It took 58 days, a welter of speculation, couple of knockbacks and mountain of fan frustration, but by hook or by crook Cardiff City might just have landed the best candidate for the job.
The Brian Barry-Murphy appointment feels like a seminal moment for the club after years of terrible Vincent Tan managerial choices. A progressive boss who will pick the club’s gifted young players, improve them with his Manchester City coaching methods and, most importantly, bring a vision for the future.
Nathan Jones? I totally get why City supporters coveted him, even if I didn’t quite share the same level of enthusiasm. Why? Because it would have cost multi-millions to extract him from his Charlton contract, I’m not convinced he would have gone with youth - and he would probably have clashed with Tan within three months. Another expensive compensation package, then. [_Join the Cardiff City breaking news and top stories WhatsApp community_](https://chat.whatsapp.com/C7QBdMA45pND02kwnBoABC)
Jones landed himself a bumper new Charlton contract on the back of Cardiff’s interest. Good luck to a clearly very decent manager.
Aaron Ramsey? That one really appealed to me as, like Barry-Murphy, he would have represented a project, rather than the customary short-term nonsense Cardiff have dealt with in recent times. But Ramsey was probably a little too inexperienced, if we’re honest, and perhaps needs to get some coaching stripes before tackling a job as big as this one.
Ramsey wants to captain Wales at the World Cup. Good luck to him for one final playing year. Maybe he’ll be the next Cardiff boss post-Barry-Murphy down the line?
Ian Evatt, Des Buckingham, Neil Critchley. Sorry, they didn’t float my boat. Not even remotely.
Tom Cleverley I could have bought into, but that one didn’t appear to get past first base.
And so, whether by default or not, Cardiff’s chosen one is Barry-Murphy. The right man at the right time.
So many of Tan’s managerial calls have been doomed to failure.
Omer Riza. No chance. A silly appointment.
Mark Hudson. Same.
Steve Morison had more about him than those two, but it was another cheap option which again was never going to work for a club of Cardiff’s size and levels of expectation.
I was never a particular fan or Neil Harris or Russell Slade as manager, but compared to those other three they seemed like Jose Mourinho!
No wonder Cardiff have been in such an awful mess which eventually culminated in League One football. Poor manager lands job, invariably gets sacked and there’s a short-term re-set before the whole cycle starts up again.
Neil Warnock and Malky Mackay aside, the only Tan appointment who really appealed to me from day one was Erol Bulut. There was an air of mystique about him, something different. It didn’t work out, but I don’t criticise them for trying something different with a guy who’d managed a club as big as Fenerbahce.
Barry-Murphy just has that exciting feel to it for me, too, but you hope he is more likely to succeed. The very fact Tan has awarded him a three-year deal, as opposed to the customary 12 months, is a huge positive.
It indicates belief in the vision Barry-Murphy has told the club he wishes to implement. What is essential is that he receives the structural back-up required for that to happen. Without it, there’s always the danger he goes the same way as the others.
On the field of play Barry-Murphy really doesn’t need much, you know. What he has to do though is flip that dressing room on its head and bring in much-needed culture change. [_Sign up to our daily Cardiff City newsletter here_](https://www.walesonline.co.uk/newsletter-preference-centre/?view=Solus&mailingListId=aac78459-03ba-4d9c-830a-016965aa8145&utm_source=solusarticle).
Rather than under-performing senior stars ruling the roost and being automatic picks, Barry-Murphy has to make the talented young guns his main go-tos.
Yousef Salech, Alex Robertson, Rubin Colwill, Cian Ashford, Isaac Davies, Dylan Lawlor and Ronan Kpakio are among the early twentysomethings and teens who can help offer a bright future for Wales’ capital club, in League One and beyond.
Lawlor may only be 19, but he is rated so highly by Craig Bellamy and Wales that some view him as a Champions League defender in the making. Forget the so-called rough and tumble of League One, he’s not ready for Mansfield Town away and that usual nonsense, it will be football negligence for Cardiff not to pick a defender as evidently talented as him.
There are other youngsters too, Will Fish, Joel Bagan, Luey Giles, Joel Colwill among them.
Barry-Murphy will implement a quicker tempo style of play, one-twos or one-touch football, which will suit this younger crop far better than the slow-slow, ponderous, pass it sideways, back to the goalkeeper, possession without a purpose methods witnessed in the last couple of seasons.
What a truly terrible yawn it's been.
Cardiff seemed the slowest team in the Championship to me, literally in terms of high-intensity sprints, and also in mind. I anticipate a radical change in that approach, with Barry-Murphy tougher on standards, levels of fitness and the pace at which the team plays. At Manchester City he’ll know more than most it’s not just about ability, it’s also about extra work done in the gym to enhance speed, agility, mobility.
Of course, you can’t just fill the team with players under 25 - although Sunderland make a pretty good fist of it. Barry-Murphy badly needs to sign an experienced, battle-hardened captain at centre-half, and a similar dynamic figure at 6 to complement Robertson and Colwill. A midfield boss.
More experience and leadership at right-back wouldn’t go amiss for me, although Kpakio will need game time, while it’s blindingly obvious a fast, direct winger is required to battle it out with Ashford and Davies for the two wide berths.
A new goalkeeper? That is probably being a little greedy. There are bigger priorities. And I still hope, with the right guidance, there is a decent number one somewhere inside Ethan Horvath who is looking to play in the World Cup.
Cardiff have cleared out a lot of unwanted players, albeit I’m sorry to see Dimi Goutas and Aaron Ramsey depart, but there is still work to do for Barry-Murphy in restructuring the squad he has inherited.
Because of his connections, and the reputation he has in the game, the top clubs will be more likely to loan Cardiff some of their fringe players and youngsters, knowing a year under Barry-Murphy will improve them.
Of course there are negatives. He’s only managed Rochdale, say the cynics, and he took them down. He did, but some context is required. Upon inheriting the job, Barry-Murphy turned around a side that had lost nine out of 11 to keep them in League One.
He kept their heads above water the following year, earning commendable cup draws with loaded Manchester United and Newcastle teams.
Yes they were relegated the season after, a blot on Barry-Murphy’s CV. But given Rochdale’s lowly budget you can view his time in the north-west with glass half-full or half-empty mentality, as you see fit.
He was coach of the Leicester team that has just been relegated from the Premier League is another charge thrown his way. Factually correct, but a tad harsh. He was only there for half a season. Even if they get rid of Ruud van Nistelrooy, as anticipated, the Foxes wanted Barry-Murphy to stay, but knew they couldn’t stand in his way of leading the Cardiff City project.
In between, Barry-Murphy headed up Manchester City’s hugely successful Academy, improving players like Cole Palmer and Oscar Bobb. That pedigree, coming from that type of winning environment, is what impresses the Bluebirds hierarchy more than a couple of relegations.
“You don’t work with Pep Guardiola for three years without being very good,” is the way it was worded to me.
At his interview, Barry-Murphy blew away Cardiff with his presentation and ideas. From that moment he always had influential Board support, whatever the clear merits of Jones and Ramsey.
But I really hope he walks the walk, as well as talks the talk, by getting tough and dealing with any dressing room issues he may find. That Cardiff squad should never have been relegated. That they were says everything about mis-management and problems that were permitted to build up, in my opinion.
I still see a role for some senior players. Callum O’Dowda and Callum Robinson have clear playing pedigree, Perry Ng, David Turnbull and Callum Chambers have their strengths, Joe Ralls is a model of professionalism. Some of those will stay, others may go.
Either way, the youngsters need to be the way forward from here on in. They are the ones capable of playing, and shining, at a higher level in due course, given proper opportunities to develop together. They are the ones who will bring desperately needed zip to the team.
Hopefully, Brian Barry-Murphy proves the perfect man to implement such a plan.
After the recent travails and torment, maybe the future is just starting to look bright blue again.