Desperate last roll of the dice sees Aaron Ramsey replace Omer Riza for final three games.

1 Response to Desperate last roll of the dice sees Aaron Ramsey replace Omer Riza for final three games.

1. Dai Woosnam says:

   April 20, 2025 at 1:23 pm

   You are correct Paul in highlighting the defensive substitutions in that early game in Riza’s reign at Ashton Gate. But I submit that there was an even more telling factor in that game.

   Your MAYA readership will recall O’Dowda – out to show his former Robins fans of his footballing skills they were now missing – tried playing fancy football deep down by our left touchline, instead of putting it up the touchline or even in Row Z… and our opponents got an undeserved equaliser as a direct result.

   Riza never learned from that… and neither did Mehmet… him wanting to give the Turkish-Cypriot diaspora a manager in the upper echelons of the EFL that they could be proud of.

   Riza should never have been given the job – his perversity in excluding Bagan and persistence in playing the talented O’Dowda out of position, being just one of many lingering sores as far as I was concerned – and as for him being a ‘nice guy’… well, I never saw it.

   No ‘nice guy’ behaves in the shameful way he did against the Swans. He should have had a six game ban for those silly histrionics, I reckon*… and the breathtaking way he allowed the ‘strain following the death of his dear dad a few days before’, to be an excuse.

   The thought occurs Paul that my comments on MAYA immediately he was sacked, will not have been seen by the mass of your readership… being overtaken by two new page postings by you in quick succession… so I beg your permission for me to refer readers to them via this link… as they are directly relevant to this…

   https://tinyurl.com/37tf3yxr

   (Thanks as ever for keeping us ‘au courant’ with events at CCS.)

   *and allowing others at the club to use as a mitigating factor ‘the strain of close family bereavement’… when you are 44 years old. Well, it just won’t wash with me… someone who lost my own Porth Rhondda dad to King Coal when I was just ten years and three months… and that dear reader is when you really need a dad more than ever… (not when you are 44 and have landed temporary top manager status… and are doubtless more successful financially than most of the kids in your school team 30 years previously).

   No, Riza should have grown a pair there and then after that Swansea game and ‘fessed up as follows… ‘I will not my recent bereavement be an excuse for my inability to control myself in the local derby’.

   How I would have respected him for that. But no, Riza has plenty of brass neck. Exemplified by this breathtaking comment of his just released:

   ‘…
   “I would like to thank TanSri and the board for the opportunity given to me to steer Cardiff City away from relegation.
   “Although not quite there yet I firmly believe we will survive”.
   ‘…

   folks… just zero-in on 4 words and roll these words round in the inside of your mouths like the fully flavoursome chutzpah-coated Maltesers that they are…

   ‘…
   not quite there yet
   …’

   Eh?

   That is priceless, and overtakes Dave Jones’ infamous insult to City fans after he had failed to get the vital 2 points out of the final 12 to make the playoffs… and losing one of those games by 6-0… thus allowing the victor to pinch our play-off place on goal difference. ‘What do Cardiff fans want? We only missed out on goal difference and they are lambasting me.’ (not quite verbatim but that was the gist of the quote made that close season following).

   And later in Riza’s parting statement, he again talks about the death of his dad, Josh.

   OMG.

   Bereavement happens to us all, Omer. Get over it. You don’t need your claque of sympathetic journalists and supporters using it as an excuse for your failings.

   ‘Ycha fi’. ‘Pass the sickbag, Alice’.

   TTFN,
   Dai