Originally Posted by
the other bob wilson
You use the words "put up with" and, speaking for myself, they go right to the heart of the issue. I put up with the football we have played virtually non stop for five years when we are winning because I'm a Cardiff City fan and I want to see us challenging at the top of tables and getting promotion, but I don't like the way we play, never have done and never will and so I reserve the right to be critical when it isn't producing wins or promotion challenges - you may think that's fickle of me, I just think it's being truthful.
At the moment, we're nineteenth in the Championship, when Paul Trollope was sacked we were twenty third, so, for now at least, all of the money Neil Warnock has spent in the transfer market (more than any other City manager with the possible exception of Malky Mackay) has got us four places up the table. The promotion of two years ago was great and and our manager was given plenty of praise for it, but it was offset completely by our relegation last season.
Our manager gets credit from some supporters who seem to revel in the "plucky little Cardiff" identity which was used constantly last season and yet the truth of the matter is that we had the eleventh biggest attendances in the Premier League last season, we have parachute payments for a couple of years and nearly twenty thousand season ticket holders - we should be moving on from playing the underdog football that Warnockball essentially is.
So many who defend Neil Warnock talk as if football is divided into two basic ways of playing these days - tiki taka or the old fashioned, blood and guts, long ball approach of which we are probably the leading exponents in the top two divisions at least. Of course, the truth is that very, very few sides play in these ways - they play in a way which is somewhere in between the two extremes.
I won't speak for others, but that is all I want from City - a bit more of a balance between the two. That is why I think Mike Flynn may be a good choice to handle any transition in playing style because he has shown that he has an understanding of the Warnock approach and I think whoever takes over from him will have to introduce any changes of style gradually.