Dave Jones has been sacked.
So what is Dave Jones' ultimate legacy? He, and we, can be satisfied that Cardiff City Football Club are now an established Championship outfit, having consistently improved upon their final standing season-upon-season (just), but having failed to complete the job he was tasked with, and which he was adequately funded for, promotion to the Premier League.
Sadly, equally consistent were the season-end capitulations. Having assembled groups of players capable of playing exhilarating, expansive, free-flowing attacking football, Jones seemed incapable of forging the team ethic, the collective belief and self-confidence necessary to propel the team through that seemingly impregnable bullet-proof barrier to the next level.
In the final analysis, on the home strait, Jones' teams were found wanting - again, and again, and again. Crippled by self-doubt, tormented by the prospect of failure and rendered inert by paralysing nerves on the big occasion, the last three seasons imploded and ended in soul-sapping disappointment.
The team lacked cohesion, focus and fire in the belly, and when games started slipping away, the manager was unable to reverse the decline. Too often he made odd and late substitutions, remaining tactically intransigent to the point that his best players were frequently played out of position to accommodate the straitjacket of 4-4-2.
His sour demeanour, fractious rapport with the local media and a spikey relationship with the fanbase did not help. Teflon Dave appeared untouchable, cosily immune to criticism on a (reported) whopping salary of 800K. Quick to slate, savage and alienate his own players after costly individual blunders contributed to points concessions, Jones would never, but never, 'fess up to tactical / selection / substitution mistakes, stubbornly persisting with favourites who were blatantly blindingly obviously either off-form or just plain not good enough.
Like the Pope, DJ was infallible, and countered any tentative criticisms with patronising bad-tempered rants about reporters and supporters who had "never played the game". And how many frigging times did we have to put up with the tedious post-match mantra that we would just need to "pick ourselves up, dust ourselves down and go again..."
When things were going well, the fans afforded him a grudging degree of respect and appreciation, but he was really hard to warm to. When the team hit bad patches, which they did all too predictably at recurringly pre-determined points in the season, the fans turned. The "Jones Out" mob were never truly silenced or won over, they merely hibernated.
Jones' grim frozen taciturn touchline reactions stupidly wound fans up too as if a rantingly arm-waving manager in the technical area could somehow communicate mental strength to his wilting wallflower Bluebirds. Jones' problem was not self-expression, but preparation, man-management and motivation.
This season's craven, shame-faced and oh-so-predictable collapse at home to Middlesbrough and Reading rendered Jones a Dead Man Walking. The prospect of job termination seemed inevitable when news of the curfew-breaking pre-Boro boozing indiscipline was acknowledged by the club, Jones' standing fatally compromised and undermined by a number of waste-of-space players who clearly fancied a night out more than promotion.
Jones looked a sad figure in the final post-match press-conference, his stern and craggy features pummelled by yet another failure - a failure magnified and underlined by the ease and slickness of Swansea's stylish dismissal of another set of chokers, Notts Forest, in the other semi-final (and, of course, yesterday's promotion).
It took almost two weeks to arrive, but when the decision was made, it was surely the right one. Six seasons is long enough. Dave Jones' time was up - and I would venture that most fans are relieved that it's happened, and excited about the next appointment and the future.
We thank you for the good times, the achievements, the memories, but it's time to move on. It really is the dawning of a new era.
And Dave, please don't have a shit journey home...
Paul Davies
urban75