Mackay gives Tan dreaded vote of confidence

Board meeting at CCS – a healing?

Bizarrely it seems, the outcome of the Cardiff City board meeting yesterday appears to be that manager Malky Mackay has given his board and majority shareholder Vincent Tan, the dreaded vote of confidence.

Typically these well publicized board meetings are seen as opportunities for chairmen and owners to give their managers a vote of confidence before firing them some weeks later. Of course that could still happen but it appears Mackay has taken the initiative and is the one who has given his owner the dreaded vote of confidence.

Mackay’s agent Raymond Sparkes is on record as saying, “Malky understands there has been a lack of clarity… (the club needs to) provide supporters with a clear explanation of what has been going on”. Sparkes went on to insist that if the club were not forthcoming with the reasons Mackay would be.

We must assume from Sharpe’s opening gambit that the club has now assured Mackay of this requirement and will give an explanation or make a statement shortly. If this does not happen we can also assume Mackay will be back to square one and we will be in the same situation again. Not good for anyone, not least the players and the fans.

Whatever the problems were with Iain Moody, they were enough to anger or disappoint Tan and as the owner he has a right to act as he sees fit. What he doesn’t need to do, rightfully or not, is upset the apple cart or play chicken with the Bluebird’s Premier League status. Retaining top flight football for another year will be difficult enough without over reactions and fits of pique coming out of the boardroom.

I doubt the relationship between Mackay and Tan will ever be any better than it is right now. Behind the scenes it appears Tan is not an easy man to work for. Any honeymoon period is probably over by now and whatever conflicts there may or may not have been beforehand will have left a mark on both men.

In football there have always been numerous taut relationships between club owners and managers, even during successful times. It is only when the team is doing poorly that these come to the surface in such a way as to be insurmountable. We can be sure there will be testing times ahead for Cardiff starting at Chelsea next Saturday.

With the Tan-Mackay relationship surely fractured if not broken, it can only be time before they part company one way or another.

If Mackay hangs on for a few months with relative success it won’t be long before an offer comes his way. Where in the past he may have looked away from those offers, who would blame him now for moving on? If Cardiff stumbles and falls in the next few weeks or months it could be Tan who pulls the trigger.

If I was a betting man I’d look at the Christmas period as any likely departure point. The only saving situation would be a Cardiff City sailing comfortably in mid-table, relegation fears set aside and finishing above Swansea as the ultimate goal.

Perhaps only then, time will heal these two men and Cardiff City too. Anything else could be too damaging to imagine.

Vincent Tan ready to share the wealth

Vincent Tan money man

With the recent publication of Cardiff City’s financial accounts for the last year showing something like 80 million pounds as the likely current debt level, supporters can hardly be criticised for wondering how this burden is going to disappear any time soon. Even the richly anticipated promotion to the Premier League will have little impact on dispelling the debt, despite the rise in income and prize money the EPL produces.

Just maintaining the debt at its current level would be a task. Sam Hammam and Langston hold anything from 9-24 million of this debt, depending on who you listen to and which is the latest offer or counter-offer. Yet settling the debt may not be as paramount as you might think, for either party. Hammam still holds a love for Cardiff City, his baby, so we are to believe. Sam definitely deserves credit for helping take the club from the depth of despair to the doorstep of the Premier League. He introduced passion and pride into a club that was stale and despairing. He worked the press, the sidelines and the supporters. He made friends and enemies. He spent speculatively to get promotion and he took the Bluebirds to the brink of administration. You can have your say, make your own decision on Hammam. Would Cardiff City be anywhere near where they are today had he not taken over in 2000, I doubt it.

The Lebanese businessman has given Cardiff City fans a relative 13 years of on field success. A period longer than probably any other in the clubs history, including the great days of the 20’s. Yes, overall we have been higher placed in the Football League system for a time but as a sustained period this has to be the best. There has not been a single relegation fight in all that time, something no other generation of City fans has lived without. If you started regularly attending Ninian Park games at 10 years of age when Hammam took over you are 23 now and have little to complain about compared to other older and less fortunate, more often despondent supporters. The goals have flowed, the wins have come, the FA Cup, the League Cup, a Play-off final at Wembley and another at the Millenium. Yes, promotion heartache too but in general it has been a wonderful ride.

I well remember miserable nights on the Grange End terrace, roof gone, rain lashing down and goals flooding in. Time was when staying in the Football League was a task, that was success. In 2013 getting out in the opposite direction is on the horizon. So, to blame the club, Hammam, Peter Ridsdale or anyone else for our current plight is really to compliment them, one and all. Hammam did get out and saved the club when he eventually had to. Ridsdale forced the issue by finding the Malaysian investors. How grateful we were when they turned up in the High Court, at the 11th hour, cheque in hand. If asked to, I’m sure we would have all accepted playing in red on that day. How times change and memories fade. In the November of 2009, in the red and dead it was.

When T.G. took hold of the reins and saved the day he was quick to find support from his homeland in the shape of Vincent Tan. Eventually T.G. faded into the background as Tan involved himself more heavily in the overall planning and direction of the club. Whatever happened he saw the debt rising, the Langston problem unresolved and a broken Cardiff City team fail once again to gain promotion. David Jones was fired, Malky Mackay hired. Tan appears to have given Mackay his head regarding the playing and coaching staff and after a first year of surprising success and a League Cup Final appearance, backed his manager with real money aimed at securing that elusive promotion dream. Knowing the state of the finances it is perhaps difficult to understand why he has done this. It appears he is not a football fan in the traditional sense and he is not a local man hoping to do good for his local team. He is not an avid collector of celebrity or a front man relishing and revelling in the limelight as a Sam Hammam or a Simon Jordan.

Tan is a businessman. Yet everything tells us, experts in marketing and business, that he cannot turn Cardiff City into Manchester United, we really aren’t bigger than Barcelona. Yet I prefer to trust the businessman in Tan rather than the academics in universities. I admit to being biased on this score as I do work in a university! Academics don’t run businesses. Business is rarely successfully run by academics or governments and Tan is neither. It seems plausible and already publicised that Tan will convert debt into share equity. In other words he will in effect be buying shares in Cardiff City Football Club with the money he has already loaned them.

As for Sam Hammam, I’m sure he also knows this. Sam is another astute businessman. He finds himself (or Langston) in the enviable situation of holding enough in loan notes to accept a substantial offering of shares should he wish to remain an integral part of the club, a major shareholder in fact. Should Tan deny this the Malaysian will have to stump up the full loan amount to Langston. Sam has no reason to settle early or for less. Now here’s the twist in the tail. Once Cardiff City’s debt is significantly reduced or eliminated by converting debt into share ownership, the club could then be floated on the stock exchange becoming a public company. In this way the current stock holders can either sell and turn a nice little profit – maybe. Or, they can hold and float additional shares to raise further capital.

The fight for Cardiff City’s future may not be about debt but about share ownership and profits from same. Tan the businessman would not want to give Sam Hammam the businessman, stock that would see him as a significant shareholder and a potential adversary but neither does he want to pay Sam the full amount he is looking for. Sam for his own advantage and perhaps his own pride, may prefer to take shares rather than pounds now. Sam Hammam as a businessman is far more controlled than Sam Hammam the football club owner. A return to his cavalier style and speculation is not what is needed. Sam left the Ninian Park boardroom following something of a coup d’etat. He may feel he has unfinished business and wants a return to the new Cardiff City Stadium boardroom, a stadium he dreamed of, planned and was cut out of.

For answers, whichever way this goes, it pays to follow the money, not the team.

Red letter day leaves question, what’s really behind this flight of fancy?

Remember Bartley Bluebird?

Surely enough has been said about the change from blue to red? I still hold to the view that it’s just a colour. If it were not why do supporters buy and wear the away kits?

The recent compromise over the crest and nickname is a sorry one. Surely there was never any original intent to include the poor little, scruffy Bluebird on the new badge? It looks out of place already.

I’m sure the intent is for the arrogant dragon to overpower the former chirper and in good time for the little Bluebird of happiness to eventually fly the coop. Having been saved from immediate extinction it will simply masquarade inside the new City red crest as a reminder of the past, for now.

This was not a red letter day for another Cardiff City icon. If I were mascot Bartley Blue and his female sidekick, I’d be looking for new employment. What goes around comes around I suppose, seeing that Bartley got his current gig due to the indescretions of our former feathered mascot named Bartley Bluebird. If Bartley Blue had shown the same kind of fight as his flighty, winged predecessor maybe the current Bluebird emblem might have survived. Remember how Bartley Bluebird bravely stood up to the now retired Robbie the Bobby at Bury’s Gigg Lane ground back in 2001. The winged crusader went into battle despite being outnumbered and with his Cardiff team losing the game handily.

Was Bartley Blue missing in action on the side of the Bluebird? Was he promised a brand spanking new red dragon costume? A trip to Malaysia to meet other dragons? You decide for yourself. You have to stick up for your neighbours because if you don’t who is going to stick up for you?

What goes around comes around … Bartley Blue a gonner too?

Be it now or be it a few years from now, the Bluebird logo is over with. Unless of course the Malaysian owners do a Carsen Yeung at Birmingham City and get caught money laundering. Who knows, maybe McDonalds and Starbucks are cover business’ for operating underground nail salons in Malaysia? Of course Yeung is a Hong Kong businessman so what did Birmingham expect. Perhaps playing in blue is unlucky after all. Consider the Blues previous owners David Gold and our own Penarth born David Sullivan, not to mention Karen Brady.No, criminals and porn merchants the Malaysians are not. Although I do hear they like a gamble. If T.G. and Vincent Tan do a runner at any point, be it voluntarily or through some financial or legal matter, bringing back the Bluebird can be first thing on the agenda for the new owners. Turning blue will be immediate, no new owner required.

A 10 ringgit note

If the Malaysians go home Cardiff City’s lifes breath, Malaysian ringgits (formerly Malaysian dollars, yes, they even rebranded the currency) dry up and so too Cardiff City’s immediate future. But all this is mere speculation. As of course is the 100 million pounds the owners are promising to have invested in the club over the past, present and (how many) future years?A jokes a joke but there could be some underlying truth to my comedic prologue, I just hope not. Seriously, the owners are injecting life saving capital into the club and significant funds toward pushing forward into the Premier League. They have to be allowed the benefit of the doubt and the best of intentions (as whatever other intention could there be?). They have already sunk enough into Cardiff City that makes finding any new buyer almost impossible. The club itself as a Championship club is not worth the money invested in it.

The obvious gamble the Malaysians are taking is to get Cardiff into the Premier League and to keep it there. Did I mention they like a gamble? The status and reach of the club would then shoot up and it becomes a far easier sell to the football and Premier League worshipping punters and fans in the Far East and Malaysia in particular. 28 million people live in Malaysia. T.G. and Vincent Tan have already begun spreading the Cardiff City name through academies and their own business interests. You better believe they have a plan. Not only will the status shoot up but so too the value of the club.

The good news is our owners have bitten off a lot, not just a single bite. Fortunately they have the wherewithall to pay for each mouthful. It’s a gamble, a business risk, using venture capital. The decision to buy Cardiff City, develop Cardiff City and push the brand that will be Cardiff City throughout Malaysia is nothing to do with football, anymore than owning McDonalds is about liking hamburgers. If being red and a dragon is going to improve their business model then that’s what must happen.

If Cardiff City fans at home don’t like the model they will see it as a small price to pay if they do get the success we all crave. I have a feeling if Cardiff City do make it to the promised land and do stay a Premier League outfit, the rest of South Wales outside of Swansea will embrace it and feel a proud part of it.

Increasing the size of the stadium will be a requirement not a consideration. A consistent Premier League team in the capital city of Wales, synonomous with the national emblem of Wales and our vital red colour will be as obvious to everyone as a Phil Dwyer sliding tackle on a soggy Vetch Field during a derby game. By the way, how are the Jacks doing in their new home, in their all whites (they used to be white and black) and weren’t they once Swansea Town? Cries of ‘up the Town’ are long gone now and hardly remembered I’m sure.

A Premier League team in Cardiff will surely pull average gates of 25-30,000 with the top games against Manchester United and the other Champions League contenders easily able to sell out a 40,000 seater stadium. This is the only way forward for Cardiff City in the modern world of football finance. As I have said before, it’s a business not a pasttime. As long as the football bubble doesn’t pop, much like the world economy has.

For Cardiff City there is no way back. The owners can only sell Cardiff City if it is worth more than it is right now and that means in the Premier League. I would expect a share floatation to happen if the club establishes itself at that level. Even the Malaysian owners will need more capital to continue to maintain an elite place in the dizzy heights of the Premeir League. Malaysian investment and interest from a small but significant portion of that 28 million in population will play a huge part in this plan.

The good news for Cardiff City supporters today is that with a share floatation they can invest their own hard earned money into the club they love and who knows, maybe convince the ownership by democratic vote (one share, one vote) to turn back the clock and reinstate Bartley and the migrated Bluebird before going back to singing Blue is the Colour!

The only other way back to becoming Bluebirds is through failure. If the Malaysians lose interest or too much money they might cut their losses and run. They might also allow Cardiff City to finally go bankrupt. What goes around comes around. If that happens we’ll have all the blues we want and then some.

Daveja vu all over again

Since my last blog the City have picked up a good point at Brighton (2-2) and a fortunate win at Bristol City (2-1) but on Tuesday slumped horribly against a mediocre looking Hull team losing 0-3 at the Cardiff City Stadium. The Bluebirds failed to grab the Tiger by the tail and served up a mistake-ridden performance that handed the visitors the points without them really playing well at all.

I hate to say I told you so but you will know if you have read my last few blogs that this was not unexpected. A tired, jaded looking City needed fresh minds and legs but Malky Mackay resisted, believing his players would pull themselves up out of the growing despair they seemed obviously headed into. Even the cross channel derby win could not hide the evidence.

Is it to be a case of deja vu for City fans?

For all the good work and results he has brought with him in the first 6 months the Scot is showing signs of having the same stubborn rigidity that haunted Dave Jones at the end of his tenure as Cardiff City manager. One thing fans were excited about with the arrival of Mackay seemed to be his willingness to change line-ups and formations when needed. He is fast losing that capital amongst the blue faithful as the Hull game brought sharply into focus. Is it to be a case of deja vu all over again?

Three down with 20 minutes to go was a difficult enough task. It would be fair to say, to score the four goals needed to win or three to salvage a draw, Cardiff were going to need to create or force a hatful of chances.

With only Earnshaw on the bench as a forward, he came on, not alongside but instead of the unlucky and out-of-form Kenny Miller. Mackay stuck to a 4-5-1 formation although granted, he did get midfielders further forward.

Cardiff would need perhaps 10 chances to score the three or four goals required and that would mean getting the ball into the box as many times as possible in the final 20 minutes. Could he have thrown big Ben Turner up front, put Conway and Whittingham out wide to cross the ball and brought on Earnshaw with Miller playing a 3-4-3 formation? Just a thought. The Bluebirds needed to get it forward early and often and to feed of scraps if neccessary. They needed to pressure the ball in the Hull half of the field. Yes, they would have been open to the counter-attack but they were anyway. Hull had an easy time holding onto posession and by doing so killing the clock.

This was the first game that has really tested Mackay and I think he was found wanting. Will he keep the faith once more or will the inevitable changes that are needed be made for Sunday’s game with Burnley? What an interesting decision he know has. I can only guess, so there will be no I told you so’s after this one, just admiration or despair at Mackay’s line-up and tactics and what the scoreline may or may not declare after the 90 minutes plus.

Surely anything but a win Sunday will finally end Cardiff’s hopes of a play-off place for this year.