Cardiff City mauve and yellow army.

Apologies for the lack of posts in recent weeks, I had been waiting for the minutes of a FAB (Fan Advisory Board) meeting held on 12 May to be published. FAB members requested that the club should publish the minutes within forty eight hours, but, in the event, it took eleven days and they eventually saw the light of day late last week.

Anyone wishing to read the minutes can do so here by clicking on the relevant link. For myself, I won’t go into any great detail on my opinion – suffice it to say that it is very similar to that of Cardiff City Supporters’ Trust who released a response to the minutes yesterday.

For a club that promised changes following a relegation that almost everyone apart from themselves felt had been coming for at least three years, taking so long to produce minutes from a meeting that would have been of great interest to many fans seems to me to be far from the change talked about, eventually, after relegation had been confirmed, it was indicative of “more of the same”.

Similarly, at a time of a year when other clubs are making their retained lists public as they do year in year out, City (who always used to publish their retained lists soon after first team fixtures ended for the season), now do so weeks after most clubs.

Seemingly, there is a need for the EFL to be informed of clubs’ retained lists some time around mid May and City have done that, but this has not been accompanied by the contents of the list being made public like it is at so many other clubs.

This is the third consecutive occasion where the club have chosen not to let fans know the details of the retained list despite it having been filed with the relevant authority within their stipulated time scale. The subsequent two or three weeks delay before making the list public seems indicative of unnecessary secrecy, but there may be another reason for it.

It says something of the way Cardiff City is run that at the end of the last three seasons, we’ve gone through May not knowing who is going to be our manager for the coming campaign due to start in August. in 2023, Erol Bulut was appointed manager on 3 June and last year, although Bulut was still in place, he had not committed to signing a new two year contract the thad been offered to him and, so, to all intents and purposes, the club was in a state of limbo which lasted for weeks after the 23/24 season ended and it was, once again, not until 3 June that confirmation that Bulut had agreed to the new deal arrived.

So it may be that the retained list was for, some reason, not made public until the identity of the manager for the coming season had been confirmed and the precedent of the last two years would suggest that this time around, we’ll know who the new manager will be this time in about a week’s time.

The reality should be different though because it’s been reported that a short list of candidates, who were interviewed last week, has been passed to Vincent Tan to make a decision on – the people carrying out the recruitment process have made a recommendation to our owner and a decision is expected imminently.

Mehmet Dalman sets out the procedure for the appointment of the new manager at the top of page 3 of the FAB meeting minutes – it’s been reported as a new approach indicative of the hierarchy’s willingness to approach things differently, but, while I have no doubt that this is a departure from what we’ve seen before, it isn’t too different to what was reported to have happened during the search for a replacement for Erol Bulut following his sacking around nine minths ago.

It was reported last autumn that a couple of former managers had been approached to identify candidates to repalce Bulut, but the men identified had been deemed too boring by the club hierarchy who chose instead to persevere with Omer Riza. Therefore, it would appear that the club have tried something along similar lines at least once before, but then chose to ignore the recommendations made for reasons which seem both arrogant and inept to me.

Of course, another thing which appears in the aforementioned minutes is a repeat of the line from Messrs Dalman and Choo that, in essence, there is only one person making all of the big decisions at Cardiff. Therefore, when I say that it was decided that those candidates to replace Erol Bulut were too boring, it may well mean one man thought they were too boring and it cannot be beyond the bounds of possibility that the decision maker will bot be enamoured with the candidates and/or recommendation this time around thereby leaving us back at square one.

You’d like to think that such an outcome is very unlikely this time though. As for who the candidates are this time around, Paul Abbandonato, the former Wales Online journalist, is someone who seems to have close contact with “senior sources at the club” and so I’d take this Tweet he made on Saturday fairly seriously.

So, who are the candidates Mr Abbandonato mentions?

Brian Barry Murphy

The first thing to say about him is that on Saturday, he suddenly went from nowhere to favourite in the betting for next City manager. Barry Murphy is currently evens to become our next manager with the second favourite at 5/1, so there’s good reason to believe there is something to the speculation linking him with the job. One con I can see with him is that, for all of the good reputation he’s built for himself since he quit playing, his record as a manager at EFL level is modest. He has managed at League One level before and being able to keep a club like Rochdale in the third tier would be an achievement, but,his predecessor Keith Hill managed to do that for a number of seasons at Spotland and they were relegated at the end of Barry Murphy’s second season in charge there. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that Barry Murphy is highly regarded within the game with this article (since the article was written, Barry-Murphy has moved on and is currently First team coach at Leicester) setting out why I think he would be an exciting and good appointment.

Des Buckingham

Currently the 5/1 second favourite mentioned above. He has hardly had your typical career as he never played league football and he worked in New Zealand (including as caretaker manager for the national team) and India before being appointed Oxford United manager in November 2023. Buckingham led Oxford to the Championship for the first time in a quarter of a century at the end of his first season as, with a team containing four ex City players, they beat Bolton at Wembley in the league One Play Off Final. Widely predicted to finish bottom of the league last season, Oxford were struggling after making a strong start, but it was still a shock to see Buckingham sacked after just over a year in the job and I’d say that this piece was a fair reflection of supporter opinion at the time. Subsequently, views on Buckingham may have changed somewhat among Oxford fans as his replacement, the more pragmatic Gary Rowett, had an immediate positive impact and eventually led the team to safety, but, although his candidature is not causing much excitement among City supporters, I reckon he’s someone who’s done well enough to get a second chance and I wouldn’t mind it being here. One other thing, although I don’t think it was ever officially confirmed, it is widely rumoured that Buckingham was interviewed for the Wales job following the sacking of Robert Page.

Aaron Ramsey

Nothing much to add about the 6/1 third favourite, except to say that it has been confirmed that he has had an interview for the job – if we have to go for another internal appointment, then I’d say this one would have more going for it than all of the others.

Ian Evatt

Was favourite last week, but has now drifted to 8/1. It seems to me that he has the best managerial record out of the four candidates named in the Tweet I mentioned earlier. Evatt managed Barrow back into the Football League when he led them to the National League title in 2020. Appointed by Bolton in the summer of 2020, Evatt lost his first four competitive games, but turned things around to such an extent that Bolton finished third in League Two to earn promotion. Bolton had no trouble in settling at the new level and in their second season back they qualified for the Play Offs and won the 2023 EFL Trophy by beating Plymouth 4-0 at Wembley in the Final. It was the Play Off’s again in 23/24 as they were beaten by Oxford in that Final I mentioned earlier. With a win regard at Bolton of a very impressive 50 per cent and an advocate of attractive, attacking football, Evatt had a lot going for him, but it all started to fall apart for him after the Oxford defeat as fans turned against him and results were patchy. Evatt was sacked in January after over five years in charge with Bolton ninth in the table (they finished eighth). This well written article about his time at Bolton hints at a stubbornness (both tactical and personal) which may have contributed to his downfall, but I must say that, looking in from the outside, it seems odd that fans would turn against a manager for being too attacking in his outlook.

Abbandonato talks as well of a mystery “outsider” fifth candidate, but, unusually for a City managerial hunt, I wouldn’t be too unhappy with any of the four I’ve mentioned as our next boss – they all have facets to them which could count against them if you want to be negative and I think I’d like to see a mentor type figure appointed for a while anyway if Ramsey were to get the job.

I’d also have liked to have seen Ruben Seles in contention and I like the look of Leyton Orient’s Richie Wellens. Gary O’Neil has been mentioned, but I can’t see him dropping down to League One and Nathan Jones seems unlikely given Charlton’s promotion yesterday.

However, it strikes me that, just as there was last autumn at the time of Bulut’s sacking, there are a nucleus of pretty strong candidates we can go for who would be willing to come here (notwithstanding the Tan effect)- a first step towards the hierarchy trying to improve their dismal record would be if they were to choose correctly this time.

In my reaction piece for the Norwich game, I said that Aaron Ramsey’s comments to the media had made him being appointed as our new permanent manager less likely than it may have looked when he was first put in temporary charge of the team.

However, I wrote that before I’d heard Ramsey’s post game press conference in which he tended to adopt more of a wait and see attitude. Therefore, the notion of him getting the job now seems slightly more likely than I thought it was three or four days ago.

I hope and expect that we won’t see Ramsey appointed Player Manager as the role has almost become obsolete these days. I think you’d have to be very proficient in both of those parts of the game to make a success of the manager’s job while still making a playing contribution which made you part of your team’s strongest starting eleven.

Maybe I’m being unfair here, but what tends to come over when the subject of keeping on playing is discussed with Ramsey is that, first and foremost, he wants to be part of any Welsh participation in the 2026 World Cup. Of course, City would benefit if a fully fit Ramsey was playing well enough to get himself in the Welsh squad through next season, but he’ll be 35 next Boxing Day and there’s been nothing in the past two seasons to indicate that he will be able to do that as injuries will limit any contribution he makes as a player.

If Ramsey were to get the job, I believe it would signal an end to his playing career, so, making a few assumptions, would I want him to be the next manager of Cardiff City?

To hear Ramsey talking after the three games he took charge of, you could be forgiven for thinking he’d overseen a big improvement in the team. I don’t blame him for saying that and, in certain facets of the game, I’d say things were better. I thought our attitude was better in the games where we still had a chance of avoiding the drop and you could make a pretty convincing case for why we should have beaten Oxford and could have beaten West Brom – for me, the performance in those two matches was better than what we’d become used to under Omer Riza.

However, the fact is that while all around us were getting the wins needed to give them the chance to preserve their Championship status, we kept on failing to do so -Ramsey got us two points from a possible nine when we needed five more than that.

Those advocating Ramsey for manager would ask, not unreasonably, whether three games at very short notice with someone else’s squad should be enough to rule their man out of contention? I would add that, more than someone like a Richie Wellens or a Karl Robinson (two names linked with the job already), Ramsey would have the “clout’ to demand changes from Vincent Tan in the way the club is run and how it goes about its training and recruitment programmes.

Clearly, getting the managerial appointment right is very important. For my part, I thought appointing Ramsey could be an inspired choice or a complete flop before he had his three games in charge and my opinion hasn’t changed much after that trio of games have been played. Notwithstanding my earlier comment about him, Wellens appeals to me, Robinson doesn’t and as for Nathan Jones, I can’t help thinking that, if we ever were going to appoint him under Vincent Tan’s ownership, we would have done so by now.

Although three months seems a long time before competitive football starts again, let’s not forget that line about teams in the Play Offs being at a disadvantage because they’re behind in their planning compared to others. Well, City, for a third straight year, have put themselves at that same disadvantage while having none of the hope and possible joy that a Play Off place entails. More than any other candidate, Ramsey could be a quick appointment and, if he was, we would then, hopefully, not have to go through the rigmarole of this “review” of club procedure which, it seems, will be carried out by the same people who have made such a mess of running the club for the past five years (in fact, you could make that fifteen years).

So, while the choice of manager is undoubtedly significant, it still comes second to me to getting rid of the self inflicted disadvantages the ownership puts on the club when it comes to competing on an equal footing with the teams it faces every week.

It’s truly baffling why someone with Vincent Tan’s record in business does not seem to recognise and act upon the fact (and it is a fact, not an opinion) that the football part of his business “empire” is failing miserably in both Wales and Belgium. If his McDonald’s franchises in Malaysia was returning results like Cardiff City and Kortrijk have been doing year in, year out, he would have taken steps to address the situation well before now.

Tan knows his ownership of City has been, to put it mildly, a failure, yet he keeps on behaving as if he knows better than the all of the specialists in the footballing field who have been telling him he’s been getting it wrong for years.

Will the shame of a double relegation be enough to persuade Vimcent Tan as to the error of his ways? Is he in a position to listen to someone like a Ramsey or some other potential City manager when they tell him he has to change things to stop City’s downward drift – I’m not convinced he’ll change, but we have to hope that he will and there was that admission he was wrong with the rebrand ten years ago to cling to as well.

If Tan is for changing, what will that entail? Well, there’s been plenty of talk of things like a full time CEO working at the stadium every day, a Director of Football to oversee the recruitment side of things and more specialised coaching, but I’m no expert on such things and would be happy to leave it to people (not the trio currently in charge!) far more versed in what makes a successful football club these days to oversee the changes.

What I would say though is that I’m clear in my mind about the sort of things i don’t want to see any more of – here’s a few of them.

MANAGERIAL APPOINTMENTS

No more done on the cheap appointments from within. No more leaving a caretaker boss in charge for three months while results get worse and worse and then appoint him until the end of the season (something you could have done ten weeks earlier). No more of the arrogance which sees recommendations from former managers ignored because you consider their suggestions too “boring”. Let any manager manage without interference from the owner.

PLAYER RECRUITMENT

An end to the “transfer committee” which has clearly failed. An end to Roco Simic type transfers. After a season as a Cardiff City player, is anyone any the wiser as to why we signed Simic?

Here’s a scenario for you that would be too daft for words at other clubs, but, because it’s Cardiff City involved, it might possibly be true. We see that Sunderland are interested in signing Simic and so think “he must be good and we’re desperate for a striker”, so you offer more to Simic’s club and to the player than Sunderland (always assuming they were really after him) and complete the signing, only for it to become clear very quickly in training that the player is nowhere near ready for Championship football yet. Therefore, the manager at the time gets told to inform the media that Simic is a “club project” and is being loaned out to Kortrijk who, it turns out, have no use for him.

Simic returned to City in January having featured very little for Kortrijk and has spent his time since then playing for our under 21 team where he has shown some ability as a finisher and a slow, but gradual, improvement in his all round play.

There’s been something of a clamour from fans to see Simic play for the first team and maybe he would have come on as a sub on Saturday if it were not for Calum Chambers’ red card, but I’m not convinced he’s good enough for the first team yet based on what I’ve seen of him in the under 21s.

Despite the opinions expressed at the time about us having a good transfer window, the league table does not lie and the recruitment last summer was not good enough. There’s no two ways about that – who out of the players recruited last summer could now be called a good signing? I’d say Alex Robertson was the best, but his displays from January onwards mean that he was the best of a bad bunch.

The January window could be called more of a success, but only because of Yousef Salech – Will Alves flattered to deceive and, although I’d be happy to see Sivert Mannsverk back here next season, his performances certainly didn’t justify the sort of fee we’d have to pay for him.

Like so many things at Cardiff City, our recruitment procedures have been shown to be unfit for puropse in recent years.

COACHING

I’m going to use Jesper Daland to try and make a point about the standard of coaching at first team level. I think it’s fair to say that all City fans were impressed by Daland’s debut at Swansea – I try not to go too over the top about players making their debuts, but I remember thinking that he looked like he could be an upgrade on Mark McGuinness whose sale had been for about three times what we paid for Daland.

The following week, Daland had to go off at half time with an injury caused by one of his team mates (think it might have been Perry Ng) and he never looked the same player again. Now, you cannot rule out the player having problems settling at his new club, but you do have to wonder about the standard of coaching at the club when you see how Daland was performing once he had returned to fitness – he had regressed as a player.

Meanwhile, Will Fish, another signed out of the proceeds of the McGuinness sale, was a permanent non playing sub through the first half of the season, yet, when he finally got his chance, he showed himself to be the best of our centrebacks. Okay, that’s not much of a compliment given how we played in that position through the season, but we’re always being told that our opinions aren’t valid because we don’t get to see what happens in training,.However, you have to wonder why no one on the coaching staff could see that Fish might have been worth a go in the starting line up from September through to january.

Coaching is supposed to be about improving players, but what first team players can you say have definitely improved over the period they’ve been working with the first team staff at City in recent years? I maintain Daland became a worse player the more coaching he received at Cardiff, while someone like Cian Ashford, who I feel was the biggest single reason for the improvement in results and performances we saw through January, was playing worse in April than he was when he was given his, belated, chance around the turn of the year.

Omer Riza was given a makeshift and depleted coaching staff to work with during his time in temporary charge and only one newcomer was brought in when we he was given the job until the end of the season. Once again, you get the distinct impression that a club that is always paying over the odds when it comes to transfer fees and wages for players is trying to do things on the cheap when it comes to all other staff.

ADMINISTRATION

Thjis one should be the easiest of the lot – have at least some full time staff at the top of the club who are on hand at the ground to deal with matters as they arise. Such people should have more knowledge of the game than the present incumbents do and there should be less secrecy!

MEDICAL

To be fair, this could be more down to a feeling of Cardiff City being a club where everything is going wrong than a problem with the department concerned. However, we did seem to have more injuries (particularly ones to hamstrings) through the season just ended compared to normal and there seemed to be more cases of players suffering from “setbacks” in their recovery. As I say, there may not be a problem here, but does the “doing things on the cheap” attitude extend to the treatment rooms?

I’m sure there’s other things I could come up with given time, but that’s more than enough for now. It still feels like I should do something more player related before leaving 24/25 behind and I can see me doing at least one more piece before I revert to the normal weekly review pieces that continue on through the summer.