NOTHING WILL CHANGE UNTIL ONE THING DOES

Cardiff City's huge potential is clear but nothing will change unless one thing does[b]
walesonline

Cardiff City are looking for their 12th permanent manager under Vincent Tan's ownership[/b]

Buying a Championship club is the most expensive lottery ticket in the world, so the adage goes. And that might be true were it not for the repeated agony said lottery ticket causes again and again.

Cardiff City fans are at a loss. And the club's hierarchy are hurting, too. They don't want to be in this position again. But heavy is the head that wears the crown. Because this machine has not been functioning well enough for too long now and change is needed.

Erol Bulut is far from blameless in steering Cardiff to their worst league start in almost a century, but blaming tactics or the wrong 65th-minute substitution is just the tip of the iceberg and supporters know that, too, they are not daft.

The truth is, two things can be correct. You can say it was right for Cardiff to hand Bulut a new deal, after a major improvement in results which saw the club finish 12th after two successive seasons of battling relegation, on the proviso of a more adventurous, attacking style of play. And you can also agree with the decision to sack him after six games, disappointed by the lack of improvement on the pitch which had been promised throughout the course of the summer and a dire goal and points return.

Cardiff is a hard job. You need to 'get' the supporters' passion and club's history, have to get results while playing attacking and quick football and you have to manage very, very well above you with perhaps not as much help as you might get at other clubs.

That last point is salient. It's a point which is brought up time and again when Cardiff find themselves in this situation. The dearth of football acumen or experienced football people within the club in top positions places a weighty burden on the shoulders of any manager who accepts the job – and don't misconstrue me here, it is still a very appealing job with a massive ceiling.

More than one manager has praised Mehmet Dalman in the past, but he is a non-executive chairman – as such it is impossible for him to be across all things, try as he might. The executive on the board, CEO Ken Choo, also has a huge remit. The club bottlenecks very quickly the higher up you go. As one senior figure put it in recent days – "It is like a ship without a captain."

But Cardiff City Football Club is a business and a big business at that. It is a company which in the last financial year turned over £26.7m – and the vast majority of that income is predicated on the success of its men's senior first team. There are revenue drivers elsewhere but make no mistake, if the football team are not doing well, the numbers go down in total correlation.

The upshot from the relative dearth of football knowledge at the top end is that Cardiff are looking for a silver bullet for success every time they appoint a manager. But Neil Warnocks don't grow on trees, unfortunately. Cardiff need a character with a huge personality, equipped with the stature to shoulder all the responsibility and pressure that comes with managing a big club, who is tactically astute with experience and comes armed with a massive contacts book and proven transfer record. If you can get all of that in one person on a Championship budget then I doff my cap to you, sir.

Some supporters, who had grown disillusioned with Bulut in recent weeks, cited Albert Einstein's famous definition of insanity when talking about what was happening on the pitch. While there was merit in that, the same can be applied to appointing managers in recent years. Sign up to our Cardiff City newsletter here.

There is no doubt those at the top want the best for the club, but whether its stubbornness or hubris, the reluctance to add a technical director or sporting director to oversee the running of the footballing side of things will remain a huge frustration for fans, who see their club lurch from one manager to another, from one philosophy to another, from one transfer strategy to another, even. The counter-argument to that from sources at the club is that the owner might see any technical director as equally as dispensable as he sees the managers. If that is the case, well, you simply can't legislate for that.

Even the likes of David Hughes, who was a respected footballing figure and had a hand in some transfer strategy during his time running the academy before being poached by Man United in 2022, and Kevin Beadell, whose success in the market on a shoestring budget while he was transfer chief at Cardiff was vital to them staying in the league, while he has been praised for his subsequent work at Sheffield Wednesday, have not been replaced.

Cardiff have signed 23 players since Beadell left in the summer of 2023 — twenty-three! — how many of those have been hits, would you say? Very few indeed, although some will place blame at the manager's door for that.

Twenty-three players in a year with no sporting director and a rookie transfer chief in Patrick Deboys — let's be clear, this is no slight on him, he was also doubtless working around the clock this summer — these are huge calls we are talking about and it's just scratching the surface with regards to of the type of responsibilities which fall on any Cardiff manager's head.

Other areas of the club are thriving. Look at the new academy complex in Llanrumney and the Cardiff players packed in Wales youth teams. Some academy graduates are now first-team bench regulars, while some will always want more and that's understandable too.

The women's team is a huge success story coming out of the club over the last couple of seasons. They are back-to-back league and cup winners and are currently playing in Europe. The club has also started work on a new state-of-the-art training facility, another big investment with the ultimate goal of becoming a regular fixture in the Premier League.

There are major positives, not least the squad Bulut has left behind. It's not a promotion-winning squad, but there's certainly enough to work with and build on if whoever gets the gig also gets the required help to allow them to flourish. Otherwise we will be in this position ad nauseam until a new ownership structure is implemented.

It is still early enough in the season for Cardiff to salvage something from this woeful start, make no mistake about it. Steve Cooper took over Nottingham Forest, who were bottom after eight games in the season, and won promotion with them. That, of course, is unlikely, but you get the point.

What should be addressed now is not only the manager's position, but how the management structure looks moving forward. Warnock is a freak of nature at this level and was manna from heaven as far as Cardiff were concerned, but praying that happens every time you appoint a manager is no recipe for sustained, prolonged success.

Vincent Tan wants one more shot at the Premier League. He's ploughed in — and lost — so much cash he feels he has earned the right to see the sparkly lights of the top flight again. He insists he can make a go of it this time and says he has learnt from his mistakes. But has he learnt that this creaking system needs fixing and it needs help at its most crucial juncture, right at its top end?

Any new manager should be set up for success. Tan can back them with cash and support, but without full-time footballing people in key positions, the Premier League dream slips further and further away.

You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.

Very rare to see WalesOnline journos criticising Vincent Tan; but I am reliably told large parts of this story were ‘lifted’ from a prominent Cardiff City Podcast…

Still ,a very good read Chris

We bang the same drum everytime we change a manager, We need to do something about it then.... otherwise nothing will ever change,

Obviously as customers we are entitled to moan, but it's pointless if we don't actually follow through

We bang the same drum everytime we change a manager, We need to do something about it then.... otherwise nothing will ever change,

Obviously as customers we are entitled to moan, but it's pointless if we don't actually follow through

What do you suggest?

There was talks of protests not long ago but didn't seem to materialise into anything,

Like I posted on another thread, a mass boycott of a live on sky game. Send a clear message. Its easy to do...just needs co-ordination

The only way to get tan to listen is less bums on seats, and fans uniting to protest him out.

I just don't see our fans togetherness anymore

The only way to get tan to listen is less bums on seats, and fans uniting to protest him out.

I just don't see our fans togetherness anymore

Kyle, the fan base has been divided for a number of seasons now.

Weather that be because of Tan, because of the manager, because of the football, it all amounts to the same.