Reply With QuoteWhat did you think about Cornelius, at the time he was signed?Originally Posted by The Lone Gunman
And then 6 months after - what did you think about the situation then?
And again now, with the benefit of apparently fuller hindsight ?
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What did you think about Cornelius, at the time he was signed?
And then 6 months after - what did you think about the situation then?
And again now, with the benefit of apparently fuller hindsight ?
I'm going to take a wild guess and say it was because the player didn't turn out to be anywhere near as good as either the ambitious manager or his legions of supporters believed he'd be.
"Then why didn't the ambitious manager play this rising star of European football who he had beaten several Premiership clubs to sign?"
Quite possibly something to do with the injury he picked up at the very start of the season which kept him out for months.
Like most people, I thought he looked very promising when he was signed. An obvious gamble at the fee, but very promising all the same. After 6 months, I thought Mackay had bought a player who was nowhere near ready for the Premier League at best and nowhere near good enough at worst. Now I think he looks like he could probably do a job in the Championship.
So history hasn't really rewritten itself just people now have the benefit of hindsight.
He didn't play him when he wasn't injured and said himself he had to bed him in slowly as he was "one for the future"
A bit odd considering he was a record signing and one of the highest earners at the club.
Well that's what I thought.
Also , 'some other things' seemed to come to light, but only over time (even though nothing appears to have been proven ).
I don't think anybody can truly claim to have had their suspicions from the outset, nor claim to have called it all correctly from day one.
It was a bizarre few years.
Before he signed people only had his YouTube reel to go off.
After he signed we got to witness his odd running style and his extremely poor first tough which meant his 2nd touch was a tackle.
Raw yes, worth 8m at the time and 45k a week no chance.
You're right, history hasn't rewritten itself. It's been rewritten by those who claim they believed there was something 'fishy' or 'dodgy' about the Cornelius transfer all along when nobody said actually anything of the sort at the time.
I find it amusing that people genuinely seem to believe a guy in Mackay's position would have signed a player like Cornelius for nothing more than personal financial gain. That is such a ridiculous notion under the circumstances, but seemingly there are those who are prepared to believe it. But then they probably believed the Emperor re-branded the club for commercial reasons too.
This.
Only rather than amusing, I find it ridiculous.
Whatever the reason behind the Cornelius transfer, it is the one event that Vincent Tan can legitimately use against Malky Mackay when he wants to accuse him of wasting "his" money. Before the Cornelius deal, Mackay had done brilliantly with limited funds to put together a squad which reached a Cup Final while finishing in the top six in his first season and, when delivered with a promotion or the sack ultimatum when given a healthy budget by Championship standards in his next season, he delivered in the shape of a title win.
There's no point debating about whether he would have kept us up if he had stayed at this point, but I find it very insightful that apart from Cornelius (who, according to the view prevailing at the club at the time, just had to be moved out no matter how much money we lost on him), we, reportedly, got all of the money back that Mackay was supposed to have wasted in transfer fees on the likes of Caulker and Medel. We probably took a bit of a hit on the Theophile-Catharine and Brayford deals, but this would have been more than made up for by the profit we made on Jordon Mutch and the expense for Odemwingie would have been compensated for by the fact that Stoke took over his contract when we swapped him for Kenwyne Jones.
Mention of Jones moves me on to how we have fared when it comes to trying to get players signed after Mackay was sacked out of the club. Has just one of of the legions of players signed between January and October 2014, when we were told transfers were to be conducted by a committee consisting of Ole and Messrs Tam, Lim and Dalman (we were even making daft and very expensive signings in the form of Ravel Morrison in the period between Ole leaving and Slade arriving!) made the club a profit when they left us?
The almost certain truth is that players such as Eikrem, Daehli, Berget, Cala, Guerra and Bergstaller (there's probably quite a few more I could name if I had more time to think) have been sold at a loss by us and I wouldn't altogether rule out the possibility that we may still be paying a portion of their wages even now. Despite all of the efforts to get his wages off our payroll, we only got shot of Kenwyne Jones when his contract ran out and now we have three more players where we could end up in the same position - compare how we were able to get rid of Mackay signings when we wanted to cash in on them with how we have struggled to get players signed by Ole and the transfer committee out of the club and it says so much about the how well or otherwise both parties did in the transfer market for City.
Last edited by the other bob wilson; 05-08-16 at 05:44.
Simply put, this signing was a massive waste of money. The fee naturally brought a great deal of expectation, as it turned out, unfounded expectation. You then surely have to question the motives behind the transfer, particularly based on the subsequent, albeit unsubstantiated, rumours.
Cornelius arrived at Cardiff having completed just one full season of first team football. During that season he had topped the scoring charts in the Danish league, won the league's Player of the Year award, won his country's Young Player of the Year award, won several senior international caps, scored for the Danish national side and scored goals in European competition. It was hardly as if Mackay was shelling out big bucks for a parks player.
The transfer was obviously a gamble and one that failed dismally. Cornelius seemingly struggled with fitness and form from day one and never looked like being Premier League material, as was the case with Van Wolfswinkel at Norwich, who was signed for a similar fee. However, the notion that Mackay, himself an ambitious rising star in the management game at the time, made what was then Cardiff City's highest-profile record signing for nothing other than personal financial gain is just ludicrous.
In isolation, it does look dodgy. But should you ever look at a list of the, say, top 100 most expensive transfers made each season, you'd be surprised how many are useless.
Chances are, rather than Mackay pocketing a wadge, it was just a shit transfer that everyone involved regrets.
I don't believe anyone has been able to prove there was anything dodgy about the actual money side of the transfer but the biggest disappointment for me was that malky's so called three stage transfer dossier had failed miserably and when he realized he had bought a pup claimed he was for the future when we were desperate for a proven striker for the premiership campaign.
And this was after giving him the number 9 shirt.
I know shirt numbers don't mean the same as they used to, but when you give the number 9 shirt to a new incoming striker, then you imagine he is to be the main man, not one to bed in gently.
We should have been signing for survival that first season, not buying to develop youth.
Has anyone suggested that?
I'm sure Malky thought he could do a job for us, but you have to question the transfer fee and the salary which were disproportionate to his ability and then current salary.
Ideally, we could have done both in the summer of 2013. Cornelius wouldn't have been bought as, say, Medel was (i.e. as a finished article), he would have come here with the hope that he could develop in the Premier League until he reached a stage where we could have sold him at a profit. Where Mackay got it wrong was that, if Cornelius really was bought here as "one for the future", then we spent way, way, way too much on him - as you say, we should have been signing for survival, Hull and Palace spent a lot less than us (we had decent money to spend after Mackay was sacked as well), yet bought a lot more sensibly than we did.
Last edited by the other bob wilson; 05-08-16 at 08:17.
And we shouldn't forget all of the other very poor signings that season made by people who weren't Malky Mackay either - our transfer business between January and October 2014 is all the proof you need to realise that the lessons of the Cornelius deal weren't learned.
Indeed. To be fair, most of Malky's signings were good, he just wasted a shitload of money on one crap player.
Unlike his successor who wasted a similar shitload of money on several crap players.
About six out of ten parks footballers could look good in a pre match kick in down the City yet Cornelius looked like Douglas Bader. If he has changed for the better then quite honestly it's a miracle
Yeah, I always thought he had the WWII flying ace look about him, too. It was the leather flying jacket, the goggles he wore and pipe he smoked a la Bader. On top of that, he always turned up on match days, either flying a Spitfire or Hurricane.
Nice avatar, you have too. Grace Slick, one of the greatest female vocalists in the rock cannon. Looked damn sexy in her prime, as well
Thats not strictly true it wasnt just one crap player, the 35m he spent that summer could and should have been used far more wisely than Cornelius, Medel, Caulker, KTC, Odemwingie, Simon Moore and the Urugyuan kid.
Hull spent around a third of that in the summer and filled their squad with players with Premiership experience. Huddlestone, Jake Livermore (loan), Figueroa, Curtis Davies, Elmohamady and Allan Mgregor were all signed for 12 million. They then spent another 13m in Jan window on Jelavic and Shane Long, individually both for less than what we paid for Cornelius.
Fair point I guess, but you could argue that Medel and Caulker were key players for us, even French Kev was decent.
Less said about Odemwingie and the Uruguayan kid the better I guess though tbf
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