Neil Warnock’s Cardiff City reached the Premier League in dramatic fashion last season, securing automatic promotion on the final day of the season.
Ahead of the 2018/19 campaign, we caught up with Bluebirds fan site Mauve and Yellow Army to get the low-down on progress made on and off the pitch…
What do you make of your club’s pre-season preparations, both on and off the pitch?
On the pitch, results have been mixed with a draw at Torquay and a defeat at Rotherham alongside high scoring wins against non-league sides and Burton Albion.
Neil Warnock has a different way of doing things when it comes to pre season matches compared to most – it worked really well last year as well.
Off the field, the main news has been that club owner Vincent Tan has converted nearly £70 million of club debt into shares and that planning permission has been granted for work to start on a new training complex.
Which of your club’s summer signing has you most excited about the new campaign?
We have concentrated on Championship players from last season so far, with all four new signings falling into that category.
I think Alex Smithies and Greg Cunningham can be decent, cheap, Premier League performers, while Josh Murphy has the talent to play at this level, but it was generally unfulfilled at Norwich.
I suppose the most exciting signing is Bobby Reid whose record last season suggests he can definitely handle the step up in class, but the doubts with him come from the fact that it was only in 17/18 when he justified his £10 million plus valuation.
Who’s your club’s young-player-who-could-make-a-breakthrough this season?
Bit of a sore subject this one, Joe Ralls played Academy football for us, but only for a year or so after signing for Farnborough.
It has been ages since a locally born youngster has emerged and been able to settle into the first team in the manner that Aaron Ramsey, Chris Gunter and Adam Matthews did about a decade ago.
James Waite a slight, but very skillful, attacking midfielder played for the first forty five minutes at Rotherham last week and did pretty well and full back Cameron Coxe made it into the senior Welsh squad in May, but I’ll be very surprised if one of our young players features in the first team this season at Premier League level.
What will be your club’s biggest factor behind achieving its targets this season?
There is only one target this year and that is to have onlookers asking about Cardiff City’s upcoming Premier League campaign in July/August 2019!
There is no doubt us going up was a surprise to everyone and, with Fulham and Wolves spending money like it’s going out of fashion this summer, there is little doubt we are going to be the promoted team who’ll be written off before a ball is kicked this time.
If I had to name one thing above anything else that got us into the Premier League, I’d say it was the team spirit that a very good man manager in Neil Warnock engendered – we’ll surprise a few if they take us for granted.
What will be your club’s biggest barrier to achieving its targets this season?
Well, you look at our squad at the moment and you have to admit that it’s probably the weakest looking one in the league.
We could do with another striker, but it’s in midfield where we really need reinforcements – we weren’t great in this area last season and have lost Greg Halford (who played the odd game there for us) and loan pair Craig Bryson and Marko Grujic since then.
A further temporary move for the last named is being negotiated, but it’s been dragging on for ages and, even if Grujic does agree to another season with us, we’ll still be weaker there than we were in 17/18 without at least one further signing,
Which club outside yours do you think has done the best business this summer?
Everybody is saying Liverpool have bought well, but you’re talking about a side with a completely different set of priorities to us there and it’s our likely relegation rivals I’m interested in!
I saw someone from one of those new fangled data companies that are playing an ever increasing part in transfer dealings being interviewed this week and he said he thought Brighton had done some great business by concentrating on the foreign market which tends to offer better value for money.
Chris Hughton is a highly competent manager at this level as well, so I’ll go for them.
If you had to pick a six-a-side team from your club’s current squad, who would be in it?
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Finally, how do you think your team will have done come the end of the 2018/19 season?
Despite his reputation as a miracle worker in the Football League, Neil Warnock’s record in the top flight is not good (he’ll argue, with some justification, that’s he’s never had a fair crack of the whip in the First Division/Premier League mind) and he admits himself that Cardiff “aren’t easy on the eye”, so besides the on field battles, we’ll have the media doing us down on a regular basis as well.
It is going to be very tough for us and to use the old heart/head scenario, I have to say my heart says we can, just, stay up, but my head says that, without a couple of good quality arrivals in the next week or so, we are probably going to end up back in the Championship.