Weekly review 1 June 2019.

Posted on June 1, 2019 by The other Bob Wilson

I had always planned to start the weekly reviews that I do throughout the off season months on here this weekend, but, as the time got closer, I found myself wondering what the point would be because there had been nothing of any substance to report – there were the usual, mostly, far fetched transfer rumours, but, with the club, once again, taking a lot longer than others to issue their retained list, there still hasn’t even been any confirmation as to who’s staying, let alone who’s coming in.

Wikipedia lists Brian Murphy, Kadeem Harris, Mark Harris, Loic Damour and Stewart O’Keefe as those whose contracts are up on 30 June and I wouldn’t be surprised to see all five of them leave during the close season with Kadeem Harris, perhaps, being offered a new deal. However, will he decide that, at twenty six a week today, his days of being a youthful “project” who drops into and out of the senior team are behind him and he really should be looking to join a club where he would be a first team starter week in ,week out? He may still be a Young Player of the Year candidate at Cardiff, but that says more about the strange set up at the club whereby promising teenagers turn into Development team veterans over a period of five years or more than anything else – Harris is at an age where he should be an established senior player somewhere, not the young prospect that could break into the first team with the right handling that he has been in his more than seven years at Cardiff.

There are two others with first team experience whose deals run out in a few weeks time, but Neil Warnock has already said that, hardly surprisingly, City are going to exercise their option to extend Bruno Manga’s contract by another year, while they have also offered a further contract to twenty year old Cameron Coxe who has, reportedly, been attracting the attention of Manchester City in recent weeks!

So, until Thursday, the decision I was contemplating was did the above and a bit of transfer chat justify a first weekly review of the summer? My instinct was that it didn’t, but then in the last two days there have been a couple of developments that qualify as newsworthy events at Cardiff City.

The first was the announcement of council approval for a new training centre for the club on a site nearby the facility they have been using for the last few years at the Vale.

This is something that was first mooted in the “sweetener” that Vincent Tan came out with in 2012 when announcing the controversial switch to red shirts and more details as to what it entails can be found here .

For what it is worth, my own view in 2012 was that we already had a perfectly adequate facility at the Vale and, if there was to be an outlay of the sort of order we’re talking about with this training centre, it would have been much better spent on ensuring the club’s Academy had Category One status, rather than the present Category Two.

However, I suppose I must accept that the club’s hierarchy , both on the playing and administration sides, are better placed to come to the correct decision than me and the development should be seen as a step in the right direction towards us becoming a club that appears more at home in the Premier League than the one which has been seen as, both inside and outside of Cardiff City, something of a guest during it’s two all too short stays there during this decade.

This story was followed up yesterday by the surprising news that City’s pre season preparations will include a trip to North America. Thirteen years ago, City played a series of matches on that continent as they took part in a tournament hosted by the Vancouver Whitecaps and crossed the border to take on the Seattle Sounders. – the format seems similar this time with a match in San Antonio, then a move north to play in Albuquerque before travelling into Canada to play at Edmonton.

Further details and Neil Warnock’s thoughts on the trip appear here and, as mentioned in the article, it certainly appears to be a big change in approach to the ones seen in his first two pre seasons in charge, whereby a week was spent in Cornwall taking on a series of minor league teams from that county and neighbouring Devon.

While this low key approach, which our manager has always favoured in the latter half of his managerial career, could be termed a success in our promotion season, there was criticism in some quarters last year that it was no way to prepare for the Premier League. While I don’t think anyone would suggest that our relegation happened because we spent too much time playing the likes of AFC St Austell, Bodmin and Truro City, a start which saw us take just two points from our first eight matches in 18/19 hardly sends out a message that it did us any good either.

My own thoughts on the matter are that it seems an improvement on our last two seasons, but, after flying 4,867 miles from Cardiff to San Antonio, it’s then a further 714 miles to Albuquerque and 1,700 more to Edmonton. Now, while the actual number of miles traveled to America is less than some sides will fly during their pre season build ups, those that venture far from home do tend to base themselves in one location. With the sort of distances City will travelling on the North American continent, I presume this won’t be the case with us, so it just seems to me that the party will be spending an awful lot of of their week in their air travelling from one location to another.

Finally, a few thoughts on other City related matters. First, Aston Villa finally made all of that transfer and wages spending pay as they edged past Derby in the Play Off Final on Monday to claim the last promotion place from the Championship. So, us, Fulham and Huddersfield will be replacing Norwich, Sheffield United and Villa, while Luton, Barnsley and Charlton come up from League One to replace Rotherham, Ipswich and Bolton.

I always struggle with the argument about whether a league is a “stronger” one than the previous season etc, so I’m not going to say that the Championship will be stronger or weaker in 19/20 than it was in 18/19, but I wouldn’t be surprised to read that it is weaker in media previews produced for the new season in a couple of months time.

I say that because it seems to me that the six clubs leaving the league would be regarded as “bigger” as a collective than the ones coming into it. Even so, although any relegation has to be viewed as a failure and a disappointment, the blow is softened to some degree for me this time by the awareness that we will playing in a great league which means more games, four of which will be against the two sides generally regarded as our greatest rivals, far less of the sense of boring inevitability which goes with too many of the matches played in the Premier League and also not as many weird and not so wonderful kick off times!

Lewis Holtby celebrates his goal for Fulham in their 3-1 defeat at Cardiff City Stadium in March 2014 – could he be making a return to the ground on a permanent basis for the coming season?

Also, this column wouldn’t be this column without at least some transfer speculation! The most interesting rumour for me is the one linking us with Lewis Holtby who is running down his contract with fallen giants S.V Hamburg. The three times capped German international midfield player asked to be left out of the Hamburg squad for an away game in March after learning that he would not be in the starting line up and, although he soon realised his mistake and apologised for his actions, his club decided not to pick him again (Hamburg’s form deteriorated after Holtby’s outburst and, after looking assured of a quick return to the Bundesliga after their relegation last year, fell away so badly that they didn’t even make the promotion/relegation play off).

Holtby, who has also played Premier League football for Tottenham and Fulham was regarded as an outstanding prospect at the start of this decade and although his subsequent career has definitely not seen him reach the heights predicted for him, there will, surely, be plenty of clubs interested in signing such a player on a free. However, it is the type of wages that Holtby would probably demand which makes me see this one as something of a non starter.

Alleged City target Will Vaulks comes with his own, highly individual, goal celebration!

Much more likely for me is that we will try to sign Will Vaulks, Rotherham’s Welsh international midfielder who is almost certain to be sold by his club this summer. Initially I thought this one was almost a certainty, but I have changed my thinking a little because, firstly, my initial belief that Vaulks had played previously under Neil Warnock’s management at Rotherham was wrong and, secondly, it has been reported that both of the teams promoted automatically to the Premier League a few weeks ago are after him. Nevertheless, it does have the feel of a move that would appeal to our manager (not least because Vaulks has an effective long throw!) and I would not be surprised to see him in our squad come August as part of a rebuilt central midfield.

Posted in Out on the pitch | 3 Comments

Neil Warnock to stay for one more season as Cardiff City do Brexit.

Posted on May 18, 2019 by The other Bob Wilson

The 0-0 draw against Huddersfield at Cardiff City Stadium in January was definitely the worst we played this season without losing – in fact I would probably rate our performance that afternoon as one of our worst of the 18/19 campaign.

Therefore, I daresay Neil Warnock must have been grateful for the opportunity presented to him in his post game press conference to go off topic and opine on the subject that most of this country has become heartily sick of – Brexit.

If you are one of what must be a very small number of City fans who are not familiar with what he said, I’ll not repeat it on here, but I will give a one word, neutral I hope, verdict on it – “trenchant”!

Now, because I want anyone reading this piece to stay with it right to its end rather than click on that x in the top right hand corner of their screen muttering “bloody Brexit” (or words to that effect!), I should say straight away that I have not taken leave of my senses by imagining that discussing the decision taken in that Referendum nearly three years would increase the readership on my Cardff City blog!

No, Brexit should be considered as a backdrop to what I write about the news that Neil Warnock will be staying at Cardiff for one more season as he tries to make it a ninth promotion in a managerial career which started back in 1980.

When considering how I would structure this piece, I, for some reason, cottoned on to Brexit as what I believe is an effective way of getting across how I believe the club will be affected .

Before that however, I’ll just quickly state my own opinion which, while certainly not being a neutral one, is one that can acknowledge that there were powerful arguments on either side of the divide.

I would have thanked Neil Warnock very much for the great job he had done at Cardiff, but told him that the time was right for a change at the top. I say that knowing that we would be losing a very good motivator, someone who knows the Championship like the back of his hand and someone who would, on the face of it, have most, if not all of, the current first team squad onside when it comes to wanting to play for him and the club.

Especially in the league we are going to be in next season, those are assets which can take you a long way and while it is tempting to imagine how someone new coming in could improve us in areas where we may be considered weak now, it’s easy to take the good things Warnock brings to the club for granted and assume they would not be lost when he moved on.

So, that’s how I feel, but I’m trying to look at things here more from the club’s point of view and in terms of what can be done during the next season when Mr Warnock is still here to prepare for his departure.

This is where I think the Brexit analogy comes in because, Cardiff City have an awkward set of problems to come which have to be faced up to – they have a manager who is at an age where there are all sorts of reasons why things like five or ten year plans under his watch would be a waste of time -something has to be done to address this at a date in the not too distant future.

After our win at Old Trafford last weekend, Neil Warnock insisted that there was “not a cat in hells chance” of him staying on beyond next season. Therefore, the assumption has to be that, just as with Brexit, there is a date, probably some time next May, which can be seen as the equivalent to the 31 October deadline the UK is facing now with regard to leaving the EU.

Although it would be funny to see our manager’s reaction to this given what he said following that Huddersfield match, the decision Cardiff City and Neil Warnock had to make during the past week was whether to “remain” in their relationship which began in October 2016 or “leave” each other. Of course, this could entail either an interim period which ensured as smooth a transition as possible could be arranged or a “crashing out” (why do Remainers always refer to a no deal Brexit as crashing out, rather than just leaving?) that had Mr Warnock being relieved of his duties at the end of this season!

There is another alternative which needs to be considered. A year from now, with another promotion achieved, Neil Warnock could, his “not a cat in hells chance” comment notwithstanding, find himself fancying one last attempt at redefining a career description which read “very effective Football League manager who could not cut it in the Premier League”.

In that event, the Cardiff Board and owner would have a difficult decision to make. Insisting that a manager who had taken their team up to the top flight twice in the space of three seasons should leave would go down like a lead balloon among a body of fans which, generally speaking, would be even more supportive of Mr Warnock than they are now and the temptation would, surely, be to “kick the can down the road” for another season and see how things look in May 2021.

That remark, used so often in the past year to describe Theresa May’s Government’s attitude to the looming Brexit deadlines they were facing, captures exactly what the hierarchy at Cardiff City have, in effect, done in the last few days though doesn’t it?

It certainly does for me, or I’ll qualify that to say, it certainly does for me unless they start preparing the ground now for what will happen when Neil Warnock is not here.

There was a time about three or four years ago when local media and supporters were almost unanimous in their opinion that “a football man” was needed at Cardiff to act as go between in Board/owner and manager consultations – someone with the requisite financial and administrative abilities who also “knows the game”.

In the event, what we got instead was a manager who had a strong enough personality to, and got the results which, enable him to win his fair share of battles with the money men – Neil Warnock may not have ticked all of the boxes when it came to the longed for “football man”, but he was a pretty good substitute for one in many of the different facets as to what makes a modern day football club tick.

However, I only say many of the different facets, not all – there have been aspects on the football side which have not improved during Mr Warnock’s time at the club.

To give a couple of examples, Cardiff’s record, in terms of producing first team footballers at least, remains just as poor now as it was in the Russell Slade days – the club spend a seven figure sum every year on the Academy and it is clearly failing in its primary function.

Similarly, although Neil Warnock has had his successes in the transfer market, his record in that department is mixed with a worrying tendency for the chances of a good recruit arriving to decline in direct proportion to how big his transfer fee was.

Neil Warnock has his own way of playing the game and it has been effective at Cardiff to a large degree. Therefore, I’m surprised (albeit pleasantly) to see so many supporters expressing a wish for a change to a more “footballing” approach.

Again, there has to be an element of “be careful what you wish for” here mind, because we don’t have a squad built to play that way and, anyway, even with the time and investment put in to get us to the required method of play, a complete change of approach where we aim to become Man City Mark 2 would, surely, be destined for failure on the grounds that too many sides would be better at it than us.

It would be like going from one extreme to another, better by far for me would be a method which retains elements of our current approach which we could turn to when we were being out Man City’d so to speak.

These are the sort of things that the current hierarchy have shown little or no interest in tackling during their time at the club. Going back to style of play, I don’t for a minute think that Neil Warnock is perfectly happy with our possession percentage or, more particularly, our ball retention. I refuse to believe that he isn’t bothered by how awful we can be at keeping the ball .

In recent years, I’ve been won over by the argument which says that possession isn’t everything – although our percentage possession figures were appalling last season, the fact that we were able to finish in second place in such a competitive league tells you that much.

However, a basic ability to give and receive passes should be a prerequisite of anyone playing the game in the top two divisions of the domestic pyramid and, too often, Neil Warnock’s Cardiff team contains too many in it who are uncomfortable with or substandard at these basics.

I think it would be entirely reasonable for, say, a Board member to ask the manager why this is so, I’d also say they should be asking serious questions about the Academy and looking to implement a recruitment policy more in line with a Premier League/top ten Championship standard of operation.

Now is the time to be looking for that football man who could help with these things while Neil Warnock works on trying to get us promoted. There would bound to be clashes between any newcomer and someone as opinionated as our manager, but the club would have to find a way around them for the greater good.

Given the arrangement that seems to have been arrived at in the last few days whereby the Warnock era at Cardiff is coming to an end, you would think that any casting vote from the money men would probably go against him. It would be sad to see this result in an early departure for someone who has done so much for City, but, like Theresa May, the kicking the can down the road has to end some time for Vincent Tan and his minions.

Posted in Down in the dugout | Tagged | 10 Comments