In a first for this blog in sixteen years, I reach the end of these summer weekly reviews without us having signed a single senior player. Going back to my youth, the close season was often a period where it felt like football had truly closed down and there wasn’t the same intensity to the summer transfer market – it was very rare for sides to bring half a team or more of new players in through the transfer market like they do these days.
However, without looking it up, I can’t recall a summer where we went without signing a single player who would be in first team consideration – just one or two new arrivals perhaps, but there always seemed to be someone coming in.
Of course, there’s still a week before we play our first competitive game and even if, as I suspect, we don’t sign anyone before we face Peterborough, there’ll surely be some newcomers before the transfer window shuts at the beginning of September.
I’ll come to my two theories as to why there’s no new signings shortly, but, seeing as one of them is connected to the takeover speculation, a few words about that first.
After what’s happened this week, I’ll not be commenting further on any takeover after this until there’s something concrete which both sides agree on out there in the public domain.
Speaking for myself, I feel this video from yesterday is probably close to the truth regarding takeover speculation.
However, recalling what used to happen around twenty years ago in the Sam Hammam/Peter Ridsdale days when there were those who always wanted to give the impression that they knew that bit more than anyone else, this week has seen a reprise of those times.
Si says there has been no EFL clearance given to possible future owners regarding fit and proper person rules and Vincent Tan did not fly over to this country to conclude the takeover deal. Furthermore, there was no meeting with Mehmet Dalman in Monaco (or he denies that there was at least) and, as I type this early on Saturday morning, I’m unaware of any meeting between the people behind the “South African” bid and supporters yesterday – yet all of these things were reported by some as having happened or were about to happen.
Anyway, my first theory (which I don’t believe) for the lack of new signings is that, as mentioned in my piece on the takeover speculation early last week, on FM24 clubs that were in the process of being taken over would have a transfer embargo put on them. Subsequent to me writing that, somebody on social media looked into the rules further and it seems that it’s possible for the selling owners to be able to move players out of the club in some cases, so a scenario whereby you didn’t sign anyone, but there would be still be departures while under an embargo would be possible.
That is what is happening with us this summer. However, as I say, it strikes me as very unlikely we’re under an embargo and, frankly, I’m probably engaging in the sort of empty speculation I was criticising others for above, It’s the sort of stuff that you get when your club behaves like City are doing – that is, keeping contact with the media and spectators to a bare minimum at a time when the future for the club looks uncertain.
Much more believable for me is that we are trying to do what was hinted at by some pundits who have the club’s ear back in May. Hence, the release of out of contract players will, more or less, cover the loss of revenue caused by relegation, but, although the plan is not to sell younger talent (e.g. Salech, Robertson and Rubin Colwill), they would look to cash in on some senior contracted players.
Increasingly, it’s being mentioned that the object of the exercise is not just to balance the books by non renewal of expired contracts, there’s also a desire to cut the amount Vincent Tan has to put in every month to ensure the smooth running of the club. So, any sales of contracted players will be used to reduce costs as well as provide the funding for any new arrivals.
The problem is that anyone who could afford to pay us what we want for the players we were hoping to sell while also paying them a wage which would make the move attractive for them will, surely, have seen how the large majority of them performed through 24/25 and concluded they were not worth it.
We managed to offload Callum O’Dowda and I wouldn’t rule out a decent sized bid for Callum Robinson (but would the wage offered to him be acceptable?). However, i get the feeling that, just as with Mark McGuinness a year ago, at least one of the players we don’t want to sell will have to go.
I’m not expecting any signings in the coming week and it could well be late on in the transfer window before we see any new arrivals with loans being the most likely means of recruitment I’d guess.
The plan it seems is for this widely criticised ownership and Board to get us promoted with a squad that is missing large numbers of players from the group that was the worst in last season’s Championship while not only catering for the loss of revenue caused by relegation, but also cutting costs further. That’s a very tough task for a competent and organised administration, but for present day Cardiff City, all I can say is good luck with that.
Yet, the performances in pre season games are offering hope that City can play a part in the battle to get out of League One in an upward direction.
Yes, I take on board all of the stuff about reading too much into warm up games, but we were very impressive on Wednesday in drawing 2-2 with QPR in west London. QPR have also made an interesting managerial appointment in Julien Stephan who has plenty of experience of managing in Ligue 1. On the back of the Stephan appointment, I’ve seen Rangers touted as dark horses in this season’s Championship with some fancying them as surprise play Off possibles.
It should be remembered also that it’s still a fortnight before the Championship starts, so Rangers were probably a week behind us in terms of preparation, but, even so, we were clearly the better of the two sides on Wednesday and really should have won.
The Brian Barry-Murphy blueprint is already taking shape as it’s a long time since I’ve seen a City side as comfortable in possession, as effective in the press and intelligent in their passing and movement as we looked for long stretches of Wednesday’s match.
Robinson put us ahead in eight minutes as we won the ball back just outside the Rangers penalty area and Rubin Colwill played in the striker who scored via the keeper and the post from ten yards. Inside another ten minutes we’d scored the sort of goal that City teams of the last decade or so barely ever scored as the ball was passed quickly and accurately over a distance of eighty yards to turn deep defence into dangerous attack as Colwill received a pass from Isaak Davies to fire the ball in from the edge of the penalty area – I’m not doing the goal justice though, have a look at it here.
???? ????#CityAsOne | @RubinColwill pic.twitter.com/h2ijMI8VEa
— Cardiff City FC (@CardiffCityFC) July 24, 2025
The home side got back into the game with what was virtually their first serious attack twenty minutes later and I’d rather give them credit for clever passing just outside our penalty area and a good finish than criticise our defending,
Unfortunately, Rangers’ second half equaliser felt preventable – Eli King, only recently introduced and playing in an unfamiliar central defender role, followed the ball deep into the Rangers half and no one filled the gap he left behind him. One through ball to a player who looked offside at first, but was shown to be inside his own half when starting his run, was then sent through and a squared ball across left the scorer with a simple chance,
Within seconds, Joel Bagan had made the only mistake of what was otherwise a very good showing at left back and we would have gone behind with a better finish, but, apart from that, we looked much the more likely team to come up with a winner in the closing stages, but the result was unimportant really and I can only think BBM would have been very pleased with what he saw.
I don’t like the philosophy that sees some people look for the players to criticise in a good team performance, but if I were to try to do it here, I can only think that Ronan Kpakio lost possession a few times early on before settling down to play well. Indeed, I can’t help but think that BBM’s approach, which is so different to anything we’ve seen in ages, is being helped by the presence of some of the Academy products who are becoming the positive element to come from so little transfer activity as they are more used to playing in a more progressive, possession based style, as wanted by BBM, than many of their seniors are.
So, Kpakio was a seven or eight out of ten just like most of his team mates, but there were one or two who were worth more than that including Dylan Lawlor. Now, I’ve been loath to build up Lawlor too much for fear of increasing the pressure on him in what looks like being his breakthrough season in senior football. Therefore, I baulked at the “generational talent” description I’ve seen and heard applied to him on a few occasions recently, but I must say that on Wednesday he looked like one!
It should be said that QPR played without an orthodox centre forward for most of the game and Lawlor and Callum Chambers alongside him were almost unhindered when coping with long high balls, so it wasn’t the severest of defensive examinations for either of them. However, Lawlor was sound at the back when called upon and revealed a range of quality passing that no other centreback at the club, with the possible exception of Chambers, could provide, Indeed , our fine second goal wouldn’t have happened if Lawlor had not picked out Robinson with a quality ball into midfield which enabled last season’s top scorer to find Davies.
The charge list against Vincent Tan and co when it comes to how they’ve overseen a clear decline in the club over a period of nearly fifteen years is a long one. However, if the present impasse regarding Lawlor and his contract is allowed to go on until January when he will be free to talk to other clubs from outside England and Wales and, possibly, leave us for nothing without even the very small consolation of some derisory amount in compensation, then it will make its way very close to the top of the aforesaid charge sheet.
For City to have let things meander along for so long without addressing Lawlor’s contractual situation is shocking and the lack of activity makes me think that, just like transfers may be on hold until we receive some more revenue from outgoing players, we may be in a position where nothing will happen with Lawlor’s contract until there is more money in the club coffers.
Lawlor was an absentee from City’s final pre season game at Notts County today with what was described as a minor injury, while it was illness that kept Rubin Colwill out of the squad.
Traditionally, a pre season programme of games sees plenty of players given some match time to start with before the manager’s best eleven gradually emerges until you reach the stage where, hopefully, the team to play in the first competitive game starts the final warm up fixture.
However, BBM has gone about things in a different way as he talked in his post match interview today of trying to get all of the first team squad to have played a similar number of minutes so far. So it is that, for example, Rubin Colwill, Ryan Wintle and David Turnbull (team A) have tended to play together in midfield, as have Joel Colwill, Eli King and Alex Robinson (team B), while up front, it’s tended to be Callum Robinson Isaak Davies and Ollie Tanner with the Wintle group and Yousef Salech, Cian Ashford and Chris Willock with the Robertson group.
For me, team A have looked the more dangerous attacking unit throughout while team B have looked a bit more solid, but a bit lacking in creativity and it proved to be more of the same today as City ended their pre season unbeaten with another 2-2 draw. However, if Wednesday was a “winning draw” where we were the better team, this was a contest where we were slightly fortunate to draw as the home team put in a strong second half showing.
With a surprise captain in Ronan Kpakio, City started the game with the same sort of confidence as they’d shown against QPR, but unlike that game, City carried little in the way of a goal threat for the first thirty minutes or so.
Although the team weren’t really gelling in the way they had done three days earlier, there were still some good individual performances with King shining in the number six role and Will Fish switching the play with some impressive long balls from the back.
After Ashford had shot not too far over, a sweet long pass from King found Salech whose well timed run had kept him onside and the striker took the ball around the keeper and rolled the ball in.
Robertson, who has cut an unhzappy looking figure in pre season, shot over from a good position and gave away a series of free kicks which left a reluctant referee no alternative but to show him a yellow card and a forgettable afternoon for the Australian was complete when an ugly tackle left him with a deep gash well above the shin area and he had to come off.
Notts County had barely laid a glove on City, who replaced Kpakio with Will Spiers at half time, but the full back, who had stood out when he had played a half against Southend a fortnight ago, had quite a torrid time of it here as the Notts left flank became increasingly more productive.
The home side had clearly been told to up the tempo and not stand off City so much at half time and were playing a lot better now. It came as not too much of a shock therefore when they scored a fine equaliser as Barry Cotter smacked a shot from out on the right that Jak Alnwick got nowhere near.
The game had an EFL type competitive feel to it now and City were struggling to cope despite a change to three at the back and the introduction of fresh legs from multiple substitutions, but when Notts’ second choice keeper made a present of the ball to City with his first touch after coming on, another replacement, Callum Robinson, scored easily to restore our lead.
Isaak Davies who shot narrowly wide soon after coming on as City put together their best move of the game as a great ball by Colwill found Ashford whose low cross almost picked out Robinson before Willock teed up Davies. However, a similar move by the home side saw them coming even closer to what would have been a winning goal after Allasana Jetta had taken advantage of Spiers and David Turnbull’s presentation of the ball to County from a City throw in to score from the edge of the penalty area.
Ollie Tanner should have done better than shoot straight at the keeper late on after Joel Bagan opened up the home defence with a slide rule pass, but defeat would have been very hard on Notts who gave City their hardest warm up game out of the six they have played.
Finally on today’s match, I’ve found something I don’t like about BBM’s methods. I mentioned that Robertson had given away a lot of free kicks and he was by no means alone as City showed a Man City like tendency of just grabbing any opposing player who gets the wrong side of them no matter where it happens on the pitch. The City’s commentary team, as usual, loved it and praised the offender for what is often called an intelligent foul or, when a yellow card is issued, “taking one for the team”, but I really don’t like this cynical fouling, not least because it invariably happens because someone is not doing their job properly.
So, at the end of an unbeaten pre season programme, what do i think the upcoming season has in store for us?
Truthfully, I was so impressed by our play against QPR that I feel we should expect a top six finish and, very possibly, automatic promotion if we can get to the stage where we can come up with performances close to that level on a consistent basis.
The very large but in.that scenario though is that today offered what is probably a more realistic verdict on our chances as we allowed ourselves to be bullied for much of the second half by what I think will be a pretty good League Two side this season. Today asked questions as to the depth of our squad and it was a concern to see the experienced Wintle and Turnbull come on in a bid to steady the ship only for both of them to lose the ball in dangerous areas of the pitch virtually as soon as they were introduced – in the case of the latter, it cost us their late equaliser.
Remember at the back end of last season when. it felt like everyone bar Vincent Tan was saying that the club was in need of major structural changes if they were to start fulfilling its potential? Well, that’s all died a death hasn’t it – the Tan knows best mindset still rules and the only changes to have occurred are we’ve appointed a new Head Coach, while the departure of so many senior players means that our, much vaunted, group of Academy graduates are going to have to sink or swim in a physical and unforgiving league.
Lots of online season predictions podcasts I’ve seen have us finishing between fourth and sixth and, although I’ve seen one have us finishing sixteenth, all of the other ones I’ve seen that have predicted us to finish outside the top six have us in the eighth to tenth area. However, almost all of them mention how poorly run we are and the implication seems to be that we’re too big for this division really, but it’s not surprising to see us here given our ownership and the way the club has been run in recent years.
I suppose it’s worth mentioning here that Sheffield Wednesday recently overcame the disadvantage of having a shocking owner to get promoted from League One. I can’t help thinking though that BBM will need to be resolute in hjs dealings with Tan and the Board and he’ll have to be as good as some think he is while enough of our youngsters turn out to be as good as some of us think they can be if we’re going to be seen as serious promotion contenders.
I always say that the time to make these sort of predictions is when the transfer window closes in just over a month’s time, but what I’ll say for now is that I think a season with the current coaching staff and players would see us occasionally thrilling our supporters. However, they would probably be too inconsistent to make it into the top six because the inbuilt disadvantages City have when it comes to maximising our playing potential will prove too much to overcome – get a group of people who know what they’re doing running the club though and our prospects automatically improve.
The under 21s and under 18s both helped themselves to six goals in the week. Last night the under 21s went to Merthyr and won a crazy sounding match 6-4 with the goals coming from Luke Pearce with a hat trick, Trey George, Cody Twose and Mannie Barton. As for the under 18s, they shook off their defeat to Shrewsbury last weekend to beat Stockport 6-2 on Thursday.
One final thing, it was inevitable that as soon as I predicted we wouldn’t be signing anyone any time soon, we see the most plausible reports of a new player coming in that we’ve had all summer! It’s being said that a season long loan for Copenhagen goalkeeper Nathan Trott is going ahead with City having an option to buy the twenty six year old who was once with West Ham.
It’s reported that Copenhagen paid 1.5 million Euros to sign Trott last year, so you’d think anyone who cost around £1 million would have enough going for him to make a success of it in League One. However, he lost his place as number one choice at Copenhagen after about half a season and, although the need for a new keeper has been something I’ve seen and heard a lot of all summer, I’ve always felt that Jak Alnwick or a confident Ethan Horvarth would be perfectly acceptable at this level.
However, it may well be that BBM sees neither of them as being good enough with their feet to fully take in the way he wants us to play. The usual highlights reel on You Tube shows Trott making some fine saves, and he has something of a reputation for saving penalties. but there’s not enough of his footwork on there to suggest he’s a big step up from our two current senior keepers. One thing appears to be clear though, at least one of the three senior keepers (if you include 23 year old Matt Turner as a “senior”, will be on the move if Trott does come here with Horvarth the strong favourite to do so as he has a place in the USA’s World Cup squad to try and nail down.
