Cardiff City, the future – a view from a MAYA reader.

Before getting on to the main purpose of this entry, I should say that there was a meeting between Mehmet Dalman, Ken Choo and various supporters’ groups yesterday to discuss the sort of issues that will be referred to later on in this piece. Cardiff City Supporters’ Trust had representatives there and here is the Trust’s account of what was said.

Moving on, over the weekend I heard from a Mauve and Yellow Army reader named Michael Weedon who wanted me to take a look at something he’d written in the wake of the sacking of Neil Harris and the appointment of Mick McCarthy as City manager for, at least, the next six months.

I read Michael’s article and was very impressed – it was intelligent, well put together and kept my attention throughout. I thought it worthy of reading by a wider audience and, although I realise that the readership of this blog isn’t as big as many other football sites, publishing it on here is at least a way of ensuring that Michael’s work gets something like the audience I believe it should.

While on this subject, can I say that if ever any other reader feels they have something that they would like to see published on here, let me know and I’ll have a look at it – it’s probably boring just reading me pontificating on all things Cardiff City all of the time!

Anyway, here’s what Michael has to say, it’s well worth a read;-

CCFC: Can we please have a plan?

Groundhog day in Leckwith

Cardiff fans are unique. We’re a diverse fanbase drawn from one of the most working class and deprived areas in Europe,  South wales and its valleys.  Coming together on masse every week from different valleys, towns and villages to ‘support the boys’.  Make no bones about it, it’s not easy being a Cardiff fan, it’s not fashionable and practically it’s not easy, (If anyone has ever tried to get a  ‘train’ from Cardiff Central back to Merthyr post-match on a Tuesday night will testify). It’s a labour of love, so called success is rare and fleeting. Surrounded in our communities by so called ‘fans’ of the top 5 premier league clubs, the cheap shots are a weekly feature from the armchair season ticket holders of Man United and Liverpool fans. They never have, nor will experience that joy as Cardiff scramble in an agricultural 89^th minute winner against Barnsley. Yes we’re fickle but we remain football purists in an era of convenience.

We’ve faced it all, from absolute tragedy and heartbreak to weekly disappointment, kit changes and more recently absolutely diabolical football. The queue to drink questionable pints of fosters, from plastic glasses, 15 minutes into the second half is testament to this.  Yet here we are, the hardnosed underdogs unified and ready for whatever the footballing world can throw at us. We remain consistent through success as we have failures. Generally speaking we put up with most things, a Cardiff fan who isn’t moaning is a rarity. However things are changing, we’ve seen how other clubs have left us in the dust during modernization and now fans are questioning the broader direction of the club. We’ve felt like this before, it’s calmed down but now the same problems remain and it can’t continue.

The contrasts

Now contrast the fan base, it’s values, it’s beliefs and desires to those at the top of the pile. The board and owners. The core are Mehmet Dalman, Ken Choo, and the Owner Vincent Tan.

Cardiff’s chairman Mehmet Dalman, a man of high net worth has worked in investment banking most of his career, carving out an extraordinarily successful career in equities and asset management. Uniquely being the first non-German on the board of the German bank Commerzbank, no mean feat.

The CEO of Cardiff is Ken Choo, who since 2017 has ran HR Owen group, the luxury car business acquired by Cardiff’s owner Vincent Tan back in 2013. Choo has spoken openly about the need to transform HR Owen’s approach to business, looking towards a community led approach to business and notably saying “At H.R. Owen we don’t come in and try to change things significantly without listening to what the people want and what our staff wants” What a contrast to the that of the approach of the Cardiff City FC business hey.

The last and most important piece of the boardroom jigsaw is the Owner Vincent Tan, he’s a figure who has, and still does cause much division and derision among City fans. The kit change in 2012 was sadly the death knell for many bluebirds. He’s not seen around these parts much anymore, preferring to take a moderate interest from his home in Malaysia. He’s got a few other clubs under his wing now. Drifting from being an overly enthusiastic new owner to one who observes from a distance rather than take much active interest. Mick McCarthy’s appointment was a just ‘brief chat’. Hardly the rigorous recruitment process some would have called for. Despite this severe delegation, he is the sole reason Cardiff survive as a club, pumping in millions each month to keep the club afloat. No matter your views on VT, he’s essentially the life support machine for the club.

So there you have the scene set, a working class fan base and a club ran by those with very different backgrounds, lifestyles and priorities. This incongruous relationship isn’t unusual in Football, more recently, Burnley’s new Wall Street made, American owner from would surely be shocked pulling off the M65 and heading down the dual carriageway into the bright lights of Burnley town Centre.

Rudderless for years

However there’s a key difference between many of these clubs with foreign, often highly wealthy owners with working class fan bases and Cardiff City. It’s the middle men, the glue, the expertise in the right areas, often called the ‘footballing infrastructure’. The missing link between the money men, the suits and the footballing world. Almost every City fan recognizes this, it’s so blatantly obvious. With two thirds of the board not even based in Wales it’s also a matter of practical common sense.

The talented and inimitable Steve Tucker, challenged Dalman back in 2015 with regards to the direction of the club during the calamitous Russell Slade era. Following Tucker’s persistence, Dalman eventually suggested that he wanted the club ‘to stand on its own two feet’ and acknowledged some of the shortcomings following fan pressure around the direction of the club. Back in 2014/2015 the cycle of short termism and rash decisions were noticeable. Six years later it’s not changed. We hop from manager to manager, plastering over issues.

Since then we’ve seen plans for a training ground approved by the Vale of Glamorgan council, then complete silence following the green light. It’s worth noting that the latest planning approval process began in 2013, the plans were unanimously approved in the spring of 2019 following resubmissions. Neil Warnock emphatically and famously claiming at the time “That’s what Burnley did when they got relegated – they signed a few good players, started on their new training ground and came straight back up.” The diggers remain silent as do the club when questioned on this. They won’t make any comment on the matter. The silence is deafening.

More recently in the Chairman’s annual statement to shareholders following relegation, he spoke of the desire for a restructuring and getting back to the Premier league quickly and more importantly ‘breaking the vicious cycle of promotion and relegation’. So there are shoots of promise in the club but they never seem to manifest other than empty rhetoric.

Structurally unsound

The Cardiff City setup, as a business is the equivalent of a skyscraper, with the boardroom at the top, the owner occasionally arriving on the helipad, 30 floors of empty desks and then the playing and coaching staff on floor one.  The media team are consigned to hot desking in the basement. There’s a gulf of knowledge, we’re top heavy. It’s very clear that the Cardiff board know how to run a business successfully, they have the track record. They know that any business relies on the right expertise and people making the right decisions, underpinned by a long term vision and plan. However for reasons unknown to Cardiff fans, there is no long term plan, no identity and no business plan which points to a sustainable and successful future.

To use another analogy, to describe the resulting outcome of this business structure on the pitch. If Cardiff are a ship trying to set sail to the calm and rich waters of the premier league, then they are doing so with the ship back in the dockyard. The managerial and coaching appointments plugging holes while attempting to navigate a ship without a map. The players are signed to fill positions in the crew, in roles they often don’t know. If this proverbial ship were to ever be released into the ocean with the current squad, it would list heavily, such is the unbalance in playing personnel.

Project reset and time to succeed

Mehmet Dalman, has spoken openly about the balance sheet and the dire financial situation we face, annuals accounts prior to lockdown were hugely worrying, even with the shot in the arm of the Premier league money. Post Covid-19 it’s going to be catastrophic. Therefore it’s understandable that the club think short term, almost survivalist. Having fewer staff means decisions are made quickly and with relative ease. However Cardiff fans in the whole, are an empathetic, understandable bunch. Appreciative with realism that the club just can’t go out and spend millions. We all understand that after the Malky and Solksjaer reigns that Vincent Tan had seen enough, the purse strings would be tightened. Rightly so. I don’t think any Cardiff fan expected differently.

However this does leave the club, the business, in a perilous position stuck in a short term cycle, a rut. Juggling perilous cashflow issues with unwise footballing decisions. Managers are brought in, cheaply, quickly with little backing to make an impact before the baton is passed onto another low risk safe pair of hands (Warnock to Harris to McCarthy) it’s punch drunk, rushed decision making. Crucially players that are bought in with capital, are rarely sold at a profit. Unwise investments indeed.

Fans would sacrifice and trade in, short term success for a longer term business plan without question. The new academy development is welcome news, young talent in South Wales has for too long bypassed CCFC to Swansea or to Premier league clubs. Those that stay have not been given the right pathway to develop or stay.

However I’d urge the board to reframe and adjust their thinking to be like a successful business and put core pillars in place that would drive success longer term. Dalman’s success in equities would be a result of calculated decisions, often involving evaluating risk and being pragmatic over a period of years before seeing any return. In a similar vein, what the club desperately needs is a series of calculated decisions to form a basis of sustainability and success in the long term. To slowly remove us off Vincent’s life support.

This would involve over time, with gradual sensible investment, bringing in a Director of football to be the link between the board and footballing operations, making decisions based on footballing knowledge. A manager who can take the club on this journey, a training ground suitable for the club, a youth development program, a broader scouting network and dialogue between fans and those who run the club. I’d also add the development of the marketing department. In the age of generation Y the clubs digital content is seriously analogue. It’s low risk and functional. Yes this costs money, but it’s a risk that would absolutely bring reward.

The blueprint

There’s numerous examples of clubs restructuring and adapting to address their long term futures with relatively sensible investment levels. Burnley were one of the first to do so, but the most notable is the Welshman Stuart Webber’s appointment as Sporting Director at Norwich in 2017. They’ve gone from a club hemorrhaging money, unable to pay the wage bill in August 2016 to making £40 million in player sales following relegation last season. They aren’t backed by big money but the infrastructure in place has given them the platform to compete every season. The key thing to note, is that they don’t have to sell players following relegation. Such is the sustainable way the business operates.

On a European and bigger level, a nod to Sporting Director Ralf Rangnick who took Red Bull Salzburg and Leipzig to another level, in his words recently, talking about his spells at the two clubs: “I felt that we needed to not only focus our attention on winning titles, but also on developing players. By scouting and developing young players, we should look to sell them on for a big profit. I wanted to sell players for double figures within two years.” He was initially laughed out of the boardroom. Furthermore he goes on to also crucially mention “we didn’t just focus on the players. What we did at both clubs was more club-building than team-building” and “Capital is a limited-success factor. Alone, it is far from enough. What’s more, concept and competence, if you use them well, will generate capital.” It’s a remarkable achievement and a blueprint for many other clubs. Considering their rise through the leagues and how much the club as an institution is widely detested by other fans.

Back to Cardiff, it all seems so clear and obvious what the club needs more than ever. It’s easy for me or the fans to say from afar. But that still doesn’t make the point any less pertinent, we need long term planning and change, the club needs to be closer to the forefront of our community and needs modernizing.

Ken Choo himself when talking about the future of HR Owen, said “During our tenure, which is not forever, we want to make sure it has a future.” Changing our club will take years, but it’s been over a decade since Tan took over and it’s thoroughly risible that we’ve remained in the same situation. Going forward as much as we have backwards. No one deserves Premier league football nor any period of continued success, but Cardiff, a capital city club has such potential that we have every right to be given a firm footing and platform for the future at the very least.