Cardiff City players returned to pre season training last Monday and it seems that there were only two days worth of intense physical work before the players were allowed to “get the ball out” and start playing some football on the Wednesday.
I can remember old pros when I was a kid saying that they never saw a football until they played their first pre season game (which tended to be a fortnight before the league they were in kicked off) and even in days when the preparatory work didn’t consist almost entirely of things like running up and down sand dunes or 5 to 10k road runs, it would be a fortnight or so before a football would put in an appearance.
It comes as no shock to see the game of football take precedence over more traditional pre season work at Cardiff City under BBM’s management mind and, using his first season with us as a precedent, it was hardly as if the players were found lacking in terms of fitness – in fact, I’d say City looked fitter throughout 25/26 than they had done through many of the preceding seasons.
In an interview on the club website, all Joel Bagan would say was that a midfielder had won the dreaded bleep test on the first day back from training – the only other thing he would say was that all of the midfielders got very similar test results.
City therefore have a week’s more training before they play their first warm up match in seven days time and, so far, the only “new” arrival is Nathan Trott who was signed around six weeks ago. There has been some activity when it come to signings at age group levels though with a couple of stories about groups of Academy products signing pro deals – see here and here.
There have been a couple of season long loans arranged for young goalkeepers with Luke Armstrong heading to Scotland to play for Raith Rovers (disappointingly, it looks like he’s going to be second choice there) and Danny Higgs becoming the latest player from the club to be loaned to Pen-y-Bont.
There have also been a couple of permanent signings with centreback Thierry Katsukunya arriving from Aston Villa to become part of our under 21 squad, while the linked article also contains a brief mention of Cass Machin a midfielder from Manchester City who will be joining our under 18s.
At first team level though, the only thing I can mention concerning even a vague transfer rumour in or out is that Australia’s exit overnight from the World Cup means that it shouldn’t be too long now before there’s a decision made on Hearts midfielder Cammy Devlin’s plans for next season. The Australian international is out of contract at Tynecastle and City are, apparently, one of a number of clubs with bids in for him – Hearts have offered him a new deal, but there seems to be an assumption that he’s off to Rangers to join up with his former boss Derek McInnes who has taken over at Ibrox Park this summer. Furthermore, with Birmingham and Derby seemingly having bids in for him as well, the chances of City landing him look very slight.
Apart from that there’s been absolutely nothing. Now, although, I always think that, in an ideal world, you’d get all of your new players in so that they can complete a full pre season training programme at their new club, I’m still not really bothered about the lack of transfer gossip. However, I would note that with it being very unusual that we sign anyone while we’re away on a week’s training break out of the country, it looks like nothing will be happening until the end of July unless we sign someone in the next week before we head off to Ireland.
As I say, I have faith in BBM (even if I my critical opinion of the decision to let Ryan Wintle go may only change when I know who we sign as his replacement), so am not overly concerned about how quiet it is on the transfer front. I would like to outline though something which does worry me somewhat – it’s a subject that I brought up on the transfer thread that’s been set up on the messageboard I use.
It seems to me that transfer fees have gone up somewhat in the Championship during the year we’ve been away to the extent that, typically, you appear to be looking at something like £5 million to get what I’ll call a proven second tier standard player.
That is a sum which I certainly wasn’t expecting City to spend on anyone this summer unless we decided to cash in on at least one of our more saleable assets. However, with Stoke, reportedly having already spent £20 million with the best of their signings being, for me, Swansea’s Ethan Galbraith, who only has one season as a Championship regular behind him for a fee which I’ve seen reported as being in the 8 to 10 million pounds range, it tends to show exactly what we’re up against at this level these days.
Of course we’re never going to be at West Ham’s level in this division where they can receive £85 million for a player, but it’s a bit concerning to see historically fairly modest spenders like Derby paying £6 million for someone and sides like Millwall and Preston, apparently, tabling bids in the 5 to 6 million range for players.
BBM has said we’re going to be “dangerous” opponents for any Championship side in the coming season and that’s more or less how I feel. I’m pretty bullish about 26/27 as I see us as a kind of middle third team capable of giving anyone a bloody nose on our day.
However, when I look at what £5 million seemingly buys you in the modern day Championship , I think one or both of two things have to occur if we are to have that kind of middle third finish I alluded to above (don’t forget that, from next season, you won’t need to be much better than middle third to get in the Play Offs).
Firstly, our recruitment has to be absolutely spot on with an eye for a bargain being to the fore – you only have to look at Galbraith, who was signed this time last year from a League One club for something like twenty per cent of what he has been sold for, as an example of what I mean.
Secondly, I believe BBM improved a lot of our players last season, but it’s hard to judge by how much given that many of them were playing at a lower level than they had been prior to his appointment. Suffice it to say I reckon in 25/26, BBM has to improve the likes of Joel Bagan, Alex Robertson, Ollie Tanner, Rubin Colwill, Isaak Davies and Yousef Salech to the extent that they are better, more effective, players in the Championship than they have been up until now.
I’ll finish with sobering news of Wales’ Under 19 Euros campaign so far. Nobody thought it was going to be easy and pre tournament I’d said that I would regard anything other than elimination after three defeats as success and let’s face it , Spain, Germany and Denmark are very tough opponents for a country like Wales at any level.
However, as hosts, you would hope that they could have done better than to lose 7-0 to Spain and then 4-0 to Germany in their first two games. Wales now face the Danes, who went down 4-3 to the Germans before being beaten 3-0 by Spain, with victory meaning that they would secure a place in a Play Off for the forthcoming Under 20 World Cup Finals. So, there’s still much to play for, but, realistically, when you compare our scores with the Danish ones so far, it’s hard to see us having enough to take third place in the group.
Of the three City players in the under 19 squad, Rob Tankiewicz started against Spain, but came off at half time and, while he wasn’t a direct replacement for him, it could be said that he was replaced by Jac Thomas who played all of the second half at left back.
Thomas and Noah Williams were the starting full backs for the German match, while Tankiewicz came on to play the last fifteen minutes or so.
