Ned Thomas : Cardiff will go nowhere under Russell Slade
Cardiff will go nowhere under Russell Slade
It may sound harsh, but it’s true.
I’ve seen and heard a lot of people ask: Who would you prefer – Slade or Ole? It’s a question that’s unanswerable. Ole signed players who had a proven pedigree, such as Adam Le Fondre. However, he played them out of position and that’s why his tactics failed.
Slade then took some of our best players, such as Daehli and Fabio, and froze them out completely. Slade’s tactics have failed for a completely different reason. He is stuck in his ways and the we play is far too predictable. Slade is a dinosaur in football management terms.
Would we have made the top six with Ole? Probably not. But we had absolutely no chance of getting there with Russell Slade. As people, Ole is one of the nicest people you meet. I’ve never met Russell Slade so can’t comment, but seems to be a nice bloke in his interviews. But neither are good football managers.
People say the way we play now is the same as we played under Malky Mackay. To be frank, that’s some of the biggest load of rubbish I’ve heard. Under Malky, it wasn’t attractive football a lot of the time. But he sent his players out there every week, and without fail they had fight in them. You could see they were committed to the cause from day one. The manager had a big say in that.
These days, we also don’t play attractive football. But that’s where the similarities end. Our players have no fight in them, no will to fight for their manager. Can anyone honestly say that the players couldn’t work any harder than they do? I doubt it.
Even the players who were there when Malky was, have changed.
Whatever Malky Mackay did away from footballing matters, it does not change the fact that he took us to a cup final and got us promoted. He will be remembered for the right reasons over the years, I honestly believe that.
Even Dave Jones could do a better job than Russell Slade is.
OK, the players who are leaving now – I don’t think that’s down to Russell Slade. The owner has clearly decided that he wants a quick-fire sale of players, and to replace them with a cheap option, to make some money. We can’t blame the manager for that, it’s out of his hands.
But his tactics are his downfall, together with his stubbornness.
Whenever I watch the team, listen on the radio, or I see highlights I struggle to work out the game-plan. We don’t seem to have one. How is that ever going to work?
Let’s be honest, we only beat Fulham because we were back in blue. That was what gave the players a boost, because of the fans, it had nothing to do with the manager. We would have lost that game otherwise and if we did, we’d be just eight points off the bottom three now – with most of the teams below us to have a game in hand.
Solskjaer was sacked after seven games and we had eight points. Since then we have had 20 games, and picked up just 26 points. Is that really much of an improvement?
They judged Solskjaer on eight games, although he did have the second half of last season as well, but what if we judge Slade on his first eight games and his last eight games ahead of tomorrow?
His first eight games gave him sixteen points, which was impressive. But as you’ll have worked out by now, we’ve picked up just 10 points since then – that run ended on November 29th.
His last eight games have returned five points. Is that really acceptable? A big fat no from me.
With 19 games to go, how many more points will we get?
Will it be enough to stay up? Only time will tell.
The headline could be a bit misleading, we may well be heading down. It looks like an overreaction when you look at the table, but things can change very quickly.
When Peterborough got relegated in 2013, they had 20 points more than we have now.
It’s going to be a very interesting end to the season.