Just as Cardiff City fans were becoming resigned to adding Monday 16 June to their long, long list of dates where we’d not appointed the successor to Omer Riza, there emerged this message on the club website around tea time with the promised interview following a couple of hours later.
The appointment of Brian Barry-Murphy was hardly a shock given that the Daily Mail story about him being in advanced talks with City about the job appeared last Wednesday, but there were a couple of surprising elements to it.
The first of them was the three year contract. No new City boss has been given such a long deal since Malky Mackay fourteen years ago and by giving Barry-Murphy such a long deal following a successoin of managers who sometimes got no more than a few months when appointed, it feels like a new beginning for the club
The first thing that strikes me about this appointment is that it’s different and while I, acknowledge that it’s so easy to be optimisitc when an appointment is made in the summer with weeks to go before competitive footbsll restarts, I feel good about it and my instinct is to say that, even if it all goes wrong and we’re looking for a new man in charge come October or November, I would not blame the three Amigos at the top of the club this time for the appointment itself as I find it exciting, pretty bold and out of character for them.
The other thing which I had not expected is that the title I’ve given this piece is, strictly speaking, wrong, because we’ve not appointed a manager, we’ve appointed a “first team Head Coach”.
Now, it’s been pointed out that the very short lived reign of Paul Trollope was the only other time in the Tan era where we’ve departed from the traditional manager job title and look what happened then!, I hope and assume that’s a point being made as a joke though, because, having seen how the land was lying at the start of the 15/16 campaign, Paul Trollope would have been a short term appointment whatever his job was called.
The relevant point here surely is that, far from leading to the closer ties and line of thinking between the football side and the adminsistration side that almost everybody has been crying out for, the job title first team Head Coach rather rep0resents a widenining of the gap between football pitch and Boardroom.
Yes, I know a job title in football shouldn’t be taken too literally, but, for me, it rather sends out a signal that Brian Barry-Murphy’s brief will be very much about getting things right on the pitch, so there needa to be someone there in some form to handle the bits which make the difference between a manager and a first team Head Coach.
It seems to me that there is more to come as far as off field new arrivals are concerned. Clearly, we need more coaching staff (assuming none of the people recruited for the very short lived Aaron Ramsey interim manager tenure remain with us), but there does seem to be a Director of Football sized space between Mr Barry-Murphy and the Board at the moment!
Given Vincent Tan’s aversion to the term “Director of Football’, I would expect any appointment to fill said gap to be given a different title and it may be that the job description may not tally precisely with youe typical Director of Football type role. However, for me, the message from the bosses to Brian Barry-Murphy would appear to be “you get on with sorting the team out and we’ll get someone else in (or maybe they’re at the club already) to look after the other stuff”.
Once again, I find myself asking the question ‘do I think this is good because it is good or is it because I agree with it?” when it comes to this reaction video to Brian Barry-Murphy’s appointment.
I said earlier that I wouldn’t blame Tan and co if Brian Barry-Murphy didn’t work out as City head coach because it’s an innovative appointment, but that would change if the hierarchy now left things as they are with only about thirty/forty per cent of the required work to sort the club out done.
You can look at Barry-Murphy’s relegation at Rochdale and rven make him responsible for Leicester going down as well if you want to, but I’d rather focus on how Manchester City selected him for an important job at what many were calling the best club side in the world a year ago. Indeed, if people are seriously going to hold Leicester’s relegation against him, then isn’t it fair to claim that Man City’s demise, such as it was, last season, coincided with Barry-Murphy leaving the club!
Seriously, Barry-Murphy’s time at Manchester City has to be deemed to be a success given they won titles while he was there and there has been a fairly steady flow of players he worked with at under 23 level into the first team.
Providing Barry-Murphy is not left to, effectively, fend for himself, the length of contract given him strongly suggests that , this time at least, the club without a plan do have one. For me, it seems to be the best way to go as well because, in terms of recognition by Wales age group teams (for example, the domination of the two Welsh under 17 squads that qualified for their version of the Euros in recent years by City players), we have the best group of players coming through at 18 to 20 years old in the history of our Academy.
Obviously, not all of those currently being seen as a potential first team player will make the transition, but it’s reasonable to think that the yield from this group will be a fair bit higher than normal and, despite the miserable evidence of last season, there are current first team squad members under the age of twenty five that you think should be able to prosper in League One.
After so much pessimism and struggle in recent years, this is a time to be optimistic about City’s future as long as the hierarchy are prepared to finish off the transformation that they’ve started.
Paul compadre,
I shall reserve judgment on BBM… but at this stage I can say there is nothing too alarming about him. If he lacks the homespun nature of a Colin, he at least seems free of the arrogant narcissism of a Steve M.
Just wanted to sound you out on the extraordinary goings on at The Racecourse (I refuse to call it by that god awful name they have now given it)…
How many strikers do they now have on their books? Will they loan us one surplus to their requirements to play alongside Salech up front?
But golly… their latest capture is a player I so admire. There was no way that Ryan Hardie was going down to play in Division 1.
Wrexham couldn’t make the Championship play-offs next May, could they? Surely not… were I the Hollywood duo, I would think my defence not strong enough.
TTFN,
Dai
Oh dear, egg on my face as usual.
Re the Wrexham name change… I woke up thinking… ‘isn’t it a Welsh translation of Racecourse?’ It is only the first of the three words that is peculiar to me… with its accent over the ‘o’… which I will not use below knowing your blog’s software might not be able to show it.
Alas, as usual the linguistic fascists seem to forget the wise words that the late great Dr Glyn Jones* – the coiner of the phrase ‘the Dragon has two tongues’ – once said to me at his Cardiff home on Manor Way.
He reminded me that Wales had two official languages… Welsh and English.
So the stadium’s new name in Welsh is ‘SToK Cae Ras’. But why change a perfectly good English name to Welsh?
The first of the 3 words is the name of the American coffee sponsor… the other two the Welsh language translation of ‘racecourse’. Trust me, you will have to cut the tongue out of my mouth before you will hear me say those three words. And I speak as someone who will lay down my life for one man to speak Welsh to another man… but I will also go to my grave refusing to call my Welsh football team ‘Cymru’.
I am proud of learning the English language… instead of being a citizen of a Rhondda parish, I became a citizen of the world… long before the internet… because it gave me access to all the cultures of those anglophonic nations all over the world. I refuse to be ashamed of my monoglot status. If was a polyglot it would be great, but at 78 in a month from now, I am ashamed to admit that I am still learning English. And were I to learn a second language, it would not be Welsh… but Esperanto, a language invented by Dr Zamenof, a Polish genius.
And do you know what his profession was? He was an oculist.
And I find that very telling. Inventing a language with none of those blasted irregular verbs, and different case endings, meant he could SEE further than a myriad professional specialisers in linguistics…!!
* only Glyn could say when writing to a friend ‘get off the train at Rhiwbina – it rhymes with Heine’
TTFN,
Dai.
Thanks Dai, I’ll start my reply with Wrexham on the pitch by saying that I’m nearly always unimpressed by them when I watch one of their games, but, then again, they nearly always win those matches (strangely, the best Wrexham display I’ve seen in recent times was in their defeat at Birmingham). It’s much the same with their manager, never rated him highly and yet you can’t knock his record – although I do think his reliance on veterans needs to be toned down a bit if they are to challenge at the top of the Championship.
I’m not sure about Ryan Hardie, he was excellent in Plymouth’s 3-1 win over us in 23/24, but he didn’t do a great deal against us last season.
I didn’t know what the new ground name meant, so thanks for that. It only makes me double down on my decision to keep on calling it the Racecourse, although my reasons for doing it are less principled than yours. I do it for old fuddy duddy reasons – I’ve called it the Racecourse for over sixty years as a football supporter and I’m not going to change now.
On a similar theme, I listened yesterday morning to Rhian Wilkinson being interviewed just before the squad for the upcoming Euros was announced (what struck me about the squad was how many of them, including Sophie Ingle, did not have a club). She was stood on top of Mount Snowdon while talking to the BBC and the presenter on Radio 5 announced it along the lines of “Wales manager Rhian Wilkinson joins us from the peak of Yr Wyddfa”. Truth be told, I was left saying “where?” to myself upon hearing the last bit because I genuinely had no clue as to what they were talking about – it was only when the presenter then mentioned Snowdon that I twigged where she was. That was the first time I’d heard Mount Snowdon referred to in that way and, rest assured, I’ll go to my grave calling it by the name I was taught to in school over sixty years ago – what are we supposed to be calling Snowdonia these days?
Paul,
The answer to your final sentence is Eryri… which took me a few seconds to figure how to pronounce.* Interestingly the Snowdon/Snowdonia link is broken: it seems to bear no link to Yr Wyddfa. No chance me using it: nor the nonsense that the National Parks have inflicted on us by changing the name of the Brecon Beacons.
Regarding your mention of Rhian Wilkinson: I have just completed a deep dive into this woman.
Interesting that she spent a year aged 8 at Cowbridge primary school. But more interesting, reading her Wikipedia entry, to follow up the last of the ‘references’ footnotes, to a newspaper article explaining her sensational departure from her job as coach at Portland Thorns. It seems more than just player power forced her resignation…!!
Looking at her bizarre decision to include Sophie Ingle in her Euro squad – shades of Robert Page picking ‘past it’ old chums of his in his World Cup party – let us hope Rhian has picked Sophie for footballing reasons rather than – erm – let’s say OTHER ones**…!! Very bizarre footballing choice… given Sophie’s serious injury and past year of inactivity.
*Errrrr-RUH-rree
**[‘Cheap shot Dai! Wash your mouth out with carbolic!’
Yes, I will immediately.]
TTFN,
Dai
I think Sophie Ingle was always going to be picked Dai – I say that because of the impression I got whenever her fitness was discussed in the weeks leading up to the naming of the squad. Hopefully, it’ll turn out to be like Joe Ledley’s broken bone in his foot sustained about six weeks before the 2016 Euros startged. Joe was his usual self despite him looking to be out of the tournament a month before it started and I’d say the gamble of taking Ingle was always very likely given that our squad depth isn’t great – it’s hardly that a special talent is being left out because of Ingle’s inclusion. Sophie Ingle at anything like her best will improve the team, no doubt about that.