Cardiff City selling Callum Paterson to Sheffield Wednesday is bad for business, in every respect
Paterson had personality and enjoyed the affection of the Cardiff City crowd. Selling him for £500,000 just seems strange and also then having to pay Hearts £75,000.
By Scott Johnson
Thursday 1st October 2020
Callum Paterson was just about Cardiff’s most popular player. He gave his all, every minute of every game, and played with personality. Both qualities are all too disappointingly rare.
Take his performance at Barnsley, just before the season was suspended, as a case in point. He was perpetual motion, chasing lost causes and harrying defenders. It’s the sort of display that lifts standards and spirits. It keeps Cardiff on the front foot while the game remains goalless.
Cardiff eventually made the breakthrough through Will Vaulks and Paterson bagged the second, which effectively killed off the encounter. Paterson then parodied the Vaulks flip with his own roly-poly. Everything we love about Paterson was on display that day. He was in a rich vein of form, with six goals since the start of the new year and his fitness levels had returned after missing pre-season with an ankle injury.
Cardiff’s season was cut short and, little did we know, so was Paterson’s time at the club.
He rarely featured during the run in and even less this season, since the arrival of Kieffer Moore. During normal times, fans may have called for Paterson after a run of three defeats in four, but they don’t have that opportunity at present.
I’m sure it’s clear from this opening that I’m Team Paterson. I’m a big fan and gutted to see him go. For the sum of money reportedly involved, I just can’t make sense of it all.
I feel very uneasy criticising football expenditure during a global pandemic, but life goes on and football, even in its current guise, remains a constant in our lives. I’m also aware that opinions, across the board, are heightened in these confusing, difficult times.
Having said that, I don’t think selling Paterson would have gone down well at any point. Especially for such a relatively paltry amount of money, which will be even less once his former club Hearts take their cut.
With a week of the transfer window remaining, Cardiff have put themselves under added, unnecessary pressure. They were already on the lookout for an attacker, now they’re looking for two in a very difficult market.
The fact that they look set to make less than they received for Neil Etheridge, who is older and had less time left on his contract, makes very little business sense. From the outside at least. Half a million pounds is not the going rate for a versatile, 25-year-old Scottish international. If that is their spending money, they will soon find that replacing him, with a player as good if not better, may prove nigh on impossible.
Maybe Paterson was aggrieved at his lack of playing time behind the scenes, and who can blame him, so removing him from the equation is the easy answer. The problem is that a Championship season is intense enough at the best of times, but this year it is further condensed.
With a shorter break and abridged pre-season, this campaign will also finish at the usual time, so will be a month shorter. All those extra games have been crammed in so that there are pretty much two games a week, every single week.
Neil Harris will need all the help he can get and who better, when pitches are getting heavy and players are getting leggy, than Paterson? His versatility was also viewed as an asset by Neil Warnock, but it feels more like he’s considered a jack of all trades, master of none under Harris.
Harris certainly has his favourites, as all managers do, but he seems rather reluctant to rotate. If you’re in, you’re in for the long haul and if you’re out, you may as well bring a book. As the likes of Paterson, Aden Flint, Gavin Whyte and Sol Bamba know all too well.
With the departures of Paterson, Etheridge, Nathaniel Mendez-Laing and Danny Ward, the club have cut a sizeable chunk off their wage bill and you would like to think that would create some wriggle room, but Cardiff are going into the season with one rookie right back on loan. They are selling themselves short.
Communication is key here. If Cardiff are cost cutting again, so be it. All things considered, that would be understandable. That message has to be consistent though. You can’t sell the idea of a promotion push, then continue to weaken your chances with your transfer activity.
If Cardiff are sailing perilously close to the wind, and to some extent all clubs at this level are, make it clear. Supporters will understand. Keep them in the dark, watch how lies and half-truths grow.
The most disappointing aspect of Paterson’s transfer is that it looks like bad business. Cardiff are usually more savvy in their dealings than this, but it feels like they’ve had their pants pulled down here. Even post-Covid, this is far from the going rate. It’s another high earner off the payroll though and someone that would probably now be classed as a fringe player.
Had Paterson left earlier in the window or for a better return, it may have felt more understandable. Killing a sacred cow so late on, after such a poor run of form, is never going to be a good look, but you’re at the mercy of buying clubs.
It’s left Cardiff looking that much older (despite the grey hair, Paterson was one of Cardiff’s younger players, which is another problem for another column) and that much more vulnerable.
There is a sense that Harris never really made the most of Paterson. He has been mainly used him as a forward, but has shown in the past that he is more than capable of filling in as a 10, right winger or right back, all positions where Cardiff look weak. Just not on Harris’ watch.
Harris made an impressive start to his Cardiff career, but the suspicion was that he may have overachieved in getting Cardiff a play-off place. That is certainly starting to look the case. He deserves the tools he needs to try and go one step further, but that task is getting more and more difficult with every departure.
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