Cardiff City: All System Go From Today !!!

Cardiff City FC have seen turbulent lows and captivating highs over the past decade, and more recently over the last year with a glamour trip to Wembley sandwiched between off field turmoil and financial worries. Today, Thursday 1st July 2010 marks the true beginning of a new era for the Bluebirds and will see a great number of questions answered about the future of the club.

Today is the day when Joe Ledley is expected to finalise his departure from the club after almost 15 years in the CCFC set-up. He leaves with our best wishes for the future and deserves a shot at Premiership football. The manner of his leaving will be low key, with no transfer fee as such and with Stoke City his likely destination, there will be little glamour in his new surroundings! That said, we can now properly start planning for the new season and looking for a new central midfielder with an expected compensatory fee of ~£1.5 and a significantly inflated wage gap following the withdrawal of Ledley`s contract offer which would have seen him one of the top earners at the club.

July 1st sees many such players contracts expire and understandably, agents prefer their players to wait for all interested parties to make contact before finalising deals. Therefore, many of the close season signings are made after July 1st and Bluebirds fans will be looking to see early moves to allow players the necessary time to ‘bed in` and gel with their new team-mates.

Also today will see the return of the Bluebirds players to training. The post holiday fitness checks will ascertain whether the players have stuck to the detailed and personalised training and diet regimes over the summer break and coach Alex Armstrong will be looking for a positive response. Jay Bothroyd is looking at a return to full fitness after his ever-so-untimely injury as he tore his calf prior to the Wembley final. He will re-join his team-mates and the group must start right: hungry, passionate, ambitious and un-affected by the crushing ‘nearly-men` tags rightly applied after the past two seasons.

The current crop are back, new faces targeted and hopefully due to join shortly and the start of a new footballing season with new and hopefully far more astute management at board level. Ready for another, typical, Bluebirds rollercoaster season?..