Exclusive: Omer Riza reveals why it really went wrong at Cardiff City | OneFootball

Ex-Cardiff City boss Omer Riza spoke exclusively to Football League World to reflect on his time managing the Bluebirds and why it ended in relegation

Cardiff City's relegation from the Championship at the end of the 2024/25 campaign represented a perfect storm of suffering for the Welsh capital side, who ultimately paid the price and were caught up by years of misery and misalignment both on and off-the-pitch.

A lack of direction and tangible footballing philosophy from the top down led to incessant managerial and playing squad turnovers, each bearing contrasting identities and fingerprints from previous policies.

After the departure of Neil Warnock, who famously guided the Bluebirds back to the Premier League against all odds before leaving the club one year later, divisive owner Vincent Tan would sweep through eight permanent managers in less than six years.

That was, of course, until Cardiff appointed Brian Barry-Murphy following relegation to League One, which has proven to be a richly-inspired decision.

The Irishman has performed a stellar job on all fronts, securing automatic promotion out of the third-tier at the very first time of asking while deploying an aggressive, front-footed brand of possession-based football, capsizing the squad culture and placing an emphasis on promoting young homegrown academy products such as Joel Colwill, Ronan Kpakio, Dylan Lawlor and more.

Buoyed by a renewed energy and feel-good factor, and supported with progressive and carefully-implemented foundations for longer-term success, it does now feel unrecognisable from the club which returned to League One for the first time in 22 years with a whimper - rooted to the very foot of the division - merely 12 months ago.

Cardiff's last Championship season, then, is one that supporters will be all-too-eager to forget, and the reality is that the Bluebirds couldn't have possibly rebuilt following relegation any better. But, as the Bluebirds slumped into the third-tier despite finishing the previous term in 12th position under Erol Bulut, what really went wrong?

Omer Riza reflects on his time at Cardiff City

The Bluebirds stripped through three separate managers during that fateful campaign, which began with Bulut at the helm before a disastrous run of just one draw and five defeats from the opening six matches saw the Turkish boss relieved of his duties and replaced by previous assistant Omer Riza.

Riza would, remarkably, be placed in charge of the side on an interim basis for more than two months and finally received the job permanently in December, though a failure to sustain initial momentum and a downturn in results following the turn of the year saw Cardiff slowly but surely peter towards the drop.

In total, Riza won ten of his 40 matches in the dugout, drawing and losing 15 apiece, and was dismissed by Tan after Cardiff's fate was all-but-sealed with a 2-0 defeat at Sheffield United, stretching a winless run to five games.

With just three fixtures to spare, the eleventh-hour caretaker appointment of Welsh legend Aaron Ramsey - then still under playing contract with the Bluebirds - was simply too little too late, and relegation was officially confirmed less than a week on from Riza's departure.

The 46-year-old, who returned to coaching only last month as Ashley Cole's assistant with Serie B outfit Cesena, spoke exclusively to Football League World to offer his account of events and underpin why exactly he feels the club's campaign went up in flames.

Reflecting on his time at Cardiff as a whole, Riza explained to FLW: "For me, it was about trying to stabilise the club as best as possible, to get as many wins as possible, avoid relegation and, while doing that, bed in youngsters that could be ready for the following season, give players the opportunity and try and play a style that could hopefully excite the fans and make them happy.

"I think we had moments of that in the season, then we had moments where the fans weren’t happy with some of the results and performances, and rightly so."

There were, it must be said, fleeting moments of encouragement and positivity under the ex-Leyton Orient and Watford coach. Riza's spell started with a chastening 4-1 defeat away to Hull City, which preceded four victories in the next six matches including City's notable 5-0 rout of Wayne Rooney's Plymouth Argyle in the middle of October.

Cardiff's form, both during and heading into the Festive period, saw vital ground surrendered at a stage where Riza's side could've progressed away from the relegation battle instead, although an uplifting 2-1 win at Vicarage Road provided the spring and momentum for an eight-match unbeaten run across the Championship and FA Cup.

His reached its highest peak when Riza led Cardiff to a stunning 3-0 victory over bitter rivals Swansea City in January's edition of the South Wales Derby, made all the more impressive by the fact that the 46-year-old was dealing with the tragic death of his father after his passing just days before.

However, inconsistency returned to rear its ugly head and dictate Cardiff's direction of travel, and after claiming a 2-1 victory win against Derby County towards the end of January, Riza took just two victories from his next 16 matches as the Bluebirds sunk deeper into the depths of a second-tier relegation dogfight.

Riza added: "It was an inconsistent season in respect of all the things we had to manage from January through to the end of the season, and obviously I left three games before the end of the season which was a tough one because I’d have liked to have seen those three games out.”

Why Omer Riza feels it all went wrong at Cardiff City

It can be easy to forget that a fair portion of Cardiff supporters were confident of their side's prospects heading into what soon played out as a historically-wretched campaign, with the Bluebirds signing a host of high-profile operators in ex-Aston Villa pair Callum Chambers and Anwar El Ghazi alongside talented former QPR winger Chris Willock in a bid to build upon the previous term's steadying mid-table finish.

But City started Bulut's second season in charge in disastrous fashion, and were four points adrift bottom of the league after the opening five matches with just one point - gained in a 1-1 draw away at Swansea - by the time that Riza was hired on an initial interim basis.

That gap, as Riza notes, was soon bridged, though consistency remained an issue and Cardiff could never quite capitalise on flashes of momentum.

So, what precisely contributed to relegation?

There were, as ever, a lengthy range of factors at play. Performances under Riza and his ability to manage the group were both called into question by supporters and the results, for large parts, simply were not good enough, although Riza also hinted at what he described as "inherent problems" relating to out-of-favour players - who have not been named - displaying an unhappiness with their game-time.

Nigerian left-back Jamilu Collins was, mind you, one player who Riza was publicly open to offloading during the season's mid-point, but his departure never materialised and he was absent from the remainder of Cardiff's campaign.

Riza reflected on the situation as being "difficult to manage", though he ultimately believes both inconsistencies and an inability to contend with the pressures of scrapping it out for survival to be the defining reasons behind relegation.

He continued: “Obviously, when I took over, we had to try and close that gap, which we did, but inconsistent months and performances were an issue and I think it was down to the pressures of where we were in the league.

"There weren’t internal problems, but some players weren’t happy at not playing and in January, those players should’ve potentially gone out to other clubs and they didn’t. So they were in the building and, obviously, that can be difficult to manage at times when some players should’ve been off and carrying on with their careers at other clubs but weren’t.

"Sometimes, that can breed inherent problems throughout the course of the four to five months you’ve got until the end of the season."

Speaking on Cardiff's January recruitment, which saw the multi-million-pound arrival of powerful striker Yousef Salech from Swedish side Sirius in a move that Riza himself engineered before both Will Alves and Sivert Mannsverk joined on loan from Leicester City and Ajax respectively, the ex-Bluebirds boss reflects strongly on how business was conducted that month.

Lo and behold, it simply wasn't enough, and while Salech's impact was immediate with a return of eight goals from 20 Championship outings, other players struggled for form during the latter stages of the season.

Riza did, however, reveal to FLW his frustrations at being prevented from recalling Ryan Wintle, who was on loan with Championship rivals Millwall at the time.

Wintle, having been sent out by Bulut the previous summer following two-and-a-half years as a mainstay in South Wales, was in and out of the Lions' team under Alex Neil, but the midfielder has since returned to orchestrate a vital role in Cardiff's promotion campaign by making 40 league appearances and winning both the Player's Player and Supporters' Player of the Year awards.

"I think we recruited well in January," Riza reflected.

"We brought in Yousef Salech who has been a key player for the club and I’m proud of that. He’s gone on to be a key player, and will continue to do so if they don’t sell him.

"There were other two were loans in Will Alves and Sivert Mannsverk, I wanted to bring a player back in from Millwall which was Ryan Wintle but I wasn’t allowed to do that. Little things like that really, which I think could’ve helped with the situation but didn’t, and we had to find ways around it.

"There’s five or six games where we should’ve won - Coventry away, Coventry at home, the Stoke game when we had a chance that Isaak (Davies) unfortunately missed and they went down the other end and scored a goal from a throw-in or handball, whatever it was. So there were little misfortunes in the season as well, which proved quite difficult to manage."

It can't be denied that Cardiff fell victim to misfortune on occasion under Riza.

That is, though, the case for just about every team in the land from time to time, and the ultimate reality is that the Bluebirds, relative to expenditure and expectation - they were estimated to have held one of the Championship's higher wage bills in 25/26 - should never have found themselves in a position where their fate was so delicate and contingent in the first place, with few having really foreseen a relegation scrap.

But, as it has played out, relegation may have unexpectedly been the best thing to happen to Cardiff in recent years.

Indeed, it will be pointed out that such a fate never should've prompted the appointment of a progressive, intelligent and development-focused head coach in Barry-Murphy, who has married the delivery of immediate success with strong and sustainable longer-term squad-planning and a coherent philosophy - those factors arguably ought to have fell into place regardless - yet it has opened a door which, for one reason or another, was closed for far too long.