Vincent Tan does 'the bare minimum' at Cardiff City - but 'you can't compare to Dejphon Chansiri' | OneFootball

FLW's Cardiff Fan Pundit Matt has been balanced but remains critical of 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…

Following their surprise relegation from the Championship last season, Cardiff City have performed well to leave themselves well in contention for the League One title this season.

The Bluebirds also reached the quarter-finals of the EFL Cup this season, losing to Chelsea in a hard-fought clash at the Cardiff City Stadium and the South Wales outfit have been very impressive overall.

After a very quiet summer transfer window for the most part, the appointment of former Rochdale boss Brian Barry-Murphy has proven to be an inspired one, with a focus on the impressive youth production line at the club such as Cian Ashford, Ronan Kpakio, Dylan Lawlor and many more.

Barry-Murphy has done an extremely impressive job at bringing supporters back to loving the club, at least to an extent, but there remains something of a disconnect between the fans and the ownership group, led by Vincent Tan.

It has been a turbulent time under Vincent Tan for Cardiff

In what has been a turbulent decade or so under the ownership of Vincent Tan, Cardiff City have often struggled to find a connection between the supporters and the club, going all the way back to the changing of the clubs’ colours in 2012.

Promotion to the Premier League has happened twice during his tenure, including the first season after that major change, but the downwards trajectory of the Bluebirds following their second top-flight relegation in 2019 has kept the bitter taste in the mouths of many supporters.

Cardiff's fanbase remains skeptical over Tan, despite the renewed feel-good factor surrounding the club, and FLW asked our resident Bluebirds fan pundit, Matt Hall, to rank City's ownership on a scale of one to ten.

Matt gave credit to the positive work completed in redeveloping the club's academy, but he still believes Tan - who can't be compared to vastly-unpopular ex-Sheffield Wednesday owner Dejphon Chansiri, for example - often does the bare minimum in his role in the Welsh capital.

Matt says: “I would probably say that, on a scale of one to ten, I would put our ownership at about a four.

“I woudn’t want to rank them lower than that because you can’t really compare them to a Dejphon Chansiri or an ownership like that, who have literally stripped the club bare.

“I think they do the bare minimum. They keep the club afloat, they fund the club, the academy is in a good place and that is probably the biggest shining light towards them.

“Before relegation, they were going to get the training ground sorted and a new training ground built.

“Facilities-wise, we are in a decent place but it can never go above a four because this is an ownership that changed the entire identity of the club and alienated a lot of the fanbase that are yet to come back.

“Also, even despite the appointment of Barry-Murphy covering over some of the cracks, we still don’t have a football operations team in place.

“We have Gavin Chesterfield who did brilliant work, Barry-Murphy who does brilliant work. There are some people who did brilliant work but, as an actual club, we don’t function like most well-ran football clubs do.

“It is very much a thing where Barry-Murphy leaving could instantly throw everything apart and the football structure would not be anything to fall back on.”

???????Vincent Tan more than divides opinion at Cardiff

Having taken over the club in May 2010, Malaysian businessman Vincent Tan has often been a controversial figure at Cardiff City, with the rebranding of the club something that has yet to really heal, despite the club returning to blue just a couple of seasons later.

Cardiff gained promotion under the management of Malky Mackay in the 2012/13 campaign, lasting just one season in the Premier League, before becoming mid-table also-rans for much of the next decade.

In the 2017/18 campaign, Neil Warnock led Cardiff to a surprise automatic promotion, behind Wolverhampton Wanderers, but again, Cardiff’s stint in the top-flight lasted just a year.

Since then, it has seemingly been a case of Cardiff circling the drain until they eventually sank into League One last season with the sackings of Erol Bulut and Omer Riza before Aaron Ramsey oversaw their relegation in interim charge.

Overall, there have been 14 permanent managers in charge at Cardiff since the takeover of Tan, in just 15 and a half years, and that has often bred a lot of uncertainty at the club.

Barry-Murphy and this current iteration of Cardiff are in a good spot on the pitch, but scepticism remains about how they fare off the pitch.