted by South Wales’ two biggest clubs as they prepare for their first season in the same division in eight years. Swansea, primarily for financial reasons it would appear, seem to be placing all of their eggs in the one basket of youth development, while short termism reigns supreme at Cardiff, as it has done for all of Vincent Tan’s time as owner really – surely, the right way to go is somewhere in the middle of these two extremes?