A few months ago someone posted a link to an excellent Welsh football podcast called Elis James’ Feast of Football on the City messageboard I use. I’ll always be grateful to that person because it’s a great listen and I heartily recommend it to readers of this blog if they have the time to listen to the different broadcasts over the course of the season.
Comedian Elis James is a Swansea City fan, but don’t hold that against him, because he comes over as funny, likeable and as someone who also knows his stuff when it comes to many aspects of football.
However, for me anyway, his two sidekicks Danny Gabbidon and Iwan Roberts, who are guests on each podcast, add so much to the show. Both of them are very good in their different ways and they share a habit of letting you in on behind dressing door secrets more than you’re used to hearing from most ex pros now working in the media.
Roberts is the more conventional and serious minded of the two, but is also impressive in the breadth of his knowledge (he is kidded sometimes by the other two for being a bit of a swot in terms of the amount of research he does before each programme). However, it is Danny Gabbidon (I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before, but he’s the best defender I’ve seen play for City!) who, contrary to the perception I had of him based on interviews he did when he was a player, is the person who gives the most forthright opinions and is most willing to offer insights into the personalities of some of the biggest names in the game.
It’s the honest nature of what Gabbidon has to say that I am going to concentrate on here. If you listen to the podcasts from the second half of the season in particular, you won’t have to wait that long before you’ll hear him rubbishing this season’s Premier League.
According to Danny, the Premier League campaign just ended was of a particularly low standard with some very ordinary teams down near the bottom of the table. It’s a criticism that I’ve heard quite frequently this season and, based on what I’ve seen of it (I’ve not watched as much of this season’s competition as I have done in the past), it’s one I agree with.
There are common themes to the criticisms I’ve heard – while there is an acknowledgment that Manchester City are one of the better teams to have won the competition since it became the plaything of Sky TV and Rupert Murdoch just over a quarter of a century ago and other top sides have made some progress forward (as evidenced by Liverpool’s run to the Champions League Final), dig beneath that top layer of quality and it doesn’t take long before the gold and silver is replaced by base metal.
Although Arsenal need to start producing something soon if they are to continue their membership of the select few that give the Premier League it’s real star quality, there are six clubs which are figured to be ahead of the rest and below them it’s all much of a muchness.
The new ownership at Everton meant that they were being touted this time last year as a side which could prompt a situation whereby the usual suspects might face new competition for their Champions League places, but, based on what I saw during the first half of the campaign in particular, the merseysider’s finishing position of eighth greatly flattered them. If a side as poor as Everton are able to finish eighth in a league of twenty teams, then it really does give you a big clue as to it’s strength in depth.
From what I’ve heard of Elis James in the various podcasts I’ve listened to, he is under no illusions as to how poor his team has been for the last three seasons and Swansea’s continued presence in the top flight in 2017/18 told you as much about the level of ability shown by those at the bottom end of the Premier League as it did to the jacks’ talent for survival.
I’ve mentioned before on here that the definitive text book on how not to survive in the Premier League could have been written with our 2013/14 season in mind, but if there had been a sister publication called “How to survive in the Premier League when you’re a small to middling club”, then it could have been based upon the jacks’ first two seasons in the division following their promotion in 2011.
When the jacks came to Cardiff in November 2013 for the first Welsh Premier League derby, it was billed as a bottom of the table clash. Swansea were in a proper relegation fight for the first time in their Premier League existence and, despite him having won a first major trophy for the club a little over six months earlier, there were plenty of calls for manager Michael Laudrup’s head at the time.
These only increased after their defeat at Cardiff City Stadium and by the time of the return fixture in February, Laudrup had gone – Garry Monk took charge of the jacks for the first time in the game at the Liberty where City’s limp 3-0 defeat only added to the growing feeling that Ole Solskjaer was not the man to extend our stay in the top flight into a second season.
While we subsided to our inevitable relegation, Swansea comfortably avoided the drop and, albeit with a more pragmatic style than the Premier League had been used to, they prospered for a season under Monk. However, having earned a reputation for finding transfer gems that did not seem to be on the bigger club’s shortlists, Swansea, for whatever reason, promptly lost the knack and their transfer dealings in recent years have been a long way short of the quality of three years and more ago.
When you add foreign ownership, which seems to me to have hindered rather than helped, and Swansea’s template for survival, which had involved the selling of one top player a year to be replaced by shrewd bargain basement (by Premier League standards anyway), simply stopping working, then their subsequent struggles are not too surprising.
Suddenly, where the feeling of continuity that had existed had only been broken when bigger clubs came in for their managers, it was now a case of the jacks going through two or three bosses a season under ownership which seemed unwilling or unable to act on, or even acknowledge, that the club had changed fundamentally from those days when they were envied by so many.
Indeed, when the end came for Swansea as a Premier League club last weekend, it had the feeling of a pet being put out of it’s misery.
The club that had been proclaimed as many people’s “second Premier League team” with an attractive and effective passing game which earned them much admiration, went down playing defensive stuff with what looked suspiciously like a long ball approach – they had become a characterless blight on “the best league in the world” and I get the impression that few outside of their immediate support were too upset to see them relegated.
My point in going on about the jacks at some length is that if a side as poor, and as badly run, as they have been over the past three seasons can survive in the Premier League as long as they did, then that suggests to me that standards at the lower end of the league have dropped, perhaps only slightly, since we were last there.
It used to be said that the Premier League was, in fact, three leagues in one with an elite grouping of six or less which could entertain fairly realistic hopes of winning the title, with the consolation for failure on that score being that they would at least be in the fight for a Champions League place. Then there would be a group of about eight who could dream of a Europa League place and, possibly, a domestic cup win. These sides might end up being involved in a relegation fight, but were generally regarded as having enough about them to win it – finally, you would have another group of six for whom just avoiding the drop would be deemed success.
I’d say that, broadly speaking, that was the Premier League we were in during 13/14, but it was completely different in 17/18. The elite group were still there, but if there was a middle group, I would say it consisted of Burnley, possibly Arsenal above them and maybe Everton and Leicester below them.
However, both of those last two sides spent quite a lot of the season beset by relegation worries and I think it could be convincingly argued that for two thirds to three quarters of the season, the bottom group, as defined by the old standard, contained as many as thirteen teams.
Now, of course, we’ve had a Leicester come along and win the thing a couple of years ago, but, more and more, that just looks like a statistical freak to me because the big boys’ hold on the league seems as strong now as it’s ever been. Also, just because it was a weak league this season, it doesn’t automatically mean that it will be in 18/19, but while some of those teams which survived in the bottom thirteen may make significant improvements with some good transfer wheeling and dealing and/or the right managerial appointment, it’s asking too much surely for many of them to do so.
Therefore, I would argue that, for a large part of the season anyway, more than half of our fixtures are going to be against sides that would be seen as a relegation rival of ours.
Now, I can’t remember where it was that I made this comparison recently, but I’m going to use it again. We started the season with a run of four fixtures with Burton, Aston Villa, Sheffield United and Wolves and then we had a sequence of matches against the same teams in late March/early April.
Comparing the outcomes of these games sends out a clear signal that the Cardiff City of August was a stronger side than the one of this spring. If the August 2017 version of Cardiff City were to face one of those bottom thirteen teams at home with the sort of team spirit and belief we showed throughout the season, I’d back us to win quite a few of those games.
However, the spring version of the team had got into the habit of losing or not performing against the better teams in the Championship and although that spirit and belief seemed as strong as ever, I’d fear another relegation if we couldn’t raise our game to higher levels than that seen against, say, Sheffield United, Villa and Derby recently.
The dilemma for Neil Warnock and the management team is if there is a feeling that we need new players to improve the team (and it seems there is), does that carry the same sort of potential problems as we saw in 12/13 when a side quite like the current one in many respects, was taken apart to include a series of expensive signings on wages that impacted on how we operated for years afterwards?
The alternative is to put more trust in the promotion squad than was shown last time around. Based on what we saw over much of the second half of the season, I doubt if this is going to happen – despite the earlier evidence that the current squad have it in them to play good quality stuff when they are on their game.
As mentioned above, the early evidence is that we will be pretty active in the transfer market in the coming months (don’t forget that the transfer window closes about three weeks earlier in the coming season) – there have been quite widespread stories about five or six new signings and I’ve even seen in one report that the number will be eight (it was broken down into a goalkeeper, two defenders, three midfielders and two forwards).
What needs to be remembered is that, for all of the talk about not wanting to see a repeat of the 12/13 spending levels, a significant difference between then and now is the valuation of players – at least when Premier League clubs with the money from the latest TV deal come calling.
The one transfer which came to encapsulate the overspending and ineptitude of our summer 2012 dealings was the one which brought Andreas Cornelius to the club – this was the signing which Vincent Tan was able to dine out on when he wanted to reaffirm his feud with Malky Mackay.
However one of a plethora of players we have already been linked with is Andre Gray of Watford. Now, I think he could be a very good signing for us, but the fact of the matter is that, having been a quality Championship striker with Brentford and Burnley, he got a reported £18 million pound move to his current club on the back of one fine season in the top division Turf Moor .
Things have not gone so well for Gray at Watford and, if we signed him, there would be a chance that it may be for a bit less than Burnley got, but it’s likely that, especially when you consider the player’s wages, he would cost us double what Cornelius would have done if he had seen out his Cardiff contract.
Similarly, if we were looking at two players with the career prospects that Gary Medel and Steven Caulker had when they signed for us, I suspect we would be looking at something like £35 million in transfer fees alone for such a pair of players.
The reality is that the Premier League millions and an eye watering transfer budget, by our standards at least, are not worth anywhere near as much as it may first appear. City will have to be cute with their transfer dealings this summer and, with us likely to be shopping predominantly in the overpriced domestic market, the odd quality Bosman here and there would be very handy.
Mind you, maybe we’d be better off steering clear of the overseas Bosman market if the rumours linking us with Hamburg’s Sven Schipplock have any truth in them – even my desire to give every new player a full chance before starting to get critical would be be tested to breaking point with that CV!
Let’s not forget that, despite his, justified, reputation as something of a miracle worker when it comes to the Championship, Neil Warnock, who acknowledges his record when it comes to signing strikers is poor, will forever be damned by the judgment “but he couldn’t do the business in the top flight” unless he proves those critics wrong next season.
You would like to think that our manager would be backed up by a better and more understanding team than we had last time in this league. Ken Choo seems to be a definite improvement on what went before and, leaving aside the whole Malky Mackay thing for now, it’s to be hoped that Vincent Tan would have learned from the contract dispute which dogged the 13/14 team after it became public knowledge about six matches into the campaign.
For me, so much is going to depend on the quality of our recruitment this summer and whether it results in a dilution of the mental qualities which proved so valuable for us in our promotion- get it right and I honestly believe that the we can stay up, perhaps quite comfortably, given the likely shortcomings of, perhaps, a majority of the sides we will face.
