Weekly review 15 August 2020.

One story almost completely dominated the week just ended – City’s signing of Wales striker Keiffer Moore from Wigan Athletic on a three year contract for a fee I’ve seen reported as as low as £1.8 million and as high as £2.5 million, so I suppose it’s probably right to go somewhere halfway between those figures and you won’t be too far off.

Moore made his debut for Wigan a week after they had beaten us 3-2 on the opening day of last season and,,despite being a pretty regular starter for them throughout the rest of 2019, had only a penalty against Swansea and a header at Luton (both in 2-1 defeats) to add to his two, very important, goals for Wales in their Euros qualifying campaign by the time his club turned down a bid widely reported at £2.3 million from City in January.

Given that Moore then went on to score eight further goals in less than half a season for Wigan as they finished in mid table only to be shockingly relegated because their new owner treated them as no more than a way of winning a bet, even if we did end up paying the full two and a half million for him, it still looks like good business.

Ten goals in a season for a relegated team is a good return for a striker these days, but, in truth, Wigan were a relegation team in name only. Before their twelve point deduction they would have finished just below half way in the league in thirteenth having been one of the Championship’s form teams in 2020.

While, on the one hand, Moore’s goal return starts to look more modest when that is borne in mind, it is also probably fair to say that, in a side that played the game in a much less direct style than Cardiff do typically, he became a very important member of a team that only lost two of the last eighteen games he featured in.

A look at our new signing’s career record reveals him to be, if not prolific, then a more frequent goalscorer than I, for one, thought he was, with a positive aspect being that, if anything, he is scoring more frequently as his career goes on despite the fact that he has climbed up through the divisions as well as making an impact internationally in recent years.

Goals videos are of limited value I know, but this one from the 2018/19 season when Moore was with Barnsley in League One confirms a suspicion from his games for Wales and some of his goals for Wigan in the season just ended that he has better feet than you might expect from a six foot five target man.

Welcome to Cardiff City Keiffer Moore and I hope you can continue the upward trajectory of your career with us.

One thing our new signing did in his media interviews was confirm that City’s first team squad will be returning for pre season training for the resumption of league fixtures on 12 September on Monday and this will be followed the following day by an announcement of the fixture list for 20/21.

One player unlikely to be there when training restarts however is Danny Ward, who was excellent for us in some of his substitute appearances post lockdown. Ward was reported in the last few days as being in “advanced” talks with Huddersfield about a move back up north to one of his former clubs on a free transfer following the expiry of his contract with City.

The possibility that Dion Sanderson would be back for a second loan with us was not discounted by Neil Harris when he was interviewed following the Moore signing. In fact, he almost made it sound like a likelihood – whether it be Sanderson or not, we clearly need more competition at right back and so you would expect one of the “one or two” newcomers the manager was looking for to be in that position.

Finally, while the senior players “enjoy” one last free weekend before returning to training, the Under 23s are already playing pres season friendlies – the first of which was at Cardiff City Stadium on Wednesday against Connah’s Quay Nomads. I’ve no idea how that match ended though as neither club have given any details of it on their respective websites.