Weekly review 27/6/26.

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?