Malky Mackay's emotional Cardiff City admission...

[NYCBlue]

Really?

What more could he have done?

Year 1 a cup final on a limited budget plus play offs

Year 2: big budget, champions by 7 points

Year 3: big budget (relatively) and never in relegation places before dismissal.

You can't expect anything more than survival in the first year of the Premier league surely?

People seem blinded by one awful signing and a couple of private texts

This.

[qccfc]

Really?

What more could he have done?

Year 1 a cup final on a limited budget plus play offs

Year 2: big budget, champions by 7 points

Year 3: big budget (relatively) and never in relegation places before dismissal.

You can't expect anything more than survival in the first year of the Premier league surely?

People seem blinded by one awful signing and a couple of private texts

We had a huge wage budget when promoted and we spent big in the premier league, i think that looking at Hull and Palace in the year we got relegated we could have invested the money better during the 2 seasons where we had that budget.

We should have gone out and got more experienced premier league players.

[Rhiw-Blue]

We had a huge wage budget when promoted and we spent big in the premier league, i think that looking at Hull and Palace in the year we got relegated we could have invested the money better during the 2 seasons where we had that budget.

We should have gone out and got more experienced premier league players.

In the 2 years we had the big budget we romped the league and were holding our own in the EPL (despite what must have been going on behind the scenes).

You can't blame Malky for our relegation when we never spent a moment in the bottom 3 in his tenure. Our relegation was entirely down too Tan and OGS IMO

[qccfc]

In the 2 years we had the big budget we romped the league and were holding our own in the EPL (despite what must have been going on behind the scenes).

You can't blame Malky for our relegation when we never spent a moment in the bottom 3 in his tenure. Our relegation was entirely down too Tan and OGS IMO

I dont blame MM for the relegation, i dont deny his achievements.

However i dont look back at his time fondly, i do believe that he could have used the funds available to him better. That's not to say the people after him were better either. Its clear that he was better than anything that has come after him.

[NYCBlue]

We had a huge wage budget when promoted and we spent big in the premier league, i think that looking at Hull and Palace in the year we got relegated we could have invested the money better during the 2 seasons where we had that budget.

We should have gone out and got more experienced premier league players.

Palace looked dead and buried leading up to Christmas. They did well in the January window. With Iain Moody of all people.

[Rhiw-Blue]

I dont blame MM for the relegation, i dont deny his achievements.

However i dont look back at his time fondly, i do believe that he could have used the funds available to him better. That's not to say the people after him were better either. Its clear that he was better than anything that has come after him.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing as they say!

I think that the worst thing a promoted side can do is to rip apart what got them there. Much better to strengthen the core of your side by adding quality over quantity.

CB Caulker
CM Medel
CF ummmmm , well everyones entitled to make a mistake

The first 2 above were real good signings at the time and surprised a lot of people that we got them (we also got all our money back on them)

Malkays sides weren't great to watch normally but were dogged and tough to beat

[qccfc]

Hindsight is a wonderful thing as they say!

I think that the worst thing a promoted side can do is to rip apart what got them there. Much better to strengthen the core of your side by adding quality over quantity.

CB Caulker
CM Medel
CF ummmmm , well everyones entitled to make a mistake

The first 2 above were real good signings at the time and surprised a lot of people that we got them (we also got all our money back on them)

Malkays sides weren't great to watch normally but were dogged and tough to beat

Its all about opinions really, some will love his reign here and others are not do keen.

Im not in the camp where i think he was a terrible manager, he is clearly up there with the best we have had. Its just i dont look back at his spell at the club with the same amount of fondness as others.

[Rhiw-Blue]

Its all about opinions really, some will love his reign here and others are not do keen.

Im not in the camp where i think he was a terrible manager, he is clearly up there with the best we have had. Its just i dont look back at his spell at the club with the same amount of fondness as others.

Fair enough. It wasn't the best of times because of all the red crap admittedly.

Not a great time to be in charge of our club!

You might have guessed, I was / am a fan

[steve davies]

His downfall was being more popular than Vincent Tan. Tan merely used the Cornelius fiasco to his advantage.

end of the thread as far as im concerned this is exactly the reason tan wanted malky out. on the other side of the coin if tan had got us promoted in blue tan would have got all the love and adulation he craved

[Rhiw-Blue]

end of the thread as far as im concerned this is exactly the reason tan wanted malky out. on the other side of the coin if tan had got us promoted in blue tan would have got all the love and adulation he craved

.....and yet even now the dull f****r still thinks he knows best by signing players for his manager.

He gave us what we all craved and as you say would have been adored. I don't care how much money the guy has he hasn't got a scooby how to run a football club

[The Lone Gunman]

We had a huge wage budget when promoted.....

Huge? Was it really? Huge by comparison to which other clubs?

Has anyone ever produced any definitive evidence which confirms that Cardiff City's playing budget was indeed 'huge' by comparison to any of the other Championship clubs who have battled for promotion in recent times or is this just speculation?

Personally, I very much doubt Cardiff's budget in 2012/13 was any bigger than most of the clubs who have been competitive at Championship level in recent years (and some who haven't been competitive). Mackay had money to spend, no doubt about that, but his budget didn't appear that big at the time.

[CCFC CASUAL]

https://www.theguardian.com/football...nces-2012-2013

3rd highest wage bill against 10th highest turnover. He also gave Malky around 10m to spend on transfers that season.

3rd highest behind a relegated Bolton and Blackburn.

In comparison to other 2 clubs that we competed against for the title that year our budget was far bigger.

[The Lone Gunman]

3rd highest wage bill.....

So huge by Cardiff City's previous standards, but not by Championship standards.

[CCFC CASUAL]

So huge by Cardiff City's previous standards, but not by Championship standards.

I'd say over 40m on wages and transfers was huge by championship standards at that time around double the average.

The 3 clubs that come down from the PL that season were in a mess, one of them Wolves got relegated again, and not one of them challenged for promotion which is rare.

[The Lone Gunman]

I'd say over 40m on wages and transfers was huge by championship standards at that time around double the average.

Two years earlier, Middlesbrough had a wage bill of £36.3 million (they finished 12th). In 2011/12, West Ham's wage bill was £42 million, while four other clubs topped £25 million. In 2013/14, while City were finishing bottom of the Premier League, QPR were spending a staggering £75 million in wages in the Championship. That really is a 'huge' wage bill. Meanwhile, Leicester, Reading, Blackburn and Wigan all topped £30 million in wages.

[Something Blue]

Some good points well researched and remembered in this thread, I'm in both camps and then neither which is a strange feeling when remembering what was actually achieved, it was a weird time in our history, and I find myself thinking more fondly of Eddie May's 1993 team. It just felt, and feels more Cardiff City.

[life on mars]

Some good points well researched and remembered in this thread, I'm in both camps and then neither which is a strange feeling when remembering what was actually achieved, it was a weird time in our history, and I find myself thinking more fondly of Eddie May's 1993 team. It just felt, and feels more Cardiff City.

Your point is thought provoking , I do suspect the change in the club to become a more dynamic one seeking to join the elite ,with the added woes of commercial pitfalls, blood sucking agents,players joining just for the wages , lack of club commitment and local involvement all supports that view, that is what made the Leicester experience so special.

So many clubs go up ,reach the height of fame and then fall into the abyss ,just look at Leeds , Bolton , Pompey ,Forest.

[CCFC CASUAL]

Two years earlier, Middlesbrough had a wage bill of £36.3 million (they finished 12th). In 2011/12, West Ham's wage bill was £42 million, while four other clubs topped £25 million. In 2013/14, while City were finishing bottom of the Premier League, QPR were spending a staggering £75 million in wages in the Championship. That really is a 'huge' wage bill. Meanwhile, Leicester, Reading, Blackburn and Wigan all topped £30 million in wages.

Yes and you've given some more examples of clubs in different seasons who had huge budgets, mostly because they were relegated PL clubs, and in half the cases got promoted.

The year we went up our wage budget was 50% bigger than the team with the 7th highest budget and double the clubs around 12th/13th. That's before transfer fees are taken into account.

Also worth pointing out the year we went up the relegated clubs were in a right mess and so the division was less competitive.

[The Lone Gunman]

Yes and you've given some more examples of clubs in different seasons who had huge budgets, mostly because they were relegated PL clubs, and in half the cases got promoted.

Well spotted. A little hasty research has revealed that plenty of other Championship managers in recent years have had either bigger or comparable budgets to the one Mackay worked with in 2012/13. Some got their clubs promoted to the Premier League, some didn't. Mackay's team won the division by a wide margin. He was widely acknowledged to have done a very good job that year. Given the evidence of the league table, I can't believe anyone with a modicum of sense would believe otherwise.

[Splott David]

His downfall was being more popular than Vincent Tan. Tan merely used the Cornelius fiasco to his advantage.

It wouldn't matter if he had beaten Real Madrid and Barcelona, his downfall was bad mouthing the owner of the club. It wasn't about form, good or bad, it was about personal distaste for his character and his integrity, or rather the lack of it.

[Colonel Cærdiffi]

Well spotted. A little hasty research has revealed that plenty of other Championship managers in recent years have had either bigger or comparable budgets to the one Mackay worked with in 2012/13. Some got their clubs promoted to the Premier League, some didn't. Mackay's team won the division by a wide margin. He was widely acknowledged to have done a very good job that year. Given the evidence of the league table, I can't believe anyone with a modicum of sense would believe otherwise.

Yeah but look at the huge wage budget.

[Baloo]

Your dealing in some facts with a lot of opinion. Just because we beat Swansea and West Brom in very scrappy low quality football matches, which quite frankly could have gone either way, it's not an indication we would have won all of our home games against the other lower half of the table sides.

However like I said it's been debated a thousand times or more and no ones going to change their opinion now so it's as pointless a debate as the rebrand.

For that reason I'm out.

I don't think anybody would suggest we would have won them all, but it's clear that the majority of games we would have considered 'winnable' before the season started were still to come when Malky left. I don't think anybody could really disagree with that.

[A Quiet Monkfish]

Ah, the usual nudge, nudge, wink, wink stuff - nearly four years after it first appeared and it's still nothing but speculation.

I think it was a bit more than just speculation - the 'story' was common knowledge from a number of sources, but I don't think 'The Boss' would like me to put it on here, but I can PM you. Mackay's pending legal claim against Tan & the Club suddenly ceased - as a result of Tan providing MM's solicitor with some information ..

[A Quiet Monkfish]

I'm giving the occasional opinion yes, but I'm trying to stick to facts and am baffled by what the word "Hindsight" in your message signifies - all you have done is post opinions and make accusations which have been investigated and had no action taken on them.

By 'hindsight' I mean that - like all clubs in City's position at the time - you don't know whether sticking or twisting re. the manager is going to get you club out of trouble. The 'accusations' is simply that Mackay and his assistant were given 100% control over transfers and may have picked those players whose agents were 'flexible' re. arrangements for signing on fees. It wouldn't be the 1st time this had happened.

As to whether MM was a good manager , his record speaks for himself. But to say he had a lot of time for people at the club stinks of hypocrisy..

[Loramski]

This subject has been debated on here hundreds of times, maybe even thousands, and it always comes down to a matter of opinion - here are some facts, not accusations of financial wrong doing that we're still waiting to see any proof of in the public domain, just facts.

Malky Mackay had two seasons with us in the Championship, he got us to the Play Offs in one of them (and came closer than any other City manager has done sine 1927 to winning us a major Cup Final) and then won the title in domestic football's second tier (something no other City manager has done) in his second.

At the time of his sacking in our only top flight season since 1962, we were fifteenth out of twenty with seventeen points from eighteen matches played - we managed thirteen from the remaining twenty games that season. If we had continued to pick up points over the last twenty matches at the same rate as we had done in the first eighteen, we'd have ended up with thirty six points. West Brom finished in seventeenth position (i.e, just safe from the drop) with thirty six points and a much better goal difference than us, so it's likely we would have gone down if Mackay had stayed and continued to pick up points at the rate he did in those first eighteen matches.

However, it's a matter of fact that in the nine home games we played that season with Mackay in charge, seven of them had been against sides that finished in the top ten that season - the only two matches played against bottom half teams (Swansea and West Brom) had finished in 1-0 City wins. We had ten home matches left when Mackay was shown the door and seven of them were against the sort of teams we had been beating up until then - granted, two matches is not much of a precedent to base firm conclusions on, but there is evidence there to strongly suggest that we would have done a lot better had Mackay stayed than we did under Ole and David Kerslake.

Yes, we're back into opinion territory there I know, but it's a matter of fact that we never ended up dropping points after being two goals up in a home match, like we did against Sunderland in the first match after the sacking, under Malky Mackay - again, only an opinion, but mine has always been that we would have won that match, which proved so influential that season, had Mackay still been in charge.

That stat about ten home games left is a good one but, as I've pointed out before, in the three previous seasons Malky won three (with Watford), two then three of his last ten home games. To me it suggested that he was a manager who was getting 'found out' each season and couldn't come up with a plan B. If that was happening in the Championship then I see no reason why it wouldn't have happened in the Premier League too.

It probably already had, we only got 5 points out of his last eight games and the surrender against Southampton was pitiful. I've no idea what makes you think we'd have taken a 2 goal lead against Sunderland with Malky in charge. There was a lot going on at the club around then, of course, but the fact that the players put in a far more energetic and positive performance for Kerslake than they had for Malky two days earlier said a lot for me.

All meaningless stats and speculation, as always. One more quirky stat about Malky's home record though. When we beat Sheffield Wednesday in early December 2012, it was our tenth home win in a row. Malky was a young manager on the rise, bigger clubs were interested and he seemed to have a great future but he hasn't won another ten home games as a manager since that day. He's won 9 in 37 (6 in his last 32) but, of course, we'll never know if he'd have kept us in the Premiership. That won't stop another thread about it starting up soon. See you there.