Cardiff City “concern” aired towards Vincent Tan as Brian Barry-Murphy appointment nears | OneFootball

Despite Cardiff making a breakthrough in their pursuit of a new manager, questions are being asked of the board over the process

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...

Cardiff City's manager saga looks to be coming to an end - nearly two months after Omer Riza was sacked prior to the conclusion of the 2024-25 Championship season.

Having been promoted into the role following Erol Bulut's exit earlier in the season, Riza paid the price for a drop off in form as the Bluebirds plunged towards League One, with Aaron Ramsey taking caretaker charge for the final few games of the previous campaign.

The Wales icon though could not keep City in the division, meaning that they will play third tier football in 2025-26 - and Brian Barry-Murphy looks to be the man that will lead them forward.

Cardiff City "concern" issued despite Brian Barry-Murphy appointment being close

Cardiff are reportedly closing in on the Leicester City assistant manager to be their next head coach, but need the Foxes to release the Irishman from his contract in order to seal the deal.

The 46-year-old's only senior managerial experience is two years with Rochdale in League One, which ended with relegation to the fourth tier in 2021, but his style of play and methods caught Man City's eye, who hired him to take charge of their under-21's four years ago, winning back-to-back Premier League 2 titles in his job.

Whilst the manager drama may be coming to an end at the Cardiff City Stadium, FLW's Bluebirds fan pundit Matt Hall believes that there still has to be concerns over the powers-that-be at the club and how long it took for them to decide on Barry-Murphy to succeed Riza - having also pursued Nathan Jones briefly before he signed a new five-year contract at Charlton Athletic.

"There is concerns over that - I think it's more the reasons for why it's taken so long rather than the fact it's taken so long," Matt told FLW.

"My main concern is the fact that it looks like we're going to appoint Brian Barry-Murphy, who we could've appointed four-and-a-half weeks ago, but instead decided to side-track ourselves and chase Nathan Jones and Aaron Ramsey for a period of time.

"So, I think my concerns mainly boil down to the fact it's an unnecessary wait. As much as the club may dress it up as it being a necessary wait because of the importance of the decision, in the end it's boiled down to two candidates that we were in conversations with a month ago.

"So, for me, my concerns are the lack of decisiveness, even though we are eventually going to come to the right decision - it never needed to take this long."

Brian Barry-Murphy's imminent Cardiff City arrival is a positive - but it shouldn't have taken this long

As Matt alluded to, the process to appoint a new manager at Cardiff has been a lengthy one, and only time will tell as to whether Barry-Murphy ends up being a successful appointment.

But it has taken too long to come to the decision to go for the Irishman when that could've been done a long time ago - the brief Nathan Jones pursuit was one that was always unlikely to come to fruition given themselves and Charlton swapped places in the footballing pyramid, whilst Aaron Ramsey probably wouldn't have been the right fit.

Vincent Tan as owner of the club has got things right over the years with his promotion wins, but he's also got things badly wrong too, and the relegation debacle mixed with the somewhat botched manager chase hasn't gone down well with many City fans.