Just over a year ago (I think jt was on 13 May), Cardiff City announced their first signing of what was expected to be an extensive rebuilding job with the arrival of Forest Green midfielder Ebou Adams on a Bosman free transfer – Adams had been one of the stars of the team which had won the League Two title under ex Welsh international Rob Edwards’ management and had been selected in the PFA Divisional team for the 21/22 season.
There was some doubt as to whether Adams could manage the two league jump in standards at the age of twenty six when he’d played all of his football in the bottom two divisions of the EFL or lower, but it was believed he would be representative of a more realistic recruitment approach as the team moved away from the boring long ball style which had characterised Cardiff City for years, albeit with a declining degree of success.
Sixteen others followed Adams, but, as we now prepare for another new season, still no one knows yet whether the Gambian international can hack it at Championship level as a freak shoulder injury about five minutes into his debut pre season game followed by a series of other injuries and niggles meant that Adams never got to kick a ball in competitive action all season for our first team. He did manage to get in a couple of appearances for the Under 21s last month, scoring a lovely goal in one of them, but, just as he was finally getting fit enough to be considered for the senior side, the season ended.
I mention Adams because, after yesterday’s surprising news that City would not be extending the short term contract signed by Sabri Lamouchi back in January, he will be in the incredible situation whereby he will be w0rking with his fifth Cardiff City manager when he returns from holiday for pre season training in about five weeks time and yet he must feel as if his time here has not really began yet!
I wonder if any other player has had an introduction to a new club like Adams has? He was signed by Steve Morison, would have at least worked with Morison’s successor, Mark Hudson, in pre season training, bur would have been recuperating when the man who was a short term caretaker, Dean Whitehead arrived. Adams would then have had about three months working under Lamouchi who probably paid him little attention because he could not help in the relegation fight the team found itself in.
Yes, of course, what was Steve Morison’s brave new team with its revolutionary (by Cardiff standards anyway) way of playing had been ripped up and discarded after ten games and about two and a half months by then when owner Vincent Tan decided the manager had to go as the team struggled for points and, even more, for goals.
After that, City gradually underwent a transition back to the long ball team of old as a goalkeeper signed to play a full part in Morison’s playing it out from the back philosophy spent the final two thirds of the campaign whacking tt seventy yards up the pitch most of the time.
Ludicrously, a squad put together to completely change the way we played (with a consequent loss of old strengths like set piece ability at both ends of the pitch) went back to playing in a manner which did not, on the face of it, utilise their abilities to the full.
The truth was that, however City’s 22/23 squad were told to play, they weren’t very good at it and with home form wretched for a thrid straight season, they found themselves in a position where many, perhaps the majority, of fans were expecting to go down when Lamouchi arrived in late January with the team having gone eleven matches in all competitions without winning.
Cleverly, and probably correctly, Lamouchi made avoiding relegation the sole measure of success as far as he was concerned at Cardiff. Three straight losses represented a poor start, but he managed to stop the rot just short of a club record run of matches without a win and when we were able to scrape clear of the drop because of a points deduction for one of our relegation rivals, the Frenchman was able to say it was “mission accomplished”for him.
My guess is that a majority of supporters agreed with him in that respect. With Chairman Mehmet Dalman heavily hinting that he thought Lamouchi would get the job on a longer basis. it was widely expected that there would be an announcement to this effect soon after it became mathematically certain we would stay up shortly after our win at Rotherham on 27 April.
Such an announcement never came, but it was assumed this was because Vincent Tan (over here as part of a Malaysian delegation for the King’s Coronation) would be meeting Lamouchi in London for a meeting where the deal would be finalised and the plans for another rebuild, after the failure of the last one, would be discussed.
Except, the days following the meeting dragged on with no news until it was confirmed yesterday that Lamouchi would be leaving the club once his contract ends and, apparently, discussions at the meeting “did not even get around to a budget for players for the new season, with Tan believing Lamouchi’s time was up anyway”.
That quote gives the lie to what I believed had happened when I first heard the news – Lamouchi thought the budget for the tough task facing him over the coming months was not enough. If we are to believe the Wales Online piece, it might be that Lamouchi was not offered a big enough salary, but, maybe, it was as the quote states that Vincent Tan was not convinced that the former Ivory Coast manager had done enough to justify a further contract?
Predictably, our owner has been getting it in the neck from many supporters for what they see as more evidence of the crazy decision making at the top which has seen us tumble to the extent that we’re relying on points deductions for others to stay up. All of this despite us being a club pushing for a Play Off spot in the late noughties before the billionaire we all thought was the final piece of the jigsaw back in 2010 had even been been heard of.
I’ve said before that Vincent Tan has spent enough for City to have been far more successful under his ownership than they have been, but when blame starts being apportioned as to why this should be the case, he has to be the main reason for the Tan era having to be judged a failure.
The line trotted out by many, including myself, with monotonous regularity that the people at the top of the club do not understand the game and how we really should have a Director of Football is being heard and read an awful lot again. However, I’m going to say something novel (others might say mad!) here and ask is Tan right this time?
There are messageboard debates going on about the relative merits of Messrs Morison, Hudson and Lamouchi in light of Vincent Tan deeming none of them to be good enough for what he wants for his club. Lamouchi had always had the advantage of being deemed a “proper manager” by many as against the other two who, I presume, were seen as glorified coaches. I agree to the extent that I’d rate Lamouchi as better than Hudson and a shade better than the too abrasive Morison, but was he better to the extent that he had proved himself to be the man to take us forward for the next one of two years?
I rhink you have to put yourself in Vincent Tan’s position here. At this time of year in the previous two seasons, he’d found himself in the same position he was in last week when he met Lamouchi. In 20/21 and 21/22, Tan had appointed managers until the end of the season when he’d decided the man in charge at the start of the campaign was not up to the job. In both cases, he decided to stick with the replacement for the upcoming campaign. So it was that Tan found himself having to pay up Mick McCarthy’s contract after sacking him in October of the new season and then exactly the same thing happened a year later with Morison.
Given this, I think it’s reasonable to believe that Tan wanted more evidence during late January to early May that Sabri Lamouchi was a big enough improvement on Mick McCarthy and Steve Morison and he decided there wasn’t enough of it.
You could argue that Lamouchi was unlucky because circumstances out of his control meant that he had to perform that much better because of the failings of Messrs McCarthy and Morison. However, even if it’s accepted that Lamouchi was an improvement on Morison and Hudson and that he was certainly not working with anything that could remotely be called his team, his record was mediocre.
In my piece on the Burnley game, I set out my misgivings when it came to appointing Sabri Lamouchi for a longer period than the few months he was contracted for. I’m not going to go over them again here, but, having outlined my doubts, I’d be a hypocrite if I now started criticising Vincent Tan for the decision he had made. It would be completely unfair if I said I was not convinced by Lamouchi and then lambasted Tan for also not being convinced!
Yes, I was surprised by Vincent Tan’s decision, but I can’t really fault it if he had what I’d call reasonable doubts about Lamouchi’s suitability. However, we’re in a position where our embargo restricts us as to what sort of market we can shop in and to get the sort of quality in terms of free transfers and loan signings that I believe are imperative for us, we have to move very quickly – the signs are that we’re not doing that.
Mehmet Dalman has said before that all of the major decisions at the club are made by one man and that’s how this episode feels to me – Vincent Tan alone made the decision to let Sabri Lamouchi go.
This should really be a three step process whereby Tan makes his decision on Lamouchi, has someone lined up already to quickly come in as new manager and the recruitment people have fairly well advanced plans in place when it comes to transfer targets – the quality of loan signings we’ve made in the last three transfer windows suggests there are people at the club who know what they’re doing in that regard at least.
Tan has carried out step one and you’d like to think that step three is in progress, but step two doesn’t look particularly encouraging to me currently.
The almost complete absence of realistic candidates being discussed in the media in the last twenty four hours suggests that they’ve been caught on the hop by Lamouchi’s departure. It looks like there was a general acceptance that he was staying at City until yesterday’s club statement was released,
It seems to me that, at this stage, there are only two names worth discussing as our next manager. Sol Bamba has often been described as a future City manager and with none of the club’s coaching network being confirmed as having left with Lamouchi, it must be assumed that Sol is still in place. Therefore, on the face of it, you would think that his appointment as manager would be popular and cheap.
They were the reasons why Mark Hudson got the job in the eyes of many and we know how that worked out. Club “legend” (I think both Hudson and Bamba have earned that well over used description) or not, does Sol Bamba have it in him to not only transform this group of players into something better, but also oversee the arrival of the five or six new players who will have to improve a squad weakened by the almost certain departure of Sory Kaba, Jaden Philogene and Cedric Kipre?
If it was my choice, I’d keep Sol on as an Assistant Manager if possible because he has a lot to offer the club, bur I believe we can’t afford another Morison/Hudson type gamble at this stage.
So, that leaves just Nathan Jones for now. He’s available, has indicated that he is ready to go back into management after his traumatic experience at Southampton and has proved himself as a very good manager at Championship level – he also has an affinity for Cardiff City. and I think he’s made for us in lots of ways.
However, thus far, Jones has proved himself an outstanding manager of Luton Town and not much else. His spell at Stoke just did not work out and although I wouldn’t be overly critical of him in terms of results at Southampton (their record under two other managers this season ohem to be clearly the worst team in the Premier League), there were times towards the end of the short while he was there when the pressure seemed to be getting to him. To be fair, I think it was maybe more a touch of naivety and inexperience when it comes to dealing with the media at Premier League level from a very honest man that caused that problem for Jones, rather than any possible mental problems he was suffering from.
I like the idea of Nathan Jones as City manager, but can’t help thinking that a mixture of that honesty I mentioned and Vincent Tan’s autocratic handling of his club could lead to a pretty quick departure for the man from Blaenrhondda for reasons other than poor results.
Since about the time that Vincent Tan fell out with Malky Mackay and Ian Moody, I’ve always felt like there were plenty of men who could potentially be very good Cardiff City managers who will always steer clear of the club under its present ownership and this always has to be borne in mind when we find ourselves in the increasingly frequent position of needing a new manager.
Under different circumstances, taking over a club like Cardiff after a narrow relegation squeak would be seen as a good opportunity for a manager. However, let’s be realistic, we went through four managers last season, we’re under an embargo that only lets us bring in free transfers and non loan fee temporary transfers and we have an owner whose reputation within in the game is I daresay that of a non loveable eccentric!
So, even though I’m on Vincent Tan’s side to a large extent this time, I don’t think the decision to let Sabri Lamouchi go while we look elsewhere is a sign that our owner finally “gets” professional football, it’s probably more a business decision than a footballing one and now we’re in a “watch this space” position when it comes to a new manager. The appointment when it comes will probably be a surprise, but I doubt it if it will be a pleasant one!
Finally, I suppose it depends on how you view Nathan Jones as to whether Luton’s progress to to Play Off Final last night with a 3-2 aggregate win over Sunderland can be seen as proof of what a good job he did there or that he was just a supporting member of a cast which was able to carry on as if nothing had happened when he left.
One thing worth thinking about though is that Ebou Adams’ former manager at Forest Green, Rob Edwards is now in charge of Luton after they picked him up following his sacking at Watford around the time Vincent Tan was getting rid of Steve Morison. Could Edwards have been tempted here as Morison’s successor I wonder or, maybe more relevant, did Edwards’ name ever crop up at that time in Boardroom discussions at the club about our next manager?
Luton will face the winners of tonight’s game between Middlesbrough and Coventry (currently level at 0-0 after the First Leg) foe a place in the Premier League in around ten days time.
