"Why I turned the Cardiff City's managers job down"

Sky Sports

Dundee manager Paul Hartley has no regrets about turning down an approach from Cardiff City as he plots the donwfall of Celtic in the Scottish Cup this weekend.

Wed 4th Feb 2015

"I feel that I am my own person and I like to have the final say in things."

Dundee caused an upset when beating Aberdeen in the last round and Hartley is looking to add to his burgeoning reputation by claiming another prize scalp on Saturday.

The former Celtic player was linked with a move to south Wales last September but he told Sky Sports News HQ that he did not feel the Cardiff job was the right fit for him.

He said: "I know some people say you were stupid not to go down there but I don't see it that way. I feel I am still learning as a manager, there is still a long way to go and I am only in my fourth year in my management career. I want to try and build this club and make it successful.

"I think there was a lot of stuff going on at Cardiff that wouldn't have made the job entirely mine in terms of decision-making so I just felt it wasn't for me. I feel that I am my own person and I like to have the final say in things.

"I think I've got a job to do here at Dundee. I enjoy my work, I work with a good group and a good board. I have got an excellent coaching staff and playing staff - there is unfinished business here."

Hartley, who won successive Scottish Cup medals with Hearts and Celtic in 2006 and 2007, acknowledges the odds will be against his side on Saturday.

He said: "I love the Scottish Cup as a manager and I loved it as player. You want to have a cup run. It's your best chance of silverware in Scotland and we want to give it our best shot.

"We've come through a hard tie against Aberdeen and we've got another difficult game against Celtic but we are at home so we have got to go out there and play at our best and see where it takes us.

"They have a squad of 17 or 18 players who are all quality and we have got to play well, concentrate and keep our discipline. When we get the ball we've got to make sure we do something with it. Then we will see it takes us."

Interesting.

Fair play to him,didnt fancy being Tans puppet

Fair play to him,didnt fancy being Tans puppet

Yes total Respect to him

.Lots of puppets then as at least 5 clubs have owners who do what tan does ! Also Can find lots on this forum as well?

He seemed a good choise. To bad they had "a difference in philosophy" .

People go on about slade being tans puppet but fact is we wasnt sustainable as a club and couldnt afford all the wages so tan needed to take action and players had to go, paul hartley would have knew this and prob turned it down then.

This board is starting to go downhill imo because its all i see is negative posts and spin towards the owner. Why cant people just appreciate that he turned us back blue and was getting rid of players for the sake of the clubs finances, i dont agree with all the players that was let go but it had to be done at the end of the day.

he turned down an approach to speak to the club, a big difference from actually being offered the job.

the salary that was on the table had he been willing to speak was probably lower than what he's on at dundee, too.

People go on about slade being tans puppet but fact is we wasnt sustainable as a club and couldnt afford all the wages so tan needed to take action and players had to go, paul hartley would have knew this and prob turned it down then.

This board is starting to go downhill imo because its all i see is negative posts and spin towards the owner. Why cant people just appreciate that he turned us back blue and was getting rid of players for the sake of the clubs finances, i dont agree with all the players that was let go but it had to be done at the end of the day.

Well it's not just this forum saying it,this story came from a Successful Scottish manager,put out by Sky News
Plus every Cardiff Forum/Mb's and FB are saying virtually the same stuff
All the local media are saying the same and worse even the National media.
But if we are all wrong,why are thousands not turning up week in week out and season ticket sales will be thousands down for the second year running? Please answer

Head of sport wrote this today viewtopic.php?f=2&t=154442

he turned down an approach to speak to the club, a big difference from actually being offered the job.

the salary that was on the table had he been willing to speak was probably lower than what he's on at dundee, too.

He was spoken too

No way did he turn the job down just because of the need to trim the squad. It runs deeper than that. He virtually said it was because he wouldn't be disctated to. All clubs have budgetary constraints so it wasn't to do with the money available for signings. I bet he's not the only manager to shy away from the club too!

I think Russell is better anyway.

Media Wales

I turned down Cardiff City's manager role because I like to have the final say, admits Paul Hartley
4 February 2015

By Terry Phillips
Dundee boss reveals reasons he rejected Bluebirds' approach to take over from Ole Gunnar Solskjaer

Dundee boss Paul Hartley has revealed why he turned down the Cardiff City job
Scottish manager Paul Hartley has revealed he turned down the chance to become Cardiff City manager before Russell Slade because he felt he would not be allowed to make his own football decisions.

I remember Tan himself claiming to have signed Guerra on the BBC, many of our players in the last year or so have been signed because Tan wanted them,how can managers work with an owner like that? surely an owner can recommend,but not decide,the decision lies with your manager,thats why you employ them

Good point raised by Dave Sugarman aka TLG

The way Tan operates is very odd.
For instance, he got rid of experienced football administrator Alan Whiteley and appointed Simon Lim as CEO in order to have more control over the club's affairs. Then, when Lim had messed things up on a grand scale, Tan said: "I sent Simon Lim from Malaysia and he doesn't really know a lot about football, so he depends on the football expert. We have this expert always telling us 'leave the football to me, I'm the expert', so if the expert says 'do this, do that' and asks you to buy A, B and C, what can Simon Lim say?"

People go on about slade being tans puppet but fact is we wasnt sustainable as a club and couldnt afford all the wages so tan needed to take action and players had to go, paul hartley would have knew this and prob turned it down then.

This board is starting to go downhill imo because its all i see is negative posts and spin towards the owner. Why cant people just appreciate that he turned us back blue and was getting rid of players for the sake of the clubs finances, i dont agree with all the players that was let go but it had to be done at the end of the day.

Well it's not just this forum saying it,this story came from a Successful Scottish manager,put out by Sky News
Plus every Cardiff Forum/Mb's and FB are saying virtually the same stuff
All the local media are saying the same and worse even the National media.
But if we are all wrong,why are thousands not turning up week in week out and season ticket sales will be thousands down for the second year running? Please answer

Head of sport wrote this today viewtopic.php?f=2&t=154442

Yes there has been bad press for the club but that was mainly cos the rebrand but we have moved on from that now, at least i thought we did?

Season ticket sales are down because of how shit the football has been lately but if slade can turn things around and put us on the front foot for next season people will buy season tickets. All im saying is i think theres far too much negativity still towards the owner when theres no need for it at the moment. If slade keeps failing then the owner then needs to step up and sort this mess out and appoint a good manager and get the staff sorted too but lets just see how things go we are moving in the right direction having reduced massive unaffordable wages,yes the owner has made mistakes but hes rectified his biggest one with the re brand and now sorted the finances out so lets just see how things go, rome wasnt built in a day.....

People go on about slade being tans puppet but fact is we wasnt sustainable as a club and couldnt afford all the wages so tan needed to take action and players had to go, paul hartley would have knew this and prob turned it down then.

This board is starting to go downhill imo because its all i see is negative posts and spin towards the owner. Why cant people just appreciate that he turned us back blue and was getting rid of players for the sake of the clubs finances, i dont agree with all the players that was let go but it had to be done at the end of the day.

Well it's not just this forum saying it,this story came from a Successful Scottish manager,put out by Sky News
Plus every Cardiff Forum/Mb's and FB are saying virtually the same stuff
All the local media are saying the same and worse even the National media.
But if we are all wrong,why are thousands not turning up week in week out and season ticket sales will be thousands down for the second year running? Please answer

Head of sport wrote this today viewtopic.php?f=2&t=154442

Yes there has been bad press for the club but that was mainly cos the rebrand but we have moved on from that now, at least i thought we did?

Season ticket sales are down because of how shit the football has been lately but if slade can turn things around and put us on the front foot for next season people will buy season tickets. All im saying is i think theres far too much negativity still towards the owner when theres no need for it at the moment. If slade keeps failing then the owner then needs to step up and sort this mess out and appoint a good manager and get the staff sorted too but lets just see how things go we are moving in the right direction having reduced massive unaffordable wages,yes the owner has made mistakes but hes rectified his biggest one with the re brand and now sorted the finances out so lets just see how things go, rome wasnt built in a day.....

You say we should appreciate him because he turned us back to blue. Who changed us to red in the first place causing a split amongst the fans, and being responsible for the demonstrations and bad feeling in the club.

I have the utmost respect for Paul Hartley. What right minded individual would want to be anyone's puppet? I think this piece of information reveals a bit more about why we do not have a respected manager in charge but instead we're stuck with Russell Tan...sorry Slade!

I have the utmost respect for Paul Hartley. What right minded individual would want to be anyone's puppet? I think this piece of information reveals a bit more about why we do not have a respected manager in charge but instead we're stuck with Russell Tan...sorry Slade!

No quality/respected manager in football would want to work for Tan after the whats happened at our club over the last 4 years.

And the reason why Ole left. People tend to forget he was in fact not sacked.

Dundee boss Paul Hartley has spoken for the first time about being linked with the Cardiff City manager’s job back in September.

At the time, he was tight-lipped about the speculation linking him with the post vacated by Ole Gunnar Solskjaer at the English Championship club.

When asked about it that week by Courier Sport following the 4-1 derby defeat at Dens, all he would say was: “I don’t want to talk about that, only the game”.

Now though, in an interview with Sky Sports, he has admitted that he rejected the opportunity of the big move down south to complete the unfinished business he has with the Dark Blues.

The presenter teed up the interview by saying: “Paul Hartley turned down the chance to join Cardiff last September and says he has no regrets.”

The manager then commented: “I enjoy my work with a good board and an excellent playing and coaching staff so there is unfinished business here.

“I know people will say you were stupid not to go down there but I don’t see it as that. I feel I am still learning as a manager.

“I feel I have a lot to learn and have a long way to go.

“I am only in the fourth year of my management career and I want to build this club and make it successful.”
Hartley was then asked if he would have picked the team if he had gone to Cardiff and was that the offer?

He said: “I think there was a lot of stuff going on that wouldn’t have made the job entirely mine in terms of decision making so I just felt it wasn’t for me.

“I feel I am my own person and I like to do things the way I want to do them myself.”

Good point raised by Dave Sugarman aka TLG

The way Tan operates is very odd.
For instance, he got rid of experienced football administrator Alan Whiteley and appointed Simon Lim as CEO in order to have more control over the club's affairs. Then, when Lim had messed things up on a grand scale, Tan said: "I sent Simon Lim from Malaysia and he doesn't really know a lot about football, so he depends on the football expert. We have this expert always telling us 'leave the football to me, I'm the expert', so if the expert says 'do this, do that' and asks you to buy A, B and C, what can Simon Lim say?"

Maybe VT suffers from...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissist ... y_disorder

Good point raised by Dave Sugarman aka TLG

The way Tan operates is very odd.
For instance, he got rid of experienced football administrator Alan Whiteley and appointed Simon Lim as CEO in order to have more control over the club's affairs. Then, when Lim had messed things up on a grand scale, Tan said: "I sent Simon Lim from Malaysia and he doesn't really know a lot about football, so he depends on the football expert. We have this expert always telling us 'leave the football to me, I'm the expert', so if the expert says 'do this, do that' and asks you to buy A, B and C, what can Simon Lim say?"

Maybe VT suffers from...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissist ... y_disorder

Good point raised by Dave Sugarman aka TLG

The way Tan operates is very odd.
For instance, he got rid of experienced football administrator Alan Whiteley and appointed Simon Lim as CEO in order to have more control over the club's affairs. Then, when Lim had messed things up on a grand scale, Tan said: "I sent Simon Lim from Malaysia and he doesn't really know a lot about football, so he depends on the football expert. We have this expert always telling us 'leave the football to me, I'm the expert', so if the expert says 'do this, do that' and asks you to buy A, B and C, what can Simon Lim say?"

Maybe VT suffers from...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissist ... y_disorder

Just saw the Clarke Carlisle thread, so this is probably not in good taste today...