Nothing much to report on the City front this week apart from the news that it looks like they’ll be having a pre season training camp in Austria and there are some names to mention of the transfer speculation front.
Firstly, there was something online about us and Luton being interested in Southampton’s Ross Stewart. The Scottish international striker is a twenty seven year old target man striker who was something of a late developer as he only moved into the professional game at the age of twenty with Albion Rovers (actually, that’s not really true, because Albion are only a part time club).
Stewart did enough in his first season to persuade St. Mirren to sign him, but he did little of note at the Paisley club and left them without scoring a league goal. Before that though, he was loaned to Alloa Athletic where a return of seven goals from nineteen games suggests he did pretty well at what was a low level competition by the standards of the EFL. Stewart’s next move took him to Ross County where he was hardly prolific with fifteen goals in sixty three league appearances, but, despite his fairly mundane stats up to then, he was able to attract the attention of bigger clubs and his next move took him into England and Sunderland in particular.
Sunderland were in League One and, after quiet time of it at the back end of 20/21, the next season saw Stewart scoring twenty four times in forty eight league appearances as his team were promoted through the Play offs. Stewart then scored ten times in thirteen games at the start of the following season at the higher level, but has barely played since an achilles injury sustained in an FA Cup tie at Fulham.
Despite the injury causing him to miss the start of last season, Southampton were still prepared to pay a big fee for Stewart towards the end of the last summer’s transfer window, but it wasn’t until November that he was able to make his debut for Russell Martin’s club and a fortnight later, he suffered a hamstring injury which was expected to keep him out for the rest of the season. However, he was able to return with a substitute’s appearance in the Saints final match of the regular season and two more in their successful Play Off campaign.
In essence then, Stewart’s multi million pound move to the south coast club and his two Scottish caps can be put down to a prolific season and a bit with Sunderland in the second and third tiers.
There are three question marks i’d place on any move to Cardiff by Ross Stewart, the first, and most obvious one, is would Southampton be willing to let him go? Given the fee, rumoured to be not far short of £10 million, they paid for him, it seems very unlikely, but there may be some doubts as to whether he is good enough for the Premier League, especially given his recent injury record and this, together with the fact that he hasn’t been able to prove yet that he is fully recovered after having barely played at all in a season and a half could mean the Saints would see a spell in the Championship as the right move for a player who they still feel can do well for them in the longer term..
That injury record brings me on to the thought that, surely, from our perspective, any move for Stewart by City would havc to be on the basis that he’ll be loaned to us . The move to Southampton whule recovering from a long term injury was something of a gamble and what has happened to Stewart since then means that any club willing to sign him permanently at the moment would be taking a huge punt which could see them losing millions while getting little or nothing back from the player.
If Southampton were prepared to let Stewart out on laon for the forthcoming season, I think it could prove to be a shrewd move by City as long as the player remained mostly injury free, but something similar applied to Aaron Ramsey at this time last year and, given how that worked out last season, I’m doubtful if there’s much in this rumour.
A more likely possibility for me is that we may make a move for Marc Leonard, a Scottish under 21 international midfielder who is on Brighton’s books. Twenty two year old Leonard has spent the last two seasons on loan at Northampton playing in the fourth and then third tiers and it seems to be generally accepted that he has looked a good prospect at those levels.
City were first linked with Leonard in January and it appears that, although he still has a season left on his Brighton contract, they would be prepared to sell him for a fee of around £300,000. It’s been reported that Leonard has already had discussions with Preston about a move there, but it seems that nothing more will be coming of that link and now, after earlier links with other Championship clubs, the latest report has Cardiff, newly promoted Oxford and the team they are replacing, Birmingham all chasing the midfielder who I must confess to not knowing much about.
However, I think a strong season with a Northampton side which probably performed better than anticipated in finishing halfway up the table is suggestive of someone who could become a Championship footballer – Leonard doesn’t have a good goalscoring record, but if he is capable of being the box to box type midfielder we lack, then I think he is someone worth pursuing.
Moving on to international football, if the 0-0 draw with Gibraltar a week ago created something of air of crisis in the Welsh senior team, then Sunday’s 4-0 hiding by Slovakia did nothing to dispel it.
I’ll not say much about the game itself. For about half an hour there was enough in the Welsh performance to make you think we were seeing a reaction. to what had happened seventy two hours earlier, but Slovakia gradually got on top and took the lead in added time before the interval with a long range shot that left me questioning goalkeeper Danny Ward who has played so little football this season.
After that, I’m afraid we just folded in a manner which would have you questioning whether the manager concerned had much time left in the job if it had happened in club football. Two goals early in the second half put us on course for a bigger thrashing than 4-0, but Slovakia were only able to add one more late goal.
The home side didn’t look anything special, but it was exactly the sort of nice, gentle warm up for the Euros that they would have wanted. It should also be said that, although there were quite a few first choice Welsh players missing for one reason or another, it was the strongest team Wales could field and the fact that Rob Page only used three subs means that the excuse that this was an experimental line up could not be used.
Sorry for mentioning the election, but it’s only to say that I don’t watch last night’s Q and A from Grimsby with the leaders of the two main parties, but I’ve seem it reported in various sources that Rishi Sunak looked like a “broken man”.
Once again, I’ve not seen the video in question, but it would appear that for Rishi Sunak in Grimsby on Thursday, read Rob Page in Trnava on Sunday. I’ve seen and heard that same term “broken man” applied to the Welsh manager, but the word that has appeared most often to describe his mood is “resigned” – as in resigned to his fate.
Usually, a couple of end of season friendlies which mean nothing in the grand scheme of things do not end up with the manager concerned clinging on to his job. However, the performances and results were so bad against Gibraltar and Slovakia that, put together with what happened in the World Cup, the home humiliation by Armenia (as I mentioned last week, that’s the game which made me feel most strongly about sacking Page) and our failure to beat the worst Polish team of recent times, then the pressure will be ramped up several notches.
Before these last two games it had been said that a poor start to our Nations League campaign in September may see the manager sacked, but there must be a doubt now if Page makes it that far.
In saying that, the thing which could save him is the four year contract given to him back in 2022 which has I’m afraid become more ludicrous looking with every passing game – can the FAW pay up on a contract which still has more than two years left to run?
In between the Gibraltar and Slovakia matches Welsh players appeared before the media to defend the manager against what they saw as unjustified booing of him . To be fair to Wes Burns and Tom King, the former played little part in the Slovakia game and the latter none at all. However, certainly in the last forty fiver minutes on Sunday, there was nothing in the Welsh performance to suggest that this was a group of players fighting to keep their manager in his job – quite the opposite actually.