Last week I posted that a managerial appointment at Cardiff City was “imminent”. Well, if regular readers weren’t aware already, all my confident prediction did was offer more proof of the fact that, if you’re looking for “in the know” information, you’re better off looking on other Cardiff City social media sources!
A week on and were still waiting for our owner to make up his mind and this morning, Paul Abbandonato posted the following Tweet;
Now, you could just dismiss anything from this source as rubbish, but I’ll maintain my faith in him and continue to believe that he has regular contact with at least one of the three men at the top of the club.
So, I’ll take it as very likely that the club will fail to reach the target they set for themselves of an appointment by the end of May and wonder if they’re on course for a hat trick of managerial appointments/confirmations on 3 June 2023,24 and 25 – second thoughts, I’m probably being too optimistic again there!
Anyway, this time last week the betting had Brian Barry Murphy as a red hot favourite, with Des Buckingham second favourite and Aaron Ramsey and Ian Evatt some way back. The last seven days saw the favourite fading from about Wednesday onwards as he was overhauled by Buckingham to the extent “in the know” posters on one of the City message boards were proclaiming that the former Oxford United manager was Vincent Tan’s choice and confirmation of the appointment would follow shortly.
However, Paul Abbandonato’s Tweet, together with one or two other message board contributions, seems to have been the driver behind a complete change in the betting and now it looks like this;-
https://www.bettingodds.com/thesackrace/teams/cardiff-city
Once again, you could write off this as crap (it’s commonly assumed that a modest sum being bet on any of the contenders for the manager’s job at an EFL club will see them move up the list at a dramatic rate) , but I wasn’t the only message board poster to read Abbandonato’s latest Tweet, add two and two together and come up with Charlton manager, Nathan Jones from Blaenrhondda.
Certainly, judging by the way he’s suddenly come in from something like 25/1 suggests there a few punters out there who thought the same as me.
The fact that Jones celebrated promotion to the Championship with a victory in the League One Play Off Final last Sunday makes him seem a bit of a long shot both in terms of his pay packet and the compensation City would have to pay the London club if their manager decided to step down a division.
Indeed, Jones seemed to rule out any move to Cardiff in the aftermath of Charlton’s win, but this is someone who once celebrated a win by his Luton team at Swansea by doing the Ayatollah and if there was a League One team that could tempt him away from Charlton, it would surely be Cardiff if we assume he didn’t fancy a third go at Luton.
Just one other thing about Nathan Jones, the self proclaimed City fan was out of work two years ago when we appointed Erol Bulut and barely got a mention by anyone at the time, probably because of his three months stay at Southampton which, combined with his failure at Stoke, led to charges that he was a “one club man” when it came to management.
However, despite Jones surging in the betting, it’s now our own Aaron Ramsey who is the odds on favourite. Use of the words “our own” is bound to prompt thoughts of another selection from within the club and we all know how well they’ve gone up to now! I did say on here (at least I think it was on here) a few weeks ago that Ramsey could be different from other internal appointments in that he has the playing reputation, general standing in the game and fan support to be able to dictate to the club in terms of what he wants.
During his three game stint as interim manager at the end of the season, Ramsey put it diplomatically when he said that all of his previous clubs had different football structures to Cardiff. Surely, he wouldn’t entertain the current ramshackle set up at what he sees as “his team” and it seems to me that, Ramsey, more than any other candidate, could get Vincent Tan to move into the twenty first century in terms of how a football club should operate.
Yes, Abbandonato’s Tweet could equally apply to Ramsey’ as it does to Jones and, if you wanted areal long shot, someone else who has an affinity and affection for the club would be our former loanee Gary O’Neil who has got the occasional mention as a candidate for the job.
I’m not going to get involved in predicting who’s going to get the job – what’s the point after last week’s effort! However, despite Paul Abbandonato’s attempts to try and put a positive spin on this latest delay, I repeat that the club gave failed to hit their own target and as I keep on saying, for a third straight year, they’ve insisted on putting themselves at a self inflicted disadvantage when it comes to preparations for the coming season by leaving it until June before the manager situation is clarified.
A club hierarchy generally reckoned to be inept are not helping their cause by seemingly choosing to ignore the recommendations of the group they set up themselves in an attempt to provide the sort of football knowledge Messrs Tan, Dalman and Choo are generally regarded to lack.
Of course, there has been no confirmation that Brian Barry Murphy, Des Buckingham and Ian Evatt were in the list of recommendations made to the club bosses, but I think it’s fairly safe to assume they were. Aaron Ramsey didn’t need to be and it’s unlikely Nathan Jones would have been with his team in the Play Offs.
No, I feel there’s a strong chance that our new manager, when he’s finally announced, will not have been on the list presented to the club as Cardiff City, once again, prove that when it comes to, often expensive, faffing about, we have few equals.
There’s been nothing else happening at the club worth commenting on apart from offering congratulations to young right back Ronan Kpakio for his selection in the full Welsh squad for next week’s games against Liechtenstein and Belgium – Craig Bellamy was very complimentary about the player who turned eighteen recently and revealed that he had tried to sign him when he was at Burnley..
Staying with international, Wales’ women’s team were beaten 1-0 in Denmark on Friday night and will be relegated from the top level of Nations League groups as it was confirmed that they will come bottom of their section despite a much improved performance through their five games so far compared to their first effort a couple of years ago. Whatever happens in their final game, against Italy, on Tuesday, Wales cannot avoid the drop now, but the fact that all of their three defeats so far have been by single goal margins and there were those two excellent draws with Sweden as well.
Friday’s result was the right one as Denmark were the better side, but Jess Fishlock did score a valid goal in the first half when her close range effort was shown to have just crossed the line in replays despite the referee and lineswoman ruling otherwise.
For what it’s worth, and following your thread Paul, my hunch would be that Vincent Tan’s favoured candidate for the City post is Nathan Jones!
Not only has he got Charlton promoted from League 1 this season, but Jones is an outspoken Evengelical/Born Again christian, who has often made reference to God’s plan.
We are told that Vincent Tan is a deeply spiritual person, who used to frequently use the phrase ‘God willing’.
Also according to former City defender Lee Peltier, Mr Tan would encourage our strikers to join him in prayers to score more goals.
So god willing, Mr Tan will make an announcement by the end of this week!
Paul compadre, and MAYA friends…
Oh my giddy aunt…!! I have pins and needles in my head after devoting half an hour of my time to trying to fully consider this ever-so-thoughtful posting from you Paul, and BB’s comment with his admirably witty closing sentence.
Not for the first time, I find myself perplexed by events to the point that I feel that perhaps I should shout ‘stop the world, I want to get off!’
But here are some points re my take on things… in no particular order…
•Trust me I am not a poor version of a Christopher Hitchens contrarian… who if you tell me that smoke is blowing south from a chimney, will adamantly deny it and insist it is blowing west… but that said, most modern ‘football thinking’ is completely alien to me.
•And talking of smoke and chimneys… is it not remarkable that we have currently taken circa twenty times longer to choose a manager, than the last papal conclave took to elect a… Pope… who let me remind you all, is not managing a squad of 25 but a squad of 1.406 billion!!
•I note that things have gone quiet on a ‘director of football’. So they should. It is an absurd fad that I predict will be gone in a generation. If it is that sensible a policy, how come his is not the first appointment to be made? (For surely one would want a manager to sing note-for-note from the same hymn sheet as that of the chap he reports to? You cannot have them butting heads daily.)
•And if people say ‘well just look at how the top successful teams all have a technical director/DoF’, I will counter with ‘so did Southampton, Leicester and Ipswich’. Just one more snout in Vincent Tan’s trough… and God alone knows we have a myriad tracksuited folk there already… all doing backroom jobs that Bill Jones and Wilf Grant would rub their eyes in befuddlement over if they were raised from the dead today.
•I fell about laughing at your – new to me – anecdote about Nathan ‘doing the Ayatollah’ to the crowd at Swansea following his Luton team winning. Magic. Makes me love him even more… I had previously thought the ‘high’ I got when he got under the skin of that arrogant bully Steve Morison, could not be topped… but I think that your anecdote will bring a smile to my face for years to come…
•Quite why, is a bit of a puzzle in one respect… and here I refer to my distaste for the action of ‘doing the Ayatollah’. As I understood it, the action is a hallmark of Shia Muslims when they are in (wait for it)…
…
…
… MOURNING…!!
Have I got that wrong? If I haven’t, please run it by me how that thinking works if we are tapping our heads next season as we are trying to enter the Division 1 play-offs…? Do you think this sign of ‘anticipated disappointment’ might be perceived as irony on the part of our fans… in the same way as fans at The Hawthorns have to read the 23rd Psalm all around them every home game?
•A final point re fans choosing to adopt an absolutely unique physical action to express their support: where do we draw the line? I guess a Hitler salute, deemed okay for the England team as late as May 1938
https://tinyurl.com/2n8vjt53
would be out of the question… but how about the two fingered Agincourt salute (of the urban myth?)… but done slowly, and not with a violent upwards thrust?
Suggestions on a virtual postcard please. Lunch beckons.
TTFN,
Dai.
Thanks both for your reply. BB, I’d read in Nathan Jones’ Wikipedia entry that he is in the habit of using the term “God willing” in press conferences. Sadly, I’ve now arrived at the piss taking stage in my disillousenment with my football club – if ever a club did not deserve 10,000 season tocket holders, it’s Cardiff City on 4 June 2025, but that’s what they’ve got – it makes you wonder how many we’d have if Tan and co were even remotely competent at running a football club.
Dai, all I need to point you to when it comes to the need for wholesale changes to the way Vincent tan runs the club is the farces that have been the seventy plus days our owner took to decide that the man he appointed caretaker boss after sacking Erol Bulut was, indeed, the right man for the job despite our form having fallen off a cliff since Riza’s good start in the job (few would have complained if Tan at the time if Tan had decided at the end of October to give Riza the job for the season, but, instead he opted to wait abother month to six weeks when we were on a long trun wothout a win.
Now it’s six weeks plus, and counting, since Tan sacked Riza and we are becoming an even bigger laughing stock than we looked last autumn. Maybe you’re right though because when Tan does go looking for “expert’ help as like he did when asking two former managers to recommend successors for Bulut or when he turns to a respected football agency and one or two others from the “football world” for advice on who should follow Riza, he ignores their findings!
As for the Ayatollah, here’s what Wikipedia has to say about it
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ayatollah_(football_celebration)#:~:text=It%20was%20originally%20performed%20by,at%20Cardiff's%20Chapter%20Arts%20Centre.
You mention West Brom Dai and I’m reminded of their old “boing, boing Baggies” chant when they would basically pogo l;ke punk rock fans from the late 70s ion. a gesture which became associated with that team.
Paul compadre,
Great response from you. Particularly liked your reference to the Throstles/Baggies fans use of the ‘boing boing’. (Just writing that term down makes me wish that Margaret Mead was alive at this hour.)
To me, Doing the Ayatollah is about as bizarre an act as Doing the Poznan*… and the ‘swim swim’ of their lot when we play the Auld Enemy… or the Viking Hand Clap of Fir Park travelling 829 miles as the Crow Flies to Reykjavik to be adopted by the fans and what’s more, the national side itself.
I would rather have my hands amputated than ever do it myself, but as Queen Victoria might say were she here today… ‘let them Do the Ayatollah, as long as it doesn’t frighten the horses’…
But what I really want to say is a big thankyou Paul for your finding of that Wikipedia page… and a big thankyou to the unknown man/woman who created it. Yes I realise that these Wiki pages are the efforts of several contributors through the Wikipedia joint editing scheme, but invariably that same originator’s one passion is there in almost every sentence.
And at the bottom of this Wiki posting I found this…
‘…
August 31, 2005
Wales and doing the ayatollah
Anyone watching the cricket recently will have seen the England cricketers, led by Simon Jones, doing a very odd celebration whenever they take a wicket. They all run along and slap their head with both their hands. During the last Test, Michael Atherton suggested that this was a ‘Welsh thing’.
It turns out that it is a Wales–via–Iran thing. In 1989, when Ayatollah Khomeini died, his funeral was shown on British TV and a Cardiff City fan was rather taken with the mourners way of expressing their grief – they slapped their heads with both hands. At the next Cardiff home game, he encouraged all his mates to copy these mourners and slap their heads whenever Cardiff scored a goal. The trend caught on. Players noticed what was happening and started doing it as well. Sam Hammam, Cardiff’s chairman, can be frequently seen “doing the Ayatollah”, as it has come to be known, at home games. In fact, Hammam, who is from Lebanon, has been wrongly credited with starting the celebration.
Last year, the trend caught on even more when the Welsh rugby captain, Gareth Thomas, had a bet with a mate and started celebrating his tries for Wales and the Lions by doing the ayatollah. And now, the ayatollah has caught on in a third sport, cricket, as Simon Jones, who is Welsh and plays his cricket in Cardiff, has got the England players doing it too.
I am hopeful that this will catch on at my football club, West Ham. We have FOUR Welsh players on our books, two of whom were signed from Cardiff in the close season, and one of whom, Danny Gabbidon, is actually quite good;). I think to make them all feel at home we should start doing the ayatollah as well. I am going to tell my mate who has a season ticket at Upton Park. And of course, Wales are playing England at football this weekend, so if Wales do well there perhaps we will see some head–slapping. What a great celebration!
So, an Iranian funeral lament has become a Welsh football ritual, a British rugby celebration and an English cricket ‘thing’. You’ve gotta love it.
…’
Folks… the lesson to be drawn from all this is NEVER to ignore the links in the ‘references’ section at the bottom of every Wikipedia page. Yes, I know it is frustrating that in entries that are several years old, often most of the links are no longer alive… but keep persevering and you find real gold sometimes.
*I won’t put an acute accent over the ‘n’ in Poznan out of respect for your blog’s software… remembering what it did to an acute accent over the ‘c’ in Bilic.
Too rushed to proofread. Apols in advance for typos and non sequiturs…
TTFN,
Dai.