Let’s start with what we know before getting on to the speculative stuff. Having loaned out two forwards for the upcoming season last week, we’ve now seen the first of the expected sales of contracted players we were warned about a couple of months ago when the 24/25 season ended.
As to why we need to sell, the loss of television revenue following our relegation is around £10 million and that has been more or less entirely covered by the release of nine out of contract players, some on wages that would be considered high by Championship standards.
So, effectively, Vincent Tan would have to be stumping up the cash again if City wanted to keep all of those currently contracted, while also bringing in new players for fees or on free transfers which would include things like signing on fees and bonuses.
If Vincent Tan has decided that, with bids in for the club it seems, money for new players has to come from the sale of others, then I find it hard to blame him – surely, the issue when it comes to our owner’s spending on the team it is that it has been so inept, not that there hasn’t been enough of it?
Anyway, the player who has left is Callum O’Dowda who was captain of the team for much of last season. It was confirmed yesterday that O’Dowda had joined Robbie Keane’s Ferencvaros (City played, and lost to the Hungarians in the Cup Winners’Cup in 1974).
As someone who, besides his captaincy, had an attitude that could not be questioned, generally performed consistently and had an excellent relationship with media and supporters, O’Dowda was, for me, the closest thing we had to a “model pro” last season and, as such, was always the most likely of the contracted senior players to be sold first.
If we accept that City want to retain the likes of Alex Robertson (who is constantly being linked with Portsmouth), Yousef Salech, Rubin Colwill and our other younger players, then I think they may have a problem shipping out the number of players they want to. After all, who else out of the senior players did enough to convince Championship teams, or their equivalents, that they would be an improvement on what they had already? I can only think of Callum Robertson, reportedly still recovering from the injury which affected him in the closing weeks of last season, who could be a priority target for some clubs who would be influenced by his dozen league goals in 24/25.
Managing to score ten plus in a season for Cardiff City is a feather in the cap for any striker who has played for them since Dave Jones’ departure in 2011 and there has been talk of Robinson linking up with Wrexham or his former club, Preston.
Robinson, like O’Dowda, signed a new contract earlier this year and, as such, you would expect that we could get a realistic, or even enhanced, fee for them. However, although I’m far from an expert on Hungarian football finances, I’d be surprised if we received a seven figure fee for O’Dowda like we might have done from a Championship team- my completely uninformed view is that it was something like £250,000.
Whatever the fee was, we’re now four weeks from our first League One match and I can say that I’ve still not seen anything linking us with what I’d call a realistic looking transfer target.
This has to be a concern, but not a crisis – I think we will make signings, but until we do, or we’re confirmed as meeting players to try and finalise a deal, there has to be a slight suspicion that we’re going to try and make do with what we’ve got.
This is definitely not true when it comes to our age group squads – these links from the club website show details of additions to the under 21 and under 18 squads.
Talking of the under 21s, the pre season game at Yeovil on 15 July has been designated as a under 21 game, rather than a senior team one. The reason given is that the match is too close to the return of the senior squad from their week’s warm weather training in Spain. This sounds reasonable enough, but it also carries a hint that the first team squad looks somewhat light on numbers at the moment.
One good thing that you thought would be a consequence of relegation would be more Saturday 3 o clock kick offs, but it’s not looking like that during a first month which sees games with Peterborough, Plymouth and Luton switched to 12.30 kick offs and the first away game at Port Vale, a side we’ve only visited once, in a League Cup tie, in the last twenty plus years, switched to a Thursday evening start – as has been remarked on social media, thank you Sky Sports!
Early in the week, there were suggestions that what I’ll call the Gareth Bale consortium had put in a bid to the club which was described as “very fair” – a figure of £85 million was mentioned, but, with independent football finance experts valuing City at something £30/35 million, this seemed too high.
A day later the Times posted a story claiming that a bid had been made, but they valued it at £40 million and were reporting that the it was likely to be rejected. There have been claims since then that the bid had been made before this week and there had been no new one. Finally, Sky Sports reported yesterday that the latest bid was, in fact, £20 million and that there were bids from other groups that were higher than the Bale group’s had been.
Although there has been little to indicate Vincent Tan will accept a bid from the Bale group, there does appear to be the odd sign that he is willing to consider a sale.
Of course, talk of £30 million valuations and £40 million bids surely makes no allowances for the £100 million plus of debts owed to Tan and the company in which Mehmet Dalman has an involvement. While it seems very, very unlikely that any buyer would be willing to give Messrs Tan and Dalman the full value of what the club owes them, it’s equally true that both of them can have little expectation of getting much of their money back if they insist on having their debts repaid in full.
There’s also the Emiliano Sala case to be considered. That’s likely to be completed by the end of this year and with Cardiff’s claim being in the region of £100 million, you have to think that a favourable outcome for City would only increase the chances of a sale of the club.
