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PROMORTION WORTH £100M BUT RECONNECTION UTTERLY PRICELESS!

Sun Jul 15, 2018 9:48 am

Cardiff City get £100m from promotion to Premier League, but the reconnection with their fans is utterly priceless
By Paul Abbandonato

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=198272


Cardiff are on the up and up and another special season could be beckoning


Neil Warnock has earned Cardiff City £100million with promotion to the Premier League.

The profile the Bluebirds will bring Welsh football when they play Manchester United, Liverpool and other top flight giants comes on top.

Already Sky have nabbed Cardiff's first two home matches for TV coverage. They know, from past experience, just what a rocking atmosphere Cardiff City Stadium creates and want it beamed to a nation.

Everything is on the up. It's there in black and white.


But there is something a little less demonstrative Warnock has created which is even more valuable to the Welsh game.

He has reconnected Wales' capital city football club with its people. Where there were splits - plenty of them - there is today complete and utter harmony.

That much was evident on a magical evening at Taff's Well on Friday night when Warnock took his team to the Welsh League venue for their first pre-season friendly.

Warnock had done the same a year earlier. That seemed like the beginning of the reconnect - and everything took off from that point.

Taff's Well 2018 was further evidence of everybody pulling in one direction.

None of the Bluebirds' main players were on show, Warnock wary of ankles being rolled on a pitch which was dry and dusty because of the heatwave.

Yet I didn't hear a single moan. Not one.


The players may have been absent from the pitch, but they still made sure they attended the ground to mingle and interact with the fans. Selfies were taken, beaming smiles were the order of the night. This was the perfect evidence of a team as one with its fans.


Someone tweeted me afterwards to suggest you wouldn't see the players of Arsenal, Chelsea or the Manchester clubs doing something similar.

At first, I dismissed it as a silly analogy. Those players, of course, are far more high profile. Of course it wouldn't happen.

But the truth is they have something in common with Warnock's Cardiff Class of 2018 - they are each Premier League footballers.

It is to the Bluebirds' credit they have remained humble and respectful of the part the fans have played in their magical journey. This was a way of trying to pay them back.

Truth is you just couldn't see this sort of thing happening wit so much goodwill pre-Warnock, when Cardiff City had become the butt of jokes up and down the land.

Not any more. As nationwide TV viewers will discover when the Bluebirds host Newcastle on August 18, something magical is happening in the Welsh capital.

Together Stronger is the mantra of the Wales football team who have had such success at Cardiff City Stadium.

It is not a slogan the Bluebirds will formally adopt, but the same ethos is very much there. Everybody is united.


When did that last happen with Cardiff then?

Under Malky Mackay the red rebrand split the fan base. When Dave Jones' side were wowing with some of their dazzling football, many remained cynical and didn't like the manager or his demeanour.

Russell Slade, Paul Trollope, Ole Gunnar Solkjaer? Forget it.

Yes, there was the 2003 Millennium Stadium play-off win under Lennie Lawrence, but for consistency of real love you probably have to rewind to the Eddie May era.

Here was a manager, and team, Bluebirds fans really adored. It's the same with Warnock and his Premier League upstarts 25 years on.

Cardiff are red-hot favourites to finish bottom and it's fair to say they don't exactly have a squad full of players with proven top flight ability.

But in football it's not just about that. Togetherness, team spirit and a manager who knows what he is doing, and who the fans utterly believe in, are worth an unquantifiable amount of points.

More than 30,000 passionate supporters packing into Cardiff City Stadium for home matches will create a cacophony of noise and an atmosphere that in its own way might be a little unique in the Premier League 2018-19. 'My type of people', as Warnock calls them.


These are big things in Cardiff's favour, as is the fact that Vincent Tan has reduced the debt to £50m. Didn't that stand at around £180m not so far back?

Tan comes in for an awful lot of unfair criticism because without him dipping into his pockets Cardiff might be a League Two club today.

He has ridden the storm and twice delivered the Premier League dream. This time it will be in blue. It's more real, a City united.
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Re: PROMORTION WORTH £100M BUT RECONNECTION UTTERLY PRICELES

Sun Jul 15, 2018 9:54 am

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=198272 :thumbright: :bluebird: