After a season of toil and dread, a few appointments, and a

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After a season of toil and dread, a few appointments, and a

Postby Forever Blue » Tue Nov 30, 2021 12:44 pm

After a season of toil and dread, a few appointments, and a few wins, have completely changed the mood. Steve Morison, aided by Tom Ramasut plus new recruit and former favourite Mark Hudson, has lifted spirits and pointed Cardiff back in the right direction.


By Scott Johnson

Tuesday 30th November 2021



All of a sudden, they’re showing the fighting spirit of old, pressing and snapping into tackles. Most importantly, everyone is smiling again and look like they’re enjoying their work.

The last few months have been defined by pained faces. On the pitch and on the terraces. Everyone was dreading the next game because the Championship is unforgiving. When you’re riding the crest of a wave, everyone feels beatable, but if you’re sinking towards the bottom of the ocean, every game starts to feel like an insurmountable challenge.

Cardiff have a good squad, but you never would have guessed it watching them this season.

Short passes and long balls alike would go astray and any sort of press looked more like a box-ticking exercise. It is hard to recognise the Cardiff side that limply surrendered to West Brom as the same group of players that overcame Huddersfield a few weeks later.



It just goes to show how important it is to be happy in your workplace. All of the recent interviews and clips of Cardiff players training have shown them glowing, having had the weight of the world lifted off their shoulders. The final few months under Mick McCarthy were clearly no fun at all and performances very clearly reflected that.

Players have since made no effort to disguise the fact either. Perry Ng was particularly candid, revealing that the club was a “horrible” place to be and that his form fell through the floor as a result. Will Vaulks aired his frustration that the midfield was being bypassed completely, rendering him largely pointless.

The support of the players likely went a long way towards securing the role for Morison. We haven’t seen the players this energised since… well, the arrival of McCarthy, or before that, the introduction of Neil Harris.

That, sadly, is the nature of the beast for managers. At the beginning, you’re almost always a breath of fresh air and by the end, the players vote with their effort and enthusiasm. You only had to watch Manchester United’s dreadful display at Watford to be under no illusion that the players wanted rid of Ole Gunnar Solskjaer. Whether it's conscious or subconscious, the end result is much the same.

Morison quickly became the right man for the job, but time will tell if his fit is for the long term or a quick fix. His contract is permanent, but only runs until the end of the season, like so many of the current squad. That makes sense from a risk perspective, having proved to be too hasty in extending McCarthy’s terms, although nobody expected the complete collapse that followed.

The problem is that, as things stand, a lot of people look set to depart the club in June and that breeds a sense of unease.

The landscape has changed since the Covid outbreak and clubs no longer have the security or spending power of a few years ago. The market looks set to be flooded with free agents, but free is never really free. The best unattached players will still have their pick of the litter and the associated costs will reflect that.



The fact remains that Cardiff cannot afford to let the likes of Morison, Joe Ralls, Sean Morrison, Marlon Pack, Alex Smithies, Will Vaulks, Aden Flint, Josh Murphy and Ciaron Brown all walk away, but they probably can’t afford to keep them all either, even if they wanted to, which they probably don’t. The question therefore remains whether they can afford to keep any of them, or adequately replace them?

You like to think that the club will be deciding as we speak who stays and who goes, with half an eye on trying to recoup some of their original investments in January. Letting them go is one thing, but writing off a transfer spend of around the £25m mark is a terrible look.




Who makes these calls though?

That is the downside of a manager that may not be here next season. Morison himself has admitted that he doesn’t know if such decisions are within his remit and it may well prove that his future will need to be clarified before anyone else’s is, but by then it may be too late. Players will rightly look after themselves.

For now, though, Cardiff are back on track and have hit the ground running, which was always going to be the biggest upside of appointing Morison. He knows this group of players, especially the youngsters, who are expected to be the lifeblood of the team going forward.

Rubin Colwill, this season’s breakout performer, found the net again at Luton and had his best game for Cardiff at Preston. Having toiled out wide in the opening stages, he was moved inside and everything appeared to click for him. It’s the position supporters have been waiting to see him play and he thrived. He looks capable of filling the Lee Tomlin-shaped hole in the centre of the park and that is surely also great news for Kieffer Moore, who is too often starved of service.

Cardiff currently face a run of less daunting fixtures, before things get rather more difficult after Christmas, with Bournemouth, West Brom and Bristol City in quick succession. It is important that Morison makes hay while the sun shines, both for the team’s prospects and his own. There will be the odd setback, like the frustrating defeat against Hull, but the signs of progress, in every area, are there for all to see.

A nagging uncertainty may linger, but there is also a huge sense of relief that we have ended a painful chapter and begun a new, more optimistic one. Hopefully it will also lead to a happy ending.
Annis Jnr Author and Publisher of 7 Books.

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After a season of toil and dread, a few appointments, and a

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