These little town blues… are melting away

By: Martyn | October 6th, 2009

metropolis01 2009/10s Cardiff City are proving to be owners of the most prominent split personality since Dr Henry Jekyll’s. Limp, moribund showings against the likes of Doncaster Rovers and the Parkies have been consigned to a dustbin seemingly reserved for anomalies: unless of course the 6-point-reaping, 10-goals-in-180-minute triumphs of the past week are themselves the occurrences rarer than a chortle-worthy Bruce Forsyth gag. Yet they just can’t be: we’re scoring goals from the halfway line for crying out loud! Surely this is all weirder than the fact that stoic, prosaic pint-n’-pie Yorkshireman Mick McCarthy played for Lyon? Or is it…? If I can ask this sans the misogynistic ‘I bet she does’ innuendo of your Lynx-sporting, WKD-strawpedo’ing Jack-the-Lad type; are we coming or going?

Cardiff itself is a city defiantly in the ascendancy, one that is definitely coming in both the figurative and literal sense. The current subject of much regeneration and investment, the municipality is a hip, energetic and fresh place to live, albeit one that hasn’t forgotten its roots. The cuisine is still heartily Welsh in flavour, the local Brains brewery still permeates the local club and pub scene, and the architecture incorporates the famous nineteenth-century shopping arcades amongst its sprawling, mollusc-esque modern and postmodern erections. The Cardiff Bay area hasn’t been neglected either, and although now far removed from its days as a working port and docks, the attention paid to creativity in the fields of arts, dining and culture in the area shows that the council recognises its importance to the very essence of the Welsh capital. New restaurants, shopping centres, and housing/apartment blocks are opening at a rate that’d give Billy Whizz a stitch: as an encapsulation of the stature Cardiff is held in by big businesses, the nation’s second-largest John Lewis branch has just opened here.

Factor in a world-class sporting arena like the Millennium Stadium, a brogue to the lace that is the famous River Taff at the very heart of the CBD, and of course, our own club side’s recently-opened new stadium, as well as an Olympic-standard swimming pool, a new athletics stadium, and a plethora of concert venues, and you have a cosmopolitan melting pot that warrants a club at the top level of the nation’s favourite sport. Except, alas, we’ve a habit of jilting the groom at the altar. As weak an analogy as that is, it’s futility best illustrates the flaws this club presents its followers with as round 46 draws ever nearer.

So is this to be the season upon which Cardiff City take Suggs’s advice and proceed one step beyond? Newcastle United aside, no outfit in this division looks capable of cementing that other automatic promotion spot. The Bluebirds boast one of the Championship’s best grounds, its most passionate fans, the league’s sharpest shooter, the most prolific ‘F’ column, and high-quality players such as Jay Bothroyd, Peter Whittingham and Chris Burke, so surely ours is the hat-stand upon which most pundits and flutterers would toss their berets with justifiable logic? Caution, naturally, comes in the shape of our small and brittle squad, defensive lapses, and the manager’s lack of tactical acumen or clinical usage of the loan market (not to mention his apparent-inability to handle or motivate an under-pressure squad in Spring as the beach beckons). Nevertheless, we’ve wilted at the key moment so many times, surely this club, its fans, and the city deserves gaining and then retaining its place mat in the eating quarters of our favoured pastime’s eating quarters. And you know what, even I, a shameless pessimist, have reason to believe that we’ll be watching images of a certain South African-hosted competition this summer and using it as a chance to measure up our latest batch of foes.

Cardiff City, are coming!