Remember how the month of November was always dreadfully bad under Dave Jones? It almost became a joke as team after team under “the surly scouser” would start like a train through August, September and October and then hit the buffers when Halloween and Guy Fawkes night arrived – I remember checking and the November dip was often there in Jones’ time as Stockport, Southampton and Wolves boss as well.
Now it would appear Cardiff may well have another cursed month, but this time, it won’t disappear with a change of manager. In fact, it will only become worse, because, after tonight’s interview with Erol Bulut in the aftermath of a 3-1 loss at Plymouth, shock waves will have been sent through the club – January is in serious danger of becoming the new month to dread for City.
Back in January 2021, Neil Harris was sacked with City in a similar position to the one they find themselves in now (in mid table, but very much on a downward trajectory). Harris’ successor, Mick McCarthy steadied things in the short term as City made it into the Play Off positions for a while, but things deteriorated so badly that McCarthy did not get to celebrate a year in the job. Instead, Steve Morison was in charge and fighting a relegation battle in January 2022 only for some effective signings in January to help us secure safety.
2022 was the exception to the January rule, because having got rid of Morison in the autumn, Vincent Tan sacked his successor Mark Hudson in January 2023 with City on a long run of matches without a win. After a short stint in charge for Dean Whitehead as caretaker manager, Sabri Lamouchi took charge, but, although we eventually stumbled to safety under the Frenchman, he couldn’t stop us entering February without a win since early November after another nightmare January for City.
This time around, there have been clues that all has not been well in the club/manager relationship throughout this month, Erol Bulut had talked through part of November and all of December about the need for signings to be made in January. In fact, to hear him talk, he thought there was every chance we would be making signings very early in the month – he was also remarkably open when talking of the club’s interest in Kieffer Moore and I think it’s fair to say that many City fans were thinking that Moore would have been with us early enough to have made his second “debut” for the club last weekend against Leeds.
I think our manager was being naïve there, it might be different in Turkey, but signings in January tend to be made as the month is ending, not at its beginning.
Now, it needs to be said that the feeling that Moore was as good as signed already did not arise because of what the manager said. There were “in the know” merchants on social media telling us the deal had been done from around the time the summer transfer window closed at the end of August, but Bulut’s willingness to talk so openly about Moore did tend to give the claims of those making out they were in the loop more credibility.
When no one, let alone Moore, turned up before the Leeds game, was it just coincidence that Erol Bulut decided to bring up the subject of his one year rolling contract in the pre match media conference? The manager told the assembled hacks that he had not been offered an extension on his contract yet, while appearing to hint that he may not sign it anyway (that’s how it seemed to me at least).
When the team folded in falling to an emphatic 3-0 home defeat by Leeds with some fans claiming the team had not been trying, the following day or two saw stories appearing online that fears of breaking what I still call Financial Fair Play rules were behind the lack of new arrivals during the transfer window.
This prompted the club to respond through a statement issued by the Supporters’ Trust that there was no truth to these claims and that there should be transfer business, both incoming and outgoing, by the end of the week.
Well, there certainly have been outgoings aplenty with Ike Ugbo and Jonathan Panzo having their loans cancelled and no end of youngsters leaving on loan during the last few days. It all had the feel of a clearing of the decks to help finance the arrival of new players, but they still resolutely fail to turn up.
Just before I get to what Erol Bulut said today, I’ll mention that a City video podcast streamed in midweek had the presenter, who emphasised how much he disliked “in the know shit”, claiming that he’d been told by someone he completely trusted that relations between the team and manager were very poor.
I make no comment on such a claim except to say that there have been times in our last two matches where we have looked a bit like a side that was no longer fully in tune with their manager.
It needs to be remembered though that we’ve been playing really poorly when compared to the first third of the season in the last two months and we’re getting worse, so that could be the explanation as to why it has sometimes looked like the team wasn’t trying.
Anyway, on to what our manager had to say. Here’s a link to it and, although I’m aware of the risk of over dramatising things, I have to wonder whether a manager/club relationship can survive such things – that’s assuming that Erol Bulut is minded to stay.
Under different circumstances, I think what Bulut said could be put down to frustration at a bad defeat for his team in a game which they were bossing in the first half for a very short while. However, there is all of the stuff that has been said in recent weeks leading up to today’s words from Mr Bulut to consider as well. More than that though, we have a Chairman who has said on more than one occasion that there is really only one decision maker at the club and that is the owner. Vincent Tan sanctioned the appointment of Erol Bulut, but he is very much Mehmet Dalman’s pick, so you have to wonder whether Tan has ever offered unconditional support for Bulut or whether there are some reservations there?
From my point of view, I would say that if Vincent Tan really does watch all of our games and if he has acquired a decent knowledge of the game over the last decade and more through doing so, I would not argue with him much if he thinks that we’ve looked absolutely nothing like a Play Off team for months and our recent performances suggest that he would have to spend a lot more during January to turn us into a team with a decent chance of finishing in the top six.
Furthermore, let’s be honest, the top four sides in this season’s Championship look to be a lot better than the rest, so, in truth, it’s only really one, or maybe two places up for grabs for the dozen or so sides that still dream of extending their season beyond early May. So, even if City were to somehow squeeze into a fifth or sixth place finish, they would have little chance of going up or even reaching the Play Off Final.
Therefore, can you criticise Vincent Tan for, perhaps, believing that there’s little point pushing the boat out when it comes to the January window and that we will, in all likelihood, see the rest of the season out content that we’ll be in the Championship next season – even if the nature of our last couple of performances means that the thought of relegation cannot wholly be dismissed.
What I would say mind is that it’s getting hard to see what the plan is with Vincent Tan, his club is drifting along, but it is drifting towards the edge of a huge waterfall – we look like staying up this season, but we’re being run like a club that will go down eventually. He is acting like an owner who is looking to sell up, but he must know that his club is not looking like an attractive proposition just now. To get people interested in a possible take over of his club, Tan is surely going to have to speculate to accumulate a little?
Moving on to the game, the first thing I’ll say is that I spent much of the first half trying to figure out what system we were playing. On the left we had Ollie Tanner taking the throw ins (a sure sign that he was playing full back or wing back) and given how much Jamilu Collins was coming inside, as well as pushing forward at times, it seemed to me as if he was one of three centre backs with the usual pairing of Mark McGuinness and Dimitrios Goutas.
However, it was on the right that it was hardest to tell what was going on as Perry Ng was the full back/wing back if you applied the throw in test, but he was spending much of the time playing in front of Rubin Colwill who looked like he was playing as a right sided midfielder in a 4-4-2.
If I had to guess what we were doing, I’d say it was a back three with wing backs with a right sided midfielder, two central midfielders in Ryan Wintle and Andy Rinomhota and Karlan Grant playing as a second forward supporting Yakou Meite.
The fact that I may be completely wrong in that opinion shows how confused I was, but I wasn’t the only one – Plymouth were baffled by what we were doing for a while as well.
The Colwill/Ng partnership was to the fore in an attacking sense early on and with Meite proving a bit of a handful and Wintle showing up well, we were supporting my theory that we play better away than we do at home these days and we deserved to be ahead after a first quarter that we dominated.
As is too often the case, this superiority was not manifesting itself in chances created in open play, but at least we had a set piece goal as home centre back Phillips made a right mess of dealing with Wintle’s corner and the ball fell to Ng who hooked in from five yards.
For ten minutes or so after that, City knocked the ball around in pleasing style, but there was no end product and once Plymouth had worked out how to deal with our strange formation, we had nothing to offer in an attacking sense apart from an odd thirty seconds or so in the second half when sub Josh Bowler had a shot blocked as we messed up a three on two and then when another sub Kion Etete set up Bowler again his shot was saved this time by keeper Conor Hazard who then tipped over Collins’ bouncing bomb shot from the rebound..
Going back to the first half, I mentioned that the Colwill/Ng partnership was working well going forward, but it was impossible to see what the plan was when they had to defend- or whether there was a plan at all.
All game long there was a yawning gap down our right in the defensive third which often saw Goutas forced to come out and take on what was almost a full back role = needless to say, Plymouth exploited what looked to me to be a shambles.
For the equaliser, Ng was left with two players to look after and when the cross came over, the impressive Ryan Hardie got free of Goutas to score easily from eight yards.
It was 1-1 at half time, but the story was of increasing Plymouth control and, after, Bulut replaced Tanner with Mahlon Romeo, City paid for another one of their too frequent dozy second half starts by conceding a shocking second goal.
Romeo took over in the role Ng had played in the first half with the ex Crewe man becoming the right sided member of the back three, while Collins became the left wing back, but, if Plymouth were the ones who were confused first time around, it looked like we were this time.
Colwill started things by carelessly losing possession around the half way line and the home team moved the ball to their right where a cross was eventually put in to Hardie who turned Goutas too easily and hit a shot which, although well hit, was straight at Jak Alnwick who added to the catalogue of errors by not dealing with it well enough as the ball burst through him and into the net.
After that, the brief period when City could have scored three times apart, it was just a question of how many Plymouth would win by. As it was, they scored once more with a crisp and effective counter attack, which would have been well beyond our capabilities, that ended with Morgan Whittaker receiving Hardie’s pass to score from just inside the penalty area.
I’ll finish on the game by lamenting Bulut’s non use of substitutes. We were told that a mixture of injuries, sickness and African Nations Cup call ups meant that we only had fifteen senior players available and that the other places on the bench would have to be taken up by kids from the under 21s. In the event, it wasn’t quite as bad as that and it was only Joel Colwill and Cian Ashford (who signed a contract extension until 2027 yesterday), who were on the bench for the previous two matches, plus Raheem Conte, a midfielder/winger signed from QPR in 2022, who were needed.
It goes without saying of course that none of these three were brought on, yet Bulut has been happy enough to use the younger Colwill and Ashford in cup ties all through this season, when it comes to league games though they may as well not be there – Bulut’s never going to use them, despite a level of performance from the seniors that has just not been good enough in recent games.
So, our nine substitutes were effectively just six, only three of whom the manager chose to use despite us being overrun at times in the second half. We were told Manolis Siopis had been affected by the sickness which has hit the City camp in the past fortnight, but he was considered fit enough to be a substitute, so why wasn’t he used?
While the first team is imploding, the under 18s sail serenely on. Well, maybe serenely isn’t the right word to use about today’s 5-2 win over Bournemouth which saw both sides reduced to ten after what was described as “a mighty scuffle” between the teams which saw coaches from either side come on to the pitch to try and calm things down. Jac Thomas was the City player dismissed with his side holding a 4-2 lead at the time. City were 3-0 up at half time thanks to goals by Jake Davies, Trey George and Joseff Edwards. Louis Phillips got a fourth before the visitors hit back with two quick goals, but George made sure of the win late on from the penalty spot.
Ton Pentre’s home game with Bridgend Street in the Highadmit South Wales Alliance Premier Division was postponed, but Treherbert Boys and Girls Club moved up to third in the table with a 4-3 home win over mid table Cardiff Airport.
I admit to not following our Argyle game as closely as I usually do, as I was otherwise occupied at a freezing Jenner Park in Barry for the Nathaniel MG Cup Final between TNS and Swansea City U21’s (congratulations to TNS for an impressive 5-1 victory which made them a record-breaking 10 times winners)! I was following our score updates though, which had more than air of predictability to me.
So I’ve only just caught up with Erol’s post-match interview.
All I will say that in the circumstances, it’s very fortunate that we don’t play again until Watford away on the 3rd February.
By then, the transfer window will have closed, and we’ll have new players, a new manager, one, both or neither.
At the moment I have no idea which of those permutations is most likely to happen!
The quoted salaries being paid to Cardiff and Plymouth players makes some interesting reading
If Internet sources are correct Cardiff are either paying their players far too much whereas Plymouth appear scrooge like in comparison
It appears from yesterday’s match data and from the above column Cardiff were outplayed by an outfit that cost and is paid peanuts in comparison
I can well understand why Erol Bulut is angry and why Vincent Tan thinks he is being ripped off
The manager doth protest too much, methinks.
Dear Paul et al,
Watched the full 90, feeling increasingly dismayed after that promising start. I thought your account was very fair… and loved your trademark penchant for a striking image… I refer to your description of that Collins shot as a ‘bouncing bomb of a shot’.
So apparently Erol is feeling a striker is required desideratum. Oh dear…!!
It is clear to me that Vincent has realised that Mr Bulut could sign Harry Kane* and the great man would be starved of service and spend all his game looking for the ball in midfield.
Let me tell you this Paul: before Saturday’s game, I watched the Swansea game in full. OMG… I promise you that the first half was the best half of football I have seen for a good year or two. And here I have to identify myself as a bit of a dunce: let me explain.
I have long held two contrasting thoughts regarding Russell Martin: whilst I cannot stomach his penchant for kamikaze defending and insistence whilst Swansea boss to always play out from the back, I have always had a sneaking admiration for Russell the man. The intellect, I mean… and the fact he has a real hinterland outside of football.
And now I find myself saying that I feel a little embarrassed, because last Saturday lunchtime I saw a brand of football from the Saints that I did not think possible in a team managed by him.
Yes there was a phenomenal number of short passes… but they were always forward ones. But there were also some stunning 40 yard passes too… I recall one from Adam Armstrong to his namesake Stuart, that was directly out of the Steven Gerrard playbook. Exhilarating stuff.
And it was all based on getting his players to play a long pass forward into space… where colleagues can run into the acres of green turf ahead of them. Not rocket science… indeed Walter Winterbottom’s young assistant, Charles Hughes, advocated just this. (I guess it was forever thus.)
What’s the betting that SirJim Ratcliffe is not casting an envious eye in his direction?
True, in the second half traces of the old Russell manifested itself: a crazy, über casual, misdirected pass across his own penalty area by sub, Jack Stephens… and a similarly too casual goalie with his feet… but gee, that first half was really something. And the Swans hardly had a kick at times,it was such one-way traffic. But the second half showed this Swansea team are no mugs: we will do well to get a single point there five or six weeks from now.
As for the Plymouth game… you are right that Jak could maybe have done better with the second, though that said, it was fired at him with mega force at point blank range. One perhaps needed the reflexes of a cobra to save it.
As for their first goal: watch the video. Count how many players they have in our penalty area at the moment the pass to Hardie enters the area: three.
And how many do we hove in the same area? An astonishing EIGHT outfield players.
And yet Hardie is still given the freedom of the penalty area by Goutas to collect the pass and cleverly almost pass the ball into the corner of our goal… such a contrast to his pile-driver effort for his second goal… where again, Goutas was culpable.
Not the best day for our centre backs: Mark McGuinness does not lose out in a sprint with many opponents, but Morgan Whittaker left him for dead with their third.
Oh and Whittaker is the real deal, is he not? Bit of an indictment methinks of my new fave… ‘Saint Russell of Martin’. I bet having previously not really rated him, he would now love to have him playing at St Mary’s.
I reckon inside two years England’s three man midfield will be Bellingham, Rice and…
… Whittaker.
And now I will sign off with my pet theory…
If and when we get what I reckon are the four home wins and two away draws we need to be safe, do not be surprised if Erol goes to Germany with a strengthened CV showing experience in the EFL. And then? Ah, then comes sensational news: Aaron Ramsey becomes our new manager.**
You heard it first from me.
*Forget my mention of Harry Kane… we’d be as well off giving the number 9 jersey to nonagenarian Michael Caine.
** And it is a moot point whether he announces his premature retirement on injury grounds simultaneously. Let’s hope he makes a better fist of managing City than our also very gifted ex player, Alan Durban, once did.
DW.
Belated thanks for the replies everyone. My apologies for the fact they weren’t appearing on here earlier. This is partly down to me because I had something of a domestic emergency yesterday (now sorted out) which meant that I didn’t look at my computer all day and so I wasn’t aware of your messages. The fault isn’t all my own though, Dai is aware of a problem which has affected some who use the Feedbank section for years, whereby the process which allows replies to be shown on the site automatically does not work for some posters and I have to go into the app I use to publish the blog and approve them manually – this tends to only affect some posters and then not all of the time, but all of your messages did not appear where they should have this time and I’ve only just discovered them because Dai e-mailed me concerned that I was unable to answer them. It’s something I’m going to have to start checking more regularly, but it’s a nuisance because I’ve tried to get a fix for the problem in the app’s help section, but to no avail.
As for what you’ve said, I’ll first of all express my support for Mike’s very to the point comment. I was not impressed by Bulut’s rant on Saturday and, although I accept we’ve got a somewhat limited set of players, I don’t like the way our manager is so quick to “throw them under a bus” whenever we lose – it can’t do them any good to hear the manager effectively saying that his hands are tied until the transfer window when he can get some decent players in.
Blue Bayou, I’ve not seen the figures regarding the salary levels at Plymouth and City and, to be honest, I’m always wary of any details of players wages that appear on social media. That said, even though City’s wage bill fell a lot in their last published accounts, I would not be surprised if it was still a lot higher than Plymouth’s. I’m not too critical of that as long as we’re able to keep within whatever the FFP regulations are called these days, what annoys me is that, like virtually every Championship side we play, Plymouth had far more players who were comfortable in possession and did not make passing the ball from A to B look such a difficult process as we do – there was a passage of play in the second half on Saturday where we worked the ball across field from right to left through four or five short passes. These passes were essentially sideways and were about five to ten yards in length, by the standards of the league we’re in, they were all simple balls to play. Yet, every one of those passes were played so poorly, in each case the player had to check back because the ball was a yard or so behind where it should have been and any momentum we had was lost.
It was all so typical of the Cardiff City of the last ten years or so, where the recruitment process has favoured physicality and power over technique nine times out of ten – it’s as we think, the one skilful player we recruit a season can cover for the plethora of workhorses we recruit! I don’t like singling individuals out, but Yakou Meite is a typical Cardiff City signing – although I sympathise with him because he’s not the player he was before the serious injury he got while with Reading, he still shows enough pace and power to make an impact at this level, but, there’s a fundamental lack of skill there which lets him down. Of course, I accept that City aren’t a big enough club to be able to fill their team with players who have pace, power and good technique, but we’ve been terrible at striking the right balance between the physical and the technical since Vincent Tan arrived (no saying that’s his fault, but the problem did seen to start then) – Peter Whittingham used to cover a multitude of sins!
Dai, to reply to some of your points, I watched the second half of the Swansea v Southampton match, but have read Southampton fans saying that their first half display was their best of the season. Southampton’s early season 5-0 loss at Sunderland had me using all of the Russell Martin cliches about negligible work on defending, but, gradually, you couldn’t help noticing that their defensive record was beginning to look pretty impressive and I now think that they are a good bet to take the second automatic promotion place this season. That said, there were some signs of the old Kamikaze defending in the second half on Saturday although I’d rather give Swansea some praise for attacking play which unsettled the Saints in a way hat you just cannot imagine City doing – Swansea’s problem in recent years is probably that they’ve got the physicality/technique balance wrong as well, but in the opposite direction!
I’m not as convinced as you about Whittaker – he’s got a great shot and is quick, but he didn’t impress me as much on Saturday as he did in the reverse fixture on Boxing Day. In fact, take away his well taken goal, and I thought he was pretty ordinary – I was much more impressed by Ryan Hardie who I was surprised to learn was also in double figures for goals scored this season, that said, I think that when judging strikers who have faced us in 2024 you have to factor in that our central defenders are not hitting the heights they were regularly attaining in the first half of the season.
Finally, Aaron Ramsey as City manager is a thought that has occurred to me as well – there’s always a doubt when it comes to someone entering management for the first time and there are plenty of very good players who, for whatever reason, were not able to cut it as managers, but I’d love to see him given a chance. You never know, he might be able to get that physicality/technique balance I talked about fixed as well!
Paul,
Good to know you are not ill.
If this was a video link, you would now see me smiling ear-to-ear…
Great.
Forza MAYA…
DW
Thanks Dai, it’s still playing up in that I had to approve your message (I’m having to approve my own messages now!), but a least I received the normal e-mail notification of it = I didn’t get those over the weekend.
Paul…
Have you seen this? Posted an hour ago. An exclusive for SKY Sports…
https://www.skysports.com/football/news/11095/13056388/emiliano-sala-cardiff-city-suing-football-agent-willie-mckay-five-years-after-plane-disaster
I never understood how Neil Warnock’s buddy got away scot-free. I would dearly love it if we can get a verdict in the civil court.
DW
Thanks Dai, yes I’ve seen it, the story was reported in the local media down here about ten days ago. I can remember seeing him at an under 23 game at Cardiff City Stadium a few days before the fatal plane crash and he was acting as if he had the run of the place. The fact people like McKay make the sort of living they do from the game tends to confirm a suspicion that, as a lover of the game, it’s probably not best to delve too deeply into how the football world operates – I think I’d find that it’s basically corrupt.
By the way, the problem with having to approve all feedback continues – I’m still having to approve my own replies!
Paul, compadre,
I am puzzled. How is it that The Bluebirds keep missing footballing talent playing right under their nose? And this goes back to Craig Bellamy and Gareth Bale, and no doubt even further back. What are we doing spending serious money on the likes of Adam Le Fondre, Eoin Doyle, Omar Bogle, Callum Robinson (all firing blanks in a City shirt), while we have talent we can pick up for free on our doorstep?
The latest was playing for Cardiff Met just three or so years ago, but City ignored signing Will Evans who would have cost them SFA… (that’s if they knew of him in the first place). Now watch some club move in for him pronto.
City were either unlucky or too inept during the time Gareth Bale and Craig Bellamy were coming through Dai in that we’d been in the lower divisions for some time and so our youth facilities and recruitment procedures would have been very basic I would have thought. On the other hand, Aaron Ramsey would have first been associated with City in the mid to late nineties I’d guess and that was around the time where we had, arguably, our worst ever team. However, even if a Cardiff born Bale type was coming through now in these days of Academies and new youth development centres in Llanrumney, I doubt it if we’d stand any chance of getting someone that good.
I agree with you on the main thrust of your post mind – for me, City have pitched their recruitment too much at the quite big name, getting old portion of the market and have ended paying more in transfer fees and wages than they needed to as a result, there’s also the fact that so may of our signings down the years had no resale value to consider. It would be wrong for me to be critical of the Nat Phillips signing announced yesterday because I’ve not really seen that much of him, but, almost certainly, the biggest casualty of his arrival will be Mark McGuinness, a young player who is having a bit of a poor spell at the moment, but has proved himself to be more than good enough at this level for a few years now – he is someone who could have a resale value, but it’s going to drop quite a bit if he spends the rest of the season on the bench.
Thanks Paul for the explanation.
All I can say regarding your foreboding re Mark McGuinness is this: if they treat him with the casual contempt with which they have treated Joel Bagan, then they deserve to be relegated. Mark remains the only good thing on Mick McCarthy’s City CV.
As for Phillips; he is a Championship player at best. Liverpool only bought him in an emergency.
DW