The championship’s reputation is that it is a highly competitive league where anyone can beat anyone. But take a look at the current table and you will see that Leicester, still a Premier League team in all but name, are charting a course towards the top tier at a dizzying pace, ready to breach the 100-point mark in the same way Burnley did. Last season was a season in which Leeds and Southampton were on the rise. Welcome to the new Championship: an era of big budgets and celebrity manager appointments.
There have been losses during this period in recent years; among them is Cardiff City. As a Premier League club less than five years ago, they had to readjust their ambitions, their finances and virtually start over. Erol Bulut has arguably been the championship’s least heralded coach, but in half a season he has guided them to within three points of the play-off places. A win against Leeds at the Cardiff City Stadium this Saturday could catapult the Bluebirds into an improbable promotion push.
Relating to: Samuel Iling-Junior: The young Englishman on the rise at Juventus
It won’t be possible for a few reasons. Not least because Cardiff were placed under a transfer embargo after Emiliano Sala, the £15 million Nantes striker they signed in 2019, defaulted on paying the transfer fee and tragically died in a plane crash before he could play for the club. The transfer ban was lifted this month but the club is still in recovery mode.
The Sala saga has cast a long shadow on the Welsh capital. Facing the threat of relegation from the Premier League in the same year took its toll. The post-Neil Warnock years have been barren and difficult; The club had been dealing with six permanent managers since his departure and was trying to compete with a reduced budget as parachute payments expired.
Local lad Rubin Colwill – like a cloud – is a beacon of light, a symbol of new-age stripped-down Cardiff. He’s had some tough times as a childhood fan and academy product that broke out in the middle of the pandemic. He trained under Neil Harris, made his debut under Mick McCarthy and played alongside Steve Morison, Mark Hudson and Sabri Lamouchi before finding his feet under the Cloud. “I’ve seen a lot of managers in action, so I’m pretty experienced at judging them,” he says with a laugh.
For Colwill and his teammates, finding a sense of stability this season will be vital to the club’s resurgence. “It wasn’t ideal to start my career with all this chopping and replacing,” he says. “I guess you always want to be part of a bigger project, a plan for the future. It is a good thing that the coach is putting these into practice so that the club can improve as a whole. “This is a long-term process.”
There is hope among supporters that a plan will finally come together. Reaching the play-offs this season will be an unpredictable bonus; After flirting with relegation for two seasons, Bulut’s arrival would have welcomed a top-half finish. The club entered a concrete upward trend for the first time in years.
Bulut is a former Alanyaspor and Fenerbahce coach and his connections with clubs in Turkey helped Cardiff cope with the arrival of Manolis Siopis and Dimitrios Goutas on free transfers from Trabzonspor and Sivasspor respectively when their hands were tied in the summer transfer window. The club also brought back hometown hero Aaron Ramsey on a free transfer. In addition to Kieffer Moore, agreements are ongoing for the contract of Fenerbahçe forward Mehmet Umut Nayir. The bag’s strings were loosened a bit.
There is only one obstacle and that is the future of the Cloud. He signed a one-year contract last summer and there have been no discussions with the hierarchy about extending the contract. That being the case, it becomes difficult to think beyond the next five months.
“I can’t make any plans for the new season or the future,” he says. “My plans can only be until the end of the season. It is difficult to talk about the future without knowing whether I will be here or not.
“I said I am happy here. I think the fans know that because we have had many meetings together. I would like to continue to make changes here and contribute a lot to the club. It is not easy to change everything from today to tomorrow, but we have changed a lot since the beginning of the season.
“This is not enough for me. We must continue to work, we must invest to bring in quality players, we must create a really good structure by bringing young players into the academy. We need a plan to make this work. “We need to work together to make a plan work.”
More time for Bulut would be welcomed, especially by Colwill, who feels he is developing faster and learning more under the 48-year-old. He’s definitely not alone.
“He’s a good guy,” Colwill says of Bulut. “He is a serial winner on and off the field. It’s great to have it here and I’d love to see it continue. “We’ve certainly shown enough consistency and fighting spirit so we’re not far off.”
The play-offs are tantalizingly approaching, but promotion may be a little too early for Cardiff City’s restart this season. The Bluebirds are on the verge of flying high once again, if only they can look to the horizon.