Cornelius

[lardy]

Vardy would have fitted our style very well.

[LordKenwyne]

Given under 90 minutes of game time in his cardiff career. And coming off an injury. One start in the cup if I remember correctly. Then the rest subs.

Think about that before claiming he was awful.

Then flogged so tan could build a legal case against mackay.

People were glad gestede was sold, look how that turned out.

Bear in mind we were in the premier league when he was being tested in UK football.

Everyone fell for tans fire sale, claiming every mackay signing was crap. When they were all good. The atmosphere tan created killed our chances.

Corn dog could have been good. But in the circus that was our premier league year he was always a goner being a perfect scapegoat.

[ManBearPig]

If we could sign him for £500k now I would be quite happy!

[Steve R]

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.

Sorry, I don't subscribe to that.

Anyone who has ever watched a solitary professional football match could blatently see he was never cut out for this level of football.

[lardy]

Sorry, I don't subscribe to that.

Anyone who has ever watched a solitary professional football match could blatently see he was never cut out for this level of football.

Eh?

I said it was a shit transfer!

[Steve R]

Eh?

I said it was a shit transfer!

More to it than that.

[lardy]

More to it than that.

If there was, Tan would have got criminal proceedings up and running.

[Steve R]

If there was, Tan would have got criminal proceedings up and running.

If a crime had been committed.

[LordKenwyne]

Sorry, I don't subscribe to that.

Anyone who has ever watched a solitary professional football match could blatently see he was never cut out for this level of football.

Not meaning to argue, but could you please tell me when your saw evidence of him being awful.

Take the 1,2,3 minute appearances out of it.

[Steve R]

Not meaning to argue, but could you please tell me when your saw evidence of him being awful.

Take the 1,2,3 minute appearances out of it.

I didn't. I hadn't even heard of the bloke. Much like anybody else. Do you think Cardiff watched him at all? Let's hope so aye?

You don't think he's awful and not cut out for professional football?

[LordKenwyne]

I didn't. I hadn't even heard of the bloke. Much like anybody else. Do you think Cardiff watched him at all? Let's hope so aye?

You don't think he's awful and not cut out for professional football?

Haven't seen enough of him to comment.

And tan sold him ridiculously cheap, so quickly, to try and add to his case against mackay.

To make out he was unfit to do the job.

[DubaiDai]

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.

I agree with the comments that the transfer simply turned out to be rubbish and not some kind of Malky/Moody scam but for me, it was clear that while Malky was a decent manager in the championship, he was not the rising young manager that many thought he would be. He was badly found out in his one season in the Premiership and has since simply drifted out of sight.
It is always difficult for any newly promoted championship team to survive the premiership, but Tan gave him every opportunity with the budget at his disposal.
Unfortunately, playing Campbell up front on his own and ensuring 10 men behind the ball (even at home) was a sure fire recipe for relegation.

[Rhiw-Blue]

I agree with the comments that the transfer simply turned out to be rubbish and not some kind of Malky/Moody scam but for me, it was clear that while Malky was a decent manager in the championship, he was not the rising young manager that many thought he would be. He was badly found out in his one season in the Premiership and has since simply drifted out of sight.
It is always difficult for any newly promoted championship team to survive the premiership, but Tan gave him every opportunity with the budget at his disposal.
Unfortunately, playing Campbell up front on his own and ensuring 10 men behind the ball (even at home) was a sure fire recipe for relegation.

Strange then that we weren't in the bottom 3 until the Tan / MM fall out really kicked in.

Malkys sides were not great to watch but we had the ability to grind out results and were solid throughout the team. We'd have lost plenty no doubt but our togetherness would have seen more Man City type results and more importantly a constant flow of points. We certainly wouldn't have been conceding like we were in the latter parts of that season.

Cornelius was an awful signing but Mutch alone makes up for it!

I don't think for a minute that we'd have gone down under Malky and nor do I think he did much wrong

[jon1959]

Not meaning to argue, but could you please tell me when your saw evidence of him being awful.

Take the 1,2,3 minute appearances out of it.

He managed 44 minutes at the Store First Stadium against a very depleted Accrington Stanley side on 28 August 2013.

Dreadful.

The highlights that night were the youth match behind the away stand, Tom Heaton and his girlfriend/wife coming along to support City, and Rugy Gestede (who replaced Cornelius) showing that he was back to fitness and very sharp (so inevitably he was loaned out and then sold off cheap!)

http://www.cardiffcityfc.co.uk/fixtu...=full#anchored

http://www.walesonline.co.uk/sport/f...f-city-5799667

http://accringtonstanley.co.uk/match/378/

He was supposedly fit to play and Malky had put him on for Fraizer Campbell in the 90th minute against Man City three days earlier.

There can be all sorts of explanations or excuses, but for that half he was the worst player on the pitch. Stanley were scraping the barrel to get a team out as well.

[lardy]

Strange then that we weren't in the bottom 3 until the Tan / MM fall out really kicked in.

Malkys sides were not great to watch but we had the ability to grind out results and were solid throughout the team. We'd have lost plenty no doubt but our togetherness would have seen more Man City type results and more importantly a constant flow of points. We certainly wouldn't have been conceding like we were in the latter parts of that season.

Cornelius was an awful signing but Mutch alone makes up for it!

I don't think for a minute that we'd have gone down under Malky and nor do I think he did much wrong

I agree. We won just three matches after the middle of December (three wins from more than half the season) and yet we weren't completely out of touch. That's how bad the bottom half dozen teams were.

If we had the same record but beat Hull and Palace at home (two games I think Malky would have won) then we would have stayed up.

[NYCBlue]

I didn't. I hadn't even heard of the bloke. Much like anybody else. Do you think Cardiff watched him at all? Let's hope so aye?

You don't think he's awful and not cut out for professional football?

He seems to have found his level. He's only 23 and he's played over 100 professional games. I'm going to go out on a limb and say he's definitely good enough to play professionally.

[NYCBlue]

I agree with the comments that the transfer simply turned out to be rubbish and not some kind of Malky/Moody scam but for me, it was clear that while Malky was a decent manager in the championship, he was not the rising young manager that many thought he would be. He was badly found out in his one season in the Premiership and has since simply drifted out of sight.
It is always difficult for any newly promoted championship team to survive the premiership, but Tan gave him every opportunity with the budget at his disposal.
Unfortunately, playing Campbell up front on his own and ensuring 10 men behind the ball (even at home) was a sure fire recipe for relegation.

How was Malky badly found out? We were surviving until Tan decided to start interfering. We beat the eventual champions! Sure, we were defensive, but our defence and organization was our strength. Malky probably saw our mission as survive and consolidate (as most promoted managers do). Tan (wrongly and naively) expected far too much. The only reason that Makay has "drifted out of sight" is because Tan made it his business to ruin his career.

[Croesy Blue]

And because he sent some very unsavoury texts and then got Wigan relegated.

I was a huge Malky fan but I think we'd have gone down with him in charge, we just didn't have enough goals in the team however you try to spin it.

[Jimmy the Jock]

The Uruguayan kid (Maxi Amondarian) really was 'one for the future'. He now plays for Elche B after a successful trial with their reserve team (i.e the Reserve team's reserve team). It seems the future is still some way off:

Elche Club de Fútbol Ilicitano is a Spanish football club based in Elche, in the autonomous community of Valencia. Founded in 1932 as Club Deportivo Ilicitano, a farm team, it is the reserve team of Elche CF, and plays in Tercera División – Group 6, holding home games at Ciudad Deportiva Elche CF, with a capacity of 2,000 seats.

[DubaiDai]

How was Malky badly found out? We were surviving until Tan decided to start interfering. We beat the eventual champions! Sure, we were defensive, but our defence and organization was our strength. Malky probably saw our mission as survive and consolidate (as most promoted managers do). Tan (wrongly and naively) expected far too much. The only reason that Makay has "drifted out of sight" is because Tan made it his business to ruin his career.

Malay was seen by many on the MB as some kind of "young pretender" on his way to bigger things.
No matter how you spin everything the statement of "we were not in the bottom 3" when he departed is a thin veil over the form we were showing and the next 3 fixtures after he left.
I have no doubt we would have been relegated even if would have stayed. None of us can prove anything but just my opinion.
Don't forget, by championship promotion standards, Malky was given a considerable budget to add strength to the team to stay up.
I agree Tan did have a personal vendetta after he left but he did land another job at Wigan, who were subsequently relegated and sacked him.
I am not advocating Malky to be a poor manager. What I am saying is that he was out of his depth when in the Premiership.

[Bobby Dandruff]

It's funny how history has been rewritten with regard to the Cornelius transfer.

As I recall, the reaction from the majority of Cardiff fans when the guy was signed was that the transfer was something of a coup from the canny Mackay, who had allegedly beaten several other Premier League clubs to the lad's signature, while the player himself was widely hailed as one of the rising stars of European football and someone with great potential.

I can also remember supporters getting excited by the fact that Cornelius had been hailed as star in the making by none other than that wise old owl Ole Gunnar Solsksjaer, who was quoted as saying that Manchester United should be considering him as a transfer option. Ironic, huh?

Now, it seems, everyone thought there was something dodgy about the transfer all along, while the apparently ambitious manager wasn't bothered about his first season in the top flight or his rising reputation and was merely interested in lining his own pockets at Tan's expense.

I don't agree with any of that.

Nearly everyone at the time including myself thought that it was VERY odd to be spending so much money on someone that most people had never ever heard of.

We all hoped for great things from him but he turned out to be rubbish, sadly.

I have no idea where your version of events comes from.