The local lowdown on favourite for Cardiff hot-seat

CARDIFF City’s search for a new manager is well and truly under way with Neil Harris still the favourite.

Here, we spoke to South London Press’ Richard Cawley to get the inside track on him.

What sort of manager would Cardiff City be getting if they got Neil Harris?

Well, you can only really look at what he did during his time at Millwall. It was a hugely successful period for the football club.

In Harris’s first full season in charge he salvaged a team from the wreckage left by relegation from the Championship. The team was effectively doomed under Ian Holloway that year.

There was a feeling it might take a while to rebuild, but they got in the play-off finals and the second season they went up. Within all of that there were so many good achievements, lengthy FA Cup runs and an eighthplaced finish in the Championship after coming back up.

His work at Millwall is very difficult to find fault with. The other key thing with the way he runs a club is that he wants players that are the right kind of characters. You see some managers who wouldn’t be as worried about that, but he feels the team ethic has to be right.

What style of football does he like to play?

If you’re not spending big money, you can’t bring in those highly-technical players that the top teams have.

But if you look at what he did for Millwall, his teams were very good from set pieces. They could play football at times and pass the ball on the ground and counter-attack, but, by and large, I don’t think it’s any secret that they played to their strengths, which was to get the ball forward quickly to get into the opponent’s final third.

His first year back in the Championship, they flew the second half of the season. It was an amazing acheivement.

Towards the end of his time at Millwall, he definitely wanted to shift the playing style on a little bit. But it’s not easy when you are at one of the clubs with a lower budget.

What are his strengths and what are his weaknesses?

In terms of his strengths, he is very clear on what he wants. That runs right through to the type of player that he likes and what he feels the fans want to see.

I think he did some very good deals for the club in the transfer market, too.

He has a good rapport with the players, some were very upset when he left. When you speak to the players at Millwall, there wasn’t a single one who would have had a negative thing to say about him. There was even that human touch that when players had personal problems, Harris would be there.

You get the idea that he does treat them like adults and in return the bond is strong. He does have that ability to connect with the players.

Weaknesses? I guess towards the end Millwall fans thought it was going a little bit stale.

To be fair to Harris, it was his decision to leave. I don’t think it was the board’s choice. He thought it was time to go.

All-time record scorer and the success he had as manager, I don’t think he wanted to go down the route where fans would view him differently.

So there are not massive weaknesses, but perhaps fans didn’t quite enjoy the football. But he had to get the results and he did that and stayed up last season.

His record in the transfer market? It’s very good. After the first season up, it’s been hard to make that leap in quality when you’re looking to upgrade the squad.

Some of the signings they made that first season back up, Jed Wallace, Jake Cooper and George

Saville, he worked the market very well with all these players.

Saville was also sold for a clubrecord fee to Middlesbrough after signing him at cut-price. Sean Hutchinson, too.

Until they signed Tom Bradshaw and Ryan Leonard, their transfer record was still Paul Goddard, which had stood since the late 1980s. That’s pretty much unheard of for a Championship side. He has had to be creative and he has done it well. Some haven’t worked out but that’s going to happen.

He has worked the market remarkably well.

Why did it go wrong in the end? Maybe it was just a feeling that some of the social media and criticism got a little personal towards the end.

Harris hasn’t really spoken loads about it and until that person themselves tells the full story you can’t really know what happened there. But it’s probably wrong of me to speculate as to why he went.

Harris has kept his counsel until now.

It was never in doubt that another job was going to come up, because his work at Millwall totally deserved that.

Until he gets another job in management and says why it was the right time to leave Millwall, then it will perhaps become clearer.