I mentioned last week that the next seven days would, finally, provide some worthwhile news regarding Cardiff City and it turned there was even more of it than I was expecting.
The squad returned for pre season training early in the week and there was a new face among the coaching staff to greet them. I remember Omar Riza as a player, but I knew nothing of his work in the coaching field, it turns out that he has a fairly impressive CV and I’ve read that he specialises in attacking play – if that’s true, then I’d say his appointment is a welcome one.
On the playing front, it’s been confirmed that Keiron Evans has signed a one year extension to his contract with an option for a further twelve months. I must admit that I expected to see Evans among the players released this summer and I’m pleased to learn this is not the case. Yes, those who say he is twenty two now and so, if he was going to become a regular first team player, he would have made the breakthrough by now do have a point, but there’s a lot of ability there and I feel he’s one of those who we may have ending up regretting releasing as he established himself elsewhere.
Last week I had a moan about the lack of information regarding our pre season fixtures. Well, as it turns out, the club released this a few hours later. Hardly the most exciting set of fixtures for a team celebrating their one hundred and twenty fifth anniversary, but I’m not too bothered about that and, anyway, there was no mention in that release as to who we’d be playing on the Saturday before the first Championship game.
As it turned out, the missing fixture was not one that qualifies as a 125th birthday extravaganza as we make the short trip to Bristol Rovers (the team from that city I don’t have a problem with!) on 3 August.
That said, with us being drawn to meet Rovers at home in the First Round of the League Cup around ten days before we’re due to face them in that friendly, I suppose there’s the possibility it could be called off.
This leads me on to our fixture list for the Championship programme and my immediate reaction when seeing it for the first time was along the lines of ‘what a tough first half dozen games!” – if we can have something like ten points from our first seven matches, I’d say we could start getting quite excited about what the rest of the campaign may bring.
Another thing I wasn’t expecting in the past week was our kit for 24/25 being revealed – not only that, the kit will be available on line and in the club shop from tomorrow. I think I mentioned on here last year that the days when I was in the demographic that the club had in mind when deciding on their new kit are long long gone – if they ever existed! I’ve long been in a state whereby all of the different blue shirts of recent years tend to merge into one, but I must say that any kit that has us playing in blue shirts and white shorts gets my vote – well done to City on that and for getting the kit out and on sale so quickly.
Unfortunately, the news through a summer on the subject I rate top in the list of things that tend to happen over a close season remains thin to non existent. In two days time, there will be hundreds of players whose contracts will have run out – very many of them will struggle to find an ERL or Premier League team willing to take them on, but the best of them should be quickly snapped up and you know full well that there will be plenty such deals already done with just the official announcement of the transfer to be confirmed.
As of now, I an not aware of anything to suggest City will be signing a Bosman type free agent this summer – well, if they are, I must say well done to City again for keeping any deal(s) under wraps so well.
More likely unfortunately is that the wait for any serious news or rumours when it comes to new arrivals will go on – I just hope that this cannot be put down to that six week period after the final game of the 23/24 season at Rotherham when the club appeared, from the outside at least, to be in a state of limbo.