In my reaction piece for the Norwich game, I said that Aaron Ramsey’s comments to the media had made him being appointed as our new permanent manager less likely than it may have looked when he was first put in temporary charge of the team.
However, I wrote that before I’d heard Ramsey’s post game press conference in which he tended to adopt more of a wait and see attitude. Therefore, the notion of him getting the job now seems slightly more likely than I thought it was three or four days ago.
I hope and expect that we won’t see Ramsey appointed Player Manager as the role has almost become obsolete these days. I think you’d have to be very proficient in both of those parts of the game to make a success of the manager’s job while still making a playing contribution which made you part of your team’s strongest starting eleven.
Maybe I’m being unfair here, but what tends to come over when the subject of keeping on playing is discussed with Ramsey is that, first and foremost, he wants to be part of any Welsh participation in the 2026 World Cup. Of course, City would benefit if a fully fit Ramsey was playing well enough to get himself in the Welsh squad through next season, but he’ll be 35 next Boxing Day and there’s been nothing in the past two seasons to indicate that he will be able to do that as injuries will limit any contribution he makes as a player.
If Ramsey were to get the job, I believe it would signal an end to his playing career, so, making a few assumptions, would I want him to be the next manager of Cardiff City?
To hear Ramsey talking after the three games he took charge of, you could be forgiven for thinking he’d overseen a big improvement in the team. I don’t blame him for saying that and, in certain facets of the game, I’d say things were better. I thought our attitude was better in the games where we still had a chance of avoiding the drop and you could make a pretty convincing case for why we should have beaten Oxford and could have beaten West Brom – for me, the performance in those two matches was better than what we’d become used to under Omer Riza.
However, the fact is that while all around us were getting the wins needed to give them the chance to preserve their Championship status, we kept on failing to do so -Ramsey got us two points from a possible nine when we needed five more than that.
Those advocating Ramsey for manager would ask, not unreasonably, whether three games at very short notice with someone else’s squad should be enough to rule their man out of contention? I would add that, more than someone like a Richie Wellens or a Karl Robinson (two names linked with the job already), Ramsey would have the “clout’ to demand changes from Vincent Tan in the way the club is run and how it goes about its training and recruitment programmes.
Clearly, getting the managerial appointment right is very important. For my part, I thought appointing Ramsey could be an inspired choice or a complete flop before he had his three games in charge and my opinion hasn’t changed much after that trio of games have been played. Notwithstanding my earlier comment about him, Wellens appeals to me, Robinson doesn’t and as for Nathan Jones, I can’t help thinking that, if we ever were going to appoint him under Vincent Tan’s ownership, we would have done so by now.
Although three months seems a long time before competitive football starts again, let’s not forget that line about teams in the Play Offs being at a disadvantage because they’re behind in their planning compared to others. Well, City, for a third straight year, have put themselves at that same disadvantage while having none of the hope and possible joy that a Play Off place entails. More than any other candidate, Ramsey could be a quick appointment and, if he was, we would then, hopefully, not have to go through the rigmarole of this “review” of club procedure which, it seems, will be carried out by the same people who have made such a mess of running the club for the past five years (in fact, you could make that fifteen years).
So, while the choice of manager is undoubtedly significant, it still comes second to me to getting rid of the self inflicted disadvantages the ownership puts on the club when it comes to competing on an equal footing with the teams it faces every week.
It’s truly baffling why someone with Vincent Tan’s record in business does not seem to recognise and act upon the fact (and it is a fact, not an opinion) that the football part of his business “empire” is failing miserably in both Wales and Belgium. If his McDonald’s franchises in Malaysia was returning results like Cardiff City and Kortrijk have been doing year in, year out, he would have taken steps to address the situation well before now.
Tan knows his ownership of City has been, to put it mildly, a failure, yet he keeps on behaving as if he knows better than the all of the specialists in the footballing field who have been telling him he’s been getting it wrong for years.
Will the shame of a double relegation be enough to persuade Vimcent Tan as to the error of his ways? Is he in a position to listen to someone like a Ramsey or some other potential City manager when they tell him he has to change things to stop City’s downward drift – I’m not convinced he’ll change, but we have to hope that he will and there was that admission he was wrong with the rebrand ten years ago to cling to as well.
If Tan is for changing, what will that entail? Well, there’s been plenty of talk of things like a full time CEO working at the stadium every day, a Director of Football to oversee the recruitment side of things and more specialised coaching, but I’m no expert on such things and would be happy to leave it to people (not the trio currently in charge!) far more versed in what makes a successful football club these days to oversee the changes.
What I would say though is that I’m clear in my mind about the sort of things i don’t want to see any more of – here’s a few of them.
MANAGERIAL APPOINTMENTS
No more done on the cheap appointments from within. No more leaving a caretaker boss in charge for three months while results get worse and worse and then appoint him until the end of the season (something you could have done ten weeks earlier). No more of the arrogance which sees recommendations from former managers ignored because you consider their suggestions too “boring”. Let any manager manage without interference from the owner.
PLAYER RECRUITMENT
An end to the “transfer committee” which has clearly failed. An end to Roco Simic type transfers. After a season as a Cardiff City player, is anyone any the wiser as to why we signed Simic?
Here’s a scenario for you that would be too daft for words at other clubs, but, because it’s Cardiff City involved, it might possibly be true. We see that Sunderland are interested in signing Simic and so think “he must be good and we’re desperate for a striker”, so you offer more to Simic’s club and to the player than Sunderland (always assuming they were really after him) and complete the signing, only for it to become clear very quickly in training that the player is nowhere near ready for Championship football yet. Therefore, the manager at the time gets told to inform the media that Simic is a “club project” and is being loaned out to Kortrijk who, it turns out, have no use for him.
Simic returned to City in January having featured very little for Kortrijk and has spent his time since then playing for our under 21 team where he has shown some ability as a finisher and a slow, but gradual, improvement in his all round play.
There’s been something of a clamour from fans to see Simic play for the first team and maybe he would have come on as a sub on Saturday if it were not for Calum Chambers’ red card, but I’m not convinced he’s good enough for the first team yet based on what I’ve seen of him in the under 21s.
Despite the opinions expressed at the time about us having a good transfer window, the league table does not lie and the recruitment last summer was not good enough. There’s no two ways about that – who out of the players recruited last summer could now be called a good signing? I’d say Alex Robertson was the best, but his displays from January onwards mean that he was the best of a bad bunch.
The January window could be called more of a success, but only because of Yousef Salech – Will Alves flattered to deceive and, although I’d be happy to see Sivert Mannsverk back here next season, his performances certainly didn’t justify the sort of fee we’d have to pay for him.
Like so many things at Cardiff City, our recruitment procedures have been shown to be unfit for puropse in recent years.
COACHING
I’m going to use Jesper Daland to try and make a point about the standard of coaching at first team level. I think it’s fair to say that all City fans were impressed by Daland’s debut at Swansea – I try not to go too over the top about players making their debuts, but I remember thinking that he looked like he could be an upgrade on Mark McGuinness whose sale had been for about three times what we paid for Daland.
The following week, Daland had to go off at half time with an injury caused by one of his team mates (think it might have been Perry Ng) and he never looked the same player again. Now, you cannot rule out the player having problems settling at his new club, but you do have to wonder about the standard of coaching at the club when you see how Daland was performing once he had returned to fitness – he had regressed as a player.
Meanwhile, Will Fish, another signed out of the proceeds of the McGuinness sale, was a permanent non playing sub through the first half of the season, yet, when he finally got his chance, he showed himself to be the best of our centrebacks. Okay, that’s not much of a compliment given how we played in that position through the season, but we’re always being told that our opinions aren’t valid because we don’t get to see what happens in training,.However, you have to wonder why no one on the coaching staff could see that Fish might have been worth a go in the starting line up from September through to january.
Coaching is supposed to be about improving players, but what first team players can you say have definitely improved over the period they’ve been working with the first team staff at City in recent years? I maintain Daland became a worse player the more coaching he received at Cardiff, while someone like Cian Ashford, who I feel was the biggest single reason for the improvement in results and performances we saw through January, was playing worse in April than he was when he was given his, belated, chance around the turn of the year.
Omer Riza was given a makeshift and depleted coaching staff to work with during his time in temporary charge and only one newcomer was brought in when we he was given the job until the end of the season. Once again, you get the distinct impression that a club that is always paying over the odds when it comes to transfer fees and wages for players is trying to do things on the cheap when it comes to all other staff.
ADMINISTRATION
Thjis one should be the easiest of the lot – have at least some full time staff at the top of the club who are on hand at the ground to deal with matters as they arise. Such people should have more knowledge of the game than the present incumbents do and there should be less secrecy!
MEDICAL
To be fair, this could be more down to a feeling of Cardiff City being a club where everything is going wrong than a problem with the department concerned. However, we did seem to have more injuries (particularly ones to hamstrings) through the season just ended compared to normal and there seemed to be more cases of players suffering from “setbacks” in their recovery. As I say, there may not be a problem here, but does the “doing things on the cheap” attitude extend to the treatment rooms?
I’m sure there’s other things I could come up with given time, but that’s more than enough for now. It still feels like I should do something more player related before leaving 24/25 behind and I can see me doing at least one more piece before I revert to the normal weekly review pieces that continue on through the summer.
Paul compadre,
Just back from the best part of a week in a Sussex caravan and am rushing things a bit here as I am trying to put out a DAIGRESSING to my faithful* in 28 countries. So forgive me if this is a shorter contribution than normal.
A very thoughtful piece from you Paul about the future. Am I playing devil’s advocate when I say the following about that very ‘future’? I think not… nor is the inside of my cheek suffering from internal bruising. Here goes…
1. Far from NOT employing caretaker managers, would it not be great if Vincent said “I am proud to say that Cardiff City will be the only club out of the 92 to be bold enough to ONLY employ a manager on a three month rolling contract… that contract only renewable if he meets his targets’. That way absolute CADS like Bilic will steer well clear, and we would have young eager HUNGRY managers applying. Certainly we would not be employing a chap who was at the helm when Orient finally left the Football League after 101 seasons… true he was only manager for the last seven games that season, when they dauntingly needed at least 15 points out of 21 to survive… a tough task for even God Almighty. But there is ‘failing’ and there is ‘dismally failing’… and Omer** failed dismally alright… just amassing a paltry 4 points… 3 of them against fellow fallers through the trapdoor, Hartlepool.
So surely it should have been ‘caveat emptor’ for Vincent there after that evidence? But no, apparently not.
* that should more properly be ‘UN-faithful’… since methinks the majority of folks consign my efforts to their trash… which alas is THEIR loss as well as mine.
** I often wonder about the spelling. Why was he not named after my boyhood hero Omar Khayyam? Instead he is named apparently after a French Christian saint…!!
But as a Turkish Cypriot North Londoner, surely he was – if of any faith – then that of the Muslim religion?
Could it have been a spelling error when his parents registered his birth?
That his name ends up like being Homer pronounced in the best working class Cockney as ‘Omer’… makes me think of that pleasant yellow-coloured patriarch cove of ‘The Simpsons’…!! And let’s be fair, there was nothing disagreeable about Omer was there? Apart from his performance that is. Indeed, on reflection I even commend him for calling some of fans ‘clueless’: those were the blighters who insisted Vincent give him a contract. Had Omer stayed a caretaker, he might have pulled off an escape.
2. I love you dearly Paul, but thou canst not be serious when you say that initially you thought Daland an upgrade on Mark McGuinness? Look, Mark was no Danny Malloy, maybe not even an upgrade on a Don Murray, but c’mon… Without him, Goutas went backwards and City lost what bit of a spine they had. I know that Mark did not save Luton, but he was MotM in several games after they’d correctly positioned him at the centre of a three…
3. Training staff. It always amazes me the size of our what Shankly called his ‘boot room staff’ far exceeds his. Yes I know it is the modern trend, but to me it is just so much trendy bolloxio. Me? I’d get rid of 80% of them… not the tea ladies like Ratcliffe is doing at Old Trafford.
4. I note you mentioning paying inflated prices for players. This is often based on doubtful third party evidence… never more apparent than in the Sala case where Neil Warnock was allegedly given info by Willie McKay that two clubs had bid ‘x’ amount for the poor doomed Emiliano… which both third party clubs later denied, and led to us overpaying by several million quid.
5. A word on the Simic experience. I agree with you in theory, but please remember that this is what big clubs like Chelsea and Man city have been doing for many years now. Oh Jeez… so much for a ‘short contribution’ eh?!! Off to my DAIGRESSING. Too rushed to proofread. Apols in advance for typos.
Salutations, Dai.
First thing to say Dai, is for about the first month he was here, I was automatically calling Omer Riza, Omar and I assumed it was a mistake when I first noticed his currect first name.
To answer your five points;-
1. As I feel we’re always hamstrung to a degree when looking for a new manager because a lot of the better possible candidates would not work for Vincent Tan (Alex Ferguson advised Ole not to apply for the Cardiff job and I’d hardly say that Vincent Tan’s repatation has gone up since then), maybe only offering three month contracts is the way to go.
Seriously, I have three problems with your suggestion, First, it would decrease the quality of candidates applying for the job and, second, Tan took almost the length of one of your three month contracts making up his mind on Riza and when he decided to appoint him for the rest of the season, we were on a long run of games without a win – whatever the length of the contract, it won’t change the fact that our owner has terrible judgment when it comes to football. Finally, rolling three month contracts would make the way in which we operate even more short termist (if that’s a word).
You can argue about the extent to which he succeeded or not, but Dave Jones used to say that his aim when taking over at a new team was to “build” a club – such ambition would be pointless at Cardiff if the manager concerned was going to have to earn three contracts a season.
2. I did say I did what I try to avoid when it comes to new players and that is form a judgment on them after a small number of games (in this case one!). So, yes, I did think Daland looked like an improvement on McGuinness after his first game. I broke my own rule and the fact that Daland showed over the coming months that I was hopelessly wrong in jumping to that conclusion only proves the point that I try to always operate under.
On the subject of McGuinness, I’m not seeing much criticism of him from Luton fans despite their relegation – in fact, I’ve seen more praise for him than criticism. Based on that, I can see Championship clubs being interested in signing him for next season even if the fee involved might have to be a bit less than Luton, reportedly, paid for him.
In total contrast, I watched a Podcast last night where someone went through the whole of our squad discussing what to do with every member of it this summer. They also used a couple of those sites which estimate a player’s wage to help arrive at a judgment on each player. To be fair to the person concerned, he did emphasise that the figures were estimates and he doubted whether some of them were anywhere near correct, but some of the figures were mind boggling.
However, it didn’t stop him saying that we should sell various twenty nine and thirty year olds (plus Willock) who are all under contract for next season. You can guess most of the names involved correctly i’m sure and yet, despite them being so poor in the season just ended, he was acting as if there were Championship clubs lining up willing to pay these men what we were paying them or even more! There may be some Championship sides interested in a deal for some of them under much lower wages, but i’d say it’s more likely that, if there is any interest in these players, it’ll be from other League One clubs because, with the exception of Callum Robinson with his dozen goals, none of them proved themselves to be Championship standard while playing for us.
3. I agree to the extent that the quality of the people you hire is the most important thing, but I would add that I bet the five or six regulars in Liverpool’s Boot Room were not the sum total pf employees on the training and support side of things at Anfield , there were plenty of others who played a part in getting the first team up to standard. We spent most of last season with a very inexperienced and unproven version of the Boot Room and there were only three or four of them.
4. I agree that you cannot rely entirely on reported transfer fees, but much of the reason for this is that both buying and selling clubs want to get figures out there that portray them in the best possible light – selling clubs want to get their fans thinking they’re getting good value for the player (e.g. in the case of Mark McGuinness who I’m sure we won’t be getting the £10 million that has been mentioned for) and the buying club wants to show supporters how ambitious they are as they’re happy to see reports of the fee involved being an absolute maximum if all of the various clauses regarding promotion, international caps etc. are met.
I’ve seen the reported transfer fees for Daland, Fish, Simic and Salech ammounting to a little bit more than the £10 million we hear we got for McGuinness. I don’t believe for a second that we’ll end up paying something like £11 million for these players, but, while it looks like we may have got a bargain in Salech and Fish is not looking bad value, whatever we paid for the other two looks to be ‘inflated’ to me. You can also add David Turnbull (signed fifteen months ago) to that list and there are those who’d say Alex Robertson should be on it as well. We’ve definitely paid over the top in terms of fees for new signings, but, for me, worse than that are the wages we’ve paid on free transfer signings that have not worked (e.g. El Ghazi, Willock, Chambers etc)
5. We’re not Liverpool or Chelsea though are we and among the most ludicrous things this club that specialises in being ludicrous has done is pay millions, reportedly, for a striker (a position we desperately needed reinforcements in) and then promptly loan him out to the owner’s other club where he barely plays a game!
Good points, Paul. I agree with so much of what you say.
Changing the subject only partly from our lot… a word on the next City boss. Watch this interview please… https://tinyurl.com/2f28fpuu
Now, Nathan’s name was mud after the Stoke and Southampton debacles, and he has done well to overcome his detractors and rebuild his career. But what if they lose – as is distinctly possible – to the Orient at Wembley? Would he pin his colours to the mast of his boyhood club? Or would his new lifestyle living (as I seem to recall) in a swish Canary Wharf apartment, trump all considerations to come back and live in our beloved Rhondda?
His remarkable managerial performance at Luton told me that this chap has something very special when it comes to motivating men… and if he could bring his centre half namesake with him, well what a coup that would be for Mehmet (who personally has some unfinished business with the Addicks).
And Nathan earned a place in my heart for famously getting under the skin of our arrogant Steve Morison, in a touchline spat…!!
DW
I find myself changing my mind a lot about Nathan Jones Dai, but, if I had to make a decision, I’d say yes to him (although I’d prefer the bloke who’ll be up against him in the Play Off Final). First of all, I should say that I found the Charlton v Wycombe Semi Final awful to watch – last night was an improvement on Sunday’s wrestling match, but that’s not saying much. However, by turning Charlton around, Id say he’s answered the charge that he could only manage one club well – even if they lose to Orient, Nathan Jones has proved he’s not a one trick pony.
I think it was on here I said that I think that if Nathan Jones to Cardiff was ever going to happen, it would have done so by now and, if he’s going to get into the sort of state he got into last night for Charlton, what would he be like when he was managing the club he identifies with more than any other? Yes, I can see plus sides to having someone so passionate in charge, but I think that it could cause problems if he started to think, rightly or wrongly, that he wasn’t getting the support he wanted from the owner and Board – trying to look at it from Vincent Tan’s position, I think Nathan Jones could be very hard work for him.
Paul, compadre,
Have overdosed this week on TV soccer. On Friday I saw the first half of Villa v Spurs and the full 90 of Chelsea v Man United.
Saturday got me watching the first 29 minutes of Football Focus, then switching to Sky for all of Wimbledon v Notts County (yes, I know… don’t ask), then catching the remaining 29 minutes of FF (which I’d recorded), before feverishly switching to the FA Cup final in time to hear a weak soprano voice deliver Abide With Me and the National Anthem.
Sunday was a total overdose starting with the Hammers v Forest, then Arsenal v Newcastle, then the Women’s FA Cup Final (which I’d recorded and managed not to know the score)… and I ended the day with Match of the Day.
All the time I should have been properly proofreading my mass mailing DAIGRESSING, but didn’t, and thus consequently sent it out with a spelling typo on the first page that would have embarrassed a seven year old.
Guess which game I enjoyed the most? I loved the last fifteen minutes at the London Stadium when my favourite referee somewhat lost control of the game. But up till then it had not really caught fire.
But no… for the full 90 minutes it had to be the game at Wembley. But Paul, before you splutter over your cornflakes… it was not Saturday’s Wembley final, but Sunday’s…!!
Saturday’s was a case of chickens coming home to roost. Man City with their hopeless crab-like football sent us all to sleep. Manuel Akanji is the biggest coward currently drawing a crazily inflated salary… for he always lacks the courage to put in a cross… but instead passes the ball back to Ruben Dias who had only given it him in the first place because he too lacked the confidence of a Millie Bright to play a fast straight incisive pass forward to cut through the middle of a packed defence. Such a boring game was made tolerable by the saves of Henderson (a lucky boy after that handling offence was not spotted) and his desire to properly kick his goal kicks. (The Hammers’ keeper again showed the folly of playing out from the back by surrendering a kamikaze nightmare goal yesterday.)
But no, the Sunday Cup Final was a really rewarding game. That Scots lassie Erin Cuthbert is some player… she is like a female Archie Gemmell: covers every blade of grass and can tigerishly tackle and see a pass. Rightly she was judged Player of the Match.
Both sides wanted to play attacking football… it was so refreshing after Pep’s snorefest.
TTFN,
Dai