Cardiff City: Peter Ridsdale executed transfer masterclass after flipping £0 flop for significant profit | OneFootball

Cardiff City produced a transfer masterclass for several reasons with the departure of Steven MacLean.

In the summer of 2007, Cardiff City managed to poach striker Steven MacLean with a view to propelling themselves up the Championship table and into the promised land of the Premier League.

The Bluebirds had gained promotion to the second-tier back in the 2002/03 season and, since that point, had bounced around in the middle-of-the-table, with two 13th-placed finish, a 16th-placed finish and a high of 11th in the 2005/06 campaign.

During that time, Cardiff had some excellent goalcscorers with Robbie Earnshaw having hit 26 goals in their first season following promotion, before the likes of Cameron Jerome and Michael Chopra went on to do so in later campaigns.

However, there needed to be more of a structural shift and a bit more depth for Cardiff to really kick on and push for at least the top six, and the signing of MacLean seemed a promising one, but, on the pitch, it didn’t work out like that, although it could be said that it helped bring in some future Cardiff stars.

Steven MacLean never hit the ground running at Cardiff City

Having come down to England after coming through the academy at Rangers, MacLean shone on loan at Scunthorpe United during the 2003/04 season, and earned himself a permanent move to Sheffield Wednesday in the summer of 2004.

With the Owls, MacLean had established himself as a prolific striker, especially at League One level when he notched 18 times in 36 appearances to propel Wednesday back into the Championship.

His final season at Hillsborough, the 2006/07 campaign, saw MacLean finish as their joint top scorer across all competitions, alongside Deon Burton, as they finished ninth and just four points off the top six and the play-off places.

It was therefore a bit of a coup for Cardiff to bring MacLean in on a free transfer, with the Scotsman rejecting a new contract in South Yorkshire in order to move to south Wales.

However, MacLean never hit the ground running and very quickly faded into obscurity down at Cardiff, with the player never settling in and some big names way ahead of him in the pecking order.

That summer had seen Gavin Rae arrive from Rangers on a free transfer, alongside Trevor Sinclair from Manchester City, but the two deals that hurt MacLean the most were the arrivals of Robbie Fowler and Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink.

Fowler and Hasselbaink formed a part of a ten-signing spree across the season that didn’t feature a single transfer fee spent, and they forced MacLean to adopt a substitutes role at Ninian Park.

Peter Risdale managed to cash in on Steven MacLean at Cardiff City

Reasonably-under-pressure chairman Peter Ridsdale, who had to confirm that construction of the new Cardiff City Stadium had fallen behind schedule early on in the campaign, managed to pull off a masterstroke with the sale of MacLean.

Having started Cardiff’s first three matches of the season, MacLean played from the start of the game just twice more before the January transfer window.

In that window, Ridsdale and Cardiff managed to cash in on MacLean, who had joined on a free transfer just a few months before, with Plymouth Argyle purchasing the Scotsman for £500,000.

A few months after that, Cardiff then managed to shell out transfer fees on future club cult heroes with the arrivals of Jay Bothroyd and Ross McCormack from Wolverhampton Wanderers and Motherwell, respectively.

Ridsdale, often fairly criticised, had seemingly made a coup in bringing MacLean in but then, when it wasn’t going to plan, managed to make a hefty profit on a player that was very much on the periphery.

Then, a few months after that, Cardiff, who hadn’t spent on a transfer fee the year before, managed to bring in two talismanic figures, perhaps with the aid of those funds.