Injury problems, homesickness and the subsequent arrivals of big-name strikers in the form of Robbie Fowler and Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink all contributed to a difficult spell.
The most disappointing thing for me was not moving my family over,” he says. “I just had a young kid and we’d moved house as well. The baby was six months old at the time. So I said ‘just stay put,’ because we’d just moved in.
“So that’s probably the biggest regret — going to Cardiff and not bringing them over with me. But obviously, you take advantage of that as well.”
He adds: “It started off great and you think then
‘this is easy, I’ve made it’. But I got a couple of niggling injuries and then one was my hamstring. I suppose that kind of ruined my Cardiff career,
even though I had a good go and was top goalscorer for the reserves. It was disappointing the way things turned out, but that’s football — there are the ups and downs.”