If I was a paranoid type, I’d be accusing the decision makers at Cardiff City tonight of having read the piece I did this morning talking as if the appointment of Vitor Campelos as our new manager was a done deal and decided that they’d embarrass me by naming someone else as the man in charge some five hours later!
In fact, I would not only be paranoid, but I’d also have a heavily inflated view of my own importance. However, although I didn’t exactly cover myself in glory this morning, I did get one thing right – I said not many, if any, City fans would have known of the existence of Vitor Campelos before Thursday and I think the same is true of our new manager. Furthermore, I don’t think they would have heard of him until this lunchtime when the BBC and Wales Online websites carried stories about the appointment followed about an hour later by a confirmation on the club website.
There’s a Tweet posted today by the journalist who operates under the name Roath Boy saying that he’d spoken to Chairman Mehmet Dalman who’d told him that the club’s number one target had been offered a job by a Bundesliga club and that he guaranteed that Roath Boy would not have heard of him.
I said that there may be a few real nerds among the City fanbase that had heard of Vitor Campelos and I reckon that applies moreso to Erol Bulut who is our new manager having turned down that Bundesliga club for us it seems.
I’m definitely not among those who will have heard about Bulut beforehand, so I’m like many others who are going to his rather brief Wikipedia page to get some information about him, but you only have to look at one of the clubs he has managed to feel that his name may be better known to some supporters of the club than Campelos’ was.
There’s not much more I can add about our new manager besides what appears on his Wikipedia page, but I can’t say I’m too enamoured with what I’ve read about him from people who claim to know how Bulut’s teams play. Apparently, at his last club, the average age of the team was nearly thirty, he favours a high pressing game, is prepared to let the opposition have most of the ball and specializes in low scoring and pretty dull games (he is reported to have said that the opposition had all of the ball, but we ended up with the points after a game). Some of that reads like Neil Warnock, but does Bulut have the man management skills that help make Warnock a success at this level in the short term at least?
Given that most of this inside track information came from Twitter, I’m sure there are many who will feel that I’m placing too much store in something they wouldn’t give the time of day too. In truth though, I’m not paying too much attention to what is being said about Bulut on social media – he deserves to be analysed tactically with an open mind when we start playing our warm up and early season games.
The truth is that, as a Cardiff fan, I’ve become very good at recognizing teams that prefer not to have the ball and feed off opposition mistakes while playing a type of game that is not easy on the eye – if Bulut sends out his side to play that way, I’ll know soon enough that all that is being offered is more of the same, mostly unsuccessful, fare that we’ve been watching for most of the past ten years and more.
. To counteract the last three paragraphs to some extent, I could make a guess that, based on his pretty extensive experience of Futsal, Erol Bulut is someone who places a lot of store on the technical side of the game, but there’s no guarantee that I’d be right in thinking that, so, as I say, it’s probably best to just wait and see.
Moving on, you would think that having managed a club as big as Fenerbache and having, apparently, turned down a job in the Bundesliga to come here, Bulut is going to be on fair whack at Cardiff.
Despite a general acceptance among supporters that we’re skint this summer, the club are presenting Bulut as being a step up in class from recent City managers – it’s being reported that “the boat was pushed out” by the club opting for Bulut (incidentally it’s been reported that the other names on City’s four man shortlist for the job were Nathan Jones and Oscar Garcia who I spoke about in this morning’s piece plus our former player and son of John, Cameron Toshack who was a well regarded Academy coach at Swansea and worked as an assistant to Jesse Marsch at Leeds).
Vincent Tan has talked about how he thinks that having a manager like Bulut at Cardiff will mean that better players will be more willing to sign for us because of the manager’s reputation.
Just what has Bulut done to earn the sort of reputation City clearly think he has though? I suppose his greatest single achievement has been taking his second club Alanyaspor to their first ever Turkish Cup Final, but, despite not lasting a full season at Fenerbache, that club were having their best season in seven years under his management and he had a decent record at Gaziantep, his last club, despite their financial problems and the effects of the serious earthquake that hit Turkey earlier this year.
I used the word “intriguing” to describe the reported Campelos appointment and I think the same applies to Erol Bulut who will be giving his first press conference on Monday. However, even if he really is an improvement on what we’ve had lately it seems to me that he’ll have to do a couple of things if we are not to go through a repeat of what we saw in the season just ended.
First, Bulut will need to get more out of the club’s younger players than we saw in 22/23 and, secondly, he will quickly need to identify the areas where we need improvement and put the theory that he can attract better players to the club to the test straight away.
Gee… I much admired the dark humour of the WalesOnline comment to the effect that Vincent should ensure that nobody hires a Piper Malibu aircraft to fly him here.
Hello Dai, just saw that comment, but was unable to access the replies it rece3ived – they would have been an interesting read.
Yes Paul… there is no doubt that some people reading the comment might think ‘how outrageous to make a joke about such a serious subject’. And part of me would be with them… the ‘instant knee-jerk’ part of me, that is.
But if they stop and count up to ten for a minute, they might see the bigger picture. And I submit it is this…
Comedians, at least the best of them, are deeply serious people. My boyhood hero, the novelist, playwright and brilliant raconteur Gwyn Thomas, was one such. Beyond the gallows humour, there always lurked a PROFOUND truth.
And we find it there, in that line urging City not to fly him here by night in an unfit plane with a fitter of gas-fires at the controls. A man furthermore not licensed to fly at night.
How come there is a deeper truth in what some might find a tasteless joke?
That’s easy… he is saying ‘do not make the same mistakes again’.
And not just the plane….
Please Vincent… insure the manager NOW – yes I know there is no absurd (Warnock) Sala fee of £15m – but we will want compensating should some disaster (another Turkish earthquake* before his final departure for Cardiff?) befall him on Day 1 as a Bluebirds manager – and this must be the policy with all future signings.
Finally, regarding the Sala tragedy… I am so angry that Willie McKay got clean away, smelling of roses. Do you know if Warnock’s son from an earlier marriage is still working for him as a sub agent?
*not such a wild idea… Istanbul is expecting to be the next on that earthquake belt… any time now. Some seismologists have been predicting Istanbul as a ‘banker bet’ for years… (I hope Man City get back safely and – as a devoted ABMU man – come back with the trophy, this coming weekend.)
Finally Paul, can I ask your readers to go to the latest in my Daissecting The Song series for the major German Folk website? And if they look to the top right of the page they will see links to the previous 14 songs in my series.
They are free to write to me at…
daigress@hotmail.com
http://www.folkworld.eu/80/e/dai.html
God bless you Paul for your Labour of Love… and give all good wishes from me in Great Grimsby to my native Rhondda Valley.
Oh, yes… ABMU…?
‘Anyone But Man U’ of course…
Good to hear from you again Dai and with your usual thought provoking opinions as well. I don’t know if you’ve watched yesterday’s media conference introducing Erol Bulut, but he was asked about the earthquake earlier this year and you could see it had affected him deeply as he spoke about colleagues who had died in the tragedy.
He was also asked about managing a club with a transfer embargo on it and replied that, as he had managed in Turkey, he was already used to that!
Regarding your question on Neil Warnock, I don’t know the answer to it, what I can tell you is that there was a story in the last day or wo of one of the McKay twins we gave a two year contract to signing for Doncaster City, a club I’d never heard of before then, but a look at this
https://www.doncasterfreepress.co.uk/sport/football/doncaster-city-snap-up-former-doncaster-rovers-leeds-united-and-cardiff-city-youngster-jack-mckay-4169503
will show you what’s going on there. It’s a reminder that Willie McKay was once involved with Doncaster Rovers as he talked a good game about bringing in some of his clients on loan – from memory, Donny lost their place in he Championship in the season McKay was “helping them out”.
Thanks as ever Paul.
I have now checked out Erol’s first press conference.
It was most illuminating.
If you want my take on it, I reckon the real star was not Erol – though I do like the cut of his jib* – but Mehmet Dalman. I really warmed to the man for the first time in ten years.
It occurs to me that with a voice and presence like he has, he should not be ‘treading water’ at CCS, but treading the boards of the RSC at Stratford-on-Avon…!! Charisma to burn.
But best of all was his rolling of his eyes when he talked about Vincent’s knowledge of football…!! That of course could signify a chairman on a kamikaze mission, but in his case demonstrates a glorious certainty in the rock solid relationship he has with Vincent.
Q. Just how many other chairmen could so question their owner’s footballing nous?
A. Precisely… none. Could you imagine Eric ten Hag doing similar in a press conference re the tactical knowledge of Joel and Avram Glazer?
No… not in a million years.
Were I in that press conference, I might have asked what the chances were of our two games next season against Hull City being dubbed ‘El Kebabico’… and being beamed live on Turkish mainstream TV…
*He is clearly ‘alpha male’ material, though that said, I was puzzled to learn that Vincent saw ‘fire in his eyes’. Resolution, yes. Ambition even. But … fire…?
I am not saying he has the antithesis of fire – viz the icy cold stare of a Mafia hitman like the last Spurs manager – but Vincent is clutching at straws if he sees fire in Erol.
Will sign off now.
Btw… mentioning Spurs, I cannot help but feel that Chelsea missed a trick not appointing Ange Postecoglou… a very impressive guy who reminds me in his manner of answering questions, very much of Erol.
Let’s hope that Erol can emulate his thrilling playing style.
https://www.cardiffcityfc.co.uk/news/press-conference-erol-bulut-mehmet-dalman
I’m with you about Monday’s press conference Dai, that was the most impressed I’ve been with Dalman since he arrived here. As to the remark about Vincent Tan’s knowledge, it was expertly delivered and I agree, it could signify a rock solid relationship between Chairman and owner, but, given some of the former’s comments about the latter in the past, it could just as easily represent Dalman’s true thoughts.
I don’t think we should lose sight of the fact that, rather worryingly, all of the club’s debt is no longer owed to just the one person, Vincent Tan. There is now a loan (repayable with interest) to a company that Mehmet Dalman is involved with and the latest accounts had a note about a further loan which we’ll learn more about when the 22/23 accounts are filed. What is clear now though, is that Mehmet Dalman has more power and influence at the club than he might have done in the past and he may feel emboldened enough to make the sort of remark he did on Monday.
Indeed, I speculated on the messageboard I use yesterday that we could eventually see an “internal” take over whereby Tan sells out to a consortium headed by Dalman – I did also rather dismiss the idea at the same time mind (surely, the Sala situation will have to be resolved before any possible change of ownership is seriously contemplated?).
Regarding Chelsea and Spurs, I’d say this is a very important job for Pochettino. A few years ago, he was held to be in the top echelon of managers in world football, but he can only be considered a partial success at best at both Spurs and PSG – I think he’s got his work cut out at Chelsea with what looks like naive owners and a notoriously tough dressing room. Talking of awkward dressing rooms, Postecoglou has a huge job on at Spurs, but, like you, I’ve been very impressed by what he did at Celtic after looking at his name and background and thinking they’re scraping the bottom of the barrel now when they appointed him. Although Spurs fans (among the most entitled in the country I’d argue) are I’m sure disappointed by the appointment, I’d say Postecoglou might turn out to be perfect for what they are these days – a top ten Premier League side with the potential to do a lot better than that. I’ll be seventy in two and a half years time and I cannot remember Spurs winning a title, as opposed to a Cup, in my football supporting lifetime – it’s also fifteen years since they won a Cup, their fans need to swallow a huge dose of realism and see their club for what it is.
Thanks Paul for your insightful info re our club’s finances. You always did have a much better appreciation of the financial breakdown of Vincent’s stake in the club… by contrast, I am just an awestruck admirer of Vincent… who I feel should long ago have been given the Freedom of the City of
Cardiff for grabbing back our club in 2010 from the clutches of that most egregious of populists, Sam Hammam… who we thought had sold his majority share of the club in 2006, but were to discover that he still had a big financial claim on the club.
You mentioning never having seen Spurs in their ‘glory, glory’ days… makes me feel so very lucky… but only because I am the best part of a decade your senior.
And I can honestly say that one of the two* most memorable halves of football I ever saw at Ninian Park, was – as a 13 year old – witnessing the second half of that Saturday evening game on 11th of March 1961 against Spurs, where we withstood a siege the likes of which had not been seen since since Crockett, Travis, Bowie & Co heroically defended The Alamo. Before that Mach night, Spurs had incurred just 3 League defeats that season.
Allow me please Paul to tell this lengthy anecdote that relates to that Spurs team… and a fabulous team it was. I wrote it a few months ago in relation to a newspaper article in WalesOnline..
~~~~~~~~
“Martin Roberts ploughing half a million pounds of his own money into ‘most worrying’ project he’s ever taken on after falling in love with Welsh community.”
I used to take the train from Porth to Swansea through the tunnel (referred to in the article) as a boy. I recall, aged 12 in May 1960 coming back from a long day watching Glamorgan play cricket against Hampshire at St Helens ground.
While the train was stopped at Duffryn Rhondda station, I stood in the corridor by the open window, looked out, and started singing the football song of the fabulous Spurs ‘double’ team that I would see my beloved Bluebirds thrillingly beat in less than a year from then…
‘Glory, glory, Tottenham Hotspur, And the Spurs go marching on’…
As the train picked up speed again, I thought no more of it. I returned to my 6 person compartment… empty of passengers apart from me and my boyhood friend from Trebanog.
A minute later, our door slid open and a smiling young man of Middle Eastern appearance emerged from the corridor and introduced himself with the words ‘Which of you boys was singing the Hallelujah Chorus?’
I sheepishly put my hand up (being too timid to correct him on his wrongful confusion and attribution of Julia Ward Howe’s rousing anthem to George Frideric Handel). He explained he was from Swansea Bible College.
‘Wonderful to find such strong believers, on this train. I want you to join me on my knees to offer up a prayer of thanks to God.’
Being the amenable (naive?) boys we were, we did just this and
knelt, as he started to pray for our souls. He had not got to his third sentence before the train entered the longest tunnel in Wales in Blaengwynfi … and there we were, on our knees, and immediately cast into total darkness, as there was not a working light bulb in our compartment…!!
His prayer of thanks carried on through the pitch-black darkness, and miraculously ended the very second we emerged 2 miles later, into the early evening daylight of Blaencwm.
He got off at Treorchy, and we carried on to Porth. He took our addresses and for the next year we were (against our undisclosed wishes) enrolled in a Bible correspondence course with him, and he sent us a ‘worthy’ book as a prize for completing it.
And 62 years later, that bizarre memory remains ever vivid at nearly 76 years old. I can even remember his name… Forsi Ayub.
As for the pub, in later life I made visits there in a fruitless effort to sell them some of my beers portfolio for David Williams Bottlers of Pontypridd (but they were seldom open as trade was so bad)… but that’s another story…
One thing for sure, I will take the memory of that astonishing tunnel incident to the grave with me.
https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/homes-property/martin-roberts-ploughing-half-million-26307193
* For the record, the other most thrilling half of football I experienced at Ninian, was the first half of the League game against Liverpool on 28th of December 1957. I was down in the very front of the Grangetown Stand against the wall of the Boys’ Enclosure (and immediately dead centre) behind the net. And amazingly, I saw that net bulge 5 times as City attacked with a stunning ferocity, and with goals from Colin ‘Rock’ Hudson, Ron Hewitt, Brayley Reynolds (2) and Joe Bonson. That said, it must be admitted that their Scotland international keeper Tommy Younger had a shocker… he must have had someone slip him a Mickey Finn with his Boxing Day drinks. Whatever, we kids were in total ecstasy: 5-0 up at halftime against Liverpool.
Phil Taylor’s continued reign as Liverpool manager was probably doomed that day, though he hung on for the best part of two years, as some on the Liverpool board were loath to sack a much loved previous player. And even those who wanted him gone, were wanting to be sure they replaced him with the right man. Their hunt went on and on, and then they settled on a successful new manager who would change Liverpool’s fortunes for the better in ways they couldn’t even imagine.
Thanks for that great story Dai – it had me laughing our loud at times.
The Spurs side of 60/61 must have been something special because no one did the double back then and when their north London rivals were able to repeat the feat a decade later, my memory of the press coverage of the time is of a uniform agreement that they’d done it with a pragmatic style that was a lot less easier on the eye than Bill Nicholson’s side had been.
Your choice of the other most memorable half of football you’ve seen was interesting because it rekindled a memory of what I thought was a remarkable stat at the time. About a dozen years ago, the stats guru on the City messageboard I use asked which club City had won the biggest percentage of games against (I think there was a qualification that they must have faced the team concerned at least four times). I thought I could get the answer pretty quickly with a bit of educated guesswork, but, like a lot of others, all I got back was the answer wrong to every suggestion I made as the question went unanswered beyond forty eight hours.
Eventually, one of the board’s veterans, who was not a great one for quizzes, remarked that City always used to do well against Liverpool – he wasn’t giving an answer, just mentioning it in passing, but it turned out he was right.
Before we faced them in 2012 League Cup Final, City had won eighteen, and drawn two, of twenty nine matches with Liverpool (we’d won two and lost one in the three Cup meetings between the teams). Our dominance of the fixture owed a great deal to a run of eight wins and a single defeat between what must have been Easer Monday 1953 and 19 December 1959 when we won 4-0 at Anfield in that manager you mentions first game in charge!
Thanks Paul, for your kind words.
That stat re Liverpool being the club City had the biggest percentage of wins against, is truly amazing… I certainly would not have had them in my top five picks.
As for the 4-0 victory at Anfield, I recall my excitement hearing the score on Raymond Glendenning’s SPORTS REPORT, and my eager anticipation of the Pink ‘Un coming through our letter box two hours later… with full match details.
Nice to see City in that all white strip with the blue trim that they wore on that great day the following April when we won promotion with a wonderful Graham Moore goal against Villa, the eventual champions. I was one of the many pitch invaders at full-time, gazing up adoringly as Danny Malloy addressed us multitude from the front of the grandstand.
https://www.lfchistory.net/Articles/Article/1045