Cardiff City’s very low key close season continues with the big kick off just a fortnight away now and it’s only on the pitch where the club looks somewhere close to the levels you’d expect as the competitive stuff edges ever closer.
To be fair, City are doing well in their pre season. programme so far – not that it ever counts for that much once the real stuff starts. However, while recognising friendlies count for very little and that we’ve not really played anyone of any great note yet, three wins and a draw has to go some way towards restoring confidence levels which must have been on the floor at the end of last season.
City played their latest warm up game yesterday against Cambridge United behind closed doors at the Vale. It was the third time we’d played Cambridge in a friendly in the last four pre seasons and so you can run a bit of a comparison with how we got on this time against what happened on the previous two occasions.
The games in 22/23 and 23/24 were, in effect, two separate forty five minute matches with the teams making wholesale changes at half time. The scores after ninety minutes were 3-2 to us in the first one and then there was a 1-1 draw. So, it’s clear that, on both occasions, Cambridge had avoided defeat in at least one of the forty five minute games.
For those first two encounters, it was a fixture between a Championship club and one from League One, but Cambridge’s relegation last season means that it was League One v League Two yesterday. Another difference was that this time the format was two games lasting an hour and City ended up winning by a combined score of 5-1. The first match was won by 3-1 thanks to goals by Isaak Davies, Callum Robinson and Chris Willock, while it was Yousef Salech and Cian Ashford who got the goals in the 2-0 victory in the second one.
One other point worth noting was that City used a total of 23 players over the two hours which suggests that, with so many players released/sold from last season’s squad, we either played a lot of youngsters or some of the injuries which have caused senior players to miss games so far have been overcome.
Given that the under 21s had two warm up games this week, you’d think that if any players from that squad featured against Cambridge, it wouldn’t be for too long.
The under 21s have also had some good results to start their pre season programme. Last weekend, they came out on top of a tight contest at Barry Town United with Luke Pearce scoring the game’s only goal from the penalty spot. It was Pearce who won the penalty when he ran clear and was brought down as he tried to round the keeper. Barry and their fans argued that Pearce was offside when he received the ball, but, having looked at it a couple of times now, I’d say they were wrong because the Irish forward had begun his run from inside his own half.
Tuesday’s match at Yeovil was meant to be a first team game originally, but the decision was made to send an age group side there about a fortnight ago. With a healthy contingent of City fans having already bought ticket for the match before this change, most of the youngsters probably had more City fans cheering them on than ever before, but this seemed more of a hindrance than a help early on as we soon fell 2-0 down.
A really nice goal built from. the back offered City a way back into the game as Mannie Barton burst on to an incisive pass, sidestepped a marker and took his shot early to leave the home keeper helpless. Substitute Trey George then brought City level as he found space in the box to shoot beyond the goalkeeper from ten yards. George was to the fore again in the last minute as he provided an assist for Morgan Wigley to score the winner against the National League side.
Jack Sykes might be a new name to many of you, but it seems the striker for our under 18 side has plenty of suitors with Rangers, Newcastle and Sunderland all interested apparently. Sykes scored close to thirty times last season for various City age group teams and notched a hat trick in the under 18s’ 7-2 win over Exeter last weekend.
The good news is though that Sykes has signed a two year deal with City recently and so if anyone wants him, they will have to pay a more realistic fee for him than the sort of chickenfeed we got when players like Rabbi Matondo, Charlie Crew and Lewys Benjamin left us for bigger clubs.
As for transfers involving senior players. It was being reported earlier in the week that injury hit Japanese defender Ryotaro Tsunoda was on the brink of a return to his old club Yokohama Marinos, but the story has gone dead in recent days it seems. Similarly, there was social media speculation that Chris Willock was going to move by the end of the week and some argued that it was given further credence by the ex QPR man’s “demotion” to the under 21 squad for the match at Yeovil.
I was more sceptical about this though because it seems odd that someone on the brink of being sold would be asked to play in what was something akin to a reserve side a few days beforehand and Willock’s scoring presence against Cambridge yesterday tends to suggest that there was little in this rumour either.
As for incoming players, it was business as usual (or more accurately, non business), but at least there were a couple of pieces of speculation to give fans something to chat about for a few minutes.
The links were with a couple of ex Norwich centrebacks. Firstly, the sixty two times capped by Scotland Grant Hanley who, at 33, is now at the veteran stage and the other is American born 24 year Jonathan Tomkinson who has played once (in a League Cup game in which he scored an own goal) for Norwich while having loan spells at Stevenage, Bradford and Ross County.
Although I’ve mellowed a bit about the prospect of Hanley coming here after being dead against it when I first heard about it, i can’t get too excited about it and the same applies for Tomkinson who I’d never heard of until a couple of days ago.
As to why we’re not signing anyone, some say that it’s the usual one out to get one in policy we’ve seen at Cardiff in recent years and there’s also of course the feeling that things could be on hold while negotiations on a possible take over of the club continue.
Now, if you look at the response this week from the Europe based members of the City Board to a request from the Supporters’ Trust for clarification regarding a possible takeover by saying they do not comment on “rumours”, you’d be forgiven for wondering if there was anything to it at all.
However, with Gareth Bale making numerous media appearances where he talks about two bids by a consortium that he is a member that have put in for City, we are beyond rumours surely – I’m not saying that everything Bale says is 100 per cent true because I’m not privy to what is happening, but to respond in such a manner when there clearly is something rumbling on regarding a takeover seems both disingenuous and somewhat daft.
Only this week, there has been widespread speculation that there are two other consortiums besides the Bale one interested in the club. It’s claimed that a second group headed by someone born in South Africa who has lived in America and now Britain are in talks which are further advanced than the other two are and there is also a group made up of members of the current Board interested in buying out Vincent Tan (there was talk around the time the club was looking for a replacement for Omer Riza that Chairman Mehmet Dalman was taking something of a back seat in proceedings because of a “personal matter” the nature of which would become clearer later).
The silence from a Board that were saying “we hear you” after our relegation was confirmed is deafening. Well I say that, but one member of the Board went on social media a couple of nights ago to outline the rules regarding the maximum number of players in a first team squad in League One and subsequently deleted his Tweets because he was shown to be wrong.
I take no pleasure from the above because the gentleman concerned has done more than his fair share for the club down the years. However, it’s concerning that he got something like that wrong and this could be said to be indicative of a group that has been in charge for too long and they’ve become more inept and error prone as their tenure has gone on.
Apart from some positive pre season signs on the pitch and, maybe on the training ground, Cardiff City currently seems like a tired club in need of dynamism and a fresh approach at a time when the other three Welsh EFL clubs are looking positive and purposeful.
Again, I don’t want to blame people who are I’m sure big City fans, but it’s so typically Cardiff City in 2025 that I can go on the club website this morning (Saturday – it was the same last night mind), click on the News section and be greeted with a page from this week six years ago announcing things like the signing of Will Vaulks and Curtis Nelson!
What on earth is all that about and why, at a time when there has been so little coming out from the club for getting on for three months hasn’t it been fixed, or an apology issued at least, in more than twelve hours? We’re talking about the club’s main means of communicating with the public in this digital age here and yet the portion which is supposed to keep us abreast of things as they occur is telling all about what Neil Warnock’s plans were for the 19/20 season!
Stop press, the news section of the club website is now up to date (It’s Sunday morning as I type this final section) and it carries details of yesterday’s Nathaniel MG First Round Cup tie at Ammanford Town. Last season in a competition where our Under 21 team are given what they call in tennis a wildcard, City made it all of the way to the Semi Finals where they were beaten in a penalty shoot out by Aberystwyth. However, this time the shootout format worked in our favour after a goalless ninety minutes with few chances at either end of the pitch as Luke Pearce, Jac Thomas and Troy Perrett all scored from the spot while the home side saw their first three attempts prove unsuccessful. So, City move on to face Cambrian in the second round. There was also a defeat for our under 18s, by 4-2, to Shrewsbury to inflict our first loss at senior, under 21 and under 18 levels in. our pre season.
