Cardiff City: a club in need of direction
With poor performances on the pitch and a lack of vision in the boardroom, prospects are bleak for the Bluebirds.
Clubs who struggle in the Championship generally fall into one of three categories. Firstly, there are the historically small teams whose tight budgets cannot sustain second-tier football, like Wycombe Wanderers and Burton Albion. At the other end of the spectrum, Derby County dropped into League One after overspending in their unsuccessful pursuit of promotion to the Premier League.
Thirdly, there are clubs who have suffered a managed decline due to their owners gradually losing interest and cutting away financial support; the relegations of Blackburn Rovers in 2017 and Ipswich Town in 2019 can be attributed to this. Under the stewardship of Vincent Tan and his lieutenants Mehmet Dalman and Ken Choo, Cardiff City are in danger of suffering the same fate.
On the pitch, the first years of Tan’s reign were a success. Two play off campaigns, a League Cup final appearance and promotion to the Premier League represented a great achievement for a club which had spent much of the late 2000s as Championship also-rans. Although, a controversial kit change and clips of Tan appearing to boo the players from the director’s box left the club’s supporters wishing that their owner would keep a lower profile.
Today, things couldn’t be more different. The Bluebirds are marooned in a relegation battle, with their 20-year stay in the top two divisions now at serious risk. Off the field, money is tight and Tan is rarely seen in the Welsh capital (a visit for November’s match with Hull was his first since 2019), with fans now begging for some direction and ambition from the boardroom, or better still, a change in ownership.
It would be unfair to suggest that Tan does not spend at all. Since 2010, he has pumped roughly £200m into Cardiff. However, this investment has not been consistent; instead, it has come in isolated bursts, without any coherent strategy attached.
In the last nine years, there have been three transfer windows in which the Bluebirds have spent heavily by second tier standards. After each of the Premier League relegations in 2014 and 2019, with the club among the pre-season title favourites, Tan has given his manager the funds needed to bounce back to the top flight. Additionally, in January 2018, then-boss Neil Warnock eventually persuaded Tan to make a rare mid-season venture into the market. At the time, Cardiff were sitting 2nd in the table, unexpectedly competing for promotion against clubs boasting far more expensively assembled squads.
Throughout this period, Tan has only shown willingness to part with his cash when he feels he can get an immediate return on it. Yet none of these spending sprees have yielded value for money, as the club failed in both their attempts at quick returns to the Premier League in 2015 and 2020. Even though the 2017-18 campaign ended in an unlikely promotion, £5m January addition Gary Madine made no meaningful contribution and left for free just two years later. The recruitment in pre-season (the club’s only genuinely outstanding transfer window since that first relegation) was the driving force behind their success.
Crucially, there has never been a contingency plan beyond instant promotion and after the short-term financial gambles of 2014-15 and 2019-20 failed to pay dividends, the playing budget was slashed on both occasions. This toxic combination of cuts and the expensive post-relegation recruits’ lack of impact has left the Bluebirds reliant on managers working Warnock-esque miracles if they are to achieve anything of note.
Nevertheless, this is another area where the owner has been generally unwilling to loosen the purse strings. From Russell Slade and Paul Trollope pre-Warnock to Steve Morrison and Mark Hudson in more recent years, Tan has consistently plumped for thrift over quality when making managerial appointments. Employing Sabri Lamouchi in January showed slightly more ambition, and he has made a bright start, but avoiding relegation is a more immediate concern than troubling the top half of the league at this stage.
As difficult as it is to consistently compete with the wealthier sides in the division, modest investment can go a long way when combined with strategic thinking. Brentford spent very little on transfer fees in their first few seasons in the Championship, but owner Matthew Benham used a statistical model to identify transfer targets from European leagues, particularly in France, Germany and Denmark. By shopping in under-scouted markets, they were able to obtain better value for money when purchasing players and make higher profits when they were sold on.
Between 2017 and their promotion to the Premier League in 2021, the Bees sold 17 players for more than they had been bought. The fees received for the likes of Jota, Neal Maupay and Said Benrahma gave the club the funds to further develop the squad and buy more established replacements such as Pontus Jansson and Ivan Toney, who were both instrumental in the 2021 play-off triumph. By contrast, in the four seasons since relegation back to the Championship Cardiff have made profits on just three players; Neil Etheridge, Kenneth Zohore and Kieffer Moore.
Even when the Bluebirds have shopped in the lower reaches of the EFL, another market from which gems can be unearthed, results have been poor. Recruits from the third and fourth tiers have either tended to be of an insufficient standard to make an impact on the pitch, such as Gavin Whyte and Max Watters, or too old to generate future profit, like 26-year-old Ebou Adams. Again, Brentford experienced far superior outcomes in this area without breaking the bank – their £1.8m purchase of a 21-year-old Ollie Watkins before selling him three years later for £28m being their most successful set of transactions.
Norwich City’s 2018-19 promotion could also provide inspiration for owners like Tan, looking to reach the Premier League on a budget. The campaign was centred on the brilliance of striker Teemu Pukki, a free transfer from Danish champions Brondby, and creative midfielder Emiliano Buendia, who was plucked from the bench of La Liga club Getafe for £1.5m. Youth played an even bigger role though. With academy graduates Max Aarons, Jamal Lewis and Todd Cantwell impressing alongside Pukki and Buendia, the Canaries were able to build half a title-winning XI for a relative pittance.
Historically, Cardiff’s academy, which can take credit for the development of Welsh internationals Aaron Ramsey and Chris Gunter, has been strong, but the production line has slowed somewhat in recent years. For all the glimpses of form shown by Ruben Colwill and Isaak Davies, neither have enjoyed regular starts this term.
Some promising talents have passed through; it is highly likely that Rabbi Matondo and Gabriele Biancheri would have been able to fulfil their promise in South Wales had they not been poached by Premier League development squads. Regardless, the inability of any Bluebirds academy graduate to establish themselves as a fixture in the first team since the emergence of Joe Ralls a decade ago is a black mark on the record of the club’s youth system and provides an obstacle to progress.
Without a conveyor belt of academy products or impressive young first team players providing any re-sale value, City are now even more reliant upon ticket sales as an organic revenue stream. Yet things look bleak here too. Average crowds currently stand at 18k but when taking non-attending season-ticket holders into account, the true figure is undoubtedly even lower.
Outside of fixtures with local rivals, atmospheres at Cardiff games are not what they used to be and when watching a match, it easy to forget it is taking place in the same stadium which hosts the Welsh national team and the famously vocal red wall. It would be easy to blame supporters for this, but their apathy only reflects the poor performances on the pitch and in the boardroom.
There is one obvious solution to these multiple problems, and that is for Tan to sell the club. He is not interested in staying and the fans are not keen for him to stick around either, with anti-board sentiment rife around the Cardiff City Stadium.
The only issue is that if he were to sell now, the Malaysian would have to take a substantial financial loss, because no prospective buyer will pay a significant sum for a club flirting with relegation to League One. However, the club’s value will only appreciate with promotion to the Premier League, and all of Tan’s recent decisions indicate he is unwilling to provide the funds required to get there.
This leaves the Bluebirds in a state of limbo, with Tan having minimal involvement but continuing to subsidise the club’s losses in the vain hope that an unlikely return to the Premier League will be forthcoming and he can recoup a greater percentage of his investment.
Whatever happens next, without either fresh strategy or new personnel in the boardroom, it is likely that Cardiff’s next exit from the Championship will be in the wrong direction.