Originally Posted by
the other bob wilson
First up for me is that I think the writer of the piece I linked to in the OP has got much of what he writes from someone at the club - I may be wrong, but I suspect that article is pretty close to the truth when it comes to our attitude in the transfer market over the next couple of months or so.
Also, I don't see any great change in style taking place during the summer. The players we have are much better suited to playing in the manner we did in 17/18 and so any attempt to play more of a passing game would have to be founded, to a large extent, on new signings who probably would not come cheap given the job we would be expecting them to do.
It's far more likely I reckon that it will be more of the same from us, but, having only managed to beat Middlesbrough out of the Championship's top eight in the second half of the season (we got better at beating the division's also ran's during that time, but we struggled against the top sides) , I would say we need to do what we do quite a bit better than we did from Christmas onwards if we are going to compete at the higher level.
Reading some of the contributions to this thread, it almost seems as if there are those who want to keep our transfer business at the same sort of level it would have been if we hadn't gone up - if we were to do that then, surely, our chances of staying up would be negligible?
I get that we don't want to repeat what happened in 2013, when we spent in the region of £50 million and were the seventh highest spenders in the league, but the rewards for promotion from TV deals are higher these days and, with £25 million being quoted by Norwich for James Maddison apparently, the sum we spent five years ago would buy you a lot less now than it could have done then if it had been spent better.
With the talk of the free transfer and loan markets mentioned in the Wales Online article, it seems to me that City are, once again, in danger of going from one extreme to the other. If there really are these great Bosman's and potential loan deals out there, it seems daft to me to expect the other nineteen clubs in the Premier League, clubs in the Championship with hefty parachute payments boosting their budget and rich clubs in other countries, many of which would have far better scouting systems than us, to be completely unaware of them.
Being realistic, the only way such players would choose Cardiff over other clubs likely to be chasing them would be if we offered them more in wages and signing on fees than anyone else and then we'd be back heading towards a 2013 situation again.
If City are really going to spend as little as that article suggests, then we are, again, going to be relying very heavily on Neil Warnock and his staff repeating some of the great work they did last summer with the signings of, for example, Etheridge, Mendez-Laing and Paterson. Our manager is a proven miracle worker at Championship level, but his record in the top flight is, at best, patchy and, by his own admission, he is no good at spotting strikers.
If we really are looking at "mainly British-based experienced players", then that is probably as expensive a market as you can choose if the experienced players are not closer to forty than thirty, so, again, you have to wonder what is there available in that field at the sort of prices hinted at in the article?