Cardiff City owner Vincent Tan(Image: Getty Images)
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Here are your Cardiff City headlines for Friday, May 15.
Cardiff City look poised to land highly-rated Manchester City midfielder Cass Machin.
The 16-year-old, who has been with the Premier League champions since Under-9 level, is set to join the Bluebirds' academy ahead of next season after being offered both a scholarship and professional contract by the Welsh club.
Machin, regarded as an exciting technical midfielder, featured for Man City's Under-16s this season and is set to link up with Cardiff's Under-18s setup as the club continue to strengthen their academy ranks.
The move would represent another statement of intent from Cardiff, whose youth pathway has become one of the biggest success stories at the club.
A host of academy products have broken into the first team over the last 12 months, with Brian Barry-Murphy - who himself worked in Man City's academy until 2024 - placing a major emphasis on promoting from within.
Machin is understood to be viewed as another player capable of thriving in Cardiff's increasingly possession-based development model.
The move comes two years after another similarly talented teenager, Timeo Whisker, made the move the opposite way to Man City from the Bluebirds' youth system. Join the Cardiff City breaking news and top stories WhatsApp community.****
Cardiff City’s return to the Championship will come with a major change to the financial landscape after clubs voted through new spending regulations for the 2026/27 season.
Championship clubs voted on Friday to scrap the current Profitability and Sustainability (P&S) model and replace it with a new Squad Cost Ratio (SCR) system.
Twenty of the 24 clubs voted in favour of the proposal, comfortably surpassing the 16 votes required for it to pass.
The move brings the Championship more closely into line with the Premier League and could have significant implications for Cardiff and owner Vincent Tan as the Bluebirds prepare for life back in the second tier under Brian Barry-Murphy.
Under the new system, clubs will only be allowed to spend up to 85 per cent of their football income on squad costs.
That includes player wages, manager salaries, agent fees and the amortised cost of transfer fees - effectively rolling all first-team spending into one monitored budget.
Unlike the previous P&S rules, which allowed clubs to post losses of up to £39million across a rolling three-year period, the new model directly ties spending to annual revenue.
In simple terms, clubs will no longer be able to continually build losses to fund increasingly expensive squads.
For Cardiff, who have historically relied heavily on owner backing under Tan, the changes could reshape how aggressively they are able to invest in transfers and wages this summer - with the futures of Joel Bagan, Perry Ng and Ryan Wintle all currently in the air as contract negotiations continue.
However, there remains some flexibility for owners.
Championship clubs - or, more specifically, Tan - will still be permitted to inject owner funding into the club through equity investment.
Under the new rules, clubs will be allowed a flexible equity top-up allowance worth up to £33million over a rolling three-year period, capped at a maximum of £15m in any one season.
Crucially, though, that funding must be genuine equity and not owner loans.
That allowance can then increase the club’s permitted squad spend under the SCR calculations.
Importantly for Cardiff, infrastructure spending remains exempt from the new SCR calculations, meaning the club's new training facility at the Vale, which is currently on hold, won't be impacted by these new rules.
The EFL will also introduce a stricter auditing process.
Mandatory financial reviews will take place every October and March, meaning clubs’ finances will effectively be monitored twice during the season. A mid-season review immediately after the January transfer window is designed to catch breaches earlier rather than retrospectively.
The new rules will operate with both a “green threshold” and a “red threshold”.
The green threshold represents the 85 per cent target. Clubs who exceed it but remain below the red threshold will avoid sporting punishment but will instead pay a financial tax on their overspend, with that money redistributed to clubs who remain compliant.
However, clubs who breach the red threshold will face automatic sporting sanctions. Sign up to our daily Cardiff City newsletter here.
The proposed framework is expected to include automatic sporting sanctions, with reports indicating an immediate six-point deduction will apply for exceeding the upper limit, with further punishments added depending on the severity of the breach. For every additional £6.5m spent beyond the permitted limit, clubs will receive another one-point deduction.
For Cardiff, the timing of the changes is significant. The Bluebirds are returning to the Championship with renewed optimism after promotion and with Barry-Murphy now overseeing a club increasingly focused on youth development and sustainability.
The new SCR model could further incentivise Cardiff’s current strategy of promoting academy players and building within their means, while still allowing Tan some room to support the club financially within the new framework.
Cardiff City Under-21s boss Darren Purse believes teenage defender Dylan Lawlor has the potential to become one of the best centre-halves in world football.
The former Bluebirds captain made the glowing assessment after reflecting on Lawlor's development during a breakthrough season which has seen the young defender emerge as one of the brightest prospects at the club.
Purse pointed to a difficult moment in a Welsh Cup final defeat against Aberystwyth Town as a key learning experience in the teenager's development.
“Dylan Lawlor gave away a penalty in the Welsh Cup final against Aberystwyth to lose us the game by handballing the ball from the back,” Purse said.
“So little things like that — has he learned from it? Definitely. Has he dealt with the adversity of it? Definitely. Has it made him the player that he is today? Yeah. Has he got a lot more to learn? Definitely.
“I think Dylan Lawlor's got an exceptional chance of being one of the top centre-halves not only in the country but in the world. He's an exceptional young footballer.”
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