This should have been the weekend when the 2020/21 Championship began, but an enemy which, almost certainly, didn’t exist in terms of its effect on humans has put paid to that to the extent that the 2019/20 campaign only ended last Tuesday, some three days short of a full year after it had begun.
Does going out of a competition to its eventual winners give you some extra kudos I wonder? I’m not sure it does, but that applies to City in the Play Offs because Fulham beat Brentford 2-1 in a game of no great quality or excitement to take the last place in the Premier League last Tuesday.
So, it could be argued that the 19/20 Championship, derided as it was by many critics for being of poor quality, got the Play Off Final it deserved save for one moment of real invention and skill from Fulham’s very good left back Joe Bryan. He and his manager Scott Parker apparently cooked up the free kick routine which cashed in on Brentford goalkeeper David Raya’s occasional dodgy positioning for free kicks between them.
Bryan’s eye catching free kick in extra time following a dismal and goalless ninety minutes was soon followed up by another goal from him and, despite their opponents halving the deficit, it wasn’t enough to stop Fulham regaining the Premier League place they lost alongside us in 18/19.
I’d say Fulham’s promotion was merited to the extent that they probably performed the best over the duration of a Play Off campaign in which all four participants deservedly won a game – they were better than Brentford on the night I thought, but I also must say that, looking at both squads today, the losers still look the better equipped for survival in the top division of the two because they have more attacking match winners available to them.
Brentford though were a classic case of running out of steam with the finishing line in site as in their final five matches, where they had so many opportunities to confirm what, I feel, would have been a deserved promotion, they came up short. Only in their Second leg against Swansea, did Brentford look like the side that had steamrollered their way through the post lockdown programme until they could see the whites of the Premier League’s eyes and then, sadly, they faltered.
As a throw money at it outfit in the manner of so many other Championship teams (including Cardiff, albeit not to the same extent as the Thameside club), Fulham could well splash the cash in the manner that they did to disastrous effect in 2018 now. However, I think they can take some comfort from the fact that in Parker they have a promising young manager who, correctly, identified the weaknesses that needed to be rectified for a Championship season and I believe they can be trusted to sign players better suited for the task ahead than was done so last time around in the Premier League – always assuming Parker has a say in who is recruited that is.
I’d also give Fulham a better chance of survival than automatically promoted West Brom who ended up so grateful for Brentford’s wobble, but, as of now, I’d pick those two teams and, hopefully, Villa as the ones who will be facing Championship football again in 2021/22 whenever that season starts.
Norwich, Bournemouth and, surprisingly for me, Watford replace Leeds, West Brom and Fulham and, in terms of appeal and reputation at least I’d say they represent a weakening of the Championship for the new season. With Coventry (a marvellous achievement given they had to play their home games at St Andrews, Birmingham), Rotherham and Wycombe (huge respect to Gareth Ainsworth and his team there) replacing Charlton, the dreadfully unlucky Wigan and Hull, I’d say the same applies in terms of the sides coming into the division from League One as well.
Although I don’t really see any of the promoted sides being challengers at the top of the league and it may be that Norwich’s experience in the season just ended was so traumatic that it could take them longer than a season to be in a position to contend for promotion again, the other two relegated teams have as good a chance as anyone in the upcoming season if they keep the bulk of their current squads in place – Watford’s ridiculous habit of changing their manager every five minutes probably being the biggest potential obstacle they face.
So what does all this mean for Cardiff City? For me, they are already at the stage where they have moved into territory where they are regarded as one of the Championship’s bigger fish and I’d say that will apply even more when you consider the teams who will be new to the division in 20/21.
There are grounds for optimism in terms of how we performed generally post lockdown and there was what for me was a long overdue intention to play in a less old fashioned and one dimensional way in the closing weeks of the campaign.
If Neil Harris can tread the line between continuing an improvement in our ball retention (which still wasn’t great by any means by modern standards) while maintaining the things that we’ve been strong in at this level in recent seasons, then you would like to think that we’ll do better than we did in 19/20 when, despite the evidence of August until early March, we were good enough to come fifth after all.
What may work against him though is that we were the oldest squad in the division in the season just ended and we have a lot of players who are now into the final year of their contracts. In such a position, I would not blame the club for adopting a flexible approach whereby all realistic offers will be seriously considered for any player whose deal runs out next June as well as a few others who are contracted for longer.
It may be the changed finances of football in the Covid 19 era will see players being sold by us “on the cheap” so to speak, but it would be a mistake to apply pre lockdown thinking to things like player valuations and, as long as any newcomers we sign for a transfer fee have a value that also reflects this, then there would be no great harm done.
The new thinking can be seen to an extent with the player we’ve been most strongly linked with so far. Wigan’s problems are threefold admittedly given the fact that they are in Administration and have been relegated as well as taken the virus hit, but, ordinarily, you would have expected them to be looking for more than just over £2 million for Wales striker Keiffer Moore given how both player and club performed over the second half of the season and the fact that Wigan, reportedly, turned down a £2.3 million bid from us for him in January.
The Daily Mail is reporting this weekend that Moore has turned down approaches from Millwall and QPR and is now choosing between us and Middlesbrough for his next destination and, given earlier reports that he had “set his heart on Cardiff”, you’d like to think we have a decent chance of getting him at something of a bargain price when you also consider the Wales connection.
There have also been reports that we’re interested in Wigan winger Jamal Lowe who we were said to be chasing a year ago when he was at League One side Portsmouth. Lowe had an impressive first season in the Championship and, given this, you would expect his value to be higher than the £3 million that Wigan are said to be willing to accept for him.
At twenty six, Lowe would tick the box in terms of the age of our squad if he was brought here as a replacement for, say, Junior Hoilett who is one of those in the last year of his deal and turned thirty in June. I mention Hoilett specifically because his name has come up this weekend as a possible target for Neil Warnock and Middlesbrough and, given the link between the Canadian and our former manager seems to be a strong one (Hoilett hung on while out of contract until Warnock came to Cardiff a couple of months into a season to sign for us), this is an entirely predictable rumour I’d rate as more realistic than most we will hear in the coming weeks.
The Portsmouth connection is there again with another winger we’ve been linked with in twenty four year old Republic of Ireland international Ronan Curtis, who is generally thought to be bound for some Championship club or another during this transfer window.
For now, I’d rank the chances of us signing either Lowe or Curtis as unlikely, but, like the Moore link, the story that we are looking to renew Dion Sanderson’s loan has a ring of truth to it for me – whether it be Sanderson or not, right back strikes me as the most urgent area when it comes to City reinforcements.
I’d like to be proved wrong on this one, because he was often excellent when used as a sub in recent weeks, but I think there is a strong possibility that Danny Ward, who is now out of contract with us, will decide to go elsewhere rather than sign a new deal with City. There have been stories linking him with one of his old teams, Huddersfield, in recent days.
I’ll finish with a word of commiseration for young defender Joel Bagan whose loan spell with Notts County ended at Wembley a week ago when they were deservedly beaten 3-1 by Harrogate Town in the National League Play Off Final. Normally I’d be on the side of the underdogs in a match like this, but Bagan’s presence in the Notts side alongside Ben Turner and the fact they are managed by our former Academy boss Neil Ardley had me backing them.
