Last week I posted that a managerial appointment at Cardiff City was “imminent”. Well, if regular readers weren’t aware already, all my confident prediction did was offer more proof of the fact that, if you’re looking for “in the know” information, you’re better off looking on other Cardiff City social media sources!
A week on and were still waiting for our owner to make up his mind and this morning, Paul Abbandonato posted the following Tweet;
Now, you could just dismiss anything from this source as rubbish, but I’ll maintain my faith in him and continue to believe that he has regular contact with at least one of the three men at the top of the club.
So, I’ll take it as very likely that the club will fail to reach the target they set for themselves of an appointment by the end of May and wonder if they’re on course for a hat trick of managerial appointments/confirmations on 3 June 2023,24 and 25 – second thoughts, I’m probably being too optimistic again there!
Anyway, this time last week the betting had Brian Barry Murphy as a red hot favourite, with Des Buckingham second favourite and Aaron Ramsey and Ian Evatt some way back. The last seven days saw the favourite fading from about Wednesday onwards as he was overhauled by Buckingham to the extent “in the know” posters on one of the City message boards were proclaiming that the former Oxford United manager was Vincent Tan’s choice and confirmation of the appointment would follow shortly.
However, Paul Abbandonato’s Tweet, together with one or two other message board contributions, seems to have been the driver behind a complete change in the betting and now it looks like this;-
https://www.bettingodds.com/thesackrace/teams/cardiff-city
Once again, you could write off this as crap (it’s commonly assumed that a modest sum being bet on any of the contenders for the manager’s job at an EFL club will see them move up the list at a dramatic rate) , but I wasn’t the only message board poster to read Abbandonato’s latest Tweet, add two and two together and come up with Charlton manager, Nathan Jones from Blaenrhondda.
Certainly, judging by the way he’s suddenly come in from something like 25/1 suggests there a few punters out there who thought the same as me.
The fact that Jones celebrated promotion to the Championship with a victory in the League One Play Off Final last Sunday makes him seem a bit of a long shot both in terms of his pay packet and the compensation City would have to pay the London club if their manager decided to step down a division.
Indeed, Jones seemed to rule out any move to Cardiff in the aftermath of Charlton’s win, but this is someone who once celebrated a win by his Luton team at Swansea by doing the Ayatollah and if there was a League One team that could tempt him away from Charlton, it would surely be Cardiff if we assume he didn’t fancy a third go at Luton.
Just one other thing about Nathan Jones, the self proclaimed City fan was out of work two years ago when we appointed Erol Bulut and barely got a mention by anyone at the time, probably because of his three months stay at Southampton which, combined with his failure at Stoke, led to charges that he was a “one club man” when it came to management.
However, despite Jones surging in the betting, it’s now our own Aaron Ramsey who is the odds on favourite. Use of the words “our own” is bound to prompt thoughts of another selection from within the club and we all know how well they’ve gone up to now! I did say on here (at least I think it was on here) a few weeks ago that Ramsey could be different from other internal appointments in that he has the playing reputation, general standing in the game and fan support to be able to dictate to the club in terms of what he wants.
During his three game stint as interim manager at the end of the season, Ramsey put it diplomatically when he said that all of his previous clubs had different football structures to Cardiff. Surely, he wouldn’t entertain the current ramshackle set up at what he sees as “his team” and it seems to me that, Ramsey, more than any other candidate, could get Vincent Tan to move into the twenty first century in terms of how a football club should operate.
Yes, Abbandonato’s Tweet could equally apply to Ramsey’ as it does to Jones and, if you wanted areal long shot, someone else who has an affinity and affection for the club would be our former loanee Gary O’Neil who has got the occasional mention as a candidate for the job.
I’m not going to get involved in predicting who’s going to get the job – what’s the point after last week’s effort! However, despite Paul Abbandonato’s attempts to try and put a positive spin on this latest delay, I repeat that the club gave failed to hit their own target and as I keep on saying, for a third straight year, they’ve insisted on putting themselves at a self inflicted disadvantage when it comes to preparations for the coming season by leaving it until June before the manager situation is clarified.
A club hierarchy generally reckoned to be inept are not helping their cause by seemingly choosing to ignore the recommendations of the group they set up themselves in an attempt to provide the sort of football knowledge Messrs Tan, Dalman and Choo are generally regarded to lack.
Of course, there has been no confirmation that Brian Barry Murphy, Des Buckingham and Ian Evatt were in the list of recommendations made to the club bosses, but I think it’s fairly safe to assume they were. Aaron Ramsey didn’t need to be and it’s unlikely Nathan Jones would have been with his team in the Play Offs.
No, I feel there’s a strong chance that our new manager, when he’s finally announced, will not have been on the list presented to the club as Cardiff City, once again, prove that when it comes to, often expensive, faffing about, we have few equals.
There’s been nothing else happening at the club worth commenting on apart from offering congratulations to young right back Ronan Kpakio for his selection in the full Welsh squad for next week’s games against Liechtenstein and Belgium – Craig Bellamy was very complimentary about the player who turned eighteen recently and revealed that he had tried to sign him when he was at Burnley..
Staying with international, Wales’ women’s team were beaten 1-0 in Denmark on Friday night and will be relegated from the top level of Nations League groups as it was confirmed that they will come bottom of their section despite a much improved performance through their five games so far compared to their first effort a couple of years ago. Whatever happens in their final game, against Italy, on Tuesday, Wales cannot avoid the drop now, but the fact that all of their three defeats so far have been by single goal margins and there were those two excellent draws with Sweden as well.
Friday’s result was the right one as Denmark were the better side, but Jess Fishlock did score a valid goal in the first half when her close range effort was shown to have just crossed the line in replays despite the referee and lineswoman ruling otherwise.