Why Cardiff City should have sold Bruno Manga to raise funds, not fans' favourite and captain David Marshall
Friday 2nd September 2016
BY SCOTT JOHNSON
It's not a good time to be selling your best player and I hope Marshall is replaced quicker than it took to find a competent successor to Neil Alexander
Manga would not have been as big a miss as Marshall
In February, Vincent Tan held a Q&A session, Welcome to lunch with Vincent, with special invited guests and touched upon a range of subjects.
One of which was David Marshall’s future at Cardiff.
“We could have sold David Marshall for £7million, played Simon Moore in goal, got someone else in as back up,” Tan revealed.
“Why didn’t we take the money? Because we want to go to the Premier League and David’s a big part of that.
"Arsenal and another Premier League club wanted him to go there. His salary would have gone up, people around the world would have seen him play at the highest level.
"Yet we had to tell him ‘Sorry, we’re not letting you go’."
That was then, this is today after Cardiff failed to make the play-offs.
Six months on, Marshall has departed for less than that amount and without being adequately replaced, too.
Ben Amos has arrived on loan, but Bolton’s number two is no match for Scotland’s number one.
Unfortunately in this particular scenario, I feel everyone has lost. Cardiff have sold a prized asset at a reduced price, Paul Trollope has lost his captain and an integral player and supporters are left to mourn the absence of a firm favourite.
With respect to Hull, Marshall has also ended up at an inferior destination as a result of staying loyal to Cardiff City.
In my opinion, it is a transfer that has undermined Cardiff’s play-off prospects and has also been compounded by the departure of Moore. Deciding to sell your first and second choice goalkeepers within the final two weeks of the transfer window is a rather remarkable statement, when you think about it.
A similar thing happened in January, when Cardiff shed pretty much their whole strike force, shipping out Kenwyne Jones, Joe Mason and Alex Revell. They also lost Tony Watt, who was on loan and set to sign permanently the same day that the club were slapped with a transfer ban.
Russell Slade was expected to get the team in the top six then. Paul Trollope will be expected to this time.
Fabio has been another disappointing departure, but he was heading out of contract and the deal did at least appear to make good business sense.
Marshall did not appear to be angling for a move and personally I feel if the club needed to cash in on a player, it should have been Bruno Ecuele Manga.
An expensive acquisition, he has entered the final year of his contract and appears unlikely to agree an extension. Cardiff have cover in his position and his departure would not have disrupted Trollope’s grand design.
At Cardiff, it has often been one extreme or the other. Feast or famine. Everyone is well aware that the club is paying the price for past indulgences in the transfer market and are cost cutting to avoid further punishments.
To be fair, Cardiff have still managed to make some smart signings recently. Rickie Lambert, Jazz Richards, Lex Immers and Emyr Huws are solid acquisitions, in spite of the restrictions.
But I think that part of the problem is that Cardiff no more give anything away with regards to transfer fees paid out. We know what they have received for departing players, but how much did Immers, Huws or Kenneth Zohore cost? Who knows?
In light of the last few years, you can understand why they are so reluctant to divulge precise sums, at a time where undisclosed transfer fees are the rage.
Who would you have sold first?
David Marshall
Bruno Manga
Neither of them
However, it works two ways. It may suit to withhold this sort of information, but supporters are also in the dark as to whether the club is actually spending any money. Has the Mason fee been reinvested in terms of transfer fees? Again, who knows.
Cardiff can’t legislate for their peers spending unsustainable, Financial Fair Play-baiting amounts to try and reach the Premier League, but they have to give themselves the best possible chance of making a little go a fair way.
Their dealings in 2016 may have steadied the ship, but there is a danger it has also set the team back. I remember how much time it took to suitably replace Neil Alexander with Marshall.
To me when so much is underwhelming, from the football on offer to the managerial appointments, it is probably not the best time to sell your best player.
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