City managers in 2014/15.

Posted on May 7, 2015 by The other Bob Wilson

CoymayAlthough the large majority of this piece is going to be about Russell Slade’s time in charge, I’d like to start with a few words about the other men to have had managerial responsibility at Cardiff City during the season just finished.

I mentioned before on here that when City led Norwich 2-0 after about half an hour on September 13, Ole Gunnar Soskjær must have felt pretty good about life – his side were playing as well as they had ever done under his tenure and looked well on the way to notching a third consecutive home win to begin the season with. An hour later, after four unanswered Norwich goals, all of the doubts about him remained and, after Middlesbrough held on to the lead they gained in the first minute with few alarms at Cardiff City Stadium the following Tuesday, he was less than twenty four hours away from leaving the club.

What tends to be forgotten by some now is that the official version of events had Ole not being sacked, but leaving by mutual consent – he and Chairman Mehmet Dalman citing a difference in philosophy as the reason for the manager’s departure. At the time, my assumption, and that of quite a few others I think, was that Ole had left because he wasn’t happy with the notion that a Director of Football type role was going to be created at the club (call it what you like, but I still believe that someone with a foot in both camps so to speak, is desperately needed to act as a buffer between the administration side and football side at the club) , but I’d now say it was more likely that he didn’t fancy enforcing the cutbacks in the wage bill that were being insisted upon by the owner.

Ole left with his reputation damaged having been a complete failure as Cardiff manager in the Premier League and there hadn’t been much evidence at the lower level that things were going to improve for him as his gigantic squad were limping along in seventeenth place when he departedt. As for Scott Young and Danny Gabbidon, they did okay in the league with a win, two draws and a defeat, but a disastrous home defeat by a largely second string Bournemouth outfit in the League Cup was a sure sign of the need for a permanent appointment.

So Gabbidon, never a natural for a management job in my opinion, returned to his role as rarely used squad member when that appointment was made and Young found himself earning a considerable promotion from his position under previous managers at the club when he was appointed the new man’s Assistant. It’s fair to say that Young has had credibility problems since then with fans, quite reasonably in my opinion, asking is it right that someone with a managerial CV that includes just AFC Porth and Port Talbot Town should be second in command at a club where a challenge for promotion to the Premier League is the expectation both in the Boardoom and among the fanbase.

This brings me on to Russell Slade and I believe any attempt at a fair and objective assessment of the job he has done over the past seven months should first try to establish just what he was working with when he first arrived at the club – was Russell Slade handed “the best squad in the history of the Championship” as per that now notorious Wales Online article or was it, as some Slade defenders now say, an outfit on it’s way to relegation?

The easy part of that question is to totally dismiss the best squad ever claim, but bookies made us favourites and it was unusual to see us placed outside the top six in any of the pre season predictions by various pundits. On the other hand, while we were winning the title a couple of years ago, Wolves were proving that it is possible to drop from the top to the third tier in successive seasons and Cardiff was a club with all sorts of problems (not least a largely disconnected  fanbase).

I don’t present my own thoughts as some sort of binding arbitration on the subject (I’m just as likely to be wrong on the matter as the next person), but I never believed we were as good as most thought and expressed a concern that if lessons hadn’t been learned from our season in the Premier League and we did not become “streetwise” as to the nature of the Championship, then I could see is finish in a lower mid table position (I mentioned sixteenth). In reality though, I expected us to finish somewhere like eighth – for me, a finishing position of eleventh is an under achievement given the players we had over the course of the season especially because I strongly feel it flatters us given the general level of performance from the team between August and May.

Hardly surprisingly, Russell Slade wastes few chances to raise the examples of clubs who have continued on the downward path and ended up in what is now League One (or even dropped lower) and is almost presenting the fact that we will be playing Championship football next season as some sort of triumph.

If the spectre of relegation is one foe our manager believes he has overcome (all but one of the sides he came out with like Leeds, Southampton and Forest spent at least one season in the Championship before the relegation that followed their drop from the Premier League mind, so I’m not sure how he claim that it won’t happen some time in the future because it didn’t happen in 14/15), I believe he faces a much tougher fight when it comes to winning around what I believe to be a fairly large proportion of supporters who have been against him right from the moment his name was first mentioned in connection with Cardiff. Now, I can sympathise with those who feel that way to the extent that a manager who has no real playing pedigree in the game and who has never managed at this level on a full time basis before in a twenty year career hardly appears to be a natural choice for a recently relegated from the Premier League club with an, apparently, ambitious billionaire owner.

Slade makes much of his more than seven hundred matches as a manager and it’s true I suppose that he must be doing something right to keep on getting jobs in the game, but those 700 plus games don’t look so impressive when you qualify them with the rider that they do not include even one game in which he has experienced what it is like to be a promotion winning manager.

However, with many of those who were saying back in October that Cardiff was too big a club for someone like Russell Slade being old enough to remember times when City were what seemed like permanent fixtures in the third and fourth tiers, it seemed to me at the time that there was a degree of arrogance involved in the way our new manager was not even being given a chance to prove himself.

This, together with my natural affiliation for underdogs had me defending our new manager at first and, even now, I feel I have to point out that Russell Slade has won more Championship games than he’s lost as Cardiff manager, he’s had to oversee a cost cutting exercise that has left the squad looking weaker now (on paper at least) than it did before January’s transfer window, he’s had two important players leave on loan for “business reasons” and yet he still finished the season with five wins and just two defeats in our last ten matches.

With all of that it mind, that’s doesn’t look that a bad record to me. In fact, I can’t help thinking that a more high profile manager than Slade would not be getting all of the flak he attracts if they had a record like that at Cardiff and yet…….

Until this season, I’d always thought of myself as someone for whom the result was everything – I can remember criticising those City fans who were moaning about the lack of entertainment during the first few months of our Premier League season because I thought it was unrealistic to expect points and entertainment in a league where we were underdogs nearly every time we went on to the pitch. However, in 14/15 I came to the realisation that I do want to be entertained to some extent when I watch my team play – I have Russell Slade to thank for that, although I doubt it if he would be too happy about that.

When I think of all of the poor football I’ve seen down the years from City teams, it really does bring into some sort of perspective how mind numbingly boring we were to watch at Cardiff City Stadium from the period late November to the end of the season – yes, there was the occasional decent display by City (Bournemouth and Blackburn spring to mind) and I’m always aware that the general downbeat mood there is about the club these days can be an influence when judging what you are seeing out on the pitch, but some of the stuff I watched either side of Christmas was absolutely awful kick and rush (actually forget the rush bit, speed was something you never really got to see from a City team during this period).

Russell Slade has won his fair share of Manager of the the month and even Manager of the year awards in his time, but will he ever win such a prize at Cardiff - the reaction from supporters to such an event would be interesting to say the least!

Russell Slade has won his fair share of Manager of the the month and even Manager of the year awards in his time, but will he ever win such a prize at Cardiff – the reaction from supporters to such an event would be interesting to say the least!

From that Blackburn match I mentioned onwards, things did improve a little in terms of the football we were trying to play, but it was somehow typical of Slade’s reign so far that the credit for this tended to go more to newly appointed coach Paul Trollope than the manager – to me this is a little unfair, because if Slade was ordering us to play the long ball crap we saw against the likes of Reading in the Cup, Derby and Brighton, then surely he would have cracked down on any attempt to play what I regard as football.

There were encouraging signs at Forest on Saturday of better to come as some neat pass and move football played at a decent pace opened up the opposition pretty often in open play, but it’s one thing doing that to dispirited opponents on the final day of the season and another completely doing it to fully motivated opponents in August – I’d also say that our manager and a CEO no doubt worried about dismal season ticket sales would have been ever so grateful for even the merest hint of such fluent attacking play at Cardiff City Stadium.

That’s the thing I still don’t quite understand about our manager – I can remember another win by a Slade team at Forest when his Yeovil side overturned a two goal deficit in the First Leg to stun the home team to the tune of 5-2 in the League One Play Offs a few years ago – Yeovil counter attacked in devastating fashion that night while playing some nice passing football, in much the same manner as I saw his Leyton Orient side do in the Play Offs last season when they saw off Peterborough and should have beaten Rotherham, but Russell Slade’s Cardiff shows nothing to suggest they have  anything like that in them – indeed, the slowness of the passing in general almost suggests that such play is discouraged.

In the past I’ve given our manager’s marks out of ten when doing end of season pieces like this, so, although his results weren’t really bad enough to justify such a low marking, I’ll give Ole 3 and Young and Gabbidon 5 – as for Russell Slade, he’s already done that himself. Although I’m sure that there will be plenty of City fans who think anything between 0 and 4 is more appropriate, I’ll go along with our manager’s own judgement and give him 5, with a concern that this is as good a mark as he’ll get even if stays at Cardiff for as long as Dave Jones did.

Regular readers of this blog may be aware of the contributions of Dai Woosnam who, invariably has something to say in the comments section about the stories that appear on here. I’m pretty sure Dai would agree that he and I differ about quite a few things regarding Cardiff City, but I can’t help thinking he will be proved right when it comes to Russell Slade. Dai is an exile who lives in Grimsby and remembers our manager’s spell in charge of that club – when he was first appointed at Cardiff Dai contacted me by e-mail or through this site and said, based on what he had done at Grimsby (where he is pretty highly regarded by the locals) Slade would be able to stabilise things, but prove incapable of being able to take the club very far forward – based what I’ve seen this season, that sounds about right to me.

 

 

 

Posted in Down in the dugout | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

It’s all a Swansea plot I tell you!

Posted on May 3, 2015 by The other Bob Wilson

CoymayFirst thing I want to say is well done to Steve Borley for agreeing to attend Tuesday’s Supporters’ Trust Committee meeting  following his recent online dispute with the organisation. However, for me, the latest Twitter outburst from the City Director goes to the heart of so much that is wrong with the club at the moment.

Before going on to that though, I’d like to talk about the Wales Online “open letter” to Vincent Tan that prompted Mr Borley’s response.

I believe that, based on the events of the last three years (the decision to change to red became public knowledge almost three years ago to the day), such a letter was justified. It needs to be said mind that on field performances are the main barometer for gauging how their club is doing for most fans and so it should be recorded that, for the first of the three seasons in which we started the campaign in red, these were perfectly acceptable, bar the odd quibble from some fans about the quality of the entertainment on offer.

However, if you look beyond those horizons, my opinion is that legitimate questions could be asked about the way the club was being run – in fact, this stretches way back beyond Vincent Tan’s time, for me it dates back to the time that Mr Borley stood down as Chairman to let Sam Hammam take over.

My main gripe with the “open letter” is that it doesn’t do a very good job of tackling it’s subject. For example, right at the start, it calls the campaign just ended “One of the worst seasons in the history of Cardiff City FC”.

Well, anyone whose time supporting City runs into decades, rather than since their FA Cup Final appearance in 2008, will know that this statement is absolute rubbish – eleventh place in the second tier is higher than I’ve seen us finish in thirty nine of the fifty one seasons I’ve supported the club.

That said, if the words “in terms of value for money” had been added on to the end of the statement, I would have had no problems with it. I’ve said it a few times on here before, but for me City’s 2014/15 squad (particularly the one we had in the first half of the season) was the worst I’ve seen in my time supporting the club when they are measured in terms of value for money – so much cash spent for so little quality out on the pitch.

There is also something of an arrogance to the letter that doesn’t sit well with me. The one of the worst seasons in history assertion, the claim that someone with a CV like Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink “would probably walk over the Severn Bridge from Burton to take over at the club where he once played” and the claim that Cardiff City Stadium is “traditionally a fortress” when it has, like Ninian Park before it, been anything but that for the large majority of its existence  all suggest to me that the writer has a more inflated view of what Cardiff City should be than what history tells us it actually is – I’d say mid table in the second tier is just about the club’s default setting for its ninety five years as a Football league club.

Another thing I must say about this letter is that it would be a bit more convincing if it had come from a source which is less prone to jump on bandwagons when it sees them. Now speaking as someone who grudgingly accepted the rebrand at first, I can accept that it’s possible to change your mind about such matters, but the Echo’s coverage of that subject, with its subsequent forgetfulness of its apparent conversion to the blue cause of about a year ago, won itself few friends based on the conversations I’ve had on the matter.

So, for me at least, the open letter could and should have been better than it turned out, but who wrote it?

Well, although I see Mr Borley appears to have withdrawn the tweets now, he was adamant that it was Chris Wathan, saying

“@ChrisWathan is behind today’s disgraceful letter in the Echo. He doesn’t hide the fact he is a Swansea fan but can’t get a job on the Post”

on Friday night and

“The team dedicated the win to @ChrisWathan and WalesOnline”

after yesterday’s game at Forest.

Now, a personal view is that Mr Wathan’s writing is often of a better quality than that seen in the open letter, but, that’s by the by – the question which springs to mind to me is should it be accepted that he wrote it just because Steve Borley says so?

What’s probably more important for the purposes of this piece though is the implied suggestion that Mr Wathan has an axe to grind because he is a jack.

Although I’ve not seen anything from the man himself to say he’s a Swansea supporter (in fact I’ve seen messageboard claims that he is a Spurs fan), let’s accept for now that Mr Borley is right and the writer of the open letter is, indeed, a jack, then my next question is why should this invalidate everything that appears in the Echo’s open letter?

Tellingly for me, Russell Slade cut short a pre match press conference a few months ago shortly after what seemed to me to be fairly gentle questioning by Chris Wathan, accusing the Echo man of being a Swansea supporter while doing so. Therefore, it seems reasonable to conclude that the view Chris Wathan = jack, is a common one among those who occupy the bunker at Cardiff City Stadium.

I use the word “bunker” there purposely because it seems an appropriate one to use when you think of it’s connection with the word “mentality”.

If Messrs Slade and Borley, along with others in positions of authority at the club, really do believe that it is only jacks who are being critical of Cardiff City during a season which, although not among the worst in the club’s history, has been a very poor one given the money spent on it and the level at which the side has been competing in the last decade or so, then they are deluding themselves.

City director Steve Borley is a fierce defender of the club and owner Vincent Tan on his Twitter account, but is there sometimes a case of him being too close to the action so to speak?

City director Steve Borley is a fierce defender of the club and owner Vincent Tan on his Twitter account, but is it sometimes a case of him being a bit too close to the action, so to speak, to be objective in his views?

On the subject of the jacks, I’ve mentioned before that my attitude towards them is different from many other City supporters because I still don’t see them as our greatest rivals. The truth is that Swansea were never good enough to be in the same league as us during my formative years as a City fan, so it’s the team we always used to play more than any other local side back in those days, Bristol City, who’ll always be our real rivals as far as I’m concerned.

That said, I know I’m in a minority in thinking like that and I would say I have been surprised that there have been so few gloating jacks appearing on the City messageboards I use during the course of the season.

Could it be that many Swansea fans now think they are above us in much the same way I used to about them back in the late 60s and early 70s? In a way it would be understandable if they did – after all, they are celebrating their highest ever points total gained in a Premier League season and there is still a possibility that they could be playing in the Europa League next season by virtue of their finishing position in the so called strongest league in the world.

Compare that to what has happened at Cardiff in 14/15 when we have  looked as far away from the Premier League as at any time since 04/05 – even the most optimistic Cardiff fan has to accept that, at no time since late November, did we look even remotely like obtaining a top six finish.

So, I’d say to Messrs Slade and Borley, and anyone else in the Cardiff City bunker who want to look at things in a Cardiff/Swansea light, that, under your watch, our biggest Welsh rivals are disappearing into the distance as they prosper and we thrash about enduring yet another “transition phase” brought about because of a combination of our gigantic debt and poor decisions made on and off the pitch. As an aside, I’d also mention that I’ve seen Swansea age group sides come to Cardiff and win three times so far this year, so it’s not just at first team level that they are outperforming us.

If things have to be put in a Cardiff v Swansea perspective, then we are coming second virtually everywhere, so, whatever the motivation for the open letter, surely much of what is in it is valid and true?

Speaking for myself, the jacks are very far from my thoughts when I attend home matches these days. I see apathy and, worst of all, the beginnings of the gallows humour/take the piss mentality that I used to be so familiar with in the past when we were crap year in, year out, but had temporarily forgotten about, all around when I go to games now – and that’s from those who can still be bothered attending.

It was good to see that Mehmet Dalman felt the need to apologise to City fans for the way the season has gone at last week’s awards night ceremony, but whose view really represents how those in charge at Cardiff think these days? Is it the one we see in Mr Dalman’s public utterances or the one Mr Borley and one or two others have let slip in recent months? I can’t help thinking that we are in deep, deep trouble if it’s the latter – talk about fiddling while Rome burns!

Posted in Up in the Boardroom | Tagged , , | 9 Comments