‘It’s exciting to see what comes next’ – so said Cardiff City’s combustible attacker Craig Bellamy, when reflecting on his hometown team’s securing of promotion out of the Championship this week.
That emotion is matched by the fascination that will come with watching how events unfold at the latest outfit to step onto the Premier League roster. Remarkably, the Bluebirds are the 46th of the current 92 English league clubs to have taken their place in the money-laden top-flight since its 1992 re-branding.
Of more parochial concern in South Wales is the fact that Cardiff will be competing on a par with Swansea City and, in the process, will become only the second team from their nation to join the elite.
The great unknown exists in the course that will be plotted at the Cardiff City Stadium from here. Loathe as they may be to admit it, a similar path to that forged by their fierce rivals would fit the bill.
In a fraction under two seasons since their own 2011 promotion, Swansea have firmly established themselves as a Premier League fixture. A lack of star names and experience saw the Swans written off ahead of their first top-flight campaign for 28 years. Prior to this term, the loss of manager Brendan Rodgers to Liverpool, and key players, Joe Allen – also to Anfield – and Scott Sinclair who left for Manchester City, were cast as reasons why ‘second season syndrome’ was sure to afflict Michael Laudrup’s charges.
In fact, Swansea have flourished. Guided by the enterprising hand of their Danish boss, the Swans’ football has grown ever more compelling, and the club have celebrated lifting their first major trophy – the League Cup in February this year.
Until summer transfer business is concluded, and the new campaign’s opening skirmishes have been fought, any attempt at guessing how a promoted club might fare when matched with the big boys is particularly futile.
It isn’t only events on the pitch which are entirely unpredictable. Who could have guessed that the men whose clubs filled the top two spots in last year’s Championship – Brian McDermott and Nigel Adkins – would have been dismissed by their respective chairmen before their first seasons as Premier League managers were complete?
In Reading’s case, their decision to remove McDermott seemed without logic. Thus far, that suspicion is yet to be disproved. To the contrary however, the Saints’ sacking of Adkins struck all football observers as outrageously harsh – yet the South Coast club are proving themselves to be a coming force under the tutelage of Mauricio Pochettino.
There is no danger of Cardiff’s authoritative manager Malky Mackay allowing complacency any place in his mindset. It isn’t only the example of Adkins, who was dismissed off the back of taking Saints to successive promotions – and was by no means performing poorly in the top-division at the time of his removal – to which Mackay will refer to keep his own position in perspective.
The Scot’s playing career as a whole-hearted centre-half looked to have reached a pinnacle when, after six years at Norwich City, he formed an integral part of that club’s 2004 arrival in the Premier League. The Scot’s reward was to be deemed surplus to requirements by then Canaries boss Nigel Worthington.
A term at West Ham United followed – a period which featured another prosperous pursuit of top-flight football. The echoes of Mackay’s time in East Anglia didn’t stop there. He was again considered not fit for Premier League purpose and moved on to Watford.
It was at Vicarage Road where Mackay finally enjoyed a fleeting taste of playing the big league. Perhaps more crucially, the Hornets provided the stage for the former Celtic players to cut his managerial teeth.
Two solid, if unspectacular, years were enough to convince Cardiff that he was the man to end a painful yearning for the return of top-division football to this ferociously passionate capital city. The formidable task that objective presented is given perspective by both recent and distant history.
Prior to the joy of their return this week, the Bluebirds had not been a member of the elite since relegation in 1962.
Furthermore, this was a unit – players and supporters alike – with scars which ran deep. If there was a way to stumble at the very last, Cardiff City would typically find it.
Most spectacularly, Dave Jones’ side failed to reach the 2009 play-offs after taking one point from their final four games. That bare statistic hides the inclusion in that mini-collapse of a 6-0 defeat at Preston North End. It was North End who took 6th spot ahead of Cardiff – by virtue of goals scored.
Blackpool, in a Wembley promotion decider, denied the Bluebirds the following year. Mackay’s first year at the helm was ended by a semi-final play-off thumping at the hands of West Ham United. A similar fate befell Jones in his final term – beaten over two-legs by Reading.
Also in common with his predecessor, Mackay took his team to Wembley for a cup final only to be narrowly denied silverware. The anguish of 2008’s single-goal F.A. Cup final defeat against Portsmouth was trumped by a penalty shoot-out loss at the hands of Liverpool in the 2012 League Cup final.