Andreas Cornelius

The much maligned, by City's owners, Cornelius, inferred to be a dodgy transfer by Malky Mackay & Co. scored the 2 goals that Denmark beat France by in the Nations League in Paris last night. He has had a successful season in Turkiye
helping Trabonzspor to their first title in 38 years. This comes after several years in Ligue 1 and Serie A.

Was he ready for the Premier League when we signed him, perhaps not although injuries did not help, but not worth a punt at £6m? I think history proves he was.

He was useless NINE years ago bringing a whole new dimension to the expression "raw young striker". He was a "punt" by Mackay based on a good first season in the Danish league.
While he has done well since we will never know if a couple of seasons sat on the bench at the CCS would have helped him develop as he did.

8-9 years on and despite transfer fees being massively inflated in that time I still doubt he is worth the 6m we paid for him.

To me he goes down as our worse transfer, at the time 6m was a hell of a lot more than it is now. That was a huge chunk of a big budget having just been promoted. The one thing we needed after promotion was a proven striker so to take a punt with a huge transfer fee for a long term project was nothing short of disgraceful. Yes if your Man City and you think he can develop for a few years in the youth team and then sure take a punt. We needed a striker for there and then, we certainly didn’t need a project at that cost.

History shows it was a huge mistake not that Malky would ever admit it.

The transfer fee was the problem, not the player. It was a wildly inflated price for a young player going abroad from the Danish Superliga at the time, and would be now too I suspect. If we'd paid maybe 2 million and allowed him to develop, without huge expectations, then we could have had a good signing I think.
People saying he was useless then base it on a handful of brief appearances as he was also injured for much of his time with us, which was just very unfortunate on his part.
He was very raw, but over here he was highly regarded by just about everyone and expected to go on to bigger things than FC Copenhagen. People definitely raised an eyebrow at the fee but definitely not the talent

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Originally Posted by Albany

The much maligned, by City's owners, Cornelius, inferred to be a dodgy transfer by Malky Mackay & Co. scored the 2 goals that Denmark beat France by in the Nations League in Paris last night. He has had a successful season in Turkiye
helping Trabonzspor to their first title in 38 years. This comes after several years in Ligue 1 and Serie A.

Was he ready for the Premier League when we signed him, perhaps not although injuries did not help, but not worth a punt at £6m? I think history proves he was.

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He wasn't worth a punt to us because we couldn't wait years for him to develop.


At the time we needed an experienced striker who could hit the ground running which he plainly wasn't

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Originally Posted by Elwood Blues

He wasn't worth a punt to us because we couldn't wait years for him to develop.


At the time we needed an experienced striker who could hit the ground running which he plainly wasn't

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If he was bought as a punt I'd hazard a wild guess that we'd have then brought in the experienced striker we needed as well..

Terrible signing.

I agree with poor sigining remarks and he's still around the 6 million mark as he will score as he us a lump ,ehy is he not at a big club in the leading nations in Europe ie Spain , Italy ,Germany, France or even Denmark , he is a poor man's Moore in my view.

I'd have given Rudy a run rather than waste valuable transfer kitty money , and bought a seasoned back striker , every penny spent effected our survival, therefore it was a poor decesion and probably cost a lot more than the 10 million fee .

A poor signing as things transpired.

Might well have been a stroke of genius had VT kept his powder dry and allowed MM see his premier league season through.

He must have thought he had a job for life at City to contemplate paying out so much for "one for the future".
Could have been so different had it been a decade or so earlier pre-text messaging.

As they say though, if my auntie....

Didn’t we also massively inflate his wages, a reported 45k a week, how much is that over the 9 years on top of the transfer fee.

When Andreas Cornelius signed a five-year contract for Cardiff City in July 2013, he had just turned 20 years of age. To put that into perspective, he was a few months younger than Chanka Zimba is now. He'd had one full season in the Danish Superliga and had finished top scorer with 18 goals in 32 appearances. He was also already a full Danish international and had scored a hat-trick for his national team against Canada and further goals against Mexico and the Czech Republic. He clearly had bags of potential.

During the car crash season that was 2013/14, Cornelius was given a grand total of six months to prove himself and he was injured for a significant portion of that time. By the time Vincent Tan had made him a scapegoat for the club's failings and had shipped him back to Copenhagen, he was still just 20 years-old.

His transfer was clearly an error of judgement on Mackay's part and the player obviously couldn't cope with the weight of expectation that was placed on him. However, given what he had done before he arrived in Cardiff, the way in which he was written off and publicly humiliated was clearly ridiculous. But let's be honest, much of what was going at Cardiff City in 2013/14 was clearly ridiculous.

As I recall it was Malky speaking of his ‘potential’ or a project which upset Tan. Tan thought every signing could be a bargain like the Swansea Spanish guy who’s name I can’t spell.

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Originally Posted by Dave Blue

As I recall it was Malky speaking of his ‘potential’ or a project which upset Tan. Tan thought every signing could be a bargain like the Swansea Spanish guy who’s name I can’t spell.

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Or Mr Tan was assuming MM decisions was based on sensibke appropriate scouting not some agents selling blurb if I was VT and it was my money I'd question why one club did it right and the other didn't, thats is surely down to those who work to Mr Tan like any other organisation???

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Originally Posted by Dave Blue

As I recall it was Malky speaking of his ‘potential’ or a project which upset Tan. Tan thought every signing could be a bargain like the Swansea Spanish guy who’s name I can’t spell.

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I would think so, that’s what annoyed me as well. Who on earth buys a project for a huge fee when we are badly in need of a player in that position to start games to keep us up. I thought Malky was taking the p1ss massively out of the fans and the club with those comments, as if we are that stupid.

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Originally Posted by 2b2bdoo

I would think so, that’s what annoyed me as well. Who on earth buys a project for a huge fee when we are badly in need of a player in that position to start games to keep us up. I thought Malky was taking the p1ss massively out of the fans and the club with those comments, as if we are that stupid.

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I agree. I’m not defending the signing. We had a certain budget no doubt but for that budget Tan expected - rightly or wrongly- to be doing well.

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Originally Posted by Dave Blue

I agree. I’m not defending the signing. We had a certain budget no doubt but for that budget Tan expected - rightly or wrongly- to be doing well.

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From memory I’m sure I read it was the biggest budget a promoted club had ever had (at the time). He was certainly well backed but even after being sacked Malky would not admit he was ever wrong but then I guess managers don’t.

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Originally Posted by 2b2bdoo

From memory I’m sure I read it was the biggest budget a promoted club had ever had (at the time). He was certainly well backed but even after being sacked Malky would not admit he was ever wrong but then I guess managers don’t.

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Wouldn’t admit he was wrong about what?

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Originally Posted by Dave Blue

As I recall it was Malky speaking of his ‘potential’ or a project which upset Tan. Tan thought every signing could be a bargain like the Swansea Spanish guy who’s name I can’t spell.

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That was after he signed, when it was clear he was miles off it. He wasn’t bought for his potential, we couldn’t afford that. It’s been done to death, he’s had a decent career, he’s never been worth the fee we paid and he’s struggled at almost every club he’s been at in a top 5 league. His signing was, and still is, an indication of the issues of Tan’s reign

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Originally Posted by Dave Blue

As I recall it was Malky speaking of his ‘potential’ or a project which upset Tan. Tan thought every signing could be a bargain like the Swansea Spanish guy who’s name I can’t spell.

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Tan thought his marquee signing would be ready for first team football. He wasn't. I actually have some sympathy with tan on that. We needed a striker and we didn't get one. I can only assume malky did think he was ready but changed the story a bit when it became apparent that he wasnt.

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Originally Posted by The Lone Gunman

When Andreas Cornelius signed a five-year contract for Cardiff City in July 2013, he had just turned 20 years of age. To put that into perspective, he was a few months younger than Chanka Zimba is now. He'd had one full season in the Danish Superliga and had finished top scorer with 18 goals in 32 appearances. He was also already a full Danish international and had scored a hat-trick for his national team against Canada and further goals against Mexico and the Czech Republic. He clearly had bags of potential.

During the car crash season that was 2013/14, Cornelius was given a grand total of six months to prove himself and he was injured for a significant portion of that time. By the time Vincent Tan had made him a scapegoat for the club's failings and had shipped him back to Copenhagen, he was still just 20 years-old.

His transfer was clearly an error of judgement on Mackay's part and the player obviously couldn't cope with the weight of expectation that was placed on him. However, given what he had done before he arrived in Cardiff, the way in which he was written off and publicly humiliated was clearly ridiculous. But let's be honest, much of what was going at Cardiff City in 2013/14 was clearly ridiculous.

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You are spot on. McKay was way out of his depth , but by the time the owners realised it, it was far to9 late. He should have been relieved of his duties the minute promotion was achieved. It was never going to work.

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Originally Posted by Optimistic Nick

Tan thought his marquee signing would be ready for first team football. He wasn't. I actually have some sympathy with tan on that. We needed a striker and we didn't get one. I can only assume malky did think he was ready but changed the story a bit when it became apparent that he wasnt.

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yeah I think that's probably spot on.

Malky took a punt with tans money and he clearly hadn't done enough research into the signing, as he wasn't ready to be our main striker, and when we did play him we didn't play to his strengths at all, we saw he was tall so we lumped the ball towards him from 40 metres away and expected him to hold the ball up.

this then led to the "transfer committee" which clearly still didn't add any football expertise to the recruitment process, but at least the manager had to demonstrate they knew what they were getting from the transfer and that they had a plan to use them.

going back to Cornelius, it's hard to argue it wasn't a bad signing at the time, but he's gone on to have a good career at a good level of football since, so you could argue that selling him when we did was just as bad a decision

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Originally Posted by Ivortheengine

You are spot on. McKay was way out of his depth , but by the time the owners realised it, it was far to9 late. He should have been relieved of his duties the minute promotion was achieved. It was never going to work.

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Yeah, we could have had Ole for the whole season then. People can go on till the cows come home about how Mackay got us relegated, but the facts are that we were clear of the bottom three when he left and yet we ended up bottom of the league - we were undoubtedly a worse side in the second half of 13/14 than we were in the first half of that season (eighteen points from the first nineteen, seventeen points from eighteen under Mackay and twelve from nineteen in the second half, eighteen under Ole).

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Originally Posted by Ivortheengine

You are spot on. McKay was way out of his depth , but by the time the owners realised it, it was far to9 late.

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I made no reference to Mackay’s abilities as a manager. The fact is we’ll never know if he would have kept his team in the Premier Division because Tan sacked him.

He was saved by leaving cardiff that couldn't develop a cold under covid.

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Originally Posted by the other bob wilson

Yeah, we could have had Ole for the whole season then. People can go on till the cows come home about how Mackay got us relegated, but the facts are that we were clear of the bottom three when he left and yet we ended up bottom of the league - we were undoubtedly a worse side in the second half of 13/14 than we were in the first half of that season (eighteen points from the first nineteen, seventeen points from eighteen under Mackay and twelve from nineteen in the second half, eighteen under Ole).

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We will never know either way, personally thought he should have gone after Villa away, we were getting worse and worse and more defensive game by game. Not sure we even had a shot at Villa and that was before all the bullying and racist evidence (allegedly?)

Personally think we made the same mistake twice on promotion and both Malky and Warnock should have been instantly replaced.

Two types of signing characterise the VT era. One is a young player with potential where the fee paid assumes he will reach that potential. The other is the journeyman pro where despite there being no competition in the market we pay full price with premium plus big wages and long contract for no apparent reason.

Cornelius is an example of the former, maybe worth a punt for a club to take for a fraction of that fee but certainly not for a promoted side to take that gamble. Josh Murphy is another.

One can only wonder how the future of the club would have been different if VT had employed a professional recruitment strategy along the lines of say Brighton or Brentford. At its nadir our expertise consisted of the transfer committee - VT, Dalman, Ken and ‘our Neil’ - supported by Neil’s pal and Chief Scout Glyn Chamberlain, Neil’s son James and the lads at Unique Sports Management plus various chancers lurking in the background like Willie McKay. With a set-up as shambolic as this sadly the club never had a chance.