This must be the fourth or fifth of these reviews that I have done and this time around I'm pretty sure that, amazingly, I have got this far without mentioning the new ground, boardroom politics, debts and property developers (normally I seem to spend half my time talking about them!), but all that changes from now on!
Before going on to the events of 21 October, I'll just mention in passing that, as far as I can remember, the position regarding the new ground around this time was that, although the three month due diligence period hadn't even begun, Peter Ridsdale was still claiming that diggers would be on site before the end of the year. I must admit that I thought this was impossible because of the due diligence situation but, actually, although our Chairman was a couple of months out with his timing, he was right - preparatory work began on the new ground site in February only a month or so into the due diligence period.
Four days after beating Southampton, City were playing at Norwich, but, to be honest, the game was almost forgotten as news broke that Sam Hammam would be stepping down from his position as club owner and his place in the Boardroom!
There had been many messages posted on here in the months running up to the financial restructuring of the club about how Sam Hammam was on his way out with some of them saying he was being forced out and others claiming that his failing health was forcing him to stand down, so I suppose that, when it came, the news shouldn't have been a total shock, but, speaking for myself, it came as a total bolt from the blue.
I suppose the first those of us who hadn't travelled to Norwich knew of what was happening was when Radio Wales carried a vague story in the hour before kick off about Sam Hammam leaving and Peter Ridsdale taking over as Chairman. By half time, there were messages on here posted by people at the game itself saying that something was definitely up and, as soon as the match finished, the news and speculation started coming thick and fast!
Knowing what we do now, I find it quite hard to recollect precisely what was being said at this time, but two things I do recall are that everyone who gave an opinion on the subject seemed to think the changes at the club were good news and that I soon found out what hedge funds were!
As I remember it, the changes were thought of as good news for two reasons. Firstly, it had long been accepted, even amongst Sam Hammam's most loyal disciples, that his relationship with the council was not a good one. We often hear it said now that the new ground would never have gone ahead with Sam Hammam still in charge - I cannot remember that being said too often while he was still owned the club, but it was obvious that his continued presence in the Cardiff City boardroom was creating a problem - therefore, it was argued that Hammam's disappearance would clear the last obstacles to the Leckwith project going ahead.
Secondly, it was being widely reported (or perhaps spun might be the better description!) that the new mystery investors would be making money available to Dave Jones for team strengthening in the January transfer window - I think most people accepted that, with Sam Hammam in charge, any transfer dealings in January would have been on a pretty modest scale whereas with significant investment, apparently, coming into the club, there appeared to be no reason why we couldn't be much more aggressive in our recruitment drive during the period when the transfer window reopened.
Of course, at this early stage, supporters were very much reliant on the media for information and this piece which appeared in Wales on Sunday the day after the Norwich match makes interesting reading now;-
http://tinyurl.com/25znby
Now, I know many regular posters on here don't have too good an opinion of the guy responsible for this report and, with the benefit of hindsight, you can see that it is full of glaring errors, but, as I recall it, this is pretty typical of what a lot of hacks were writing at the time.
Whilst the Wales on Sunday report was pretty short on detail, this question and answer article that appeared in the Echo the following day is more comprehensive (as well as being far more accurate as it turns out!);-
http://tinyurl.com/yjqobj
What the Echo piece does not make clear was how Sam Hammam's stranglehold on the club was being loosened. It is reported here that he held 74% of the shares in the club, but I have seen it reported as being as high as over 80% in other articles - how was it that he was only left with an 8% holding after the financial restructuring? What became clear as the days went on was that Sam's shares were being "diluted" by Ridsdale and co creating millions of new shares with the majority of them being taken up by the mysterious hedge funds that we were being told were the key to a great new future for
As can be expected, the media had a field day with the takeover story as more details of what was supposed to be happening emerged - this piece by Steve Tucker is notable for the first use of the word "transparent" when applied to the new regime!
http://tinyurl.com/2vjl3g
Given how things ended up a few weeks later, it's interesting to see what the main parties in the takeover were saying about each other at the time. In this article, whilst Sam Hammam makes it clear that he was sad to leave the club and also doesn't mention Peter Ridsdale by name, the implication appears to be that the parting, when it came, was on good terms;-
http://tinyurl.com/2qt3gg
For his part, Peter Ridsdale had some complimentary things to say about our former owner when he addressed the Cardiff Business Club on 27 October;-
http://tinyurl.com/3bj6d8
When this story first appeared, I seem to remember that it was our current Chairman's comments about the Cardiff Blues and ground sharing that provoked the most discussion. However, one thing that
Anyway, that is all for the future, what is more important here is what sort of affect did this brave new world at Cardiff City have on the team that was forging ahead at the top of the Championship? Unfortunately, the one word answer to that question is "disastrous"!
City travelled to
In the event, City could have no complaints as they slipped to a 1-0 defeat with the match being decided by a quality long range goal by Etuhu after just seven minutes and anyone trying to explain why we tailed off so alarmingly from November onwards could have identified three contributory factors to our decline that afternoon;-
1. In the closing minutes Kerrea Gilbert clashed with
2. Chopra's absence was keenly felt as his replacement Luigi Glombard gave a miserable performance that saw him replaced by Malvin Kamara at half time (I'm pretty certain that Dave Jones has never replaced a non injured player so early in a game before or since in his time as our manager). In all other areas of the pitch City didn't not have enough in terms of quantity, but this wasn't the case in the striking positions where it was an absence of quality that was the problem - we had nine strikers on our books during the campaign, but only Chopra showed himself to be capable of scoring goals on a regular enough basis.
3. Kamara's introduction brought about a second half improvement, but only to the extent that City got more of the ball - they were able to do hardly anything with it that really hurt the home side. From around this time onwards, players like McPhail, Parry, Ledley and Scimeca became less of an attacking influence and the number of chances being created declined accordingly.
Having said that, the third point I mentioned certainly didn't apply to our next match in which
To be fair to Chopra, he did play a part in the goal that gave us an overdue lead early in the second half as his run towards corner taker Paul Parry distracted the
City responded well to this setback and regained the lead with a quarter of an hour to go when Chopra finally converted one of his chances after Parry and Thompson had done well to work the opening for him. Whether it was by accident or design City sat too deep after that and they paid the price in injury time when
Barnes' goal quietened a home crowd that had spent much of the game singing the sort of pro Sam Hammam songs that had not been heard at Ninian Park since Black Friday as they said their goodbyes to the owner, but they would have gone quieter still if Howard had been able to convert a great chance late on instead of send his shot across goal.
Significantly, Howard had got in down the left hand side of City's defence and both of the visitor's goals had come from crosses from that area. Kevin McNaughton had been excellent so far during the season, but he now entered a phase where his level of performance fell away quite badly - you couldn't help wondering though if he shouldn't have been on the pitch at all during this time. This was McNaughton's first match since picking up his hamstring injury and it was hard to avoid the suspicion that he had been rushed back too quickly because Kerrea Gilbert's suspension meant that we only had James Chambers as cover for the full back positions - this was to happen with other players on a few other occasions during the season, but would it have occurred if our squad had been as big as those of the other clubs battling it out at the top of the table?
City now faced two successive away matches followed by a home game with
Glenn Loovens was fit enough to take his place in an unchanged City team that faced
Michael Chopra, roundly booed throughout by the home contingent for his Newcastle connections, gave us a third minute lead with a simple goal from a Parry cross as the Sunderland defence was caught dozing. However City weren't ahead for long as seven minutes later Brown headed home after a good move down City's right. Chopra then restored City's lead eight minutes from half time when Parry was again able to pick him out and, although, with
With October not yet over, City had chalked up their fifth away win of the campaign, but, just as their previous two matches had offered clues as to why it all went wrong after the first third of the season, so did this one because, from now on, away results declined alarmingly with only one more away win (a fortunate 2-1 triumph at Wolves) being gained in the remaining six months of the campaign.
With Steve Thompson reportedly out for some time, Kevin Campbell was given a chance to establish a place in the starting line up for the trip to
However when sub Willo Flood laid an equaliser on a plate for the in form Chopra midway through the second half there were signs that City were getting on top, but, once again, an injury to Glenn Loovens was to prove decisive. The Dutch defender limped off with a quarter of an hour to go to be replaced by Roger Johnson and, within ten minutes, the home side regained their lead when substitute Guy held off Darren Purse to fire past Alexander. In their desperation to find an equaliser, City pushed Johnson up front, but the resultant lack of cover at the back was exploited in injury time when McPhail was adjudged to have brought down Jones in the box and Cureton ticked away the resultant penalty to make the final score 3-1.
With McPhail being judged as last man in the penalty incident, he became the latest City player to be shown a red card, but, at least this time there would be no suspension to serve because referee Moss later admitted he had got the red card, and, by implication, the penalty, decision wrong and overturned his decision.
With the transfer window being closed, the widely held opinion that there would be, by City's standards anyway, a lot of money available for transfers under the new regime could not really be tested, but clubs could still bring in players on loan and, on the day before Burnley's visit to Ninian Park, the Echo reported that City were in talks with Manchester United striker Alan Smith about a proposed one month loan deal. At first glance, such a deal would have looked a non starter, but, the England International was making his way back from a horrific leg break earlier in the year and there was the Peter Ridsdale connection from Smith's time at Leeds to consider as well, so the notion that Smith could end up a City player for a while wasn't as daft as it may have first sounded.
For a while there was even some speculation that Smith could start against Burnley, but in the event an unchanged City side faced visitors who stood third in the table and were defending an unbeaten away record. The game turned out to by a scrappy and niggly affair as, not for the last time during the season, a so called elite referee from the Premiership struggled to keep control. Although he booked five of their players referee Peter Walton failed to clamp down on an over physical Burnley team who restricted City to very few goal attempts. Good football was at a premium, but, at least, the goal that decided the game on 23 minutes came from one of the few times City were able to put their game together as Loovens headed down to Campbell who teed up Scimeca to score from the edge of the penalty area with a low shot just out of the reach of keeper Jensen.
Apart from a bad miss by Chopra right at the death, City didn't really threaten much besides that, but their lack of credible options up front was proven when a badly tiring Campbell was replaced for the last fifteen minutes by centre back Roger Johnson! If City didn't cause Burnley many problems, the same was true at the other end where the team were able to hold onto their lead with very few problems and, at the time, this win was hailed as proof that the side were able to graft their way to victories when not playing well - however, in the next thirteen matches that theory was well and truly shot out of the water!