Cardiff City in danger of losing all goodwill after flicker of light
The wait is painful for Bluebirds fans and it risks losing the positivity which had taken so long to build up throughout the campaign
I doff my cap to Cardiff City fans. They once again find themselves throwing their arms up in the air, shaking their heads and begging for a manager update which never comes.
Football fans are known for their intolerance and impatience, but I have to say, Bluebirds supporters have been remarkably, astonishingly patient while they await the outcome of what seems to be the longest contractual saga in modern football history.
Some of that will be because City fans are jaded by these all-too-familiar feelings of purgatory and silence when it comes to following their team. Others are so scared that their club will find itself in the even more worrying situation of searching for a new manager in June that they don’t want to rock the boat or jinx it, in fear of it all going wrong.
We have been told for a month that things are close, that details need to be ironed out, that the ball is in Erol Bulut’s court, that the ball is in Vincent Tan’s court, that this cannot go on for much longer. But it has gone on, longer and longer, seemingly endlessly. A battle of attrition in which the spoils of the victor are diminishing with each passing day.
Because whichever way you square it, this isn’t good. It’s not a good look nor does it instil confidence in anyone – fans, manager, owner – that everyone is merrily skipping along on the same page here. Finding a positive outcome in this negotiation is becoming more the lesser of two evils than it is a tub-thumping, positive march in the right direction.
Last season was not perfect, for large periods it was anything but, but it was at least a step in a positive direction after four successive seasons of finishing in a lower league position than the year before. Cardiff won 19 games, finished slap-bang in the middle of the table in 12th and a manager started and ended the season in charge. That’s a good starting point.
There are two parties in Bulut and Tan who appear apart on one or a number of things and chairman Mehmet Dalman in the middle trying to pull it all together. But the truth is, this should have been sorted months ago. February, March, April, the questions were being asked and an increasingly-frustrated Bulut didn’t have the answers.
