Actually, the lack of any real news emanating from Cardiff City Stadium in the last two weeks means that it’s hardly a weekly review this time, but the announcement of City’s league programme for the new season gives me the chance to produce a short round up of events.
The publication of the Premier League fixtures for 16/17 a week ago gave the clue as to what City fans could expect when their team’s games for the new Championship campaign were released. With the jacks being away on the opening day of their season (August 13), at home on Boxing Day and on the weekend when the Championship season ends (May 7), it was pretty safe to assume that the opposite would apply for the team forty miles down the road from them.
Therefore, on those dates, we will be facing QPR at home having already visited Birmingham on 6 August, at Brentford for our Christmas match and up in Yorkshire playing at Huddersfield to bring the curtain down on the regular Championship season on May 7.
There’ve been a few speculative stories regarding possible transfer targets, but none which claimed that we’d made a formal offer for a player. Therefore, I suppose the one that says we have offered a six figure fee for Boavista winger Renato Santos should be taken a bit more seriously than those others.
So, no home matches on the days that I have always check first on the day that the fixtures are released, but, with Aston Villa visiting us on 2 January and Newcastle our final home fixture on 29 April for a title decider (I should point out now that I don’t have laughing smileys on here!), there are a few attractive looking matches at times of the season when you would have thought they’d attract larger than average crowds to the stadium.
Other dates to note are 15 October for the home derby with Bristol City and 14 January for the return fixture – anyway, here is the full list of fixtures;-
Sat 6 Aug 2016, 3pm – Birmingham City (A)
Sat 13 Aug 2016, 3pm – Queens Park Rangers (H)
Tues 16 Aug 2016, 7:45pm – Blackburn Rovers (H)
Sat 20 Aug 2016, 3pm – Fulham (A)
Sat 27 Aug 2016, 3pm – Reading (H)
Sat 10 Sep 2016, 3pm – Norwich City (A)
Tues 13 Sep 2016, 7:45pm – Preston North End (A)
Sat 17 Sep 2016, 3pm – Leeds United (H)
Sat 24 Sep 2016, 3pm – Rotherham United (A)
Tues 27 Sep 2016, 7:45pm – Derby County (H)
Sat 1 Oct 2016, 3pm – Burton Albion (A)
Sat 15 Oct 2016, 3pm – Bristol City (H)
Tues 18 Oct 2016, 7:45pm – Sheffield Wednesday (H)
Sat 22 Oct 2016, 3pm – Nottingham Forest (A)
Sat 29 Oct 2016, 3pm – Wigan Athletic (H)
Sat 5 Nov 2016, 3pm – Newcastle United (A)
Sat 19 Nov 2016, 3pm – Huddersfield Town (H)
Sat 26 Nov 2016, 3pm – Aston Villa (A)
Sat 3 Dec 2016, 3pm – Brighton (H)
Sat 10 Dec 2016, 3pm – Ipswich Town (A)
Tues 13 Dec 2016, 7:45pm – Wolverhampton (H)
Sat 17 Dec 2016, 3pm – Barnsley (H)
Mon 26 Dec 2016, 3pm – Brentford (A)
Sat 31 Dec 2016, 3pm – Brighton (A)
Mon 2 Jan 2017, 3pm – Aston Villa (H)
Sat 14 Jan 2017, 3pm – Bristol City (A)
Sat 21 Jan 2017, 3pm – Burton Albion (H)
Sat 28 Jan 2017, 3pm – Reading (A) (FA Cup 4th round)
Tues 31 Jan 2017, 7:45pm – Preston North End (H)
Sat 4 Feb 2017, 3pm – Norwich City (H)
Sat 11 Feb 2017, 3pm – Leeds United (A)
Tues 14 Feb 2017, 7:45pm – Derby County (A)
Sat 18 Feb 2017, 3pm – Rotherham United (H)
Sat 25 Feb 2017, 3pm – Fulham (H)
Sat 4 Mar 2017, 3pm – Queens Park Rangers (A)
Tues 7 Mar 2017, 7:45pm – Blackburn Rovers (A)
Sat 11 Mar 2017, 3pm – Birmingham City (H)
Sat 18 Mar 2017, 3pm – Ipswich Town (H)
Sat 1 Apr 2017, 3pm – Wolverhampton (A)
Tues 4 Apr 2017, 7:45pm – Barnsley (A)
Sat 8 Apr 2017, 3pm – Brentford (H)
Sat 15 Apr 2017, 3pm – Sheffield Wednesday (A)
Mon 17 Apr 2017, 3pm – Nottingham Forest (H)
Sat 22 Apr 2017, 3pm – Wigan Athletic (A)
Sat 29 Apr 2017, 3pm – Newcastle United (H)
Sun 7 May 2017, 12pm – Huddersfield Town (A)
As far as any transfer news goes, with many contracts running out next week at the end of this month, we are at the time when we should start seeing more news of new signings for Championship clubs. There’s been nothing yet to suggest that such announcements are imminent at Cardiff, but there was a story yesterday about us having put in a bid of around £250,000 for Boavista of Portugal’s winger Renato Santos – it’s much too early to be reading too much into this story yet, but, looking at the Wikipedia entry for Santos , it could be claimed that we were offering a modest fee for a modest player if there was anything factual to the story.
Although I’ve not seen any formal confirmation of this, precedent suggests that City players should be returning for pre season training within the next ten days or so, but, if this is the case, then there is still the possibility that this will happen with Paul Trollope still in France on Wales duty.
The marvelous win over Russia means that the earliest we could expect to see the squad return is late this weekend after our game on Saturday evening, but how likely or otherwise it is that we’ll be leaving Euro 2016 in the next few days will become a little clearer when our next opponents are confirmed.
At this stage, I should apologise for providing you with what appears to have been some duff info in my last piece on here. Although the article I read at the time was adamant in saying that we would be facing one of the Czech Republic, Croatia, Albania or Northern Ireland next, it turns out instead that there is very strong possibility that it’ll be Wales v Turkey for a Quarter Final spot, with the only other option being a repeat of March’s friendly game with the Northern Irish.