Other people can discuss without the abuse. If you are incapable, then it's not my fault. If Mike is happy with your behaviour so be it. One poster had an infraction for being flippant, you are worse than that.Originally Posted by Packerman
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Other people can discuss without the abuse. If you are incapable, then it's not my fault. If Mike is happy with your behaviour so be it. One poster had an infraction for being flippant, you are worse than that.
We drew our last three games, thus dropping six points, after promotion was secured. We were 8 points clear of second place, and ten points clear of third.
That's hardly limping over the line.
Er, I told you why the 2012/13 promotion to the top flight is unique in Cardiff City's history in the post above yours.
Last time I looked, the Championship was decided over forty six games, not the last twelve of a forty six match season - your attempts to rubbish our achievement is akin to someone trying to say Chelsea didn't deserve to win the Premier League last season because they only took one point from their three games in September!
I'll take your word for it that we only took seventeen points from our last twelve matches in 2013/13, but when you end up eight points clear of anyone else, does that matter? The 2012/13 Championship was like a 1,500 metres race where the winner takes the lead after the first lap, then puts in two very fast laps which break the spirit of the chasing pack, thus making the final 400 metres a procession.
I'm not going to get involved in Malky Mackay v Vincent Tan arguments in which I have said all I wanted to on the subject many times already over a period of four years or more, but this view that I hear from quite a few City fans that our title win in 12/13 is somehow devalued because of what happened in the following twelve months annoys me - we won the league by a street that year and that isn't altered by the fact that everyone at the club, apart from David Marshall, cocked up to varying degrees the following season.
I'm pretty certain that if we'd finished strongly but missed out on promotion certain posters would not be quoting that string of games as being significant. The results across the season would then I'm sure be deemed far more important.
We were also promoted with 4 games to go so hardly the normal competitive end-of-season environment to keep us right on our toes. Winning the league by 8 points cannot be dressed up as some kind of failure no matter how much it suits your agenda.
Who is rubbishing the achievement? The reality is we struggled at the end of season - something that seems to happen every season in Mackay coached teams - and that other teams also dropped a lot of points at the end. A different season, that could well have cost us.
The point I'm trying and probably failing to make is that struggling in that manner kills the momentum of winning the title. We became far, far more defensive as a consequence and as I said you can't effectively counter-attack if you've no pace in the side. Malky built and left an unbalanced side. It's only now, under Warnock, that we've got a squad with a nice mix of players able to adapt and play in different styles.
My issue is with the "Malky is a great manager, one of our best because we won the title" argument. We've had far better managers in our time, even at lower levels.
No it isn't. It really isn't.
17 points out of 36.
We weren't losing - only the one loss but 3 wins in 12 doesn't make great reading.
Whereas being top of the league with 0 matches to play made fantastic reading.
It definitely did, my concern was form going into the next season.
As I said in the other post, from the games that mattered we got 14 points out of a possible 27. The last three games which we drew were meaningless.
Last 12 games from that season
From the games that mattered we got 14 points out of a possible 27
36. Round 05/03/2013 Derby County 1:1 (0:0)
29. Round 12/03/2013 Leicester City 1:1 (0:0)
38. Round 16/03/2013 Sheffield Wednesday 2:0 (1:0)
39. Round 30/03/2013 Peterborough United 1:2 (1:0)
40. Round 01/04/2013 Blackburn Rovers 3:0 (1:0)
41. Round 06/04/2013 Watford FC 0:0 (0:0)
37. Round 09/04/2013 Barnsley FC 1:1 (0:0)
42. Round 13/04/2013 Nottingham Forest 3:0 (1:0)
43. Round 16/04/2013 Charlton Athletic 0:0 (0:0) - PROMOTED
44. Round 20/04/2013 Burnley FC 1:1 (1:0) CHAMPIONS
45. Round 27/04/2013 Bolton Wanderers 1:1 (0:1)
46. Round 04/05/2013 Hull City 2:2 (0:0)
They took their foot off the gas, promotion was never in doubt after a shaky start. One of the easiest promotions at Cardiff ever.
My perception of the league winning season is the same as a few others here, we did finish poorly in my opinion.
All credit for the work done early in the season but it really did seem like every time we dropped points, so did the teams around us. As the games started to run out i never ever felt that we wouldn't go up but I remember checking other teams scores and upcoming fixtures a lot more carefully than I would have liked.
I thought we actually finished strongly, but didn't get the results we perhaps deserved. At the time we were playing a midfield three of Gunnar, mutch and Kim, and I think we played some lovely stuff, but were prone to letting the odd late equaliser in
Pretty much how I remember it. It looked like we could up a gear when needed, the midfield three was very nice. In hindsight we had the handbrake on too often but we didn't look like a team that was limping. Certainly deserved champions that season.
So let's get this right. A team that gained promotion with three games left to play and ended up winning the league by eight points after being undefeated in their last eight matches (they lost just one of their final twelve matches) ended the season out of form? I see.
Also, there was a problem with "a lack of pace and goals". Okay the first of those assertions has some basis of truth to it, but the signing of Fraizer Campbell went some way towards addressing our lack of attacking pace (Bellamy was also still pretty quick then, Noone was quicker than he is now back then, Conway was no slouch, same with Kimbo) and that stat about no one scoring ten goals would not have existed if he had not only been with us for about 40 per cent of the season.
We averaged more than one and a half goals a game and only Watford and Palace scored more than us that year, so a lack of goals was never an issue and, as the season ended, we, obviously, were the best equipped of the promoted teams to succeed in the Premier League - it all started to go wrong when it came to improving a good squad and then it started to collapse in late September when the dispute between manager and owner found it's way into the public domain.
Asserting that the achievement of the 2012/13 side is somehow diminished because of what happened in 2013/14 is ludicrous, as is the claim that we ended our title winning season out of form.
Weird thread this. I'm not sure if you're referring to me or ccfc but I didn't say we were out of form, I just used the phrase to emphasise the point I was trying to make to Baloo, I wasn't referring to us. I said ccfc had exaggerated our loss of form and in the post before I said my view was that we'd lost some momentum by the end of the season, that's closer to a fact than opinion (we'd won 12 of our first 13 home games, 3 of the last 10). We still won the league comfortably, it didn't diminish our achievement in winning the title in any way and, in my opinion, was probably a good thing anyway because it made it easier for Malky to get Tan to release funds for strengthening the squad.
I know you feel this topic has been done to death but I still find it interesting that, even with the benefit of hindsight, it's hard to put your finger on exactly what went wrong for Malky as a manager. It was a spectacular fall from grace. You can blame Tan all you want for what happened at City but that doesn't explain Malky's abject failure at Wigan.
Having gone at Liverpool with Gestede, Miller and Mason at Wembley then looked to expand our style of play later in the year with the signings of Maynard and Noone, he retreated into his shell completely after the 5-4 Charlton game. While that benefited us in the short term, maybe it was the start of his downfall too. He seemed to run out of ideas completely after that and didn't have any kind of a plan B, even with a large amount of money to spend in the summer of 2013. A move back to the Championship with Wigan should've suited him but he failed miserably there. Very odd.
Malky left around December 27th in the PL and as far as I remember we were never once in the relegation zone under him. It really is that simple.
👍👍👍👍
The post you replied to was aimed at ccfc - he was the one who said we were out of form and had limped over the line when, in reality, we strolled to the title. I think virtually any side would lose momentum after winning twelve out of thirteen home matches. To have maintained the momentum you talk about, we would have had to end up with a home record of something like won 21, lost 2, when has anyone had a record like that in the modern day Championship? The important thing in our "fall from grace" towards the end of the season was that we only lost one in twelve at the end of the season and there was only one defeat among those last ten home games you mention - we had got ourselves into a position where draws were hardly disasters.
We were defensive and set piece reliant most of the time in the Premier League under Mackay, but was that always out of choice? It was at times, but in other matches things just worked out like that because we were playing at a level where every side we played (if you go by how the league table ended up) was better than us. The truth for me though was that we were better than a few sides while Mackay was in charge (the league table at the time of his sacking told us that) - we went out and attacked Fulham at Craven Cottage and the game should really have been over at half time, we were cagey in the first half against the jacks and West Brom at home, but looked to win the game in the second half and we picked an attacking line up when we went to Norwich.
People talk about Mackay being "found out" by the time he was sacked and maybe that would have been proved to be the case if he had stayed with us for all of that season, but the facts are we were a lot higher up the table when he left than we were at the end of the season and we had most of the struggling sides to play at home when Tan got rid of him - we had beaten the only two lower half teams we had played at home under Mackay.
As for where it all went wrong for Mackay, there were bad buys once we had got promoted, but I think the real damage to him was done after he left Cardiff. The release of those e-mails definitely hurt him in many ways and I would suggest that this included in terms of his self belief and how he was perceived by at least some of the Wigan players he had charge of. I think most people's work performance would suffer if they had a former employer holding a grudge against them who was prepared to pay a lot of money to dig into what were private e-mail conversations, someone who was prepared to make public accusations of financial impropriety against them which may be true, but have not been tested in a court or tribunal despite it now being nearly four years since they were first made and someone who would release damaging information against them at a time when they were about to be appointed in a high level position.
I'm not saying that Malky Mackay isn't guilty of what Vincent Tan has accused him of and I for one view him differently after the details of those e-mails became public knowledge, but I think anyone's work performance and public credibility would suffer given what he's been through since he left us.
We were 17th when he left and finished 20th.
Were we relatively 'stable' around 17th at that time or on a downward trend?
Genuine question, can't remember.
It was always going to be a hard season, but I thought that under Malky we would cope. Let's not forget about Tan's presence in the dressing room, the orders to shoot more, the bonus thing etc. That was never going to help was it? Regardless of what Malky did (none of it came to light until way after he'd been sacked) Tan was unhappy that he was getting all the plaudits after Tan had sunk in all the money. I believe that Tan basically ****ed us and therefore lost millions purely out of spite. I'm sure there was a fair amount of hubris in there too.
I agree with that
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