WHAT HAS GONE WRONG AT CITY?

What has gone wrong at Cardiff City?
By Dan McCarthy

Monday 19th September 2016

Cardiff City have had a poor start to the season and following their 2-0 home defeat to Leeds United on Saturday, the Bluebirds now prop up the Championship table with only five points from their first eight games. It has been a rapid decline for the Welsh side following their solitary season in the Premier League. So why have the perennial promotion challengers in the division suddenly faltered?


Lack of top quality signings

It would be disingenuous to say Cardiff have constantly sold their best players. Peter Whittingham has been one of the Championship's most technically gifted midfielders for the past decade or so, while Aron Gunnarsson and Craig Noone have been courted by premier League clubs in the past, yet have stuck with the side.

However, for keeping all those stars their recent transfer business has been particularly underwhelming. No real marquee signings have been brought in since their relegation from the Premier League in 2014. Fans may look to Rickie Lambert to be that player, but very limited game time over the past two years at Liverpool and West Bromwich Albion means he will take time to get up to speed.

Otherwise, their signings have mainly comprised of cheap foreign imports who are signed as gambles and who are nowhere near proven at Championship level.


An unsuitable owner

Vincent Tan has been a notorious Bond villain-esque character since his takeover of Cardiff in 2010. His actions include changing the club's home kit from blue to red, sacking head of recruitment Iain Moody and replacing him with a 23-year-old Kazakh work experience student, and employing a range of bizarre superstitions around the club (only having players with an "8* in their birthday according to popular rumour).

Tan's reign has seen turmoil at the club with several managers coming and going. Perhaps his personality and style of running the football club could be preventing potential managers from wanting to work with the Malaysian businessman. He has been a lot quieter recently, leading some to suggest he is simply bored with the day-to-day grind of running a football club.


Lack of management stability

Perhaps one of the reasons why Cardiff tended to perform so well in this league and subsequently win promotion in 2013, is down the stability of management. Dave Jones and Malky Mackay were relatively long serving managers during their time at Cardiff, which meant there was a stable playing side who knew their gaffer's methods inside out.


Cardiff City manager Paul Trollope

Since Mackay though, several managers have come and gone with much differing training styles and methods.

Ole Gunnar Solskjaer was replaced by Russell Slade who had never managed this high up before. The experiment didn't work and now Tan turned to the dreaded "head coach/director of football" setup with Paul Trollope being given the poisoned chalice. It certainly has not worked so far.

Another anti-Tan rant. 4 manager in total in 5 seasons is pretty good these days.

Another anti-Tan rant. 4 manager in total in 5 seasons is pretty good these days.

I don't see any rant!

I don't see any rant either. So here is a rant. Tan is to blame from the start to now. Apart from the obvious the club is still very badly run. Still loosing a million a week or whatever. That ain't the fans fault and the buck stops with our Vinny. We are one badly run business. Vinny can blame Malky then OGS but he hired them. Tan has always appointed staff who know feck all about football. So I know there are many who think Tan is God but he is the one who has put this club in the shite, along with Ridsdale and Hamman before him.
There is still a big divide in our support and that is Tans legacy also. For this club to heal Tan needs to go and we need to start again and if that is in the lower leagues so be it.

Well said nukes

Last edited by Cesca on Mon Sep 19, 2016 10:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.

+fans are different now to the 70s, 80s, 90s, they want value for money, still got some diehards, the ones that will go down each week , watching poor football, but the majority want to be entertained, give 110% win or lose we be back, not like that in football no more, money has killed the game and has for many years, dont get me wrong if city were top of the league , i would say the same, i dont really care if city go up or down, i will do the same, pick matches when i want to go, its the way forward

I don't see any rant either. So here is a rant. Tan is to blame from the start to now. Apart from the obvious the club is still very badly run. Still loosing a million a week or whatever. That ain't the fans fault and the buck stops with our Vinny. We are one badly run business. Vinny can blame Malky then OGS but he hired them. Tan has always appointed staff who know feck all about football. So I know there are many who think Tan is God but he is the one who has put this club in the shite, along with Ridsdale and Hamman before him.
There is still a big divide in our support and that is Tans legacy also. For this club to heal Tan needs to go and we need to start again and if that is in the lower leagues so be it.

All spot on

+fans are different now to the 70s, 80s, 90s, they want value for money, still got some diehards, the ones that will go down each week , watching poor football, but the majority want to be entertained, give 110% win or lose we be back, not like that in football no more, money has killed the game and has for many years, dont get me wrong if city were top of the league , i would say the same, i dont really care if city go up or down, i will do the same, pick matches when i want to go, its the way forward

Agree totally - football has changed and we will never go back to the 'good old days' -all about money these days no passion most of the time
People say they miss the old days in the lower league and yes it was good at times but even if we went back to the lower divisions it will never be like it was again- if nothing else the authorities would see to that
Modern football - sod it - at least we had our times and nothing lasts forever

Also agree this is not a rant I Have posted most of this before and will give you my views to "What has gone wrong" -

Tan should not have sacked MM & Not given him a penny to spend in the Jan transfer window ( which he did not )
Gave MM the option to sell before he buys with what he had and given ( MM + Players bonus if we stayed up )

Getting in OGS - Was the worst decisions Tan + Dalman ever made and the reason we are where we are with the cash.
Over paid players who are on long contracts and have had to be sold to balance the books ???
K.Jones £40-£50k a week ALF who is being paid to have saturday's off - and the others who OGS got in

We move on to Slade - I Still say i felt sorry for the guy for what he had to do more off the pitch than on .
Paid less than £200,000 a year working with players who OGS put on 2x3x4 times than him

To the present PT - Do the players have the respect for him as he was a number2 at the time last season ???
Are his team selections and tactics working ??? or been put in place to sort out the mess and just try to keep us up.

One key name which i have left out and is important to the running of the club and the "Happy Mood " at the club is -
Not Dalman or Choo - WE MISS TG

jUST HOPE WE STAY UP THIS SEASON

Also agree this is not a rant I Have posted most of this before and will give you my views to "What has gone wrong" -

Tan should not have sacked MM & Not given him a penny to spend in the Jan transfer window ( which he did not )
Gave MM the option to sell before he buys with what he had and given ( MM + Players bonus if we stayed up )

Getting in OGS - Was the worst decisions Tan + Dalman ever made and the reason we are where we are with the cash.
Over paid players who are on long contracts and have had to be sold to balance the books ???
K.Jones £40-£50k a week ALF who is being paid to have saturday's off - and the others who OGS got in

We move on to Slade - I Still say i felt sorry for the guy for what he had to do more off the pitch than on .
Paid less than £200,000 a year working with players who OGS put on 2x3x4 times than him

To the present PT - Do the players have the respect for him as he was a number2 at the time last season ???
Are his team selections and tactics working ??? or been put in place to sort out the mess and just try to keep us up.

One key name which i have left out and is important to the running of the club and the "Happy Mood " at the club is -
Not Dalman or Choo - WE MISS TG

jUST HOPE WE STAY UP THIS SEASON

TG was by far the best person we have had at the club behind the scenes, he was clever getting out when he did.

Tan is the problem, end of

I don't see any rant either. So here is a rant. Tan is to blame from the start to now. Apart from the obvious the club is still very badly run. Still loosing a million a week or whatever. That ain't the fans fault and the buck stops with our Vinny. We are one badly run business. Vinny can blame Malky then OGS but he hired them. Tan has always appointed staff who know feck all about football. So I know there are many who think Tan is God but he is the one who has put this club in the shite, along with Ridsdale and Hamman before him.
There is still a big divide in our support and that is Tans legacy also. For this club to heal Tan needs to go and we need to start again and if that is in the lower leagues so be it.

totally agree until tan goes the club will continue to be run like a shit play thing and the fan base have had enough of the lies and bullshit that has come with tans ownership,like u say we need to heal as a club and that wont happen while tan is in charge

We are struggling for local businesses to sponsor players kits,I don't hold much hope for any takeovers anytime soon.

We are stuck with Vincent Tan and he is stuck with us, for the foreseeable future .

I agree TG was the best thing to happen to us, but he needed someone richer to help finance us. But VT once he was introduced to us by TG,he wanted it all done his way, and he took over .
That was one of the main reasons TG left , I know it was stated he wanted to go into politics etc.

I honestly believe that TG had our best interests at heart , but Tan just seen another way to boost his ego and his portfolio .

If TG was still in charge , I think we would be quite comfortable in the premier league and would never have been rebranded .
TG never wanted red , that's when it all broke down , the rest is history.

So until anything changes and we have a new owner (if) we are where we are .
Nothing we can do about it except support the team, and hope we get out of the bottom three pretty soon.