HERECOMES WARNOCK
Eighth promotion as his Cardiff side make big time
LET the madness begin. Again. Vincent Tan is back and this time he has Neil Warnock with him, a bonkers dream team that somehow, magnificently, has barged its way to the Premier League.
Whether Cardiff City can stay for long without masses of summer business is a valid question but it is also one that can wait for another day.
What is prescient at this moment is that Warnock has contrived, against absurd odds, to get his band of waifs and strays to the top table again. But that’s just what he does — eight promotions now, a record that takes him past Graham Taylor, Jim Smith and Dave Bassett and out on his own.
Say what you like about this 69year-old — and most have over the years — but that is a glorious accomplishment for a unique manager. And this one, by his own reckoning, is the best of the lot ‘by an absolute mile’, considering he took over this side 19 months ago with them placed 23rd in the Championship.
He hasn’t made them pretty. God no. And he admits that, backed up by this real mess of a goalless draw against Reading.
But he has made them effective, brutally so, and he has done it with next to nothing. The squad, assembled in his time and that of previous managers, cost a shade over £18million, which in the context of the Championship ranks 15th, and only around £9m of that was spent this season. Peanuts, really, to go with the relative chicken feed of a midtable wage bill.
For an idea of what that all looks like, use his starting XI yesterday against Reading as an example. It featured five free transfers and a loan, taking in discarded gems like Junior Hoilett — nine goals this season — and the brilliant centre back Sol Bamba, who were free agents when Warnock rescued them.
And then there were vital figures like goalkeeper Neil Etheridge, Nathaniel Mendez-Laing and Callum Paterson — 10 goals for him — who all arrived for nothing. Brilliant bits of business; brilliant bits of judgment from a manager who knows this division better than anyone else.
Of course, the sting is that for all four of Warnock’s successful promotions to the top flight, it has never been a division that has taken to him and he has never taken to it.
Last night he was talking a good game, as ever. Would he retire now, going out on the grand high? No chance, he said. Will these players get a chance in the Premier League? Of course they will, he added, only five or six reinforcements needed. Time to ruffle some feathers, he said.
But Warnock wanted to take a deep breath. To savour his latest victory in what remains his glorious vendetta against all previous chairmen who, to his mind, didn’t rate him. He loves proving them wrong and so this was his day.
‘I have had some great promotions and great squads but because of the circumstances when I came here — second from the bottom — building it all up, I feel really proud of the job I’ve done,’ he said. ‘I’ve enjoyed every minute.
‘This last week has been the longest week of my life, I’ve not slept more than about three hours, my wife hasn’t either — it’s been chaos.’
It usually is at Cardiff — witness the crazy antics of their last top-flight stay, dominated by Tan’s rows with manager Malky Mackay.
Only this time they seem to have found a manager quite suited to the madness of it all.
The mystery now is whether he can finally prove he is suited to the Premier League. It won’t be dull finding out.