UPDATE ON CARDIFF CITY FC MONDAY 19/09/16
‘ MINI-UPDATE – MONDAY SEPTEMBER 19th 2016 ‘
By Carl Curtis
http://www.cardiffcityforum.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=177514
Cardiff City Football Club recently flew the squad of players and management to both Norwich City and Preston, the last ten consecutive flights that City have taken to away games there has not been one win.
With each trip costing £12,000 a flight and not a win to show for the £120,000 laid out in doing so, you got to question whether the club are getting any value for the novelty.
Even when they do fly, the team coach still goes to the away game, carrying the kit and then collecting/returning the players to and from the airport.
With the amount of cutbacks the club are taking and how deep those cuts are going then surely it must be seriously questioned whether this a still appropriate especially when we have not had one win in the previous ten when the squad has flown.
Anthony Pilkington and Peter Whittingham have both entered the final year of their contracts, both players have been offered new contracts to stay at the club longer but on reduced salaries.
Pilkington, is unlikely to sign the new contract on the terms currently being discussed, and don’t be surprised to see him move on in January.
Whittingham has been offered less than 50% of his current Premier League wages but the club do still expect the midfielder to sign the new deal and stay at the club to see out his remaining playing days at CCS.
The club is still losing £1million per month and with losses to a maximum of £13million per season allowed before falling foul of Financial Fair Play you can see how close to the wind the club is currently sailing. The financial mismanagement is very much the reason why the club are in the position it finds itself today.
It is staggering to learn that the cost of total wages and expenses in running Cardiff City Football Club is still £25million, despite all the cutbacks of high earners and getting some transfer fees in, it really does show how bad the finances of the Bluebirds has been and still are.
Parachute payments for this season cover just over a third of the wage bill at the club.
Fans are staying away in big numbers and who can blame them but with this extra revenue not coming in it really is compounding the problem.
Advertising and sponsorship is down by 70% across the stadium and stretches through to even the players shirts not even being sponsored, nearly three quarters of the players have not got a shirt sponsor in the match day programme, even in the nineties City players always had shirt sponsors, it is quite sad to see the lack of support for today’s squad, it sums up the apathy surrounding the club today.
Idriss Saadi is doing exceptionally well, Paul Trollope would have liked to have recalled him but can’t do so until January 2017 at the earliest.
New signing Joe Bennett is doing light training and will step up his training programme next week in a bid to make his debut in October for City.
Stuart O’Keefe is also back in training.