Sunday Times - Monkeys Would Bring Sanity Back To Cardiff

Article in the Sunday Times today by Rod Liddle...

"Monkeys Would Bring Sanity Back To Cardiff

THERE is a troupe of querulous and deranged macaque monkeys living in the rainforest near the Berjaya Beach resort in Langkawi, Malaysia, jabbering and hooting and fighting among themselves and occasionally discomfiting the holidaymakers.

It is surely only a matter of time before Vincent Tan, who made his fortune from the Berjaya chain, brings them in to run Cardiff City football club. They could hardly cause more chaos than has already been occasioned at this fine Welsh outfit, nor indeed perform their duties in a more unpredictable manner.

Vince got his dosh, as I say, through Berjaya, although one supposes he was helped a little by his close 30-year friendship with Mohamad Mahathir, the somewhat authoritarian and long-serving former prime minister of Malaysia.

Tan, and his presence in the Forbes Rich List, is regarded with a certain suspicion by many ordinary Malaysians, who are not always convinced that the tendering processes which pertained over the years were necessarily the most transparent and open. But Mahathir has always defended his friend and suggests that these sorts of criticisms are mere jealousy.

Still, all water under the bridge, seeing as Vince quit Berjaya a year or two back and is now concentrating his attentions on Cardiff City. Lucky, lucky, Cardiff. His first notable act, if you remember, was to change the colour of the club’s shirts from blue to red and put the word Malaysia on the front, rendering the club’s nickname, the Bluebirds, something of a mystery. Who says these foreign owners have no respect for their club’s history and background?

The reasoning behind this was that in the lucrative southeast Asia football shirt market, the customers prefer red to blue. Is this true? A few years ago, while on a sort of safari in the vast rainforests of the Taman Negara reserve in central Malaysia, I bumped into a primitive indigenous tribesman — an Orang Asli — whose people live deep in the jungle and eat monkeys which they kill with poisoned darts.

I noticed that he was wearing a bright blue polyester football shirt with the word “Drogba” on the back. But that’s just one chap, I suppose, and maybe right now he’s outside his mud hut chopping up a monkey wearing a red shirt with the word “Bellamy” on the back, and much prefers it.

The latest spat regards the sudden and unexplained defenestration of manager Malky Mackay’s right-hand man, Iain Moody, who was responsible for acquiring new players. One minute Moody was there, the next he was gone — replaced by a 23-year-old man from Kazakhstan, Alisher Apsalyamov.

Young Alisher’s football experience is scarcely more advanced than that of the troupe of macaques I mentioned earlier — although he did help paint the walls of the stand at Cardiff a year or so back. He is also a close friend of Tan’s son, which may have helped in the appointment.

Mackay, who has done a superb job at Cardiff, was understandably furious and not a little puzzled. It seemed an action designed to provoke the manager into resigning, although why Tan should wish Mackay to go is quite beyond me and the owner has subsequently pledged his support for Mackay, which I’m sure made Malky feel snug as a bug in a rug.

An alternative explanation is that Tan was worried by the amount of money spent by Cardiff in the close season on players who might be able to compete at Premier League level. Better to have my own bloke in there holding the purse strings, even if he is just out of adolescence, rather than the manager’s best mate, may have been the reasoning.

Having been promised a kitty of £25m by Tan, Mackay spent an estimated £30m on the likes of Steven Caulker, Gary “Pitbull” Medel and the delightfully named Kevin Theophile-Catherine. Plenty of players have been released so Mackay is scarcely very much over budget and, to judge from their league performances so far, it is all working reasonably well. A pessimist would say that Cardiff are one point clear of third bottom, an optimist would put them in lower mid-table.

Certainly they seem better equipped for survival than, say, Crystal Palace — not to mention the strugglers around them: Sunderland, Norwich City and Stoke City.

To be fair to Tan, his money did help facilitate promotion, something City have been failing to achieve since around about the time Offa built his famous dyke. And it has become axiomatic now that managers who get you out of the Championship are not those who are best suited to keeping you in the Premier League and should be jettisoned at the earliest opportunity.

This theory has its flaws: it may have worked at Southampton but it did not work at QPR or Reading, for example. But if for nothing other than Tan’s high-handed eccentricities, Cardiff City will be worth watching this season. He’s bound to do something mad again, before long."

Brilliantly funny! and unfortunately 100% true.

He's friends with Mahatir?

Well, I'll be buggered.

Crikey.

Crikey.

Are these the "Monkees"???

Oh my god!

Crikey.

Are these the "Monkees"???

Oh my god!

Which ones Mickey Dolenz?

Crikey.

Are these the "Monkees"???

Oh my god!

Which ones Mickey Dolenz?

Here's a clue.....http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfuBREMXxts

Crikey.

Are these the "Monkees"???

Oh my god!

Which ones Mickey Dolenz?

i'd be more worried if davey jones was coming back