My mate and friend of the site, TallKenny has recently effed off to live in Cardiff. It’s been disastrous causing the closing of The Tudor, my kitchen shelf to fall off the wall, the latest FIFA corruption scandal and the sacking of Uwe Rosler. But ever the opportunist, he’s taken the opportunity for recompense by wandering the streets of Wales to try and find someone who’s got something to say on our new manager. Well, he might not really have wandered any streets, but he did ask around the office and found us Johnny Hayward one of the partners behind www.uberrock.co.uk, the UK’s “go to” website for all things non mainstream when it comes to rock music.
They’ve currently got over 45k regular readers a month and are constantly growing and evolving. He tells us, “This was never more evident than when we recently celebrated our fifth birthday via a special free gig we called Uberpalooza, for which people travelled from all over the country to witness bands like Dirt Box Disco and The Hip Priests play to a well above capacity crowd.” It’s a real labour of love for him and his cohorts which means he gets the full support of us here at TNS.
But that’s not why we’ve picked him, in-between running the site and just about managing to hold down a day job he’s a Cardiff City fan and season ticket holder for the last 16 years. His favourite colour is not red, and his favourite away ground is Field Mill (it was the first ground he ever saw the Bluebirds promoted at, just in case you are wondering). Anyway, on with the daft questioning…
1. So, did you find the Premier League? Everything you hoped for and more?
Honestly, I hated every minute of it, okay maybe not all of it, beating Man City first home game of the season and then drawing with Man Utd at home were a bit like beating Leeds in the FA Cup back in 2002, but otherwise I found it a pretty soulless experience. Then again as most of you guys who have been to the Cardiff City Stadium it’s really not been the same since we moved from Ninian Park.
2. How’s the state of play between the club and fans at the moment? Are tattoo artists doing a roaring trade in altering those “forever blue” tats yet?
Right now we sadly have a completely divided club and fan base, which is of course entirely down to Vincent Tan’s decision to rebrand the club as “Tan Utd”. I’m not sure many tattoos are changing, there’s been loads done of the old badge in the last year or so as a show of solidarity to the club’s history. It’s not a brilliant time to be following Cardiff as OGS has seemingly left us with a right mess behind the scenes and again on the whim of Tan’s dream to have his very own Red Dragons. We have to all get behind Russell Slade though as he seems like a decent enough bloke, and actually reminds me of a certain Mr Mackay.
3. Right enough faffing about, Vincent Tan, Iain Moody and Malky Mackay, a match made in heaven, discuss…
Well rumour has it that the 3 fell out when it was suddenly leaked that Tan was auditioning for a Frank Sidebottom tribute show and didn’t get it when he refused to lose the tache. As a result he blamed Malky and Moody as the ones who he found sniggering at the back of the classroom. No seriously as I understand it Tan rules the roost and expects his staff to bend over backwards respect wise, there was supposed class of egos involved and hence the start of the end for Malky. Tan also seemingly didn’t like the fact that Mackay was more popular with the fans than him, even though he offered us a free red scarf each after the rebrand. I never had one btw. With regards to the supposed business dealings, as far as I understand nothing has come of any of the private investigations Mr Tan has undertaken into Moody and Mackay. But some of them (Andreas Cornelius???) did have me scratching my glistening bonce.
4. Really, were you sad to see Malky go, are you still of the same view?
Personally I was sad to see him go, because he always seemed to be proud to be manager of Cardiff City Football Club. He doesn’t appear to suffer fools gladly either (I’ll refer you to my previous answer there), although as you will find out he does seem to have his favourites. Let’s just say Don Cowie, or Malky’s Son as we affectionately called him, must be doing flick flacks ahead of your game this weekend. Again though it was tough not to like Malky he got us to Wembley for a Carling Cup Final we only lost on penalties and with a side he had to scrape together after inheriting Dave Jones’s leftovers, and the next season we got promotion to the promised land…well for some anyway.
5. What can we expect from him in terms of playing style and post-match bullshit?
Playing style Malky likes to keep things solid from the back to the front and I think he can bring out another side to players, I thought he toughened up Peter Whittingham, and although he didn’t score as many goals he became more of the team player he is today rather than just the set piece kid. You’ll play 4-4-2 and start to scrape 1-0’s that is his style, but that is also how you get promotion, something the Premiership fans didn’t seem to understand.
I think that without all the Tan nonense going on Malky would have kept us up. He probably started to lose a few of the fans at the Villa away game (after we had just beaten Swansea too) where we ended up losing 2-0. Villa were on the ropes going into that game and we went to them and shamefully didn’t attack. Perhaps if we had Malky may still be in charge of Cardiff City. Who knows?
As for post-match bullshit…I’m never sober enough to watch Match Of The Day or The Football League show. Seriously after watching Cardiff all these years I need a drink after the game.
6. And the really serious stuff to finish. Pies, what’s your favourite pre-match/half time filling, how do you go about eating it?
I don’t think I’ve a pie since Walsall away (theirs were so good I’ve never wanted to spoil that Balti Pie experience), it was when Paul Merson was their pie man. No wait I tell I lie Wembley would have been the last time, against Barnsley in the FA Cup semi-final. I’d had an afternoon drinking cider, had just exchanged some banter with Dickie Bird and needed some nose bag to keep my alive. I remortaged my house for a Wembley vegetable pie, which was served to me white hot, and then as I went to take my first bite the bottom fell out of it straight into the lap of the bloke sat next to me. He used to be a mate of mine too…well until that pie incident.
So there you go, Frank Sidebottom, Punk Rock and Balti Pies. Oh and four-four-f*cking two, a starting berth for Don Cowie and an ego to match the chairman. It looks like the next few weeks are going to be interesting… but we knew that anyway.
Thanks for your time John, and as always, good luck for the rest of the season unless it affects us of course.
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