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There's a City-related article showing up on The Times website, entitled "So Mick McCarthy is not good enough for Cardiff City fans", by Rod Liddle. I can only see the first couple of lines - the rest is behind a paywall. Does anyone have a subscription, so they could copy the whole thing across, for us to read?
I haven't sorry mate but the stuff I have read from him is generally unpleasant stuffOriginally Posted by tforturton
Agreed, but it'll be interesting to see what he says. I usually read The Times during the week, but never bother on the weekends. Probably too late to find one now.
You must have read as much as me:
'When the second division fixtures were published in June 1981, the chief sports reporter on the newspaper for which I worked, The South Wales Echo, began his story with the words: “Cardiff City begin their battle against relegation next season with a trip to Oldham Athletic.” A wonderful intro that led to him being banned from the ground for the year, but well worth it.
Cardiff were indeed relegated that season, having survived the previous campaign by virtue of goal difference. They were pretty awful. Exiled from my home country I would occasionally wander along to Ninian Park and cheer on the opposition, whoever they were, unless it was Swansea City, and then I wouldn’t go at all. The Bluebirds had one half-decent player...'
It's clearly going to be an article about how shit we used to be when he saw us play 40 years ago so our expectations shouldn't have changed in that time... Even though we were a Premier League team a couple of years ago.
I wouldn't waste my time reading any further if it was a free article.
(Sorry I couldn't help).
Rod Liddle is a twat, it won't be worth reading the rest of the article.
Wouldn’t waste my time reading anything by that wife beating racist
Yes, he was quite clever at one time, but he really has morphed into a c unt.
For my sins I admit to occasionally buying the Times, mainly for the crosswords I should add , but rarely buy it now since lockdown started.
I think he is quite clever and he is a good writer too, but he is also the dictionary definition of an arse hole.
Former Labour leader;5160736] ... For my sins I admit to occasionally buying the Times, mainly for the crosswords I should add , but rarely buy it now since lockdown started.
Croesy Blue;5160739]I think he is quite clever and he is a good writer too, but he is also the dictionary definition of an arse hole.
That could have helped but the Times crossword is cryptic
When the second division fixtures were published in June 1981, the chief sports reporter on the newspaper for which I worked, The South Wales Echo, began his story with the words: “Cardiff City begin their battle against relegation next season with a trip to Oldham Athletic.” A wonderful intro that led to him being banned from the ground for the year, but well worth it.
Cardiff were indeed relegated that season, having survived the previous campaign by virtue of goal difference. They were pretty awful. Exiled from my home country I would occasionally wander along to Ninian Park and cheer on the opposition, whoever they were, unless it was Swansea City, and then I wouldn’t go at all. The Bluebirds had one half-decent player, a*bloke called Tarki Micallef. Same thing these days, except it’s not Tarki but Kieffer Sutherland, or something.
I mention this to put Cardiff in a bit of context, seeing as the fans are moaning that the board have appointed the “dinosaur” Mick McCarthy as manager. I think they expected Eddie Howe, or maybe Pep. Cardiff may have been in the top tier recently but they have spent most of their existence clambering about in the bottom divisions, especially the third tier. They last won anything of note (unless you count the Welsh Cup, which I don’t) in 1927 — the FA Cup, beating Arsenal, the only time the trophy has left England. The roaring Twenties were their heyday.
Since then it has been peripatetic mediocrity, like it is for most clubs. But fans of Championship sides, and a good few in League One, are often afflicted with Big Club Syndrome: the notion that their rightful place is in the top division, and challenging for Europe. Some 40 clubs seem to think this of themselves and the Premier League has places for only 20. These enhanced expectations can lead to financial ruin and ignominy, bitterness and a sense of futility.
Cardiff are in mid-table having endured a six-match losing run under the now departed Neil Harris. Chopper took them to the play-offs last season, but that wasn’t good enough for the fans, who wished to win the play-offs while playing vibrant, free-flowing, attacking football. The, erm, sometimes erratic Malaysian owner, Vincent Tan, examined the options in front of him, caught the whiff of relegation on the breeze, axed Chopper and very quickly brought in Big Mick from his clement sojourn in Cyprus, where he was managing the country’s biggest club, APOEL (and not making a terribly good fist of it, if we’re honest. They’re below mid-table).
I have happy memories of McCarthy as a manager. In his first managerial stint he took my club, Millwall, into the play-offs while playing the brand of entertaining football that those Cardiff fans so yearn for. Hell, we even played the diamond formation under Mick. His finest moment, though, was in response to a journalist inquiring if it was true that Millwall had bought the goalkeeper Kasey Keller. “Kasey Keller? Don’t know about that. There’s a case of Stella . . .”
His record since then has been pretty remarkable — a kind of Neil Warnock on methadone. He hoisted Sunderland and those formerly slumbering giants Wolves into the Premier League and, in the case of Wolves, kept them there, somewhat against the odds. He is probably the second most successful manager of Ireland in history, after the sainted Jack Charlton (whom Big Mick reveres). In the 2002 World Cup the Irish missed out on a quarter-final place only after losing a penalty shoot-out against Spain.
Arguments with that fractious little monkey, Roy Keane (you may remember Roy’s stunning riposte to his boss: “Up yer bollocks”) somewhat sullied Ireland’s participation in the tournament. But then it is difficult to imagine being Keane’s manager and everything going smoothly, isn’t it?
McCarthy’s stock fell a little at Ipswich, perhaps. He was there for the best part of six years — another “big” club whose fans thought themselves more deserving than they were. Money was non-existent, while in the stands there were plenty of fans who remembered Bobby Robson and thought Ipswich should be somewhere around second place in the Premier League.
The club were on a downward trajectory, which Mick could not quite halt. But, somehow, he got them into the play-offs and then seventh place before a kind of irreversible rot set in. He felt hounded out of Ipswich by the fans who, like Tan, could sniff relegation on the breeze.
He got the hell out of Portman Road after an obdurate 1-0 win over Barnsley, consoling himself that he would no longer have to take the relentless abuse from the stands. He had no sympathy with the supporters when, the following season, Ipswich finally succumbed to the inevitable. Ipswich are still in the third tier and showing no great inclination to get themselves out.
Managers are, in general, overrated. You want your club to do better than they are ? Get a new owner. But there are a few managers kicking around who have a certain knack. Warnock, Pulis, Big Sam — and Big Mick. Just get behind the bloke
Thanks for posting the whole article. Lately I find myself thinking about what attracts people to football as kids quite often and I'll explain why I think I do that presently, but, to answer that question, I'd say it's things like goals, skills, the atmosphere and the thrill that goes with winning. When a boy or girl starts playing the game, the attraction is based on what you can do when you've got the ball and it's my view that, just as with the things that got you into the game as a spectator, those basic, gut feelings never leave you for the rest of your life.
Even if you now qualify for the state pension, the things which get you out of your seat at games or at home are the things that I listed above, not a great bit of closing down, a defensive block, a team "keeping it's shape", being "compact" (the modern buzzword for defensive), a player doing the "ugly" things that the experts think we're too thick to notice and passing the ball around a bit and then going back to your keeper to welly it up the pitch (City have turned this into an art form in recent seasons!).
Jayne Ludlow the former Wales women's team manager left her job last week, she's from where I live now and a few of the locals remember her as someone their kids used to play with, she's popular up here, but I can't say I'm much of a fan of hers after I saw Wales start the second half of their recent game with Norway by booting the ball upfield about forty yards straight into touch. Wales had been so defensive throughout the first half, but this was them just copying rugby by playing for field position, I wonder if Jayne Ludlow starting playing football because she hoped one day a team of hers would be restarting matches like that?
City have never resorted to something as anti football as that over the past ten years or so, but give them time! I know there's a tendency to look at things differently to the punters who support your team when your living depends on getting results, but, for me, watching Cardiff City since Russell Slade took over has, to a large extent, been a joyless experience whereby the things that first attracted me to the game, the things that have kept me coming back for more for nearly sixty years happen less and less.
There is still the joy which comes with winning, but most of the time it's tempered with the knowledge that, yet again, we've won "ugly", the thrill of seeing the ball going into the other sides net never disappears, but I only ever get the feeling that a goal is coming these days if we have a corner or a free kick which can be swung into the penalty area. If City manage to get themselves two or more goals in front with the clock showing more than ninety minutes played and they have an attack they head off towards the corner flag to waste time rather than look for another goal.
If there is a club among the ninety two that has played more attritional, percentage based, physical, aerial, careless passing, poor technique and unattractive football since 2014, then its fans have my profound sympathy because we've had plenty of it down here in south Wales and so I don't appreciate some bloke from the Times telling me that I'm being "precious" because I fear that our new manager is going to be offering more of the same - I've suffered enough (increasingly, I get that feeling that many others feel this way as well), Cardiff City have not been playing a version of the game I fell in love with when I was about six for ages and, with no Whitts around to remind us what the game can be like anymore, would like to see some signs of us playing with a bit of style every mow and then.
For the sake of balance, and being a pedantic so-and-so, Jayne's tactics may have been more defensive than some would like but that Wales would have qualified if based on goal difference and she's done an amazing job getting kids interested in women's football. There's a write-up here about the evolution she oversaw: http://www.markpitman1.com/2021/01/1...getherStronger
I do take your wider point though, especially when there is so much choice open to kids about what sport they get involved in now. Even clubs who do focus on constricting the opposition should be able to play football as well or else it all falls down very quickly.
Yes, I’d agree that she definitely oversaw an improvement in the Welsh women’s game and it’s also only fair to say that Wales were quite positive in their approach when they played out in Norway, but I honestly couldn’t believe what I was watching at times in the match at Cardiff City Stadium. The irony being that when Wales had to attack after going 1-0 down they caused the Norwegians plenty of problems.
I have two questions. What is his username? Which division does he think Millwall should be in?
I can’t say I disagree with him about some of our fans having ideas above their stations (some thought we were in with a chance of getting Howe ffs) and I do think Mick had a word reputation than he deserves.
But I disagree fans should be happy with being lumped with a Pulis etc.
Can't disagree with much of what he said to be fair. We do have a lot of delusional and entitled fans nowadays.
Spot on. Plus a tad precious and highly-sensitive to criticism. If anyone had read this board for a 72hour period last week they'd draw the same conclusions
Says someone who has persistently been critical of the team for the same sort of faults I’ve talked about.
I'd be the first to argue for a fresh approach to management, recruitment etc., but I honestly think the City could go down unless there's a rapid improvement - that's more likely to happen under McCarthy or similar, than a Bellamy type appointment.
hes a decent football writer
Why would Cardiff fans be wrong in thinking they could get Howe? He was the previous manager of Bournemouth not Barcelona.
Because he will 100% get a better job than Cardiff.
and more money
Monkeymfc, he got caught posting quite racist comments using it
https://mobile.twitter.com/sunny_hun...000257?lang=en
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...s-website.html
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