Nothing much to report on the City front this week apart from the news that it looks like they’ll be having a pre season training camp in Austria and there are some names to mention of the transfer speculation front,
Firstly, there was something online about us and Luton being interested in Southampton’s Ross Stewart. The Scottish international striker is a twenty seven year old target man striker who was something of a late developer as he only moved into the professional game at the age of twenty with Albion Rovers (actually, that’s not really true, because Albion are only a part time club).
Stewart did enough in his first season to persuade St. Mirren to sign him, but he did little of note at the Paisley club and left them without scoring a league goal. Before that though, he was loaned to Alloa Athletic where a return of seven goals from nineteen games suggests he did pretty well at what was a low level competition by the standards of the EFL. Stewart’s next move took him to Ross County where he was hardly prolific with fifteen goals in sixty three league appearances, but, despite his fairly mundane stats up to then, he was able to attract the attention of bigger clubs and his next move took him into England and Sunderland in particular.
Sunderland were in League One and, after quiet time of it at the back end of 20/21, the next season saw Stewart scoring twenty four times in forty eight league appearances as his team were promoted through the Play offs. Stewart then scored ten times in thirteen games at the start of the following season at the higher level, but has barely played since an achilles injury sustained in an FA Cup tie at Fulham.
Despite the injury causing him to miss the start of last season, Southampton were still prepared to pay a big fee for Stewart towards the end of the last summer’s transfer window, but it wasn’t until November that he was able to make his debut for Russell Martin’s club and a fortnight later, he suffered a hamstring injury which was expected to keep him out for the rest of the season. However, he was able to return with a substitute’s appearance in the Saints final match of the regular season and two more in their successful Play Off campaign.
In essence then, Stewart’s multi million pound move to the south coast club and his two Scottish caps can be put down to a prolific season and a bit with Sunderland in the second and third tiers.
There are three question marks i’d place on any move to Cardiff by Ross Stewart, the first, and most obvious one, is would Southampton be willing to let him go? Given the fee, rumoured to be not far short of £10 million, they paid for him, it seems very unlikely, but there may be some doubts as to whether he is good enough for the Premier League, especially given his recent injury record and this, together with the fact that he hasn’t been able to prove yet that he is fully recovered after having barely played at all in a season and a half could mean the Saints would see a spell in the Championship as the right move for a player who they still feel can do well for them in the longer term..
That injury record brings me on to the thought that, surely, from our perspective, any move for Stewart by City would havc to be on the basis that he’ll be loaned to us . The move to Southampton whule recovering from a long term injury was something of a gamble and what has happened to Stewart since then means that any club willing to sign him permanently at the moment would be taking a huge punt which could see them losing millions while getting little or nothing back from the player.
If Southampton were prepared to let Stewart out on laon for the forthcoming season, I think it could prove to be a shrewd move by City as long as the player remained mostly injury free, but something similar applied to Aaron Ramsey at this time last year and, given how that worked out last season, I’m doubtful if there’s much in this rumour.
A more likely possibility for me is that we may make a move for Marc Leonard, a Scottish under 21 international midfielder who is on Brighton’s books. Twenty two year old Leonard has spent the last two seasons on loan at Northampton playing in the fourth and then third tiers and it seems to be generally accepted that he has looked a good prospect at those levels.
City were first linked with Leonard in January and it appears that, although he still has a season left on his Brighton contract, they would be prepared to sell him for a fee of around £300,000. It’s been reported that Leonard has already had discussions with Preston about a move there, but it seems that nothing more will be coming of that link and now, after earlier links with other Championship clubs, the latest report has Cardiff, newly promoted Oxford and the team they are replacing, Birmingham all chasing the midfielder who I must confess to not knowing much about.
However, I think a strong season with a Northampton side which probably performed better than anticipated in finishing halfway up the table is suggestive of someone who could become a Championship footballer – Leonard doesn’t have a good goalscoring record, but if he is capable of being the box to box type midfielder we lack, then I think he is someone worth pursuing.
Moving on to international football, if the 0-0 draw with Gibraltar a week ago created something of air of crisis in the Welsh senior team, then Sunday’s 4-0 hiding by Slovakia did nothing to dispel it.
I’ll not say much about the game itself. For about half an hour there was enough in the Welsh performance to make you think we were seeing a reaction. to what had happened seventy two hours earlier, but Slovakia gradually got on top and took the lead in added time before the interval with a long range shot that left me questioning goalkeeper Danny Ward who has played so little football this season.
After that, I’m afraid we just folded in a manner which would have you questioning whether the manager concerned had much time left in the job if it had happened in club football. Two goals early in the second half put us on course for a bigger thrashing than 4-0, but Slovakia were only able to add one more late goal.
The home side didn’t look anything special, but it was exactly the sort of nice, gentle warm up for the Euros that they would have wanted. It should also be said that, although there were quite a few first choice Welsh players missing for one reason or another, it was the strongest team Wales could field and the fact that Rob Page only used three subs means that the excuse that this was an experimental line up could not be used.
Sorry for mentioning the election, but it’s only to say that I don’t watch last night’s Q and A from Grimsby with the leaders of the two main parties, but I’ve seem it reported in various sources that Rishi Sunak looked like a “broken man”.
Once again, I’ve not seen the video in question, but it would appear that for Rishi Sunak in Grimsby on Thursday, read Rob Page in Trnava on Sunday. I’ve seen and heard that same term “broken man” applied to the Welsh manager, but the word that has appeared most often to describe his mood is “resigned” – as in resigned to his fate.
Usually, a couple of end of season friendlies which mean nothing in the grand scheme of things do not end up with the manager concerned clinging on to his job. However, the performances and results were so bad against Gibraltar and Slovakia that, put together with what happened in the World Cup, the home humiliation by Armenia (as I mentioned last week, that’s the game which made me feel most strongly about sacking Page) and our failure to beat the worst Polish team of recent times, then the pressure will be ramped up several notches.
Before these last two games it had been said that a poor start to our Nations League campaign in September may see the manager sacked, but there must be a doubt now if Page makes it that far.
In saying that, the thing which could save him is the four year contract given to him back in 2022 which has I’m afraid become more ludicrous looking with every passing game – can the FAW pay up on a contract which still has more than two years left to run?
In between the Gibraltar and Slovakia matches Welsh players appeared before the media to defend the manager against what they saw as unjustified booing of him . To be fair to Wes Burns and Tom King, the former played little part in the Slovakia game and the latter none at all. However, certainly in the last forty fiver minutes on Sunday, there was nothing in the Welsh performance to suggest that this was a group of players fighting to keep their manager in his job – quite the opposite actually.
Thanks as ever, Paul.
I will resist talking about the Bluebirds as it is too depressing to think of another season of this turgid fare being served up. As for Ross Stewart, if he has any sense he will stay away. Put it this way… if he does come, he will have to make his own goals from his long solo runs, which as I recall are a real feature of his play.
Instead of talking City, I will talk Robert Page. And I will give him credit for one thing… putting Tylorstown back on the map of South Wales. Many years had elapsed since the days of The Tylorstown Terror, the great Jimmy Wilde… aka ‘The Ghost With A Hammer In His Hand’… so it was about time that grand Rhondda village got some prominence.
When I was about 14 in 1961, I recall climbing to the top of Tylorstown Tip… easily the tallest coal tip in the Rhondda. (Gosh my skin took some scrubbing clean in our zinc bath afterwards!). The tip was removed some 6 or 7 years later following Aberfan.
I recall relatives coming from Norfolk to visit my mam and me in the Great Snowy winter of 1963. And me taking them down to the bottom of our garden at our house in Birchgrove Strret, Porth, from where we could just see Tylorstown Tip… and telling them that the snow covered peak was our local version of the Matterhorn, and them – being from the flatlands of the Norfolk Broads – falling for it.
Well, Robert was the first man to be ‘Tylorstown Proud’ since Johnny Caesar from South Shields… best known as an actor in Emmerdale Farm.
A bit like the guy who wrote ‘There’ll be Bluebirds Over The White Cliffs of Dover’ had never been to Britain let alone seen them white cliffs (and certainly could never see an American bluebird flying there… a pig being more likely to be airborne) so Johnny had never ‘walked down to Tylorstown’ as he had never been to the place… just found the rhyme convenient amongst place names.
Johnny writes about ‘seeing The Rhondda one more time’… but I don’t think he’d even seen it ONCE when he wrote the song while staying with a friend in Merthyr… and certainly had never ‘walked down to Tylorstown’.
But hey, thank goodness for poetic licence… and for Robert Page too (though maybe not Page the football boss…!!)
Anyway let me leave you with the late Ricky Ebdon from Blackwood. He was a couple of years older than Tom Jones, but alas died far too young at 56 in 1995.
Their vocal DNAs bear striking similarities: one man became a world superstar, while the other never quite got the national prominence he deserved.
https://youtu.be/MfsVBhshJR0?si=qP5gOhqSwOl8I2aY
TTFN,
Dai.
PS. Apols…
Oh I forgot to comment on your commendable disregard for the events of the Sky News prime ministerial debate in Grimsby.
It took place about 10 minutes’ from my door. A few of my neighbours were clamouring for tickets. Not me, nor my wife.
Let me tell you: had those two been debating down in my back garden, I would have closed my bedroom curtains. And if that one of them who says ‘MPs are in a life of public service’, were to say it just once more, I swear to God that I will not be answerable for what happens next…!!
‘Tis us, Joe Public, who serve these scoundrels their incredibly inflated salaries, allowing them to employ their often unemployable spouses, and take them on so-called ‘fact finding’ trips to 5 star hotels in exotic places… get gold-plated pensions and the right to claim expenses on everything under the sun, down to a bottle of HP Sauce. We even subsidise their meals and their beer and wine.
In the immortal words of John Junor… ‘pass the sick bag Alice’.
DW
Thanks Dai, I’ve heard it said, not without reason, on social media that Cardiff City Stadium is a striker’s graveyard.
I’ve probably mentioned this before, but Tom Jones was employed as a construction worker involved in the building of the Pentrebane estate on the outskirts of West Cardiff. Our family had one of the first six houses there to be rented to the public and so down the years I became fond of saying Tom Jones built our house. We moved in around this time of year in 1963 nearly two years before It’s not Unusual was played on Juke Box Jury (something I can remember quite clearly) on its way to becoming a number one hit. So, while my claims about his personal involvement in the building of our house are probably rubbish, it is true to say that he was working in the area not long before he became a star.
I generally tend to make this a politics free area despite me having some pretty strong opinions of my own, but I’ll break my rule to some extent to observe that the first election I could say I had a reasonable idea as to the personalities of the leaders of the two main parties would have been 1970 and I’m struggling to think of a more uninspiring pair than Messrs Sunak and Starmer since then, possibly Cameron and Milliband in 2015 and May and Corbyn in 2017, but I’d say Cameron had an air of authority about him that Sunak and Starmer lack and the two from 2017 were basically more honest than the current pair
Paul, compadre,
Nice anecdote about Tommy Woodward. I knew about his job in the glove factory on Treforest Trading Estate, but his working in construction was new to me
You are right to make MAYA a politics-free zone. It was wonderful how during the Brexit debate we all kept our opinions to ourselves… although our dear late friend Colin Phillips did succumb to temptation the once.
It is just that you fleetingly first mentioned the Grimsby Sky News debate… and I stupidly could not resist the temptation to venture forth.
I will say no more about politics, other than add that if the Messiah makes His ‘Second Coming’ tomorrow and chooses not to come back in the (Un)Holy Land of Israel, but to descend instead on Westminster, England, then He assuredly this time won’t bother with removing moneychangers from the temple. But instead, He will turf the 1500 freeloaders out of the Palace of Westminster… and throw them into The Thames.
Right that’s me finished on politics.
As for the Bulut era… methinks that is equally depressing. Time for genuine Bulut fans now to make the running, and me to take a back seat.
TTFN,
Dai.
Yes Dai, I’m intending to give Bulut a fresh start, but when you read that they are finally getting around to having a meeting between representatives of the Board and the manager about transfer targets and that, contrary to what I said a few days ago, nothing is settled yet regarding the venue for a pre season training camp apparently, it’s hard for the word “complacent” not to spring to mind.