Weekly review 5/7/2015.

Posted on July 5, 2015 by The other Bob Wilson

CoymayIn the last few weeks I’ve praised the club on a couple of occasions for ensuring that the new kit for the upcoming season was going to be on sale from early July – a huge improvement on what has become the norm at Cardiff down the years. While doing so, I have to admit that there was a part of me of me waiting for the cock up which ensured that the club would not be able to live up to that promise, but, this time, they were as good as their word and, seemingly, around £100,000 was taken in sales at the club shop and online when the kit went on sale on Friday with plenty more sold yesterday as well – this story confirms that Friday was a record breaking day for the club.

I may be wrong, but the thought occurs to me that there have been more sales of this blue kit in the first couple of days it has been on sale than there were of the various red kits we wore over the two and a half years of Vincent Tan’s discredited re-brand.

This is a good news story for the club to publicise at a time when it really needs one and it is also something which suggests that, perhaps, the disconnect between club and fans I’ve mentioned on here in the past is not as pronounced as I think it is. Although I’m sure someone will disagree, my main hope for the coming season is not promotion – it’s that we see a return to the relationship between team and fans which saw us united as one at home games in particular.

Along with better than expected season ticket sales, kit sales on the scale we’ve seen since Friday at least give the hope that enthusiasm among fans is not as low as I thought it was and that the ground may not resemble a public library, as it has over the past eighteen months or so, for the coming campaign.

I’m still to be convinced that this is the case, but it does show that there is an opportunity for an improvement if City hit the ground running in August – especially if Russell Slade could make a couple of exciting signings before we play Fulham. Unfortunately, the signs are not great on that score after yet another quiet week – and let’s not forget that we are now bang in the middle of the period that our manager said was the time when we could expect the transfer market to pick up.

Although it’s still perhaps too early to say for sure, the notion that Russell Slade has moved on to his second shopping list after getting nowhere with his first has gained some credence over the past few days – certainly if some of the most recent names we’ve been linked with have any truth in them.

Before discussing possible arrivals though, I should say that there are growing rumours that Hull City will be bidding for Peter Whittingham (by the way, CEO Ken Choo said a departure was “imminent” when asked about players leaving in this piece from Friday) soon  – I wonder how strong the club’s resolve will be to keep our longest serving player if there really is something to the Humberside club’s interest?

Mentioning Hull brings me on to the news that their midfield player Stephen Quinn opted to sign for Reading on a Bosman deal this week. It was reported that we were also in for the player and I’ve every reason to believe that this was the case – I’m happy that Quinn will not be playing for us next season  and, judging by quite a few comments I’ve read recently, there are quite a few other City fans who feel the same way.

It turns out that I’m not the only one who remembers Quinn’s antics at Sheffield United’s referee influenced 3-0 win at Ninian Park in 2008/09. He is one of three Sheffield players that day who I hope to never see wearing a City shirt during their career – Kyle Naughton (now at Swansea) got Ross McCormack sent off with a blatant piece of play acting and Jamie Ward (who was at it again last season when his effort, which was going wide, was deflected in by Scott Malone for Derby’s first goal in their 2-0 win in January)  saw fit to wind the home fans up, along with Quinn, after scoring that day.

When you think that “skull breaker” Chris Morgan also featured in that Sheffield United team, you can see why that particular Blades side is not one I recall with much affection. Also in the visitors team that day was Cardiff born Welsh international David Cotterill who scored from the early penalty that brought about Gabor Gyepes’ dismissal and he is one of those players we’ve been linked with which suggests that our manager might now be looking at second choices when it comes to new signings.

Cardiff born David Cotterill scores the penalty in Sheffield United's win at Ninian Park in 2009 which he says led to him receiving death threats from City fans - that's disgraceful if true, but it does give the club about why him signing for us may not be a good idea for all sorts of reasons.

Cardiff born David Cotterill scores the penalty in Sheffield United’s win at Ninian Park in 2009 which he says led to him receiving death threats from City fans – that’s disgraceful, but it does give the clue as to why him signing for us may not be a good idea for all concerned.

To be fair, Birmingham City’s Cotterill is coming off what is probably his best ever season after shining for club and country over the past eleven months and he has turned around a career path that had been gradually heading downwards over a half a decade or more – I believe he would make a decent addition to our squad if he could repeat his 14/15 form. Moreover, I can’t remember anything in his behaviour in that match referred to earlier that makes me want to include him alongside Quinn, Naughton and Ward as someone I’d never want to see play for us, but, with him having also played for Bristol City and Swansea against us during his career, I’d say he’d have a bit of a job on his hands trying to win over some sections of our support.

In fact, in view of what the player said in this story, you would have to wonder if he would want to come here if the gossip linking him to us were to be true. Given this and the positive reaction the news of Quinn turning us down got from some supporters, it prompts me to ask whether City give any thought to the way their support may react to a certain player before going in for them?

My mind goes back to a notorious game from 1999 when the powers that be saw fit to pair us with Millwall on the opening day of the 99/00 season – predictably, there was trouble galore before, during and after a match which I’d say saw the last serious crowd violence in a league game at Ninian Park. Go forward five years and we sign Millwall’s goalkeeper that day Tony Warner, whose short stay at Cardiff became a thoroughly miserable one for the player for many reasons. Not least among them though was the fact that some City fans had not forgotten that Warner was charged with throwing a plastic bottle into the crowd during the Millwall match .

I can remember Warner playing for us in a pre season friendly against Lazio about a month after he signed where he was getting terrible stick from some of the crowd – it seemed to me then that he would never win over those people no matter how he played for us.

On the other hand, Jason Bowen and Andy Legg faced a difficult task getting supporters onside because of their Swansea connection when they signed for us about six months before that Millwall match and yet both players (particularly Leggy) were able to do that within quite a short time.

In the case of Warner, the City manager when he signed (Lennie Lawrence) had no connection with the club at the time of the Millwall game and so he could hardly be blamed for not knowing about the possible repercussions of the signing and I’d say much the same could be applied to Russell Slade when it comes to Quinn and, if there is any truth in the rumours, Cotterill – indeed, with the lack of Welsh players featuring for us last season attracting some critical comment, he may think the signing of a Cardiffian would help his standing with the fanbase.

Therefore, I wonder if there is an onus on those who have been at the club long enough to know these things to at least hint to someone in “authority” that this possible signing or that possible signing may not be a very good idea? I ask that question without really knowing the answer to it, while also suspecting that they wouldn’t be listened to even if they did. However, we have a situation here whereby a manager, who is certainly struggling to convince large sections of his club’s support as to his worth, is seemingly chasing players whose arrival could,  perhaps, only make matters worse for him.

One final thing, it’s being widely reported that Sammy Ameobi, who is currently out of contract at Newcastle, will sign a new deal with the Tyneside club in the next few days and then the winger will make a decision whether to join us or Wolves on a season long loan with the Midland club reckoned to be favourites to be his choice.

 

Posted in Out on the pitch | Tagged , , , | 7 Comments

Weekly review 28/6/15.

Posted on June 28, 2015 by The other Bob Wilson

CoymayA few weeks ago Russell Slade said this would be the time when you could expect to see more transfers in and out of the club and, with the players having reported back for pre season training last Wednesday, we would, in an ideal world, be seeing these three new players that our manager tells us he is chasing arriving in the next week or so, thereby giving them more or less a full training programme at their new club to help integrate them by the start of the season in six weeks time.

While I understand and, in some ways, sympathise with the view that the grass isn’t always greener when it comes to bringing in new players to any club (see Ole’s many and varied signings last summer for proof of this), I do believe that, at this moment in Cardiff City’s life, it needs the stimulus that a couple of exciting signings which get people talking about an upcoming season can provide more than most times in it’s recent history.

In a way I feel sorry for local newspapers in particular during this time of year as they strive to find something worthwhile to say about the clubs they cover and it seems to me that some of the stories you read in the South Wales Echo these days have an air of desperation to them as hacks try, and largely fail, to engender some interest in a subject where, to be frank, little has happened in the last couple of months to raise enthusiasm levels.

Now, I wonder how many read that reference to nothing interesting happening for a couple of months and thought I was being generous – try the last eighteen months, not two! Notwithstanding the encouraging announcement from the club last week about almost 10,000 season tickets having been sold (well,  I thought it was encouraging!), that sort of response typifies the attitude of what seems to me to be many Cardiff fans at the moment – they need something to happen to get them fired up about their team again and they are far from convinced that the current squad, ownership and management have it in them to provide that catalyst.

There are valid reasons why such thinking is somewhat unfair, but an attitude that emphasises the negative over the positive (in fact, any positives are barely acknowledged) has taken hold among vast swathes of City fans, myself included, over the last couple of seasons and, surely, even those who see any criticism of City as disloyalty have to acknowledge that there is an awful lot that the club has got wrong on and off the pitch in since getting promoted.

So, in an effort to accentuate the positive, I say well done again to the club for ensuring that the new blue kits are going to be available by the end of next week and also for getting season tickets out to fans in the last few days – both of these things represent considerable improvements when compared to what has happened too often in the past and tends to add a little credence to my theory that Ken Choo has overseen an improvement in some aspects of the club’s administration at least.

That said, something happened last week that didn’t put the club in a good light when there was an acknowledgment that it was looking less likely that the training week in the Netherlands next month will include the hoped for couple of fixtures against top rated Dutch clubs. Besides that, with Russell Slade not prepared to see the team play on artificial surfaces in the two matches against junior sides offered as replacements, it seems that our pre season trip abroad this year could be a training only event – just as they were in Malky Mackay’s last two seasons with the club.

The reason for this is explained in this piece, but the reference to Swansea having had a match called off for similar reasons in the past, could beg the question as to why no one at Cardiff thought to raise this when the idea of going to the Netherlands was first mooted or is this an another example of the sort of willingness to only judge the club negatively which I referred to earlier?

Maxi Amondarain in action for his country - the fact I could find so few photos of him playing for City tends to confirm his lack of impact at Cardiff in the last two years.

Maxi Amondarain in action for his country – the fact I could find so few photos of him playing for City tends to confirm his lack of impact at Cardiff in the last two years.

For the third consecutive week, there was an announcement of a player leaving the club. This time it was Uruguayan centre back Maximiliano Amondarain who agreed to a termination of his contract halfway through what I understand was a four year deal. Amondarain signed after a successful trial in the summer of 2013 after having been a member of the Uruguay squad which had reached the Final of the World Under 20 Championship a few weeks earlier. Amondarain didn’t got any game time in that tournament though and never once made it into the City first team – he was largely solid, steady and composed in the fifteen or so Development team games I saw him play for us, but I’d say that Deji Oshilaja and Tom James overtook him in the central defender pecking order at the club during his time with us and so letting him go looks a sensible move for both club and player.

The only other piece of worthwhile info I can think of from last week is that City’s Head Coach Paul Trollope will be Wales’ new Assistant Manager. There’s been no formal announcement yet, but it looks certain that he will be the replacement for Kit Symons, who stood down after the win over Belgium this month to give his full attention to his job at Fulham. Like Symons, Trollope will work with Wales on a part time basis and continue at his club, so, it seems that, despite our conspicuous lack of Welshmen on the pitch, there will be a Cardiff City presence in the parties that link up for international games.

 

Posted in Out on the pitch, Wales | Tagged , | 6 Comments