Cardiff are bottom of the Championship after winning only one of their past 14 matches
Dafydd Pritchard
BBC Sport Wales
Agonising, embarrassing and, ultimately, inevitable.
Cardiff City’s relegation has felt a long time coming, much more than just one dismal season.
And it has been dismal.
No team has won fewer games in the Championship, and having gone through three managers during this campaign – making it eight in the past four years – the Bluebirds will be playing in the third tier next season, for the first time since 2003.
Considering Cardiff have been promoted to the Premier League twice in the past 12 years and still have a wage bill bigger than two thirds of their Championship peers, many will wonder why the club finds itself in such a hole.
But the unavoidable truth is that this relegation is no accident, and is instead the stark result for a club that lost its way a long time ago.
“It’s been an inevitability staring us in the face. It’s death by a thousand cuts – I’ve felt it’s been coming for years,” former Cardiff striker Nathan Blake told BBC Sport Wales.
“There’s a lot of responsibility that needs to be shared among a lot of people, rather than just focusing on the team or manager. You do have to look at those above and say ‘maybe you’ve run your course’. I think they ran their course a long time ago.
“You do feel this storm has been coming.”
Managerial upheaval and ‘lost identity’
Cardiff had actually started this season with relative optimism, as the 2023-24 campaign was their first without changing manager since 2019.
Following successive relegation battles, Erol Bulut came in and guided the Bluebirds to a respectable 12th-place finish.
The hope was that they could build on that foundation but, instead, Cardiff made the worst start to a season in their history and Bulut was sacked after picking up just one point from their opening six games in the Championship.
His replacement Omer Riza oversaw an initial improvement but, having been brought in as interim manager in September, it was not until December – and in the midst of a nine-match winless run – that he was announced as Bulut’s successor until the end of the season.
Managerial instability is nothing new for Cardiff, who have had 16 different managers during Vincent Tan’s 15-year ownership of the club.
But even by their standards, the protracted appointment of Riza drew sharp criticism from fans, with one supporters’ group writing an open letter raising “serious concerns” about the state of the club.
There were also major doubts about Riza’s suitability for the role, considering that his only previous EFL managerial experience had been a brief spell in which he got Leyton Orient relegated to the National League in 2017.
Former Cardiff captain Jason Perry believes the “chaos” at board level and “toxic” atmosphere around the club had limited their options, while relegation rivals were appointing proven Championship operators such as Gary Rowett and Mark Robins to steer them to safety.
“They’ve not sleepwalked into this situation, they’ve run into it. It’s an incredibly badly run club,” Perry tells BBC Sport Wales.
“I know a lot of supporters who’ve followed this club for a long time but have told me they’re never coming back now.
“They are supporters who saw more bad days than good days but they felt part of something, that the club represented them – but they don’t feel that now.
“And I get that because I don’t feel it as a former player. I find it hard to come here. I think the club has lost touch with what Cardiff is about, it’s lost its identity and that hurts more than relegation. That really hurts.”
Wales captain Aaron Ramsey was made Cardiff’s caretaker manager for the final three games of this season
‘Tan out’ but can Cardiff survive without him?
That toxicity has been a theme of the Tan era, manifesting itself with unrest at games and numerous fan protests.
Tan’s rebranding of Cardiff from their traditional blue to red in 2012 caused deep divisions, which have not fully healed for some even a decade after he reversed his decision.
More recently, supporters have voiced their anger with two large demonstrations this season against the owner, chairman Mehmet Dalman and chief executive Ken Choo.
Cardiff’s perpetual lurching from one crisis to another is seen by many as a result of a lack of football knowledge on the board, denying the club a clear strategy or long-term plan.
“The board don’t know what they’re doing and haven’t done since they first stepped through the door,” says Blake.
“Things need to change. Whether they will or not, who knows, but if they don’t, I just don’t know where this ends.
“These fans deserve more, this city deserves more. To have a billionaire owner and still be in the position we’re in… there needs to be a plan. The board needs to improve. I don’t think anything changes until things change at the top.”
That was what fans were demanding at a protest before the draw against Oxford United on Easter Monday.
“We’ve been fighting a relegation battle for four years and we’ve had enough of it. The owner just doesn’t want to know,” Chris, one of the leaders of the protest holding a banner that read ‘Tan Out’, told BBC Sport Wales.
“He hasn’t been to a game for years. We can’t cope with Tan anymore. We don’t know who would replace him but it can’t get any worse.”
Therein lies the issue for those who want Tan gone: Cardiff are utterly dependent on their owner and there are currently no feasible alternatives.
The club recorded pre-tax losses of £11.66m in its most recent accounts for the 2023-24 season, showing further support from Tan.
The Malaysian businessman added another £11.83m worth of loans, bringing the total owed to him to around £68m.
The club said the loans will be written off or converted to equity, while interest is also being waived. Tan has also provided a written commitment outlining his ongoing support.
Loans from directors and other connected parties have also increased by an additional £11m, taking the total to £40.3m.
Dalman accounts for a large amount of that £40.3m so, although fans may call for the chairman and board to be sacked, it is not a case of simply dismissing a man so heavily invested in the club.
Until Tan and Dalman can sell Cardiff to a buyer willing to match their valuation, they will be staying. And where Tan is concerned, the club cannot survive without him for now.
As Dalman himself wrote in the accounts, Cardiff remain “heavily reliant upon the continued financial support of our owner… without which the future of the club would look much more precarious”.
Owner Vincent Tan (in the Cardiff shirt, next to chairman Mehmet Dalman) has not been to a Cardiff game since 2023
‘Expectations high but you know the divides’
As long as Tan stays and the fans do not get the change they want, Cardiff will remain a club divided.
There have been times when old wounds appear to have healed. On the day the Bluebirds were promoted to the Premier League in 2018, Tan was carried on the shoulders of some supporters as they spilled on to the Cardiff City Stadium pitch.
But for many others, the relationship is beyond repair.
“The situation looks hopeless for us,” says Gwenllian Evans, who follows the team home and away.
“I think plenty still blame Tan and the board for the decisions they’ve made. There seems to be a lack of interest in the club from Tan, which is disappointing.”
As well as corroding the club’s very soul, that division between its hierarchy and fanbase can affect matters on the field.
Riza described Cardiff as “a big pressure cooker ready to explode” during his tenure and, when he was asked if he thought the club was united in its fight against relegation, his blunt answer was “no I don’t,” before adding: “I think the expectations are so high at this club.
“It’s the capital of the country, it’s a club that’s been in the Premier League and is a club that wants to do well, fans want to do well.
“You already know the divides. I think until that all comes together and there’s acceptance of what it is and how we can move forward together, I don’t think we’ll ever improve.”
Riza was sacked a couple of days after that interview, a decision that came too late to change the course of Cardiff’s season.
Dalman, Choo and other board members are believed to have wanted him gone during the March international window; some thought they should have pulled the trigger back in January.
Neil Warnock had been sounded out for a dramatic return to the club he saved from Championship relegation and took to the Premier League – but Tan stuck by Riza, a decision that proved profoundly damaging.
Dropping down to League One will cost Cardiff millions of pounds in lost revenue from television coverage, sponsorship and prize money, while attendances will be expected to fall.
There is no guarantee of a swift return to the Championship either. It took Cardiff 18 years to get back to this level when they were last relegated to the third tier in 1985.
Of the 29 teams to have been in the Premier League and relegated to League One, six have never made it back to the Championship.
Unless Cardiff solve some of their most chronic, deepest-rooted issues, there will be nothing inevitable about their chances of a return.
