We were making love by Wednesday/and on Thursday and Friday and Saturday/we chilled on Sunday

By: Martyn | May 15th, 2009

We may have contrived to avoid making the play-offs (perhaps the players were told by Jon Parkin in the Deepdale tunnel that they contained swine flu?), but that doesn’t mean Cardiff City FC has ceased to be newsworthy during a time when loan players set off into the proverbial sunset (unless they’re fans of Corrie or Eastenders, in which case they’d delay their departure) and Bothroyd & co. finally get to spend some of their wonga on syphilis and sour mash in naff Mediterranean or Caribbean beach resorts. In this Friday-Friday round-up, not only will you get the latest news swirling in and around the city and club’s HQ, but a look at what impact the transfer guff being true might have, facts and figures inserted at random but acting as the deus ex machina to the tabloid trash, why playing on a certain day in this time period would have been duller than the love-child of John Major and Fearne Cotton, a look at how the youth team has been getting on and a birthday dedication to one of City’s zeros. Heck, the only thing I’m not offering you is my say on *EXPENSESGATE* or a personal-waiter serving chianti and sprinkling Parmesan!

Friday 8th May
The battle for not-so-deadly Ledley commences! Iiiiiiin the blue corner, weighing in at the mass of Fellaini’s Ronald McDonald crop, EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEVEEEEEERTOOOOOOOOOON! Iiiiiiiiin the red and white corner, weighing in with another annoying rendition of that shite Tom Jones song, STOOOOOOOOOOOOOOKE! And, ladies and gentlemen, the final competitor, in the claret and blue corner, weighing in at a moral zero owing to losing their dignity after going down on a former Big Brother contestant, not to mention importing illegal Argentinians, its WEEEEEEEEEEEEST HAAAAAAAM!!! £6m is supposedly what it would take for Ledley not to be allocated a locker at Legoland. On a list of highest single transfer fees paid for Welsh players, being the Six Million Pound Man would put Ledley (Majors) in 4th spot.

1. Craig Bellamy – £10-14m (depending on what and where you read) to Manchester City from West Ham United (Bellamy has also had a £7.5m transfer to West Ham United from Liverpool, as well as his £6.5m transfers to Coventry City from Norwich City, and then to Liverpool from Blackburn Rovers).
2. Gareth Bale – £10m (depending on certain clauses being adhered to) to Tottenham Hotspur from Southampton.
3. John Hartson – £7.5m to Wimbledon from West Ham United (later moved to Celtic from Coventry City for £6m).
4. Gary Speed - £5.5m to Newcastle United from Everton.
5. Jason Koumas – £5.3m to Wigan Athletic from West Bromwich Albion.
6. Aaron Ramsey – £4.8m to Arsenal from Cardiff City.
7. Nathan Blake – £4.25m to Blackburn Rovers from Bolton Wanderers.
8. Simon Davies – £4m to Everton from Tottenham Hotspur.
9. Robert Earnshaw – £3.62m to West Bromwich Albion from Cardiff City.
10. Chris Gunter – £3m to Tottenham Hotspur from Cardiff City. Other £3m transfers involving Welshmen – Ian Rush to Juventus from Liverpool, and Robbie Savage to Blackburn Rovers from Birmingham City.

As you can see, this list features a lot of ex-Cardiff City starlets all of whom broke into the first team via stints at our much-heralded youth academy (Ramsey, Blake, Earnshaw, Gunter). Even the top two in this list are from Cardiff despite having never been involved with their hometown club. Special mentions and obvious exclusions from this list include Ryan Giggs (who has never moved but would clearly be at the top of this list by a fair few million pounds if he’d moved during his peak), Trevor Ford (who set a British record transfer fee in 1950 after joining Sunderland from Aston Villa for £30k), and ex-City legend John Toshack who represented his hometown club after coming through the youth set-up before completing a move to Shankly’s Liverpool for £110k in 1970.

Saturday 9th May
It’s the day of the week set aside for Jeff Stelling’s dancing, Football Focus and ITV teatime tripe. On this particular Saturday however, the news that Sunderland are wanting to throw more cash at us is surprising. £10m for Johnson and McCormack??! Why do they love spending at our club so much? Is the service just plain swell? Is it because they know we’re notoriously weak negotiators? Do we give the best biscuits during meetings? Or do we have some kind of dirt on Niall Quinn or Ellis Short?? Maybe the situation is reminiscent of the American Dad episode where Stan gets conned by a car salesman and then keeps returning to express his anger at said screwing-over only to be fooled into purchasing another overpriced motor. Whatever’s going on the City pair will certainly be linked with moves throughout the summer; especially our penalty expert. Now unless Martin Paterson scores 10 goals in the play-off final, McCormack will finish as silver boot in the division. So undoubtedly this makes him hot property. Like holiday homes in Bulgaria several years ago. Will he represent good value to a potential investor however? Well, as I don’t have Mystic Meg in my phone book, I’ll instead conjure some more statistics to fall back on. Here’s a list of the players who’ve finished second in the FLC scoring stakes over the last five years, and then how they fared the following season.

2003/04 – Marlon Harewood (West Ham United, 25 league goals). The following season Harewood continued his purple(/claret)-patch and scored 22 goals (17 in the league) as the Hammers secured promotion to the Premier League.
2004/05 – Jason Roberts (Wigan Athletic, 21 league goals). The burly Grenada front-man netted 8 times in the Premier League (14 overall) during the 2005/06 season after his 21 goals had helped secure the Latics promotion.
2005/06 – Cameron Jerome (Cardiff City, 18 league goals). Hmm, so we’ve been here before! After very respectfully trailing in Marlon King’s wake during 05/06, Cam bolted for Brum where 2006/07 saw him net half the amount he’d scored in the previous season (only 7 of these came in the Championship) and make his initial £5m price tag look somewhat weighty.
2006/07 – Michael Chopra (Cardiff City, 22 league goals). Bill Murray?! Biiiiiiill? Is that you!? Golly, isn’t this queer. We did it again! Brought someone in on the cheap, saw them bang in the goals, and then sold ‘em on for millions! After scoring 22 goals for us in the Championship, Chops jumped up a league with Sunderland and justified(?) his £5m price tag by netting 6 goals (all in the league) before rejoining us this season.
2007/08 – James Beattie (Sheffield United, 22 league goals). Even last season’s scoring chart semi-replicated the one we view in relation to this campaign. The player who finished behind Sylvain Ebanks-Blake is the subject of much transfer speculation, completes his move (back) to the Premier League with Stoke City (albeit after scoring 12 league goals in 08/09 for the Blades) and then flatters to d… well, do rather well actually! Beattie’s 6 Premier League goals (in 14 games) were crucial in keeping Stoke up. Lest we forget however Beattie is a proven marksman at Premiership level and his tally for the Staffordshire side is in no way an anomaly or a surprise.

Maybe the Black Cats should look at these two previous examples (one particularly close to home…) of players excelling for the Bluebirds – and then moving on for hefty fees – before they write a cheque out for our no. 44!

Sunday 10th May
Dave Jones is to get a war-chest. This article, positing that our manager could be given £15m to spend on new players, is written by one Phil Blanche: now given the fact Phil’s discussing the prospect that Dave Jones is to be given carte blanche, this is either a joke article or awareness of irony is banned in the Welsh press. After I’d stopped sniggering at the rather archaic term and potential images of Dave Jones standing over a military-looking chest with his index-finger hovering over a red button (his other hand brow-mopping and adjusting his collar with needless persistence) nestled alongside cyanide, a grenade and a Walther PPK I became rather worried at the prospect of our Scouse rogue being given cash to splash. Just look at his Wolves record right here. Now bar the acquisitions of Ki-Hyeon Seol for £1.2m and Seyi Olofinjana for £1.7m (signed from Anderlecht and Brann respectively: does our scouting network even go beyond Scotland?? Oh yeah, sorry. Gulp! [Capaldi and Oruma, pals??!!!]), DJ’s cash-splashing in the Black Country rarely went above the descriptive term ‘waste’. £1m for Silas? £2m for Carl Cort? £1m for Kevin Cooper? £2M FOR MARK KENNEDY!?!? To these you can add Jones’s strange contract offerings for players at Ninian Park: Warren Feeney was ludicrously given a three-year deal, as was Darren Dennehy. The Championship’s longest serving manager is a perfecter of schadenfreude as he certainly seems to have it in for fans of the clubs he manages when it comes to his personnel recruitment. If Dave squanders this *£15m* in his erstwhile manner then the word ‘war’ may well become more apt than initially seems…
I should make some post-script – Cardiff City is the Beavis and Butthead of football clubs. Sure, we’ll prattle on like we know what we are and will be doing in a confident manner, but in reality and Pharrell-speak, City’s jus’ frontin’. Dave Jones being given that much dosh is about as likely as Rochdale escaping League Two or greasy-faced Lloyd Grossman-lookalike AA Gill embarking on a Carling and KFC-fuelled affair with a Impulse-drenched Swansea girl.

Monday 11th May
Get the violins out and brace yo’self for an ending sadder than that of Thelma and Louise. The club has released Darren Purse. Sob, sniff, bawl. This means he’s now a free agent, a term that has always struck me as having an undeserved sense of grandeur or spy-like suaveness. Slaphead centre-back Dazza, born on Valentines Day, seems set for un-romantic pastures new after Cupid (in a Dave Jones outfit) broke his heart. A player who once did his blundering in Finland, Purse always had quite a strong relationship with the City fanbase in spite of his many gaffes. You’d always hear the odd cat-call or murmurings of discontent when Purse took to the field, but it was never a four-stand-sung thing. Plus he was never in the exclusive badness fanzine of Fan Zhiyi or Rhys Weston. Perhaps it’s fitting that Purse’s last contribution to the club was a howler in our last win of the season, a goal that didn’t affect the outcome of that match but was (a). so preventable and (b). played its part in Preston overhauling our goal difference.
Elsewhere, Sheffield United beat the Lilywhites in the second leg of the play-off semi-finals to secure their place in the Wembley showpiece – a very, very lucrative game for the winner that the media seems more intent than ever reminding us of and rubbing our meek bin-scavenging poor selves in. This was supposed to be our play-off semi-final. Yet on reflection, did the players understand the club’s history so thoroughly that they avoided gracing even the semi-finals because they knew playing on May 11th would only lead to misfortune? The club has never won on the eleventh day of May, losing three and drawing three (all 0-0), and the last time we played on this day we lost a play-off semi-final. Phew – thanks for conspiring lads!!

Tuesday 12th May
The club signs a new goalkeeper, David Marshall, on a four-year contract (raised eyebrow at the length…). But have no fear for the Ronaldinho penalty stopper is here! The Scottish international joins an illustrious list of custodians (I’m not sure if the sarcasm is intended either) having achieved this feat.

- Claudio Bravo. Chile and Real Sociedad’s no. 1. Here.
- Andrés Palop. Sevilla’s no. 1 and Spain’s no. 3 (not a bad thing with Reina and Casillas as competition). Here.
- Dudu Aouate. Israel and Mallorca’s no. 1. Here.
- Marco Amelia. Palermo’s no. 1 and Italy’s no. 2 (Buffon is still in the way). Here.

Wednesday 13th May
A nice little story designed to stoke the fires of provincial rivalry, fill a gap on a quiet news day and perhaps boost the morale of a crestfallen Glamorgan public comes along in the shape of ADAM MATTHEWS – NEXT BLUEBIRDS SUPERSTAR! Matthews, an academy product (product in more than one sense…), is clearly destined to be in and around the squad next season and this represents another success story in itself for our youth set-up. Despite this bit of hilarious corporate bullsh*t making one think otherwise,
“An Academy is not just a building. It is not just a group of young players and coaches. It is not just a scheme. It is all those things, but more importantly it is a philosophy, a culture, a way of doing things”, the youngsters have played some soccer this season. In Group B of the Premier League U18 Academy league system, Cardiff City finished 7th (out of 10). By no means is this a ground-breaking achievement, but the team must be applauded for achieving this respectable position along with some very eye-catching results in recent times. Cardiff City 5-1 Manchester United being the pick of the bunch. Alas, last seasons FA Cup heroics (it wasn’t just the first team squad who made incredible progress in this competition: the youth team were knocked out by a Jay Simpson-inspired Arsenal at the last-four stage. A brilliant achievement.) were not repeated. After comfortably disposing of Blackpool in the third round by 3 goals, the Azzurini made a meal of Tranmere Rovers in Round 4 and needed penalties to proceed. In the next round, Birmingham City proved too strong and a 2-0 victory confirmed Cardiff’s fifth round exit.

Thursday 14th May
Ridsdale reveals that we made an approach to bring Aaron Ramsey back to the club. Considering how infrequently Dave Jones used him in his first spell here I don’t exactly know what the point of this attempt was bar attaining a bit of publicity and the club trying to look like they’re doing something. Are returns to former clubs a good thing though? Here are some examples to the contrary.

- Andrei Shevchenko Scored 173 times for Milan in his first spell, but in his return this season Shevchenko has netted twice (1 against Bologna in the Coppa Italia, the other against FC Zurich in the UEFA Cup) and barely been amongst the substitutes most weeks.
- Christian Vieri ‘Bobo’ has had 3 spells at Serie A side Atalanta, a club once humiliated in European competition by Merthyr Tydfil! During the first he netted a respectable 9 goals as a raw but immensely talented youngster who was soon to be a £30m+ player. In his second spell at the club many years later, he scored 2 goals before ditching them to join Fiorentina. Vieri then had the cheek to rejoin the club again, amidst much fan uproar. Not too many Italians choked on their morning espresso after reading that the Orobici eventually gave him the heave-ho mid-season.
- Joe Royle Took the Latics on an incredible journey during the 608 games of his first tenure. Guided them to 1 win and a season-ending whimper in spell number two.

Then again, there can be success stories…

Friday 15th May
Get the jelly, cake, bouncy castle and snotty-nosed brats ready Mrs Kennedy – Its Mark’s BIRTHDAY! As a present, I’ll recite some of the kind words I’ve made on the player this season: