Observations

First topic message reminder :

KTC is crap
Odemwingie is crap
Eikrem is good
Bellamy is a game changer and still has it
Hudson is better than Turner
Cornelius is a pub footballer with a 50p head

Team for next week

Does Kim not understand how a 1 - 2 works ? Saw quite a few occasions when someone, e.g. Declan John passed to him and made a run forward into space, only for Kim to go the other way, usually into the middle and end up losing it. Not impressed with him Saturday.

Red614 wrote:Sorry TDA, but you're wrong.

Aaron Ramsey was absolutely awful for years post his injury, Arsenal fans left right and centre thought Arsene Wenger had lost his mind keeping him in the squad. Then what happens? A switch flicks, his confidence comes back, and people are calling him the most on form player in the league.

Our own Peter Whittingham, left Aston Villa considered not good enough and yet give him a few seasons and suddenly Villa want him back again.

Paul Pogba, released on the cheap by United as he wasn't making the grade - now potentially the best CDM in the world.

Footballers, potentially more than any other sport, thrive on confidence. It's a game that relies on split second reactions and never more than for a striker. When you have a ball flying towards you, You have one of the best goalkeepers in the world coming out to collect it and one of the best centrebacks in the world closing you down if your confidence isn't there you panic and you make a mess of it.

Malky didn't say he was a signing for the future, but he said it a few weeks ago in a press conference. That quite rightly infuriated us, as for a promising player his price tag was far, far too much. Slumdog is completely right, top clubs spend large sums of money on 21 year olds for them only to vanish for two or three years. Why? Because they go to a smaller league to learn the trade and gather their confidence. It's not uncommon, and it's what should be happening with Cornelius. Instead, because he was too expensive people are demanding results from him when he's not ready to give them.

I have looked at the You Tube videos of Cornelius again and, admittedly, he does look better. However, the quality of the opposition, both domestically and in the internationals he has played is poor.

Taking your last paragraph first.......reinforcing the striking department was top priority last summer and we needed someone who would hit the ground running. I have no doubt that Malky felt that he had found that person in Cornelius......there is no logical reason for paying so much of the transfer budget otherwise. For that reason alone, he was a bad buy. He may well come good in the future, but at the moment, there is little evidence to suggest he could will it at this level.

Malky didn't understand what was needed for a PL squad and if Cornelius has found it a step up too far, then certainly it was for Malky. I had to smile at what he said on MOTD that OGS will find managing in the PL very different to Norway. That may well be true, but OGS spent his entire playing career in the PL at one of the best clubs in the world and cut his managerial teeth under the best of the lot.

As to points you make regarding specific players, I don't know much about Pogba, but MU seem to have a youth policy which involves slinging mud against a wall and if any sticks, then that's a bonus...............just look at how many young former MU players there are in our domestic game..........far more than from any other club.......  

Ramsey suffered tremendously physically and psychologically following that "tackle" by Shawcross and it is a wonder that he ever wanted to play again. However, by the time he was loaned to City, he was getting back to his best.

.........Whitts may well have excelled at Championship level and naturally attracted interest from above, but on this season's display, there has to be a doubt as to whether he is true PL quality..........and there may lie the best comparison we can put forward for Andreas Cornelius.

Cornelius is just rubbish. Cant believe people even bother discussing him. As far as I'm concerned he's a handsomely paid burden on the club I support and will most likely be for 5 years. No club is stupid enough to take him off us other than paying him say £20k per week and us giving him a bonus to be released from his contract.

I guess the only thing left to do is call a stalemate and favourite the topic ready to brag in a couple of years time, whichever way this goes

Red614 wrote:I guess the only thing left to do is call a stalemate and favourite the topic ready to brag in a couple of years time, whichever way this goes

Unfortunately, a return on his investment was needed this season, even moreso now, as we need goals to stay up......If we are relegated, I would be surprised if he was still here in two years time.....

On the topic of his 'heavy investment' - Velikonja cost us 2 million in the championship, so he's in the same ballpark and we all know how that turned out.

I'm not using Velikonja as an example that Cornelius is good, more that Malky (or at least the club) has a history of spending big money on players that rarely see the first team, if ever.

Part of me thinks the price tag is holding him back. As Velikonja's club owner said when he sold him 'if some idiot wants to pay three or four times what the player is worth, then that is not my problem'.

Malky / Moody failed badly when to big money transfers. Even the good ones Caulker & Medel are viewed as overpriced.

The irony is that at Championship level with a limited budget, they did so much better......

You can't fault deals like Taylor, Conway, Mason, Gunnarsson, Cowie.....tremendous value for money. Even the next price bracket up, players like Campbell, Noone, Turner, Mutch were excellent buys.

Unfortunately, above that things tend to go t*ts-up..........Velcro, Brayford, Odemthingy, Maynard (unfair perhaps because of the injury, but not a PL player) being prime examples!

I find it harder to argue against as time goes on if I tell the truth. Medel is excellent but if the rumours were true Sevilla would of been happy with 4 million then massively overpaid. The only high end player that remained value for money was Caulker, who's worth his weight in gold.

Anyone else realised the irony? That despite all our high end spending and Malky's nationwide popularity, our best and most effective player is still David Marshall - a Dave Jones signing?   

Red614 wrote:I find it harder to argue against as time goes on if I tell the truth. Medel is excellent but if the rumours were true Sevilla would of been happy with 4 million then massively overpaid. The only high end player that remained value for money was Caulker, who's worth his weight in gold.

Anyone else realised the irony? That despite all our high end spending and Malky's nationwide popularity, our best and most effective player is still David Marshall - a Dave Jones signing?   

Thats because Jones was a better manager. Yes he was stubborn, yes he was a media nightmare and yes he had no plan B (neither did Malky) but with the backing Malky had that season he'd have also taken us up. Heck, my grandmother could have taken us up that season on that budget. Malky took us up after 2 seasons of rebuilding and he was handsomely backed to do so. Was allowed to spend millions of Tan's money to take us up. Its not hard to do so really.

I firmly believe Jones would have taken us up with that same backing. The problem Jones had during his times here was that we were always on the brink, always in financial messes, always had to sell players to pay off the likes of the HMRC and so on. Malky had none of that to worry about as Tan was bankrolling him. Jones' problem was he couldn't play Mr Nice Guy, never tried to do so and was just himself, a grumpy old man - Malky loved the media attention as much as Obama does, plays the cameras and the fans all buy it with all this fist pump s**t (cringe) and they lap it up.

People need to realise this is football, a cut throat business, not a fist pump all smiles utopia where we all get on happily in la la land as KING MALKY OF CARDIFF takes us on and on and we surge to ever lasting glory. The real world don't work like that. Its a miserable and draining place much like Dave Jones.   

I'll admit myself for a whilst i was caught up in this hysteria so I'm guilty of it myself but its a learning curve I guess as you go on.

I'm not having Dave jones - who just got sacked from Sheffield Wednesday - was a better manager than Malky. Dave jones for periods of his tenure had an excellent squad that should of gone up, but still choked when it mattered. The phrase 'same old Cardiff' was coined from his failure, time and time again.

Malky was a good manager - but a good championship midtable manager. If you want a man that will keep you safe in the championship, he's your man. He crumpled under the pressure of the premiership and he started to creak last season too by the end. But Dave Jones can't even crack it at the bottom of the championship.

Red614 wrote:I'm not having Dave jones - who just got sacked from Sheffield Wednesday - was a better manager than Malky. Dave jones for periods of his tenure had an excellent squad that should of gone up, but still choked when it mattered. The phrase 'same old Cardiff' was coined from his failure, time and time again.

Malky was a good manager - but a good championship midtable manager. If you want a man that will keep you safe in the championship, he's your man. He crumpled under the pressure of the premiership and he started to creak last season too by the end. But Dave Jones can't even crack it at the bottom of the championship.

Yet kept us competing at the top of it with a fairly average squad and financial constraints for years. Malky wouldnt have done that. His Watford were mediocre and their finishes were equally mediocre under him. Jones had us punching above our weight more often than not. We didn't have an excellent squad at all under Jones. In our eyes it was excellent, in the grand scheme of things it was average.

And Malky wasnt under budget limitation when he had to rebuild the whole squad from scratch? He was asked to rebuild the squad and achieve a midtable finish with limited funds - he got us into the playoffs and led us to Wembley.

In 09/10 we had Bothroyd,Chopra, McCormack, on fire Whitts, Ledley, McNaughton, Hudson, I could go on and on. Bothroyd and Chopra are probably the best strike partnership the club has seen in the modern game and Whitts scored 22 for the season. That team was on par with the side that got us promoted, and yet all they could do under Jones was lose in the playoffs. Again. I'm not having that a team that can reach the playoffs as many seasons in a row as we did is still punching above their weight. Once or twice maybe, but after then all you are doing is performing as expected, and under Jones there was never an improvement on that success level.

Malky, when you look at season objectives, never failed. When asked to rebuild he rebuilt and overachieved, when asked to win the league we won the league. When asked to keep us safe from relegation, as of when he left we were clear of the drop. Can you say that for Dave Jones? I'm sure Sheffield Wednesday, who were 23rd in the championship under Jones but are now 19th without him wouldn't be too sure either.

 That just about sums it up for me.