By Leigh Sanders
Like the unexpected summer smash hit at the Box Office one transfer saga involving not-so A-List names has been on the lips of most football fans throughout Britain this week.
Following the conclusion of those involving Cesc Fabregas, Joe Cole and James Milner comes one which has pushed Welsh football firmly in to the spotlight and has divided the country in two. Not 50/50 that is, but South Wales against the world.
This week Welsh Captain Craig Bellamy has moved from mega-rich Manchester City to his hometown club of Cardiff City on a season-long loan. But it is not quite that simple.
If the press and opposing supporters are to be believed then Cardiff have committed a triple homicide on their way to securing the deal while Craig has pretty much sold his soul to the devil.
So let’s siphon through the arguments surrounding the deal and try and boil it down to one simple question: is it fair?
First of all is the unfortunate front-running topic of modern sport: finances. Most want to know how a club who have this year alone survived four winding up orders for unpaid debts can afford to take on a player who was earning a reported £75,000-£90,000 a week depending on which rag you buy.
The same newspapers have also given us hugely differing estimates on who is paying what. The Sun believe that the wage is split 50/50 leaving Cardiff somehow coming up with £1.7m to fund the year-long switch.
The most common estimate is that Cardiff are, in fact, paying £20,000 a week with Manchester City stumping up the rest. Other Championship clubs believe this is vastly unfair and that Cardiff are taking advantage of a loophole in the loans system.
But what I want to know is how? Where in the Football league rules does it state that a loaning club must pay 100% of the player’s wage? This sum is up to the parent club and can be agreed between the two clubs involved. I wonder how many loan signings up and down the country are being funded solely by those bringing the player in?
And Manchester City will be left in this situation a lot as when they have to cull their squad to the newly regulated 25 the Premier League demands all clubs register there will be few clubs willing to take on the astronomical wages City pay even their fringe players. Just look at the £2m Stephen Ireland demanded City give him to move to Aston Villa as part of the James Milner deal. City will be seeing a lot of loan moves like this during this transfer window.
Secondly there are the monies Cardiff owe to various parties. The winding up question should be solved. The key word is that Cardiff have SURVIVED four orders from the courts. They have paid their dues to the taxman and players and staff are being paid on time. The club’s new Malaysian backers have lots of spare money in their back pockets and this deal, as well as the loan signings of Jason Koumas and Seyi Olofinjana, underline their commitment to taking the club forward towards Premier League promotion.
Thirdly in this financial section, the money still owed to Scottish club Motherwell for the July 2009 transfer of Paul Quinn which is believed to be in the region of £175,000.
Now this is an understandable gripe as Cardiff should rightfully be paying off what they owe before looking towards bringing new talent in. Motherwell Chairman John Boyle is claiming the sum is in fact over £200,000 but, as always, who do you believe? His threats to bring in the bailiffs on the day of Bellamy’s news conference may have seemed over the top to many supporters of Cardiff but it was a brave and bold move from a man who firmly has his own club’s interests at heart.
I hope this issue is resolved quickly as I fully support Boyle’s claims. Cardiff CEO Gethin Jenkins has stated that this should be resolved within the next seven days so I hope this is the case.
Moving on from finances you have the issue of Bellamy’s career, which, in my view, is completely irrelevant. I saw one anonymous internet poster slam Bellamy as a “moron” for “leaving himself with no option than to drop down as nobody else would have him.” Bellamy has had his problems in the past and nobody can defend those. But Stoke City, Tottenham Hotspur, Wolfsburg, Celtic and Fulham were all firmly interested in the player which rubbishes those untouchable claims.
As for Bellamy, this is the move he wanted. Born in Canton, a stone’s throw away from the old Ninian Park stadium, he is Cardiff born and bred. He left home as a teenager for Norwich City due to the ramshackle nature of the club’s youth academy at the time but he and his family remain staunch Cardiff supporters. He lives just outside the city in a large and beautiful property in the same village as Cardiff manager Dave Jones. He has spent the past six years driving back and for to his various clubs from his South Wales base and has missed a lot of his young children’s growing up.
This decision to “return home” was his and it is what HE wanted. All this talk of him wasting his career is absolute nonsense. How is a career wasted if a man has no regrets? What happened to it being better to do something you enjoyed than slave away at something you don’t? It just seems to be one rule for one and one rule for another. Craig has always said he would love to play for Cardiff one day and at 31 has decided to do it now instead of waiting till he is too over the hill.
Another gripe, and by far the most ludicrous, is the question of competition. One or two supporters, and some supposedly knowledgeable ex pros have hinted that it is unfair on some other teams because Bellamy is too good for this division. They believe it will distort the balance of the Championship.
Yet there were no moans about Premier League parachute payments for relegated clubs. There were no cries of disdain when the loans system was originally brought in as clubs believed they could all secure unwanted players at higher division clubs who could lead them to glory.
Are you telling me that when a team is relegated from a higher division that somebody should sit down and declare which of their players are too good for the league below and should therefore be sold? I am actually laughing out loud at the thought of this. The notion is stupidly preposterous.
The only argument which has any standing is that of finances. As a Cardiff supporter I hope that this deal has been well thought through and won’t damage us in the long term. Cardiff are a club who seriously cannot afford another expensive Robbie Fowler-shaped mistake and I hope this isn’t an all-in gamble on Bellamy taking us up and recuperating the money that way.
Even without Bellamy, Cardiff have the best attacking selection outside of the Premier League, with the exception of maybe Middlesbrough, so promotion should now firmly be in our sights, starting with this Saturday’s match with Doncaster Rovers.
With the Football League now demanding to see financial plans before ratifying the signing, if we pass these tests then it will be a sign of how sound the deal really is and should put paid to a lot of these ridiculous outbursts from all and sundry.
If they do block it, it will be an indication of how damaging the deal would have been to our long-term ambitions and so saves us from possible financial meltdown.
Either way, the result of these meetings will completely make the Bellamy deal legitimate and fair, so why should the moaning continue? But for many English fans who despise a Welsh side doing so well, the moaning will just never stop.
