Derby County got it all wrong with Cardiff City transfer decision - Neil Warnock laughed | OneFootball

With the benefit of hindsight, loaning one of their stalwart defenders to a Championship rival might not have been Derby's wisest decision in 2017.

The relaxing of the rules over the loan market has brought clubs many benefits, but it can also come at a cost, as Derby County found during the 2017-18 season when they lent midfielder Craig Bryson to Cardiff City.

By the summer of 2017, Derby County were riding the crest of the wave caused by significant financial investment into the club following their sale to businessman Mel Morris in 2015.

The previous season had ended with them finishing in a slightly disappointing ninth place in the Championship table, but with a summer that involved players of the calibre of Curtis Davis and Tom Huddlestone joining the club, there was a feeling around Pride Park that the new season could be the one when they returned to the Premier League following an absence of almost a decade.

At that time, Cardiff City could reasonably be considered to be contemporaries of Derby in the chase for a place in the Premier League. They had only finished three places below the Rams in the Championship, and were pursuing a return to the top flight under the management of Neil Warnock, who'd been appointed into the position at The Cardiff City Stadium the previous October.

Craig Bryson was a surprise deadline day signing for Cardiff City

Warnock has always been a canny operator in the transfer market, and one player who grabbed his attention in the summer of 2017 was Derby's Craig Bryson. The midfielder had been at Pride Park for the previous six years after arriving from Kilmarnock, but Cardiff managed to get a season-long loan of the player tied up right at the end of that summer's transfer window.

Bryson had been a stalwart performer for the Rams over those six years, running up almost 250 appearances for the club over that time. But Derby had changed a lot since he arrived at the club, even though he'd already appeared in four of their first five games of the new season.

The signs were already present by the end of August that Cardiff may not even need that much strengthening. They had already won their first five games of the season to lead the table by the time this transfer was confirmed, while Derby were languishing in mid-table following a more mixed start.

Cardiff and Derby had very differing experiences of the 2017-18 Championship season

Craig Bryson didn't take that much time to have an impact for his new club, scoring his first goal for them in a 2-1 win at Sunderland on the 23rd September which kept Cardiff level on points at the top of the table with Leeds United and Wolverhampton Wanderers. Three days later they opened up a three-point lead at the top of the table again with a 3-1 win against Leeds United.

The 2017-18 season proved to be successful beyond what most people had predicted before the start. Cardiff didn't fall below fourth in the Championship all season, and when they hit the runners-up spot behind Wolves following a 1-0 win against Middlesbrough in the middle of February, they proved impossible to dislodge.

Promotion wasn't guaranteed until the last day of the season, though, when Fulham's defeat at Birmingham City rendered the result of their home match against Reading - a match which finished in a goalless draw - an irrelevance. Bryson was never able to tie down a regular place in the Cardiff first team, but his 22 appearances for that season made him an important part of Neil Warnock's squad.

Derby, meanwhile, were unable to join Cardiff back in the top-flight. They briefly held the runners-up spot themselves in January before fading, falling as low as seventh place in the table with three games of the season left to play before taking seven points from nine in their last three games to secure the final play-off place. Once in the play-offs, though, they stumbled again, beaten 2-1 on aggregate by Fulham in the semi-finals despite winning the first leg 1-0 at Pride Park.

Bryson returned to Pride Park at the end of the season, but things were changing at Derby again following their play-off failure. Manager Gary Rowett was replaced by Frank Lampard, and Bryson made 32 appearances for the Rams in the 2018-19 season.

But the season ended in even more Derby disappointment. After finishing sixth in the table for a second season in a row, they beat Leeds United 4-3 on aggregate in the play-off semi-finals, only to be beaten 2-1 in the final at Wembley by Aston Villa. That summer, Bryson left Pride Park for the final time, returning back north of the border to sign for Aberdeen.

The benefit of hindsight affords the perspective that perhaps this was the right time to be leaving Derby. The 2018-19 season would turn out to be the last of Derby's four cracks at the play-offs throughout those heady early years of Mel Morris's ownership, and by 2021 they were in administration and plummeting towards League One.

Cardiff City's stay in the Premier League, meanwhile, turned out to be brief. They were relegated back at the first attempt in 18th place in the table, and Neil Warnock left the club in November 2019. But when it came to the transfer of Craig Bryson in 2017, there's no doubt that he had the last laugh over sealing a loan deal from a promotion rival who ended up helping his team secure a much-coveted place in the top flight.