Are Cardiff City’s first team good enough to play “the Cardiff Way”?

[the other bob wilson]

http://mauveandyellowarmy.net/

[A Quiet Monkfish]

In an ideal world, the City 'way' would start at the lowest level and gradually work its way through and filter upwards into the 1st team, providing an approach and a style consistent over a sustained period. The trouble is, if your 1st team squad is amongst the weakest in their division, nothing is going to improve for years - and will quite possibly get considerably worse - unless players come in which are an improvement on what's here.

Every supporter of every club likes to see homegrown talent, but above all, they want a winning side. To focus heavily on Welsh talent is mildly absurd. Swansea climbed to the top because of their Spanish links, and Huddersfield have used their German connections to go to the top of the league...

[the other bob wilson]

In an ideal world, the City 'way' would start at the lowest level and gradually work its way through and filter upwards into the 1st team, providing an approach and a style consistent over a sustained period. The trouble is, if your 1st team squad is amongst the weakest in their division, nothing is going to improve for years - and will quite possibly get considerably worse - unless players come in which are an improvement on what's here.

Every supporter of every club likes to see homegrown talent, but above all, they want a winning side. To focus heavily on Welsh talent is mildly absurd. Swansea climbed to the top because of their Spanish links, and Huddersfield have used their German connections to go to the top of the league...

Although I cannot remember the exact figures involved, my mind always goes back to a question Richard Hoad, the co author of the Journey Back, once asked on here. It was something like what only happened six times in a City game during the whole of the twentieth century, but happened thirty nine times during the 2014/15 Championship season? The answer was City played a match in which no Welshmen appeared in their team.

This shows how much the ethos of the club has changed in the last ten to fifteen years - we won the FA Cup, reached another Final, reached the Semi Finals of a major European competition and were runner's up in the old First Division during one of the three periods (two of them fairly lengthy) we played top flight football and all with a team which featured a healthy representation (sometimes more than half of the team) of Welshmen.

I agree that a Bilbao type arrangement that saw us recruiting only Welsh players would, almost certainly, fail, but, in my view, the club have gone too far the other way in recent years - especially during Russell Slade's time in charge when it sometimes felt like City had an anyone but a Welshman policy.

I see nothing at all wrong with more empahsis being put on the club's Academy than there has been previously, because it would mean that we would only be doing what so many of the teams we play against do already. It's easy to have a go at the club for not spending millions on new players during the summer, but what isn't being acknowledged is that a fair number of the Championship clubs who spent bigger than us were able to do so because they sold players that have come through their youth system for fees which paid for their summer recruitment - that option has not been open to Cardiff City for a few seasons I'm afraid.

Joe Ralls and Cameron Jerome offer proof that young players who break into the first team as teenagers don't have to be Welsh, but the likelihood is that they will be and I don't see anything wrong with that provided the players are good enough - if two or three can break through in the coming years, then you'd like to think that would convince some better quality youngsters, who might have been put off by the recent policy at Cardiff of virtually ignoring the Academy, to throw in their lot with City.

[thehumblegringo]

Thank you Bob.

I honestly couldn't believe that the u18s lost that game on Saturday!

At the moment, I value being entertained far more than I would getting promoted.

The famine of entertainment we have had to endure over the last few years has led me to getting far more excited about watching academy games than the first team and surely that can't be right!

All I ask is that the players occasionally express themselves instead of being crippled by the fear of doing the wrong thing.

[life on mars]

Thanks Paul, I don't really know what the Cardiff way is now or in the past if i'm honest Lol.

If I was to have a Cardiff Way of playing it would be without fear and at pace , perhaps like those early Man U days in the premiership where you did not know what was going to happen , who was going to score, and from where on the field of play they would score , never boring , half the teams rocked up already beaten in the car park .

Football should be fun to watch, with a sensible line up, but with a pinch of risk and pace added in.

God I miss those old Slade days