Craig Bellamy, a thank you and an apology

 

 

The ‘thank you’ rises from the depths of my socks, powers through my soul, gathering energy all the way but emerges as only two words, ‘thanks Craig.’ I guess it should say more

Note from the pictures how generous Craig was in offering unsolicited advice to referees. How they will miss him.

I suppose I should tell you what a buzz you created in the ground whenever you were warming up. We knew you added energy and direction to the side, lifted players who maybe were looking forward to just getting by until the fat lady sang. We never witnessed your famous anger directed at colleagues.

 

No golf clubs were used as part of your encouragement. Rather, from day one under big Dave Jones, you quietly let each player know how you wanted the pass. Usually with pace and curl, so you could run on to it. It was noted how you helped the youngsters around you.

People who say you lost your pace never saw you haring down the wing with some poor sod of a full back doing all he could just to live with you. And those crosses deserved a better reward.

 

I won’t forget your wonder goals. Maybe the knowledge that you could score from distance always gave us hope.

In fact there you are, I have found the words for my gratitude. Thank you for promotion to the premier league, thanks for the goals but most important of all thank you for always giving us hope.

And the apology? I guess like many other City fans we could never understand why you spent so much time on the bench. The no brainer would have been to play you every second you could actually stand up. But now we know the pain you experienced every morning after training. You went through a brick wall for us and it is appreciated, won’t be forgotten.  

Somewhere in Canton lives John Mahoney, or at least he used to. He is crippled from the bastards who had him play when he was in pain. As a young man he followed the advice of his so called coaches and trainers and was stuffed full of knee injections - like other great brave players at the time he was forced to play on when they ought to have been rested.

So go now Craig and let your body recover.

Note from the pictures how generous Craig was in offering unsolicited advice to referees. How they will miss him.

So good luck on your retirement and best wishes with the management roundabout nonsense. I suspect you will make Diego Simeone’s attitude to referees seem like a quiet UN official visiting Luxembourg.

The Blue Shirts dilemma resolved!

I know you have all been waiting for me to resolve the great standoff between Vincent Tan and the Cardiff City fans over the shirt colour.

Here we go, make notes if you need to.

By the way, the illustrations down the left are exactly that. Illustrations. I am as good at creating a shirt in Photoshop as Cornelius was at scoring, or Turner is at dribbling the ball from our penalty area to theirs or City to go through a game without conceding a goal. Well you get my drift.

We know that Vincent has opened negotiations with the offer of a Barcelona type shirt made up of Blue and Red stripes. Meet me half way he requests.

Ok. So let us start to move. How about we say “a blue shirt with a single red ring around the collar?”

So Vince then comes back with “well I want more than that for £150 million! A wide red stripe down the front with red shorts.”

We suck air through our teeth, kick the tyres, and say “well, I can’t stretch that far. How about a red collar and a red vee shape at the front.

Vincent will shake his head. “Can’t let her go for less than 25% red. Tell you what I’ll do. Red vee shape, red collar and a red band around the socks. Can’t say fairer than that. Twelve months m.o.t. and red shorts.”

Uncertain: “Well Vince if that is the best you can do.”

“It’s breaking me heart, my old son,” weeps Vincent. “And you will stop singing silly songs about me?”

“Done.”

 

We shake hands, win the Championship for the second time in two years, a record methinks, and everyone is happy.

How about that?

And next I will resolve the Palestinian Israeli conflict. 2000 years is long enough to lob stones at each other’s heads.

By the way folks how about this ...

 ?

The shirt I like, what do you reckon Vince me ol' mate?

Worst team in the Premier league by all statistics - hurts doesn't it.

So there we are. Bottom of the league. Worst team in the Premiership. Worst team for all statistics. Horrible.

We needed two more wins maybe along with a draw to have survived which looking back on our season was possible.

 We ended today as we began in January. Scrappy and clueless.

Why we took off Daehli is beyond me. He is one of the few people who can create something. 

If truth be told we scored a fluky goal. A well hit shot from Bellamy deflected off the back of a defender beyond Schwarzer. One of the few times fortune smiled on us in the last 9 months.

The worse truth is that Chelsea could have scored a hat full. In the first three minutes Torres ought to have scored and Turner gave a way an obvious penalty.

In fact had Chelsea played anyone other than Torres up front they surely would have scored at least a couple more. Was Torres really that disappointing? Yep!

What we fans were looking for was some sort of idea of how we would play under Solskjaer next year. It doesn’t look good. The back four remain slow and disorganised leaving acres of space all over the last quarter, from the wings to the six yard box. It cannot be the players as that was one quality we shone at under Malky.

Chelsea made it difficult for our midfield players and closed down nearly all attacks. I am not expecting a Hazard or an Oscar to put on a Cardiff shirt but surely I can expect a shift of work. It is only 90 minutes and these guys are super fit.

I guess we should thank the usual figures of Caulker, Marshall, Declan John, Bellamy and Whittingham. Again we can ask why the sublimely talented Mutch can’t play for 90 minutes. As for the rest I am struggling to be kind. Fabio is at times a delight yet at others a liability. So quick to get the ball up to their goal area but so slow to get out of defence and make the offside trap click shut. 

The second goal a direct result of his lethargy. I do wonder if we would have conceded so many goals in the last few months with the steadier MacNaughton and a longer run for the gifted Declan John as our respective full backs. But it might be the coaching. Too often the fullbacks seem to be caught too far forward.

So we needed seven point just to have stayed up. Just more two wins and a draw. We will torture ourselves forever with all those goals conceded at the last minutes and the fluky ones the opposition scored. Yet the truth is, as I have been saying all along, we cannot score goals. Frasier Campbell runs his socks off, terrorises defenders when they have the ball but scoring just hasn’t happened for him. I don’t think it truly happened for him last season either.  In a different team maybe he would get fifteen, perhaps if he scored a couple it would start the flow. 

And again a word to the fans. Endlessly chanting about the colour of the shirt and what Vincent Tan is full of, does not support the team. It does not lift the players. For the money they get paid you could argue that the players should be able to ignore the lack of support I guess, but I don’t think human beings feel that way. What must they be thinking when they are working their socks off on the pitch and all they can hear from the fans is about that ‘they will always be blue’. That argument can happen now, with the season over.

We start the grind in the Championship in August. Two matches a week. I am not optimistic.

If only we could find a way to get Malky and Tan to shake hands, because from what I have seen the great expectations raised by Solskjaer’s appointment were wishful thinking. 

A note to Vincent Tan

A note to Vincent Tan.

Vincent Tan has just revealed how much Malky agreed to pay Cornelius. Make sure no sharp objects are nearby. £45K per week. Yes, wipe your pc screen and read that figure again. And yep I do mean per week.

Cardiff aren’t the only club to pay crazy sums for a striker. Liverpool’s purchase of Carroll and Chelsea’s of Torres dwarfs the Danes crazy price tag and weekly pay bill. But those overpaid buffoons proved they could score goals in the premier league, not many it has to be said, but they could score.

Vincent has a point in that had we purchased a proven goal scorer at the outset then we might not have been in this position. In fact I have been saying that all season.

We can also see from the wording of Malky and Moody’s apologies that they must have acted in very injudicious ways. Hopefully one day we will find out.

So yes Vincent won the argument but somehow he has lost the battle. I am not sure he can ever win back the souls of the supporters. Even if we get promoted again, even if he pays off the debt.

There is a saying in sales that you ‘win the argument and lose the sale’. I fear that’s what he has done. He was right all along, he was hard done by. There were unpleasant leaks about him from the coaching staff and Malky’s signings were not always the wisest.

Yes, Vincent you saved us. You really did. We were close to bankruptcy but you were clear sighted in supporting Dave Jones without over commitment. You were brave in buying so many players for Malky’s two championship seasons and generous in the transfer market at the start of this ill-fated season. You dealt with the Inland Revenue and the creditors like the brilliant businessman you are. If someone less sure footed was involved we may not be around today.

Had we done well last season I suspect the angst over the red shirts would have floated away. Leaving just a few miseries in a dark Cardiff pub on a Saturday afternoon moaning into their pints rather than being at the match.

But we didn’t do well, and to be honest you are often unwise in what you say and how you say it. I don’t know if you are ill advised or don’t have the political touch so important in dealing with large numbers of people.

You are correct in that we should be grateful to you. Yes, you saved us and have given us some of our most successful times but fans are like pets. They need to be stroked have their chins tickled, be appreciated, just as owners should. 

Remember this isn’t a job for us. We won’t move onto another team. Following Cardiff City is an incurable disease. I know. I have tried in the past to wean myself off the drug. I once went a couple of seasons with only one eye on the results. But we all come back, yes including you miseries in the pub decrying the red shirt.

Even if you changed the strip to blue I don’t know if the fans will warm to you, yes it has got that bad.

Malky played the fans like a trombone. He may have been the villain of the piece but the fans are not able to see that. He could pat and stroke our egos. Perhaps once the chanting started against you it became an ingrained hatred. We are not talking about individuals remember but a crowd, something between a party and a mob. An individual can understand, discuss but a crowd cannot. Its direction is swayed with the heat of passion.

So hopefully it can be swayed back.

Personally I thank you for saving the club and your clear financial sense. I just wish you would use some of your wealth to buy a PR guy and avoid interviews for a while.

I really hope we can move forward hand in hand. But it is time to don the blue shirt. I couldn’t give a monkey’s what colour we play in, I have never been a traditionalist. But it is too late for that. The initiative will always lie with you and I urge City fans to meet your blue shirt with a handshake so we can have many successful years together.

Malky and Mourinho, Abramovich and Tan

Ok, the guy has said sorry and thanked old Vince for the opportunities. Hopefully he will now get his pay off.

Now the insane speculation.  Hang onto you chair.

 

Who is the best guy to get City back into the premiership? Yes Malky.

Has this deal paved the way for a reconciliation on par with Mourinho and Abramovich? 

Is this been timed to get things moving as soon as the season has ended.

Solskjaer says “Vincent hasn’t told me I won’t be in charge next season.”

Well you are not going to buy a house in Cyncoed on the basis of that sort of endorsement are you?

Pigs might fly but nothing is impossible in footie.

Just how bad does Vince want his money back by being in the premier league? He is not going to get it back playing season after season against Doncaster, Notts Forest et al.

Mackay would come in with many of his stalwarts still in place. Hudson, Turner, Gunnarsson, Noone … well actually his team. I am allowing for the fact that some players of his players are going to be bought by Premier league sides.

Maybe some won’t leave. Money talks. Money says to a footballer you stay here for a bit, see how it works out. If you don’t believe me look at all those guys sitting on their polished arses at Manchester City many of whom could walk straight into an average Premier League side and actually play on a Saturday. Wages over playing.

I may be unfair. Perhaps some of the Cardiff players might want to stay from loyalty, or confidence in promotion 2015 or event that they and their families now reside in our wonderful city. And they are more than welcome.

So Vincent Tan’s dosh meshed with Malky’s knowledge of winning in the championship and away we go again.

Sounds good to me.

Of course you change the strip to blue and everyone is happy.

Are the pigs still flying?