I’d always planned to do a piece on City this morning . It was going to be about giving it both barrels to Messrs Tan, Dalman and Choo and asking the question do they want Cardiff City to be relegated?
However, after close to a fortnight of nothing in terms of a new manager and players, we finally have something to show that, no, there does not seem to be some cunning, unfathomable, plan whereby it is to the Three Amigos’ benefit for us to drop into League One.
Sabri Lamouchi, who won sixteen caps for France in the nineties and early noughties and managed the Ivory Coast in the 2014 World Cup has been appointed as manager (no details were given as to the length of his contract, but he said he was looking beyond this season – my guess though is that, one way or another, he won’t be our manager next season if we’re in League One) and I think it’s fair to say that the large majority of fans are quite positive about the decision the club has made.
The presence of Sol Bamba at Lamouchi’s side in yesterday’s press conference is one reason why the appointment has been greeted well. The connection between the two men dates back to Lamouchi’s time in international management and it’s been reported that it was our new manager’s suggestion that Sol be his assistant. If that is true, then it shows that, whatever else he is, Lamouchi is a good politician with an eye on how to make life easier for himself!
My feeling is though that there would have been enthusiasm for this appointment even without Sol’s involvement, For myself, I’m pleasantly surprised by the appointment as my confidence in those making the decision was probably as low as it’s ever been, but, credit to them. This seems to be, appointing Dean Smith apart maybe, as good a candidate as City were going to get if you take into account things like our current situation regarding such things as league and financial situation, the Sala case and the perception of the club within the football community.
In saying that, I am, as always, influenced by what a previous clubs fans have to say about a new arrival at City and a look at a Nottingham Forest messageboard told me that, remarkably, it’s virtually one hundred per cent positive!
Lamouchi was Forest boss for all of the 19/20 season and the opening month or so of the following campaign and, on the face of it, the regard for him is surprising when you consider that the team collapsed in a manner reminiscent of City in 08/09 as what looked a certain Play Off, or even possible top two, place was transformed into a humiliating near miss in the last month of the season. The hangover from losing out on the final day to Swansea for the last Play Off place, understandably I suppose, lasted into 20/21 at Forest and, Lamouchi was dismissed after they’d lost their first five games in all competitions.
Despite this, Lamouchi is widely praised and liked at the City Ground as someone who brought club and fans together at a difficult time. It needs to be said as well that surviving a season as Forest manager was very much a rarity in the pre Steve Cooper era and must be a contributory factor as to why I read quite a few comments along the lines that, their current manager aside, Lamouchi was the best boss the club has had in recent memory.
It should be said that all of this praise does not mean that their aren’t criticisms of him to be found among fans of his former club. I can remember Lamouchi’s Forest being described as very much a sit back and counter attack type of outfit when they were featured on Sky and a low scoring record for a team chasing promotion suggests that the manager had a pragmatic approach.
Indeed, despite Lamouchi’s popularity, there are plenty among the Forest fans who say that the football was not entertaining under Lamouchi and one opinion I read had it that there were many matches spent almost wholly on the back foot that were somehow won by a moment of individual brilliance. I should say that there were dissenting views from that who held that Forest were capable of playing some good stuff when they went forward, but it is a fact that their total of fifty eight goals scored over a forty six game season was higher than only one team in the top half of the table that year, while their fifty goals conceded was the fourth best in the division.
Looking beyond Forest, Lamouchi managed Ligue 1 team Rennes for just over a year. When he was appointed in November 2017, Lamouchi brought about an improvement which saw Rennes climb the table to finish fifth, qualifying for the Europa League in the process. Maybe the extra fixtures brought on by European football had an effect on the squad because the 18/19 campaign was going poorly when Lamouchi was sacked in December 2018 with his team in fourteenth place in the table.
Although two is a small sample size, I suppose it may be possible to deduce from his record at Forest and Rennes that Sabri Lamouchi has a positive effect when he takes over as manager of a club, but he struggles to maintain it.
One other thing about our new manager’s time at Rennes. While a record of seventy one goals scored from fifty four matches in all competitions represents an improvement on what happened at Forest, only in one of those games did Rennes managed to score more than twice in a game – there were plenty of examples of them scoring once or twice, but it’s a bit odd that, for what was a relatively successful side, they never really put an opponent to the sword.
So, on the down side, there’s a hint within Lamouchi’s record that,, first, he finds it hard to sustain the positivity of a bright start and, second, there is some evidence to suggest he is a defensively minded manager/coach whose sides tend to be low scoring.
I think regular readers of Mauve and Yellow Army will be able to gauge that I’m someone who has been a regular critic of the team when it comes to the lack of entertainment on offer from Cardiff City over the last decade or so. Therefore, those two possible negatives on the Lamouchi CV do ring an alarm bell although, for now at least, I’d say not too loudly.
The fact of the matter is that we’re in a scrap to avoid a relegation which would have a huge effect on the club. As someone who is old enough to remember instant promotions in 1976 and 1983 after relegations from the second tier, I’m less inclined to believe there is no way back if we do go down, but things like the Sala case and the very large amount of money owed to Vincent Tan and, to a lesser extent, Mehmet Dalman makes a relegation now more fraught with danger I’d say than those two I mentioned from decades ago.
If Sabri Lamouchi can bring about the sort of improvement seen early on at Forest and Rennes, that may be enough to secure out safety, then, in the apparent absence of any sort of long term deal for him at the moment, the decision to hire him will have worked. As for a defensive outlook, well, teams seldom get themselves out of trouble by playing swashbuckling attacking and entertaining football – I accept we’re in a situation where beggars can’t be choosers when it comes to entertainment value.
Anyway, it seems to me that, although our attacking options are very thin this season, we are better suited to a counter attacking approach with the pace of the likes of Isaak Davies, Sheyi Ojo, Jaden Philogene, Mark Harris, Callum Robinson and Callum O’Dowda.
This does lead me on to my biggest doubt about the appointment in the short term though. Currently, with thirty one goals conceded from twenty eight Championship games, we’re on course to matching, or getting very near, to the goals against figure Forest achieved in 19/20, so, based on what I can gather of his managerial record so far, you’d like to think Sabri Lamouchi can at least maintain a goals against record which is, by rights, deserving of a place in the top half of the table.
Clearly, the reason we’re where we are is that woeful goals for record of twenty one from twenty eight games. While eighteen games left sounds, and is, quite a lot, maybe the fact that we would need to score more twice a game on average over the remainder of the season to match Forest’s modest fifty eight scored in 19/20 does rather put things in perspective.
You’d think that we’d need to score forty goals at least to give ourselves a chance of staying up and that would mean an average of just over a goal a game from now on. I’d like to believe that is eminently possible, but, certainly at Forest and Rennes, there is little in Sabri Lamouchi’s record to indicate that he will come into a club and dramatically improve its goalscoring rate.
With four days of the transfer window left, there is still the possibility that we’ll see new players arriving soon (the likely departure of Curtis Nelson to Blackpool should free up a place in the squad and there have been numerous loans out of the club in recent weeks).
Our new manager made it sound very much like he had no plans to bring in anyone himself in the time which remains, but there has been constant media reporting that as many as three new signings could be coming in – albeit, they’d have to be free transfers or non loan fee temporary deals because of the continuing impact of Emiliano Sala transfer embargoes despite us now having paid the first instalment of his transfer fee to Nantes.
So, there is the chance at least that players who could improve our goals tally may be arriving. Therefore, barring a total collapse defensively over the last third or so of the season, a not too big improvement in our scoring rate should see us safe. If we have to go with just what we have already, then that makes things harder, but not impossible if Lamouchi and Bamba can restore a bit of confidence within the squad.
There are two, very differing, interpretations of our squad I see and hear quite a lot – first that they’re crap and relegation is inevitable and, second, that we’re underperforming mainly because of our chronic lack of goals. Although my faith has taken a bashing in the last six weeks or so, I’ve always been more on the side of the second option and I feel more confident than I did that, with Lamouchi and Bamba in charge, this will be the one to win out over the coming months.
I have to finish on a reminder of how low morale had got at the club however, as last Tuesday the Under 21s produced a season’s worst performance to go down 3-0 to Watford at Leckwith. While I always remember the old line about it being about performance rather than result at this level, it has to be pointed out that Watford had won just the one game, were bottom of the table with three points and had only scored seven times all season.
