Cardiff City must regret big Josh Murphy decision - Portsmouth are laughing now | OneFootball

The Bluebirds released Murphy back in 2022.

With Cardiff City’s relegation to League One now confirmed, the club and the fans will no doubt be looking back on some decisions from the last few years with plenty of regret.

The Bluebirds have hovered perilously above the Championship relegation zone all too often over the last few seasons, and this season has finally proved to be their undoing.

As City prepare for their first campaign outside the top two tiers since 2003, it must be made even more frustrating by the fact that a player they released three years ago has led one of their relegation rivals to safety.

The Welsh outfit opted not to extend Josh Murphy’s contract back in 2022, and now, after two fantastic seasons with Oxford United and Portsmouth, that looks to have been an extremely poor decision.

Murphy has been excellent since leaving Cardiff

Big things were expected of Murphy when Cardiff splashed out £11m to secure the winger’s services ahead of their return to the Premier League under Neil Warnock in 2018.

The then-23-year-old had just notched 10 goal contributions for Norwich in the Championship in 2017/18, having also managed two similarly productive seasons in the second tier in the two years before that.

However, at Cardiff, he was never really able to hit those same heights. Murphy struck three goals and two assists in his debut top-flight campaign, but was unable to prevent the Bluebirds from slipping back into the Championship.

He then notched just 15 goal contributions across two Championship seasons between 2019 and 2021, before being loaned out to Preston for the 2021/22 campaign.

At the end of that Deepdale stint, the Welsh capital club opted to release Murphy, a decision that has since proven costly.

The wideman dropped into League One with Oxford, and while his first campaign for the U’s was a quiet one in terms of productivity, he exploded into life in 2023/24.

The Norwich academy product hit eight goals and four assists, including a double in Oxford’s play-off final victory, as Des Buckingham’s men defied the odds to secure a return to the second tier for the first time in 25 years.

Murphy then switched to Portsmouth (one of Oxford’s fellow promoted sides) ahead of this season, after helping Oxford into the Championship.

Murphy, who seems to be something of a late bloomer like his brother Jacob, hit seven goals and 14 assists for Pompey, helping John Mousinho’s side to survival in what ultimately proved to be a fairly comfortable fashion.

It was the best season of Murphy’s life in terms of the numbers he produced, and there will undoubtedly be frustration at Cardiff that they didn’t retain their faith in him for longer, especially considering the way that decision has come back to bite them.

Cardiff have badly missed Murphy

Given the way the last three years have gone for Cardiff, it’s fair to say that they must surely regret their decision to release Murphy.

The Bluebirds have stagnated badly in that time, recording finishes of 21st, 12th, and now 24th, and one of their key issues has been a lack of creativity and ingenuity in front of goal.

With that in mind, their decision to release Murphy looks all the more disappointing.

Aside from Jaden Philogene, who shone during a loan spell in South Wales in the 2022/23 season and played a huge role in the Bluebirds narrowly avoiding the drop that year, Cardiff have desperately lacked a winger of Murphy’s level of creativity for some time now.

They have struggled badly for goals over the last few campaigns, and that has ultimately forced them further and further towards the Championship’s dotted line. Even in 2023/24, when they finished in mid-table, Cardiff still found themselves among the division’s lowest-scoring sides.

With the numbers that Murphy has put up since leaving the Cardiff City Stadium, there must surely be a feeling that Cardiff perhaps had the answer to their problems in front of goal within their clutches, but allowed him to move elsewhere.