A major story to justify a, long overdue, first of these reviews for the summer of 2025 – the fact that this is the summer soltice tells you how little has been going on this close season.
Yesterday afternoon, this appeared on what I still call Twitter;
Now, the first thing to say is that this comes from a source that cannot be dismissed out of hand in the manner that many can when it comes to stories like this. David Ornstein is a respected journalist who writes for, maybe, the foremost journalism website on British football – he is not in the habit of posting speculative rubbish.
Oddly, a story linking a Gareth Bale consortium with Plymouth Argyle appeared in the national press around ten days ago. As can be seen, Ornstein dismisses that link out of hand and, with plenty of “game of chess” type references flying about since the City link Tweet appeared, it seems as if we’re into the realms of the four dimensional version of tha game as favoured by intellectual giants such as Donald Trump!
As in normally the case with this blog, this is the last place to come if you want accurate info setting out what the real truth is behind all of the “in the know” stuff, but, as a pretty ordinary 3D chess player myself, I’ll give you my guess as to what’s going on.
If we assume what Daniel Ornstein is saying is true, then the Plymouth story would appear to be an attempt to prompt a response from Cardiff in the face of the claim that the Bale consortium’s first approach was turned down – the presumption being that Bale and co had decided to look elsewhere.
Now, with no public reaction, and, presumably, no private one either, to the Plymouth story from City, the Bale consortium have let it be known that they are still serious about acquiring his home town club – they’re putting it out there that they’re still around.
I’ll make a few presumptions about the group that are seeking to buy Vincent Tan out now. First, if Gareth Bale is putting his name to this, then I think it’s fair to deduce that there is some pretty big money behind it and that it is a serious bid – I’d also guess that it’s primarilly an American bid.
The involvement of the likes of Luca Modric down the road at Swansea and Tom Brady at Birmingham is proof that major sporting stars are beginning to be used as a sort of figurehead by American backed owners of EFL clubs. Plus, of course, you only have to look at what’s happening at Wrexham to see that involvement of celebrities from all walks of life is seen as a good thing in the modern game.
Wrexham are different to Swansea and Birmingham in that Messrs Modric and Brady are not major investors in their clubs, they’re more there for a publicity angle. I’d imagine it would be the same with Bale with the attraction for the other members of the consortium being that, although his late decision to turn Cardiff down three years ago when a deal seemed to be complete may have left a sour taste with some City supporters, the large majority of them would love the idea of a Gareth Bale led takeover of their club.
So, with fan unrest with Vincent Tan growing to the extent that protests against him were held before a couple of home games in the second half of last season and similar demonstrations on the cards for the new season, the notion of an attempted buy out fronted by a Cardiff born legend of Welsh football (I think the word legend is justified here!) being held off by Tan and his Board of incompetents (as perceived by many) would surely only swell the already decent numbers who attended the two earlier protests wouldn’t it? For people like me who had felt the demos were pretty pointless before this week, they suddenly would start to look more like a means of playing a part in trying to bring about the end of an unwanted owner.
Now, some will say “be careful what you wish for”, ‘the grass is always greener” etc. etc and such sentiments do have some validity when you consider that Vincent Tan charges the club no interest on their debt to him and he has authorised debt to equity conversions in recent years – he also is said to put in substantial sums every month to keep the club trading.
However, I think we’ve now reached a stage where the downward drift of the club, which is now undeniable following our relegation, and the continuing levels of incompetency in the running of the club mean that any incoming group of new owners would not need to be that special to represent a definite improvement on what we have.
So, provided that the Emiliano Sala case can be sorted out on an internal level and the fact that we no longer just owe money to one man can be accommodated, I’d favour a takeover at City and the sooner the better.
Of course, David Ornstein said in his Tweet that the Bale led bid had been rejected and a Wales Online piece last night contained a line that the club were not expecting another bid from them. Therefore, a successful takeover still seems a long way off on the face of it.
However, it’s now that we enter the realms of what I’ll just call less reliable sources than a David Ornstein – I’m talking about social media “in the know” merchants.
To be fair it seems to be me that some of what is being claimed sounds plausible. For example, I wouldn’t rule out there being interest in the club from other groups, nor would I dismiss a claim that Vincent Tan has decided he cannot expect to receive the full amount of debt he is owed in any buy out and so has decided to write off a portion of it. I can also believe that some sort of arrangement has been sorted out whereby the club did not have to stay under Vincent Tan’s ownership for the duration of the various legal processes involving the Sala case.
Returning to other possible buyers, is it that far fetched to think that there may be one from Vincent Tan’s part of the world and that they would be his preferred buyer? I don’t think it is.
I’m not saying what I’ve put in the last two paragraphs is true, more that it doesn’t seem too unreasonable to think that one or more of those scenarios could be happening.
What I would say for sure is that the sale of the club feels much closer now than it did three months ago and that, of course, could explain the slow nature of Cardiff City’s summer.
However, one decision that has been made is the important one concerning the vacant manager’s job and Brian Barry-Murphy’s first press conference took place on Wednesday. Here’s a link to it for anyone who hasn’t watched it and I’d say that it was an impressive performance from someone who was asked some pretty testing questions.
I had planned a more detailed analysis of what the Head Coach had to say, but this takeover news has rather changed all of that. What I would say is that, on this limited evidence, you begin to see why Brian Barry-Murphy has got a reputation for developing youngsters as I can well imagine young pros being inspired by what he outlines as to what they could become. I also liked that he was generally relaxed and showed a good sense of humour, but also was impressive when talking about his friend and former team mate Joe Thompson who died in Aptil at the age of just thirty six following his third cancer diagnosis.
Less impressive were some vague answers about the structure of the club and the make up of his coaching stuff. In fact, I was pretty annoyed when I first heard what Brian Barry-Murphy had to say on those subjects, but over the past two or three days, I have mellowed somewhat as what he had to say did not necessarily represent the situation or arrangement we’ll start the season with. Furthermore, if a takeover is actively being considered, then it’s inevitable that there would be a feeling of things being up the air when it comes to appointments/transfers on and off the field.
The players return for pre season training on Monday and league fixtures for the forthcoming season will be announced on Wednesday i think it is. On the subject of fixtures, it was confirmed yesterday that we’ll be facing Queens Park Rangers in a behind closed doors game on 23 July before taking on Notts County at Meadow Lane three days later. This brings the number of warm up games to four with one more still to be announced during the visit to Murcia for warm weather training. With talk of a cutback in the number of games played before the competitive stuff kicks off this year, it seems possible that there’ll just be the five friendlies played. With two of the matches to be played behind closed doors, it looks like there won’t be a game played at Cardiff City Stadium until the season proper starts.
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