Season 2012/13 for Malky Mackay.

Posted on August 14, 2012 by The other Bob Wilson

Last year my preview piece for the upcoming season in the Boardroom was, mercifully, short, while the one I did about what the coming nine months would hold for our newly appointed manager Malky Mackay went on for absolutely ages! Well, having done the opposite this year as the off the field preview I did yesterday clocked up something like 1,600 words, my initial thought when sitting here to start this piece was to complete the job by typing a couple of paragraphs which said that our manager will be sacked if we are not right up there in the top three or four come October or November.

After all, having given our manager something like £5 million to spend on transfer fees alone (so far only a few hundred thousand of that has been recouped in outgoing transfer fees), Vincent Tan and the members of Cardiff City’s Board will be expecting substantive progress from last year’s encouraging but ultimately disappointing first season at the helm for Malky Mackay. Besides that impressive transfer budget, Mackay has also been given the resources to bring Craig Bellamy here and you have to think that the wages for the likes of Mutch, Helguson, Kim Bo-Kyung, Lewis and Velikonja could well be more than the combined salaries of the players who have left the club this summer. Yes, Malky Mackay has been backed to an extent that probably no other Cardiff manager has in the past and, whatever way the millions Vincent Tan believes we will make from his re-branding are meant to come about, it seems certain that we will have to be in the Premiership to do so. Consequently, if the signs are that Malky Mackay isn’t going to be able to deliver top flight football, you fear for his survival chances.

However, a couple of things need to be borne in mind here. First, it’s obvious that the Board have confidence in Malky – the contract extension he signed just before the League Cup Final is proof of that. The second point is that, although I realise that a manager’s reputation can be ruined by just a couple of defeats these days, Malky Mackay is recognised by many in the game as one of Football managements bright young things – any straw poll taken now of experienced and successful current managers would surely produce a majority who believed Cardiff had the right man in charge.

Hopefully, Malky Mackay’s relationship with TG and Vincent Tan will remain as close as it was on 24 January after beating Palace in the League Cup Semi Final.

I’m among what I believe to be a large majority of supporters who believe Malky Mackay did a very good job last season. True, I think he was lucky to inherit a fanbase at his new club which did not need much pleasing after Dave Jones sometimes gave the impression he would rather be anywhere else but at Cardiff during his final year with the club. Furthermore, by building a squad reliant to a large degree on the honest virtues of hard work and selflessness, he was providing the very qualities that fans wanted after years where we had too many big ego’s who, sometimes, could be accused of putting the needs of the team second, but I think it’s fair to say that Malky Mackay has put the foundations in place which give him the opportunity of making a significant progression in his second season.

For me, the fundamental challenge facing Malky Mackay at the end of last season was how he could get more “game changers” into our team without damaging the hard working, team comes first philosophy which had taken us so far, but not far enough, in 2011/12. Although it’s wrong to make sweeping generalisations, the flair and innate talent which allows an individual to sometimes make the decisive difference in a team environment, often comes with character defects which mitigate against the team objective (just look at the current situation with the England cricket team for proof of that).

Malky Macaky pictured with one of the examples of sporting quotations (these are from Michael Jordan) that are dotted around the club’s training ground at the Vale.

To use a a historical analogy, I’d say what Malky Mackay has been looking for are Cavaliers with a Roundhead work ethic. Time will tell if he has been successful or not, but I would say that the signs are promising – Craig Bellamy is no stranger to controversy of course, but I’ve always thought that much of this stems from a frustration at colleagues who are not prepared to put as much in as he is – a personal viewpoint is that Bellamy was never totally at ease with some of our “superstars” in 10/11 and will feel more at home with the 11/12 attitude if it can be replicated this time around. Of the other signings, Kim Bo-Kyung certainly looked like a team player, with no little natural ability, in the matches I saw him play in the Olympics and the fact that our manager wanted to sign two players in Mutch and Helguson who he had worked with before says that he is convinced they’ll fit into the “one for all, all for one” attitude he instilled last season.

As for how Malky will go about things tactically, I think he will stick to the philosophy that he outlined in his first press conference after his appointment at Cardiff in which he, essentially, said his sides would play in a way designed to give every opponent we came up against the maximum amount of problems. With that in mind, it’s interesting to see that many view last season’s team as a long ball outfit whereas for me, it was hard to characterise us as one thing or another. There were certainly times when we went from back to front very quickly (especially when we were chasing the game and had switched, as we invariably did, from 4-5-1 to 4-4-2 for the last twenty to thirty minutes of the game), but I’d also say that I saw much more last season of David Marshall playing short balls to defenders to try and build attacks from the back than I ever did under Dave Jones.

I’ve already mentioned that we were more flexible tactically during matches than many were prepared to give us credit for and I’d like to think that we now have a few players better equipped to hug the touchlines than we did – but only if that’s the way it is believed we can enjoy the greatest success. Although I’d always prefer my team to play more like Barcelona than Wimbledon, I think you can become stuck in a tactical straight jacket if you stick slavishly to one way of playing rather than keep the opposition guessing as to what approach you’ll use.

To sum up, I think Malky Mackay will be under more pressure than virtually all of his predecessors as Cardiff manager, and the large majority of his counterparts in the Championship, this season. However, there’s an additional reason why I want City to succeed over the next nine months – it would mean that a manager whose enthusiasm, good humour, attention to detail, openness and, yes, charisma makes me like him as a person, would still be in his job – Malky Mackay deserves that based on his first fourteen months at Cardiff.

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Season 2012/13 off the pitch.

Posted on August 13, 2012 by The other Bob Wilson

For two years the Malaysian investors rode on a wave of popularity from Cardiff City fans. The reception received by Dato Chan Tien Ghee (TG) and Vincent Tan when they came on to the pitch after the League Cup Semi Final win over Palace back in January typified the warmth, respect and gratitude felt towards the Malaysian investors in general and these two men in particular because there was a a knowledge on most people’s part that the club’s prospects didn’t bear thinking about without their financial input. However, while they were being lauded all of this time, there was always that lingering question in the background – why are they doing this (club employees admitted asking the same question at the meetings I attended back in May)?

For much of last season, revelations that we were losing £1.2 million a month (to go with the £1 million a month shortfall back in 2010/11) were if not ignored, then at least swept under the carpet, as a  fanbase that was generally fed up to the back teeth with all of the financial problems caused by the ineptitude of those running the club from 2000 – 2010 chose to concentrate on the football amid an air of optimism brought on by an energetic and enthusiastic new manager and a team, which gave their all every week, that supporters found easier to relate to than some other recent Cardiff squads. However, with the amount invested in the form of loans by Vincent Tan standing at £40 million last spring, there was finally a recognition that Cardiff City’s spectacular loss making could not continue indefinitely.

So, along with the change in colours and badge which has caused so much controversy this summer, there have also been warnings that the club were not going to be able to keep on going as it has been. Now, City fans have been hearing this sort of thing for years and nothing’s ever changed, so what’s so different this time? Well, I would say that having been lucky enough to have found one billionaire willing to bail them out two years ago, the odds against them finding another one in the event of Vincent Tan pulling the plug must be miniscule (especially with a debt level greatly swollen by £40 million’s worth of new loans) – with that amount of investment and him being the biggest shareholder in the club (although, significantly, he doesn’t have 50%+ of those shares), Mr Tan enjoys a level of dominance at the club not seen since Sam Hammam in his “bigger than Barcelona” days.

Consequently, although there may have been resistance to the re-branding in the Boardroom and there certainly has been amongst some of the fanbase (even those willing to accept the change to red have nearly always qualified that view with the wish that we stay in blue), the simple truth is that Vincent Tan’s hold on Cardiff City is such that what Mr Tan wants, Mr Tan gets. Once again though, you find yourself asking “why?”, why is it so important to him that we ditch the colour we have worn as our first choice for 104 years? Those more pragmatic supporters willing to live with the change based on a feeling that there was a “master plan” which would eventually be revealed to us all, have been waiting more than three months now for evidence of this and, apart from a statement from our finance director that the revenue generated by the re-branding will not just come from shirt sales in the Far East and some vague talk of people in that part of the world being able to watch highlights of Cardiff games, they are none the wiser – meanwhile, those who have been saying from day one that the change is just down to a whim on Mr Tan’s part look on having seen nothing so far to indicate that they are wrong.

Will it ever be the same again? Vincent Tan and Chairman TG are greeted rapturously by supporters before last season’s League Cup Final – maybe promotion might bring about similar scenes, but I’m not convinced it would.

However, if you look at the situation from the perspective of a businessman who certainly had no great affinity for Cardiff City until pretty recently (I wonder if he even knew of it’s existence three years ago?), then you see a business based in an area which has made great strides in the time since it’s football team last played in the top flight. Links by motorway make Cardiff much more accessible than it was, the Bay development has made the City more attractive and brought thousands of service sector jobs to replace the manufacturing jobs from the first half of the twentieth century lost in the 70’s and 80’s and, whatever you may think of it, the Welsh Assembly does give the City a sense of authority it didn’t have before. There are other examples I could use, but the point I’m trying to make is that Cardiff’s profile on the domestic and world stages has grown markedly in my opinion since 1962, but the City’s football team has, if anything, gone backwards in that time – yes, there have been a couple of Cup Final losses, but, in terms of league position, we have been very disappointing (biggest under achievers in the Football League?).

Therefore, if you are a businessman who does not get the special relationship that exists between a fan and his’her football club (all the evidence suggests that Mr Tan doesn’t) and you look at Cardiff’s record over the immediate and long term past, the idea of a rehash of what you see as a failing brand which is not making a return on your investment might be an attractive one. The thing is though, cold logic plays little part in that “special relationship” I just talked about and I think that it’s true to say that even amongst those willing to be more pragmatic about the issue, there is a need to see more evidence of progress in other directions apart from the transfer spending which, to be frank, has a Hammamesque feel to it at the moment.

There’s a piece on the BBC website this morning in which Alan Whiteley talks about the signing of Craig Bellamy not being something done purely to appease supporters angry over the re-branding. I believe Mr Whiteley when he says that, but, when it comes to his comment later on in the article that  “What’s important for the fans is that they are seeing that the promises that were made as part of the whole exercise are actually being delivered”, I respond “are they?”. Fair enough, the increase in ground capacity has, sensibly in my view, been delayed until after promotion is won. As for the new training complex, well, based on the info available at present, we seem less further down the road to completion than we were three months ago when we were told in those meetings I mentioned earlier that a site had been chosen. Now, it seems that’s changed and no final decision has been made -there’s even the chance that we will be staying at the present headquarters in the Vale.

It’s been a fraught summer for Chief Executive Alan Whiteley who must be hoping that the new season will see attention switch away from re-branding and financial issues.

Worst of all though is that there has been no progress whatsoever on settling the Langston loan note debt which we were told would lead to the debt to equity conversion which, for me at least, makes the whole re-branding exercise worthwhile. Indeed, you even have to wonder as to the Club’s desire to get this albatross that’s been hanging around our neck sorted out sooner rather than later – after all, what was initially reported as £10 million put aside to settle the debt, has since developed into the three options outlined in this article with the “I believe Sam would look favourably if an offer of £10m paid in full up front was put forward” bit referred to by Sam Hammam’s “close friend” now transformed into £10 million plus a £5 million promotion bonus!

My feeling is that without a settlement of the Langston debt and a subsequent debt to equity conversion, all we are seeing at the moment is more of the same sort of promotion or bust stuff that has characterised so much of the last decade or more at Cardiff City, but this time it’s backed up by a divisive and, seemingly, needless change of kit. I can understand the transfer spending to the extent that I have believed it is the only option open to us (sadly, we are beyond the stage where “living within our means” will sort our finances out) for some time now. We have to get promoted to stand a chance of getting some sort of financial equilibrium at the club, but without changes to our current level of debt, we are at a stage where even promotion might not be enough.

I started by asking why the Malaysian investors got involved with Cardiff City. Well, we now know that Vincent Tan hasn’t been lobbing in £1.2 million a month out of the goodness of his heart (not that anyone really thought that did they?), but there’s still too many unanswered questions about this £100 million investment in my opinion. To be fair I suppose, although the lack of evidence to back up Alan Whiteley’s claim that City are delivering on their promises is frustrating, three months is not that long a period for the sort of issues covered by those promises. That’s why it’s probably best to reluctantly give the club a benefit of the doubt it doesn’t really deserve when you consider how the change of kit was imposed on us and the cack handed nature of some of the “official” statements we’ve seen from them over the past few weeks – there’s no way we can just concentrate on the football and ignore all the other stuff like we did last year this time around though.

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