Weekly review 26 June 2022.

Posted on June 26, 2022 by The other Bob Wilson

Just as a kind of preface, I wrote this about an hour before the news that Gareth Bale had chosen to go and play in Los Angeles broke and contemplated writing something new on the subject, but a combination of me being a lazy so and so and a feeling that I’d said all I wanted to already really made me decide to leave it as it is.

I really thought we’d know one way or another with Gareth Bale by now and the fact that we don’t doesn’t fill me with confidence. It’s not just that it’s taking a little longer than expected which is leading to a lessening of the positivity that was emanating from City fans, myself included, in the first part of the week.

For what it’s worth, City maintained their position as strong, odds on, bookies favourites to secure Bale’s signature until recently – you can have your own views on the veracity of the on line ‘in the know” merchants on social media, but there were enough of them sounding less sure of the outcome of negotiations on Thursday for you to wonder if they may be on to something.

What I think of those who get some sort of kick out of letting us know that they are, perhaps. more informed than us doesn’t really matter, but it now seems fairly clear that there is at least one other serious offer in for Bale and “any MLS side” is now the strong favourite in the betting that we once were. I should say that City are still around the evens mark with most bookies and the chance that Bale will be playing for us this autumn is definitely still there – in fact, the word “chance” might not be the best one to use because all of the indications are that we still have more than that in the battle to sign him.

However, if there is an offer(s) in from the MLS, or any other league actually, that is being strongly considered by Gareth Bale, his family and his representatives I think we can take it as read that the pay on offer will be more than City are able to come up with – probably considerably more.

So, despite the claims that this transfer is not all about money that we have read over the past few weeks, it will be an element in the decision reached by Bale if he doesn’t opt for City.

In saying that, I’m not having a go at Bale there – money may not be a factor in all footballing decisions when it comes to considering new contracts or moves to other clubs, but it is more often than not.

What I, and other City fans, need to remember though is that although there are things that make Bale to Cardiff feasible at this stage of his career and in this year, with its World Cup involving Wales in particular, it still needs an awful lot of “give” in the give and take stakes from the player for the dream to have got this far.

What will be, will be with Gareth Bale, but City still have a squad to put together for five weeks time when the 22/23 Championship campaign kicks off with a home game against relegated Norwich and yesterday there was another new signing announced.

This time it was twenty five year old Andy Rinomhota who joins us on a three year deal after his contract with Reading expired.

Leeds born Rinomhota has played over one hundred and twenty league games for Reading, but, although having a good fitness record generally, was out injured for much of a campaign when the Royals struggled even more than we did. However, they were still prepared to offer him a new deal which he turned down in favour of us.

On the departures side, it was a surprise to see James Connelly signing for Bristol Rovers yesterday for an “undisclosed fee”, believed to be around £150,000. The young centreback did really well on loan at his new club last season and is fresh from his first Wales Under 21 international appearance, but City fans are not going to be able to watch last season’s Under 23 team captain develop at their club – you’d hope there’s a sell on clause included somewhere in the terms of his transfer.

You probably got bored of me banging on about our central midfield four of Pack, Vaulks, Bacuna and Ralls in recent years – it wasn’t that I thought they were bad players, just that they were such a bad mix. Well, two of them signed for League One clubs this week as Marlon Pack returned to the city of his birth, Portsmouth (they were also his first club) and will be back at Cardiff City Stadium with his new club for a League Cup First Round tie, while Will Vaulks has signed for Sheffield Wednesday – Aden Flint has also signed for Stoke.

Leandro Bacuna has not found a new club yet, while the situation had been rather up in the air with Ralls as he had not signed the deal City had offered him, but the good news is that City’s longest serving player has now committed himself to the club for a further two years and so the player out of the original four I most wanted to keep will be staying and there must be a strong chance that he’ll be doing so as team captain..

So, for Pack, Vaulks, Bacuna and Ralls, now read Wintle, Adams, Rinomhota and Ralls – it’s impossible to fully compare the quartets at the moment, but, with the average age of the group having come down and our manager having made it pretty clear that he wanted to improve the squad’s energy levels, you’d assume that we will see an improvement on that score at least – I should also mention Eli King, who we’re told won the dreaded bleep tests when the squad returned to training on Wednesday.

The first team squad are spending the coming week in a training camp in Scotland, less exotic than the locations such events have been held in down the years, but still an improvement on the week at Lavernock I was expecting.

Finally, mention of that first game against Norwich tells you that the fixtures for the season have been published – you can see ours here (sorry about the format, the reasons why it has become popular in recent years on all sorts of football website completely elude me);-

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Weekly review 19 June 2022.

Posted on June 19, 2022 by The other Bob Wilson

Football may have finished for three weeks or so and I always tend to think of early and mid June as fairly quiet periods before contracts expire and things start to click into gear on the transfer front, but, this year, Cardiff City just keep on signing players at a bewildering rate!

Three more came in this week taking the total of new arrivals to eight and they’ve all been permanent signings, yet it has been reported that City want to use all five of the loan options they’re allowed and there is of course at least one very high profile name we’re linked with which I think has moved on beyond the mere speculation stage now.

So, it would appear that the plan is to bring in at least fourteen players which may seem a lot, but when you consider that five loan signings from the second half of last season have left, eight  senior players have not been offered new contracts, Sam Bowen has left the club with a year of his contract left, Sean Morrison’s future is uncertain once he has completed rehabilitation work following his ACL injury sustained at Barnsley and Joe Ralls, plus possible first team squad member George Ratcliffe, have not signed the contracts they’ve been offered by the club, it’s certainly feasible that we’re less than halfway through our recruitment this summer.

The three new signings this week do not address the glaring imbalance in the squad as it stands at the moment. With the contracted James Collins’ future at the club uncertain, we could be in a situation where Max Watters may be the only striker who is a potential member of City’s senior match day squad who will turn up on the first day of pre season training (I believe it’s late next week when that happens) if Mark Harris is given a bit more time off because of his involvement with the Wales squad.

All three new men are far more accustomed to the other end of the pitch and, as of now, I can only agree with the opinion I’ve heard quite often in the past week that we look like a relegation squad, but, truthfully, how can we be anything else with so few strikers? Furthermore, only one of these has proven himself at this level completely and even he is someone we appear to want get rid of who has spent most of his career in the lower leagues.

Surely, the point is that the squad cannot be judged to any great degree yet – we are going to sign some strikers between now and the end of July and it may be that many will still rate us a relegation squad after that, but let’s see who they are first eh?

What I will say though is that I can’t see the signings we’ve made up to now persuading many waverers to renew their season tickets or become a new season ticket holder – that’s not to belittle any of the new players or to ignore the financial constraints currently in force at the club, but what I say is true isn’t it?

The first of the trio of arrivals this week was Vontae Daley-Campbell, a twenty one year old right back/wing back who joins us on a three year contract after being released by Leicester City. Daley-Campbell describes himself as a hard working full back who likes to get forward a lot and although he never played for Leicester in the Premier League, he did feature in a couple of matches in their FA Cup winning run in 2020/21 – he also played nine times while on loan to Dundee last season in their unsuccessful fight to stay in the SPL during which time he was shown a straight red card in a game at Ross County.

That’s as much as I know about Daley-Campbell, but I do know more about the other one of the two right backs we signed on the same day and I would say my opinion of him is mixed.

I first became aware of Mahlon Romeo (who is the son of Jazzie B the front man of Soul II Soul) when he made an early mistake in a televised Millwall v City game in our 17/18 promotion season which enabled Junior Hoilett to put us ahead and I believe he was withdrawn at half time in that game. Also on the debit side is that he was not being selected in the starting line up during the final games of his season long loan spell in League One with Portsmouth in 21/22.

To counter that, Romeo played just short of 200 league games for Millwall with the majority of them in the Championship and he was something of an automatic choice for them before he was publicly critical of the Millwall fans who booed the taking of the knee by the team in the first match after supporters were allowed back into games following the Pandemic. From the outside, it would appear that Romeo’s subsequent loan move was a consequence of this breakdown in his relationship with the supporters of the team he joined from Gillingham as a youngster.

Romeo is twenty six and has also signed a three year contact – confusingly, a story in the local media stated that he was a free transfer who was signed for an undisclosed fee! The fact he was still under contract at Millwall though suggests that there was some sort of fee involved and his signing does not come as a surprise, because it seemed a realistic move when City’s interest in him was first reported earlier in the year while he was with Pompey.

Arriving the day after Daley-Campbell and Romeo was goalkeeper Ryan Allsop who celebrated his thirtieth birthday on Friday and has signed a two year deal after his contract with Derby expired. Allsop has turned out for thirteen different clubs and has played most often for Wycombe who he made nearly one hundred and twenty league appearances for, first in a loan spell and then after signing permanently for them. Most of Allsop’s football has been played in the lower divisions, but in recent years he has played more in the Championship and ended last season as first choice at Derby.

There have been rumours that Steve Morison wanted goalkeepers who were more confident when it comes to playing out from the back and this is a feature of Allsop’s game that does come up in messageboard discussions I’ve read about him, where he was also praised as a calming presence – comments regarding his actual goalkeeping though are best described as mixed.

The goalkeeping situation at the club is confusing if you consider that Dillon Phillips was reported to be staying with City a few weeks ago, but considering that we’ve signed Jak Alnwick as well, it’s hard to see how we, as a reportedly cash strapped Championship club, can accommodate three senior keepers and it seems more likely that Phillips’ situation will be similar to James Collins in that we’ll be looking to get him off the books, whether it be by temporary means or permanent ones.

On the Gareth Bale front, there was a story from an unusual source about him this week. French publication Football Mercarto reported in an “exclusive” that City had offered Bale a two year contract with an option for a further year and that the player “isn’t against” returning to Wales and is “taking more time to reflect”.

Intriguingly, the story also states that City are “rather confident” of getting their man. I honestly don’t know what to make of that last bit. Of course, the whole thing could be rubbish and there has to be a strong possibility that it is. Also, it’s quite unusual for potential buying clubs to make such positive noises while things are still up in the air on the negotiating front (I wouldn’t put it past our lot blurting something like that out mind). Then again, could it be that the deal is all but completed and the club is putting out a teaser aimed at those wavering season ticket holders I mentioned?

I’m over thinking things there aren’t I – there’s not much point in speculating too much as this does feel like something that we’ll get a definitive answer on quite soon, rather than it dragging on throughout the summer.

I’ll finish by asking if you’ve noticed that Cardiff City have become something like 13/8 on favourites to be Aaron Ramsey’s next club as well!

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