It was on the 6th of October that Cardiff City appointed Leyton Orient boss Russell Slade as their new manager, replacing Norwegian cult-hero Ole Gunnar Solskjaer who departed the Welsh capital.
The appointment of Slade was not an easy one, with many formalities being needed to be ironed out before it could be confirmed that Slade would become the Cardiff manager. Slade was on the verge of being sacked by the Orient owner Francesco Becchetti after the club’s poor start to the season, with only one league win in their opening six games, only for the Italian to say he didn’t mean the threats to his players. Slade eventually resigned from his job after a League Cup defeat to Sheffield United. Eventually things were rubber stamped, despite a court case coming into the fray, with the London based side accusing Cardiff of ‘tapping up’ their manager.
Slade watched the Bluebirds claim a home victory against Sheffield Wednesday, then a week later witnessed them lose to comedy club Blackpool in what was a shambolic performance. It would be a fortnight after that Slade would take charge of his first competitive game, a home victory over Nottingham Forest who were unbeaten before they faced the Bluebirds. Many home victories came to follow, claiming six straight home victories and a draw against Rotherham, unfortunately for Slade, things turned sour as his side were three-nil down before half time, with the Bluebirds clawing back two in the second half as a consolation. This would be Slade’s first home loss as manager, his next home game saw the Cardiff faithful finally turn fully on Slade, surrendering a lead to Watford got to the fans, with chants of “Sacked in the morning” and “You don’t know what your doing” being aimed at the fifty-four year old.
News of the Cardiff City hierarchy publicly backing the under-performing manager has not gone down well with the fans. This isn’t the only time that Dalman has come out to back the manager, this time it was due to the Portuguese press claiming that Bruno Ribeiro, manager of Vitoria Setubal, would replace Slade come the end of the season. Surely that in itself shows that everyone but the club don’t believe in Russell Slade? The performances have been very below-par and even though Cardiff have never been known for being a possession based side, but they’ve at least attacked or had glimpses of attacking football. Under Dave Jones we would play a 4-4-2 which would be very stubborn of him but when it worked, boy did it work! We’d tear teams apart but we just didn’t have any bounce back ability if we went a goal behind. Under Malky, we would play 4-4-2 and 4-5-1, with the team ethos being hard working, rather than any real fluency about our style of play. It was effective to an extend where we were very stubborn, we weren’t entertained but we got results and that was the most important thing at the time for the Bluebirds faithful who craved promotion. When we parted company with Malky, we turned to Manchester United cult hero Ole Gunnar Solskjaer who never really had a selective or preferred formation due to his ‘tinkering’ tendencies, even though Solskjaer’s brief spell didn’t keep Cardiff up, we saw glimpses of attractive football, unfortunately though it shipped a fair few goals but he wasn’t scared to set-up attacking based teams.
One of the things that winds many Cardiff fans up is the reluctance to swap personnel, persisting with out of form players such as Craig Noone and Peter Whittingham, instead of giving fringe players a chance. Craig Noone, a winger who only has one goal and one assist to his name despite playing constantly since his return to action in October. In fact, Sean Morrison has more goals and assists than Craig Noone and he’s a central defender! Peter Whittingham as well, who has become very tiresome with Cardiff City fans, starting all the time over younger and hungrier players like Ralls and Adeyemi. Another thing that angered Bluebirds fans was the treatment of wonderkid Mats Daehli, who was continuously told to fight for his place yet he wasn’t given a fair opportunity under the stubborn manager. Daehli was later moved on in the January window with Slade claiming his heart wasn’t in it. Very harsh on a player of such a young age.
With a new manager at the helm, we will hopefully have someone who can reshape the club from top to bottom, with some kind of philosophy being implemented at all levels. This is what the club needs and it’s been crying out for it for some time. We shouldn’t act like an irrelevant Championship side when we’ve been challenging for promotion for years. Under Russell Slade, we keep using the same formula and expecting different outcomes when it’s not happening for us. He has a 34.29% win ratio and for a club like Cardiff City, we should be expecting more than that. We are so reluctant to call on our academy players despite a talented pool to choose from. We’re the club that created Robert Earnshaw and Aaron Ramsey and we’re barely giving our youth players a chance!
It’s time for the Bluebirds to part company with Russell Slade, thankful for a season of mediocrity stability but we deserve better.
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