The Championship’s reputation is as an ultra-competitive league where anyone can beat anyone. One glance at the current table, however, and you will see Leicester, still a Premier League team in all but name, slicing a route back to the top tier at breakneck pace, set to smash through the 100-point barrier as Burnley did last season, with Leeds and Southampton, also relegated from the top flight last year, in their slipstream. Welcome to the new Championship: an era of big budgets and ambitious managerial appointments.
There have been casualties of this epoch in recent years, Cardiff among them. A Premier League club less than five years ago they have been forced to readjust their aims and their finances and pretty much start again. In Erol Bulut they have, perhaps, the second tier’s least heralded head coach, yet in half a season he has steered them to within three points of the playoff places. A win over Leeds at Cardiff City Stadium this Saturday could launch the Bluebirds towards an improbable promotion charge.
It would be unlikely for several reasons. Not least because Cardiff were placed under a transfer embargo in the summer after they defaulted on payment of the transfer fee for Emiliano Sala, the £15m Nantes striker they signed in 2019 who died in a plane crash before he could play for the club. That transfer ban was lifted this month, but the club is still in recovery mode.
The Sala saga cast a long shadow over the Welsh capital. Coming to terms with relegation from the Premier League that same year also took its toll. The post-Neil Warnock years have been barren and rough, the club rattling through six permanent managers since his departure, trying to cope with a dwindling budget as parachute payments expired.
Local lad Rubin Colwill – like Bulut – is a beacon of light, a symbol of the new-age stripped-back Cardiff. As a boyhood fan and academy product who broke out mid-pandemic, he has known some tough times. He trained under Neil Harris, was given his debut by Mick McCarthy, and played under Steve Morison, Mark Hudson and Sabri Lamouchi, before finding his feet under Bulut. “I’ve seen a lot of managers in action, so I’m quite experienced in judging them,” he says.
For Colwill and his teammates, finding stability this season has been vital to the club’s resurgence. “It was not ideal, starting off my career with all the chopping and changing,” he says. “I think you always want to be part of a bigger project, a plan for the future. It’s good the manager is putting those things in place to develop the club as a whole. It’s a long-term process.”
There is hope among supporters that a plan is finally coming together. Reaching the playoffs this season would be an unforeseen bonus; a top-half finish would have been gladly accepted upon Bulut’s arrival after two seasons of flirting with relegation. The club is on a tangible upward trajectory for the first time in years.
Bulut is a former Alanyaspor and Fenerbahce manager and his links to clubs in Turkey helped Cardiff cope in the summer when their hands were tied regarding recruitment, with Manolis Siopis and Dimitrios Goutas snapped up on free transfers from Trabzonspor and Sivasspor respectively. The club also lured back the home-town hero Aaron Ramsey on a free. Deals are in the works to re-sign Kieffer Moore as well as the striker Mehmet Umut Nayir from Fenerbahce. The purse strings have been loosened just a little.
There is only one snag and that is Bulut’s future. He signed a one-year contract last summer and there have not been any talks with the hierarchy to extend it. As such, thinking beyond the next five months becomes difficult.
“I cannot make any plans for the new season, for the future,” he says. “My plans can only be until the end of the season. It’s difficult to speak when I don’t know for the future if I’m here or not.
“I said I’m happy here. I think the fans know that because we’ve had many meetings together. I’d like to continue to make changes here and add many things to the club. It’s not easy to change everything from today to tomorrow but we’ve changed many things since the start of the season.
“That’s not enough for me. We have to continue to work, we have to invest to bring in quality players and bring young players through the academy to make a really good structure. For that to work, we need a plan. To make a plan work, we need to work together.”
More time for Bulut would be welcomed, not least by Colwill, who feels he is developing faster and learning more under the 48-year-old. He’s certainly not alone.
“He’s a good guy,” says Colwill. “He’s a serial winner on and off the pitch. It’s great that he’s here and I’d like to see him continue. We’ve definitely shown enough consistency and fighting spirit so that we’re not far off.”
The playoffs are tantalisingly within grasp, although maybe promotion this season would be a little too soon for this Cardiff reboot. The Bluebirds are on the verge of soaring high once more, if they can just look to the horizon.
