Cardiff City backed for potential Premier League return on Vincent Tan sale condition | OneFootball

FLW's Cardiff City fan pundit discussed whether the club can expect to ever return to the Premier League under controversial owner Vincent Tan

This article is part of Football League World's 'Terrace Talk' series, which provides personal opinions from our FLW Fan Pundits regarding the latest breaking news, teams, players, managers, potential signings and more…

As far as Cardiff City are concerned, the immediate objective upon the 2025/26 League One campaign is to gain promotion back to the Championship at the very first attempt after suffering relegation down into English football's third-tier, with Brian Barry-Murphy's side appearing rather well-placed to realise such ambitions at this moment in time.

The Bluebirds are enjoying the early fruits of a cultural squad reset undertaken in the Welsh capital following Barry-Murphy's appointment, which saw a number of players released at the end of their respective contracts to be replaced not by new signings, with Cardiff making just three throughout the summer, but instead with a host of burgeoning young prospects blooded through the club's academy system.

From the Colwill brothers in Rubin and Joel, the former being widely recognised as one of the best players in League One this season, and Cian Ashford and Isaak Davies, to teenage pair Dylan Lawlor and Ronan Kpakio, along with upcoming talents such as Dakarai Mafico, Tantswa Nyakuhwa, Rob Tankiewicz and more, the heartbeat of Cardiff's team, and its future, is the club's very own.

The long-term future appears to be exciting at this moment in time, representing a far cry in the eyes of supporters from Cardiff's self-inflicted return to League One for the first occasion in more than 20 years at the end of the previous campaign. Whether the Bluebirds can reach the Premier League once again, however, remains a concern — albeit a longer-term one — among supporters, particularly for as long as divisive owner Vincent Tan remains at the helm.

The Malaysian businessman has owned Cardiff since 2010 and, in that time, has overseen two separate promotions to the Premier League, something the Bluebirds had historically fallen short of prior to his purchase.

However, it would be amiss to overlook the more damaging situations of his reign, too — Cardiff's first promotion in 2013 was tainted by a hugely-unpopular temporary rebrand of the club's iconic blue kit and badge and, since suffering relegation once more at the end of the 2018/19 campaign, a lack of coherent off-pitch strategy and coherence has led the Welsh capital side into, up until this term at least, incessant managerial churn and crisis.

Cardiff's Premier League return chances assessed under Vincent Tan

Cardiff are, of course, some way off dreaming about and expecting a swift return to the top-flight. They need to get promoted back to the Championship first, which represents no straightforward task, and a period of patient consolidation and stability will also be required before competing at the top-end of the second-tier standings.

The latter has been identified as unlikely to occur under Tan, who rejected purchase approaches from suitors back in the summer, including Gareth Bale's consortium. It is, however, a tangible long-term ambition, as evidenced by more sustainable factors with the presence of a progressive and popular head coach in Barry-Murphy and the philosophy of deploying a modernised attack-minded style of football with a conveyor belt of young, homegrown and high-potential talents continually graduating into the first-team frame.

Tan deserves at least some credit for that, with Cardiff having opened a new £8 million academy training base in Llanrumney just over two years ago.

Football League World asked our resident Cardiff fan pundit, Matt Hall, whether he envisages the Bluebirds achieving a third promotion to the Premier League under Tan further down the line.

But, despite admitting the recently-implemented foundations of positivity and progression both on and off the pitch, Matt is skeptical about how much of that can be accredited to Tan himself, and believes the 73-year-old's age and inability to bankroll a lavish, accelerated spending spree akin to Birmingham City or Wrexham, means that a patient process all the way back to the Premier League will be required, by which stage he would anticipate Cardiff being under fresh ownership.

"Personally I don't, there are a multitude of reasons for it," Matt explained to FLW.

"Obviously first and foremost you have to take his age into account. If you're looking at us getting to the Premier League, I would say that, if we get promoted this season, you would be looking at a challenge for the Premier League but it would take a bit of time, 3-5 years potentially.

"You're looking at him being well into his late seventies at that stage. As an actual human being, can he run a football club at that age? Probably not.

"I think my second reason is that a lot of the changes that have happened have been down to Barry-Murphy and not the club. You're looking at a restructured club, the appointment was brilliant and a lot of the changes around the appointment have been brilliant. But are they spearheaded by Vincent Tan, which now makes me think he's a different man that would go about things differently? Perhaps not.

"We're building something that's now involved around the academy. A 15-year-old and 16-year-old (Axel Donczew and Rob Tankiewicz) making debuts [(the pair became the two youngest players to ever represent Cardiff in a recent 1-0 EFL Trophy defeat against Newport County) sort of epitomises that we're going to be very academy-centric now, it's something I've always wanted and I respect as I want that to be our identity.

"There's that dream of us being the Welsh Athletic Bilbao, but it's not something that lends itself to immediate success, nor do we have the funds to do a Wrexham and then cover gaps with £35 million worth of spending. I just think that we're either going to have to take it slowly, which we should, or absolutely blitz the transfer market, which I don't think Barry-Murphy would want and nor could Tan afford.

"So, I don't think under Tan we would ever return to the Premier League. But I do think what Tan has potentially left us with Barry-Murphy, if this is the last appointment that he makes, he's put us in a better position to get to the Premier League than if he had sold before he appointed Barry-Murphy.

"I suppose the only credit I can give to him is that he's set us up with a good academy and a decent manager, if he was to go imminently."

Vincent Tan's Cardiff City can make millions from homegrown assets

Cardiff have not historically been a selling club, with the side's perennial inability to collect significant fees a clear byproduct of shortcomings in recruitment and player development. However, that now represents an issue of the past, and Cardiff appear primed to make some handsome sales in the years to come.

The aforementioned pair of Kpakio and Lawlor, aged just 18 and 19 respectively, have both already earned senior caps for Wales after breaking through to emerge as key performers under Barry-Murphy, and will have no shortage of admirers. Both could feasibly net Cardiff upwards of £20 million together, one would like to assume, on the condition that the direction and speed of their trajectories remains intact — if not much more money, for that matter.

More talents are coming through from the under-21 and under-18 set-ups, too, and in Barry-Murphy, Cardiff have the profile of head coach who would be trusted to have succession plans in place and the acumen to reinvest fees to a high standard. That could help Cardiff make it all the way back to the promised land even quicker, though the Bluebirds must remain patient and continue to trust his process.