Like him or not, there’s no denying the good that Cardiff City manager has done for the club. Since replacing former manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer in October last year, Slade has had to deal with his fair share of stick from the Cardiff City faithful and what’s wrong with that? Fans pay good money to watch football, why can't they voice their opinion?
The problem with people who have this attitude is that it is having a notable negative effect when the team step on the pitch. Attendances at the Cardiff City Stadium have been extremely poor.
Our home form has been abysmal this season and that has resulted in just 6,500 season ticket being renewed for the 15/16 season, a little over a third of the 15,000 season tickets that were sold in the summer of 2014. Many agree that Cardiff’s away form is what saved them from the relegation dogfight in the back end of the season.
Every fan expected the Bluebirds to return the top flight at the first time of asking. This only escalated when Cardiff were tipped to be champions by the bookies, however this season time around they are destined for mid-table mediocrity, so how can Slade be seen as a success?
Slade’s first job as Cardiff manager was to cut the wages bill, which peaked at £30million, by £12million. This was as a result of Solskjaer’s erratic spending which left us with 42 first team players. Slade achieved this goal in late January, releasing some high earners like Juan Cala, Kim Bo Kyung and Guido Burgstaller but also managed to bring in a few players that he felt would improve the performance of the squad.
Fans argue that the signings didn't have high enough profiles, many of them coming from Premier League academies, low level Championship teams and League One sides. This prompted to Russell Slade to comment “We aren't shopping at Harrods anymore”. Even the strongest supporters of the ‘Slade Out’ movement have to agree that the additions have had a very good influence on the squad.
Slade has let the likes of Kenwyne Jones, Matthew Connolly among others leave the leave the club on loan at various points of the season, claiming that many of them were business decisions. He was ridiculed by fans for this but football is a business and Cardiff City’s infamous debt was probably a huge factor in these decisions.
At the start of this summer the Cardiff City board were faced with an ultimatum, to back or sack Russell Slade, and as the latter seems very unlikely at this present moment then Cardiff fans should suck it up and support the team. Cardiff fans are famous for being some of the best fans in the world and now, when the team needs us the most, we are turning our back on them. I’m not prepared to let this be the demise of our club, are you?
Source: DSG
