Let’s start with what we know before getting on to the speculative stuff. Having loaned out two forwards for the upcoming season last week, we’ve now seen the first of the expected sales of contracted players we were warned about a couple of months ago when the 24/25 season ended.
As to why we need to sell, the loss of television revenue following our relegation is around £10 million and that has been more or less entirely covered by the release of nine out of contract players, some on wages that would be considered high by Championship standards.
So, effectively, Vincent Tan would have to be stumping up the cash again if City wanted to keep all of those currently contracted, while also bringing in new players for fees or on free transfers which would include things like signing on fees and bonuses.
If Vincent Tan has decided that, with bids in for the club it seems, money for new players has to come from the sale of others, then I find it hard to blame him – surely, the issue when it comes to our owner’s spending on the team it is that it has been so inept, not that there hasn’t been enough of it?
Anyway, the player who has left is Callum O’Dowda who was captain of the team for much of last season. It was confirmed yesterday that O’Dowda had joined Robbie Keane’s Ferencvaros (City played, and lost to the Hungarians in the Cup Winners’Cup in 1974).
As someone who, besides his captaincy, had an attitude that could not be questioned, generally performed consistently and had an excellent relationship with media and supporters, O’Dowda was, for me, the closest thing we had to a “model pro” last season and, as such, was always the most likely of the contracted senior players to be sold first.
If we accept that City want to retain the likes of Alex Robertson (who is constantly being linked with Portsmouth), Yousef Salech, Rubin Colwill and our other younger players, then I think they may have a problem shipping out the number of players they want to. After all, who else out of the senior players did enough to convince Championship teams, or their equivalents, that they would be an improvement on what they had already? I can only think of Callum Robertson, reportedly still recovering from the injury which affected him in the closing weeks of last season, who could be a priority target for some clubs who would be influenced by his dozen league goals in 24/25.
Managing to score ten plus in a season for Cardiff City is a feather in the cap for any striker who has played for them since Dave Jones’ departure in 2011 and there has been talk of Robinson linking up with Wrexham or his former club, Preston.
Robinson, like O’Dowda, signed a new contract earlier this year and, as such, you would expect that we could get a realistic, or even enhanced, fee for them. However, although I’m far from an expert on Hungarian football finances, I’d be surprised if we received a seven figure fee for O’Dowda like we might have done from a Championship team- my completely uninformed view is that it was something like £250,000.
Whatever the fee was, we’re now four weeks from our first League One match and I can say that I’ve still not seen anything linking us with what I’d call a realistic looking transfer target.
This has to be a concern, but not a crisis – I think we will make signings, but until we do, or we’re confirmed as meeting players to try and finalise a deal, there has to be a slight suspicion that we’re going to try and make do with what we’ve got.
This is definitely not true when it comes to our age group squads – these links from the club website show details of additions to the under 21 and under 18 squads.
Talking of the under 21s, the pre season game at Yeovil on 15 July has been designated as a under 21 game, rather than a senior team one. The reason given is that the match is too close to the return of the senior squad from their week’s warm weather training in Spain. This sounds reasonable enough, but it also carries a hint that the first team squad looks somewhat light on numbers at the moment.
One good thing that you thought would be a consequence of relegation would be more Saturday 3 o clock kick offs, but it’s not looking like that during a first month which sees games with Peterborough, Plymouth and Luton switched to 12.30 kick offs and the first away game at Port Vale, a side we’ve only visited once, in a League Cup tie, in the last twenty plus years, switched to a Thursday evening start – as has been remarked on social media, thank you Sky Sports!
Early in the week, there were suggestions that what I’ll call the Gareth Bale consortium had put in a bid to the club which was described as “very fair” – a figure of £85 million was mentioned, but, with independent football finance experts valuing City at something £30/35 million, this seemed too high.
A day later the Times posted a story claiming that a bid had been made, but they valued it at £40 million and were reporting that the it was likely to be rejected. There have been claims since then that the bid had been made before this week and there had been no new one. Finally, Sky Sports reported yesterday that the latest bid was, in fact, £20 million and that there were bids from other groups that were higher than the Bale group’s had been.
Although there has been little to indicate Vincent Tan will accept a bid from the Bale group, there does appear to be the odd sign that he is willing to consider a sale.
Of course, talk of £30 million valuations and £40 million bids surely makes no allowances for the £100 million plus of debts owed to Tan and the company in which Mehmet Dalman has an involvement. While it seems very, very unlikely that any buyer would be willing to give Messrs Tan and Dalman the full value of what the club owes them, it’s equally true that both of them can have little expectation of getting much of their money back if they insist on having their debts repaid in full.
There’s also the Emiliano Sala case to be considered. That’s likely to be completed by the end of this year and with Cardiff’s claim being in the region of £100 million, you have to think that a favourable outcome for City would only increase the chances of a sale of the club.
Before I renewed my season ticket of many years I had family asking why? since I live in London and being now in my ’80s the cost in time and effort and money of travelling to home games is an increasing stress .. but I am a supporter so .. .. but I did say ‘if we are daft enough to sell Callum O’Dowda and/or Perry Ng I may change my mind’ .. and if I’d known that we were going to suffer TV appearances changing Saturday 3 o’clock kick-offs to 12.30, so making a Friday night Cardiff hotel bill necessary I’d have said ‘enough has been reached’ but I’ve renewed my season ticket so that’ll mean leaving home to take a bus then three tube trains just to get to Paddington and then … aaargh!
Thanks Paul for your comprehensive update on finances. And thanks also to Graham… he truly is living embodiment of the spirit of Dannie Abse.
Oh dear… ‘she who must be obeyed’ is calling me down for lunch. ?. Must go.
Hoping you have seen my link to my David Hemmings ‘blow up’ as my last comment in your League 1 grounds quiz.
Hello Graham, I take my hat off to you for such dedication to a cause which, in latter years, has given so little back in return. It’s absolute peanuts by comparison to what you’ll be paying, but I’ve forked out £10 to watch streams of the two games we’re going to be playing in Spain and I’m hoping to see signs that the 13-1 win over Merthyr on the weekend (I’ve no idea of the relative strengths of the two teams mind) is a sign that BBM and Lee Riley are having an impact on the trainng pitch and that four or five of our youngsters are looking like they can handle the step up to first team football. Looking at how our summer is shaping up, I’m beginning to think that we’ll need that contribution from our younger players if the season is to be a success because I’m seeing nothing yet to get me thinking that we’re going to spening much in this window even if we do eventually get around to making a few signings.
Dai, I’ve seen the photo you talk about, but the wording is nowhere near as clear on the photo I used – if people are going to use magnifying tools etc to study the photos that appear in some of the quizzes I do, then fine – all’s fair in love and war etc!
Interesting comment Paul viz ‘if people are going to need a magnifying glass’.
I certainly did not need one… and I regularly attend the diabetic eye clinic here in Grimsby. I did a ‘blow up’ simply to prove I was not hallucinating.
I spotted it first time of asking by looking through the tree and there is the club’s name emblazoned on the side of the stand…!!
Re your comments on Graham: may I endorse your every word.
TTFN,
Dai.
To all at MAYA…
Ah so it has happened…
REACH have introduced a paywall on WalesOnline….
Can’t say that I blame them: after all print journalism is a basket case and has been haemorrhaging money (and newspaper buyers/paying subscribers) the world over… to such an extent that last season REACH could not afford to send Glen and Tom to report on several away games of Cardiff and Swansea respectively… and as for ‘The Port’… well for several years WalesOnline clearly have not deemed Newport as part of our native land.
So as I say, I don’t blame them for the paywall. After all, as the saying goes, ‘every honest labourer is worthy of his hire’. But forgive me for taking this moment to say a tearful goodbye to the Western Mail and South Wales Echo… after all, I delivered these newspapers as a boy… and remember Thomson House being built… it was the Print Cathedral for all literate folk in South East Wales.
From March 1960, for several years in succession from the age of 12, I was climbing the 1-in-3 hill from Porth Square through Cymmer (past the boyhood home of the greatest of all the talented Welsh writers called Thomas: the late great Gwyn) to the Rickards Arms at the start of Trebanog. I climbed those hills with a heavy sack on my back to deliver the words of my heroes: Dewi Jones, writing on my Bluebirds team in the Western Mail and Peter Corrigan writing on them in The Echo… (which I delivered after school in the early evening) and the great lyrical JBG Thomas writing out of his skin for The Western Mail on my other winter sporting love: rugby union.
After a couple of years I succeeded a boy called David Chapman in writing out the various rounds for the different newsboys: this meant I had to meet the milk train at 5.50am and help Mr Owen the proprietor wheel the heavy trolley along Station Street from Porth railway station to his newsagents’ shop known as Morton’s on Porth Square.
After writing out the rounds, I would have to embark on my ascent of my personal Eiger… trudging with heavy sack up the 1-in-3 to Trebanog. I even did this through the heavy snows of the coldest winter we had since The Middle Ages (1962-63).
My father had been killed by King Coal just three months after my tenth birthday, and I lived alone with my widowed mother… my four older siblings having all recently flown the nest… to tertiary education or marriage. We were as poor financially as they come: the National Coal Board not paying a pension to the widow of a man who had died with lungs so diseased by pneumoconiosis that he had to spend the last 18 months of his life on an oxygen cylinder. But with a dirty trick that was characteristic of the NCB of the day… they tried to absolve themselves of responsibility for his death, because his death certificate showed ‘heart failure’ as primary cause of death, with pneumoconiosis as a contributing factor. And the blighters got away with it… as they did in similar cases all over the coalfields of Britain. Shocking really… if you think about it, the one common denominator in all our deaths is that our heart ultimately fails… i.e. stops ticking.
It took many years after several appeals before they took responsibility for their act of low cunning: eventually giving my mother a very modest retrospective payment and two free loads of coal a year. Coal that for several decades before, my father had laid on his side in dust-filled 3 foot seams, hewing out the coal with a little pick and shovel… long before mechanisation became ‘de rigueur’ in our collieries.
Therefore, back in the early Sixties, I vitally needed the money from my newspaper rounds to finance my joint ‘habit’: Cardiff City and (in summer) Glamorgan County Cricket Club. Alas I would sometimes due to weather conditions slowing my ascent from Base Camp, turn up at school after the dreaded Assembly bell, to be met by a sadistic male teacher on latecomers’ sentry duty.
He would offer you detention at the end of the school day, or two savage ‘cuts’ with his cane.
Now I could hardly choose ‘detention’ could I, seeing as my readers of the evening South Wales Echo wanted to read their sports reports at their usual early time. So to the amazement of the other tardy miscreants, I was the only one to opt for corporal punishment.
And oh boy, that fellow knew where to land his blows. Oh, he was considerate alright: he’d ask which hand you wrote with, then hit the other. My slim little fingers would be so swollen that they’d resemble a pack of Richmond Pork Sausages after his assaults on my often frozen hand.
Tears would well up into my eyes… and sometimes the weals would split the skin. So folks… when I say I have given blood for Reach newspapers, I genuinely am not over-egging the pudding.
And the fact that I have bought the T-shirt (so to speak) makes me feel morally justified in refusing to succumb to the financial demands of Reach newspapers. It is only a matter of time before they introduce an online paywall here in my adopted hometown of Grimsby on our local evening newspaper which has haemorrhaged print readers more than many in Reach’s stable. And guess what the current price is to buy a copy in my corner newsagent’s?
A barely credible £2.25 a copy? Truly, YCNMIU*
Meanwhile our leading Redtop national tabloid – The Sun – sells most days for less than half of that Grimsby extortionate price.
And back to my objection to succumbing to that Reach paywall: there is a more principled personal objection… and it is this.
For over a quarter of a century I have written squillions of words, not so much in this MAYA blog, as in my regular three weekly newsletter that goes to readers in 28 countries. I have put my heart and soul into my DAIGRESSINGS… and have never earned a penny from my efforts.
In those 26 years I have had 4 offers of sponsorship: only 1 seriously had ‘legs’… it was from a small record company who felt they could advertise effectively on it, even though some of my political views were anathema to them… and my music reviews sometimes were also running antithetical to their own.
But here was their clinching argument: they felt that my output provided real mental food , and they felt that if they could give it a real professional layout, it would do my thoughts real justice.
Once I saw that word ‘professional’, the alarm bells rang.
You see, I took pride in my primitive Grandma Moses approach to the look of my work: the internet is full of ‘bells & whistles’ sites that leave one cold. No personality. All style and no substance.
So I said no. I decided to stumble on with my newsletter… helped by possible legal constraints. (You see, as my DAIGRESSINGS use lots of YouTube links, the fact that I use them for no material gain will be deemed in a Court of Law as ‘Fair Usage’. However were I to start to ‘take the shilling’ of commercial sponsorship… it could have led to possible financial claims on me.)
So I am like the cobbler who has stuck to his last: I make no apologies for my amateurishly different font styles and sizes… and my idiosyncratic use of punctuation… especially my use of otiose exclamation marks which rub many of my readers the wrong way.
But I reckon I have paid my dues in my years pinned to my PC/iPads, to not pay a cent for journalism that is no better than mine… and at least unlike many Reach journalists, I do know the difference between phased and fazed, and disinterested and uninterested.
But a word to MAYA readers who may be too impecunious to pay to breach the Reach paywall.
My advice is this: remember the Mexican who said to Donald Trump ‘yes go ahead and build what you call your 25 ft high beautiful wall’, but understand that all I have to do is bring a 26 ft high ladder’.
Now, as a paid-up member of the Cowards’ Club, I am not recommending anyone do anything remotely illegal… but I would be remiss in my duty as a longstanding MAYA member if I did not tell you that if you google ‘free ways to overcome paywalls’, you will be met with a plethora of possibilities.
Me? I know that my regular correspondents will copy/paste any relevant articles that are not Glen’s usual clickbait, and send them me.
Okay… Spain v Italy calls.
Btw… the highlight of these Euros for me so far was Hannah Hampton’s refusal to play it short, but instead executed a brilliant long pass of Jak Alnwick accuracy… which led to a sublime goal.
Thrilling. How I would love it if all City’s Goal KICKS reached the halfway line… but I can only dream.
Were you watching BBM? Hope so. You need to be… for your new defenders’ second touches when playing out from the back are invariably a… tackle…!!
*= You Could Not Make It Up (even if you tried)
TTFN,
Dai.
Two tiny corrections…
Apols for the rogue apostrophe in this para…
‘…
My advice is this: remember the Mexican who said to Donald Trump ‘yes go ahead and build what you call your 25 ft high beautiful wall’, but understand that all I have to do is bring a 26 ft high ladder’.
…’
My error there was trying to put Trump’s ‘beautiful wall’ in a quote… and then realising it was a quote inside a quote… so I attempted to remove the marks, but was slipshod and only removed the one.
As for ‘google’ lower case… yes technically it is an error, but no more so than ‘hoovering the carpet’ is…!!
I’d virtually given up on Wales Online anyway Dai, I find their site bordeline unreadable these days which is a bit of a shame because I rate Glen Williams as their best City reporter of recent years.
That’s some story about your paper delivering days, mine is nothing like as compelling as yours, but it does have one unusual side to it – I was almost forty when I became a paper “boy” for a year! I took a year off on unpaid leave mainly to be on hand if and when my mother had one of her increasingly frequent arthritis episodes in her hip. My time off was paid for by me being given early access to some of my inheritance money, but I figured that it shouldn’t pay for my Saturday nights out, hence the paper round which saw me covering some of Fairwater and much of what I’ll call the City of Llandaff – it used to take me three hours every morning, more on the Sunday when I had all of the extra magazines and sports editions etc. and that was with me using my car!
That was around thirty years ago, but, even then, demand for newspapers seemed to be dropping and, compared to when I took on a round for a while in my teens, far less people were getting papers delivered in the morning in 1995 than there were in the early seventies. Now, there are two long since closed newsagents within walking distance of my home up here.
Unlike you, I’ve accepted money for my writing over the past fifteen years and still do. There was a time about five years ago when I couldn’t have continued without some financial help from readers, but that was back in the days when I was only receiving a works pension. I’ve been receiving the state pension as well for the last three and a half years, so can pay for the blog myself now and when the season starts for proper, I’ll start doing my normal note saying that I no longer need financial contributions from readers, but I know there are still those who continue to make a contribution as a way of showing their appreciation.
Thanks for the link for the Chelsea game last night – certainly didn’t see that result coming.