" RIGHT SIGNING AT THE RIGHT TIME FOR CARDIFF CITY "

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" RIGHT SIGNING AT THE RIGHT TIME FOR CARDIFF CITY "

Postby worcester_ccfc » Mon Jun 26, 2017 4:27 pm

Monday 26th June 2017

By Scott Johnson

Cardiff City’s signings thus far this window have been a mixed bag.

Neil Etheridge and Nathaniel Mendez-Laing are calculated risks from League One, while Lee Camp is one of Neil Warnock’s former favourites and a safe pair of hands, hopefully. Callum Paterson looks an exciting prospect, but is sidelined for the foreseeable future. These are the sorts of signings that Cardiff fans have become accustomed to post-Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, with cost cutting the order of the day. But Danny Ward belongs in a higher bracket.

Ward has certain aspects in common with his fellow new recruits in that, like Camp, he has also worked with Warnock before, when he was briefly in charge at Rotherham. Also, all four were free agents, although Paterson’s signing will result in compensation for his former club Hearts.

Ward would have also been a free agent, had Rotherham not activated a clause in his contract to extend his terms by a further year. They did so to protect their investment and ensure that they would earn a transfer fee from his inevitable departure.

Ward was also a player in demand. QPR and Ipswich are both reported to have offered more money than Cardiff, but Ward was keen to link up with Warnock once again.


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Quality Championship-level strikers are a rare breed and Cardiff have done well to fend off the other interested parties. Rotherham rejected three offers for him in January, knowing full well that selling their main source of goals would have effectively relegated them.

Huddersfield Town, QPR, Ipswich Town, Wolverhampton Wanderers, Sheffield Wednesday, and Derby County were all circling Ward, but he remained a Miller and could not prevent them from dropping out of the division.

“I spoke to Danny this morning,” explained manager Paul Warne at the time. “I said to his face: ‘If you can leave my office and come back with anyone under £5m who you think is better than you, please do and I’ll sell you for the same figure.’ As of yet, he hasn’t been back to me.”

“I am aware that three clubs have put proper bids in and I’m aware that all three have been turned down,” Warne confirmed. “If a £2m bid had come in, it’s nowhere near enough. It would be rejected. If anyone can tell me of a £2m striker I could get in who would come here and play the way Danny does, they’re better at football than I am.”

“I said it to Wardy, if an offer doesn’t come in that myself, the chairman and everybody on the board think is a proper offer, then he will be here to the end of the season.” Ward’s former club Huddersfield are also entitled to a percentage of the transfer fee, due to a sell-on clause.


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Ironically, Huddersfield funded their purchase of Ward with the £2m sale of Anthony Pilkington to Norwich City and £750,000 departure of Lee Peltier to Leicester City. Football is a small world. Of course, Huddersfield are now a Premier League outfit, so their cut of the Ward deal will now be a relative drop in the ocean.

So Cardiff have benefitted from Rotherham’s relegation by signing a player that was valued at £5m a few months ago, for a fraction of that amount. A £1.6m fee is hardly small potatoes, especially for such a frugal club, but for a proven goal scorer in his prime, they may have bagged themselves a bargain.

Ward has never been particularly prolific, but Cardiff would be happy if he matched the 11 goals he scored last season. He had scored nine by the beginning of January, so his form evidently tailed off in the second half of the season as Rotherham’s cause became more hopeless.

In a more upwardly-mobile side, likely to create more chances, Ward should be aiming to top that tally at Cardiff. I guess much depends on how Cardiff intend to line-up next season. Kenneth Zohore will undoubtedly be the main man once again, but did he play up front on his own for most of last season because Cardiff lacked a suitable strike partner?

It seems unlikely that Warnock would have paid so much for Ward as a back-up option, so chances are that they will be paired up and the shape of the side will change. Does the signing of Paterson suggest that Cardiff are set to start another season playing with wing backs?

Paul Trollope’s vision for Cardiff was for the side to mirror Wales by playing with three centre backs, but they often struggled to get out of their own half. Warnock trialled a similar shape in the final game of last season at an under-strength Huddersfield and gave them a thrashing. Maybe it was a one-off or maybe it was a sign of things to come. Only time will tell.

It may not be a favourable comparison for some, but the one player that springs to mind as broadly similar to Ward is Adam Le Fondre. The recently departed forward was brought in as a foil to Kenwyne Jones and although the move did not work out, the thinking behind it was sound.

One of the reasons why a potential partnership of Zohore and Ward is so exciting is because they better compliment each other than Le Fondre and Jones ever did. Jones was static, like a big tree planted in the middle of the pitch, while Le Fondre did the running of two men. In contrast, Ward and Zohore are both mobile with impressive work rates.

Kyle Bartley claimed that Ward was the toughest opponent he faced last season, while on loan at Leeds and Cardiff now finally have a pool of in-form strikers.

Ward, Zohore and Idriss Saadi, if he has a future at the club, all bagged a dozen or more goals last year. Having already fashioned a formidable defence, they now also have an attack capable of hurting opponents.
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" RIGHT SIGNING AT THE RIGHT TIME FOR CARDIFF CITY "

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Re: " RIGHT SIGNING AT THE RIGHT TIME FOR CARDIFF CITY "

Postby Jules » Tue Jun 27, 2017 6:34 am

Looks like we finally have goals in the team. Good work NW. Be interesting to see what happens with Saadi there must be an underlying story here?
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Re: " RIGHT SIGNING AT THE RIGHT TIME FOR CARDIFF CITY "

Postby LeesaJohnson » Tue Jun 27, 2017 10:10 am

Too informative thread.
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