Better than Cola: Cardiff City FC

"He plays on the left... He plays on the righhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhht,

ooooooo that boy Conway, makes Messi look shiteeeeee"

As betterthancola reaches relative middle age for a blog how better to celebrate the 10,000 view mark than by congratulating my beloved Cardiff City, on finally achieving promotion, and, as the cherry on the cake we go up as champions. So before I get into the meat of the post I just want to make sure that all you guys who asked for your money back at the start of the season when we changed kits and vowed never to support again, I just want to make sure you are still enjoying not being a Cardiff fan. Pricks.

As our thoughts turn now to how and who is going to make the current squad strong enough to survive the rigours of the strongest league in the world. Malky has been promised twenty five million, and, has already said he will be ruthless in culling an rebuilding the current team to keep us up. I for one cant wait to see, and, Id love a Kalou 8 shirt next season. So far the names Ive heard thrown around by 'serious' sources are: Hal Robson Kanu, Park Ji Sung, Bobby Zamora, Darren Bent, Yannick Sagbo, James Collins, Ryan Shotton, Adam le Fondre... the season isnt even over yet, for me Malky will steer clear of these bargain buys, who have already proven to be not good enough to keep teams up, he's a canny manager and I think we will be shopping abroad and relying on one or two loanees.

What a good segway into the topic for todays discussion... For me, there is no such thing as a one player team. Teams like Spurs and Swansea are getting a bad reputation this season for being just this. But one player, a Bale or a Michu or a van Persie or even a Messi cant make a team. People say spurs wouldn't be where they are without Bale, fine, where would you be without your top scorer?? Its not as if without these players any of these sides would be scrapping for relegation, and, at the same time adding Gareth Bale or Van Persie into the Reading side would not put them in a European contention place. It speaks volumes about the character of football fans (its not good) that instead of constructing a valid argument to bad mouth our fierce rivals (there are billions btw) we just rely on saying "yeah, well without soandso, you'd be shit"

How to best demonstrate that one player doesn't make a team...

This is Mr Loic Remy. He has eighteen international caps for his native France, unfortunately he has had to compete Karim Benzema and Thierry Henry for the majority of his career. He has played for and won trophies for Lyon, Lens, Nice and Marseille He is 26 years old, he has played two hundred and one professional games and has scored seventy four goals. In January he signed for QPR, since then he has played nine games, he has scored nine goals. Even though QPR were already doomed when he joined, even a full season with this man wouldn't keep them up, even a goal per game from this man wouldn't have kept them up. For me he is the best player that has ever been relegated from the premier league.

This is Mr Scott Parker. In 2011 he was relegated with West Ham Utd. he was 'hammer' of the year. He found the net 7 times (not bad for someone that doesn't actually know the goals are located at either end) and he credited as the sole reason the Hammers came out for a second half at WBA and clawed back a draw from three nil down. The next season he was snapped up by spurs and has enjoyed international call ups and adulation galore. Also relegated with West Ham that season was one Mr Demba Ba.

That's Mr Fabrizio Ravenelli. In 1996 Bryan Robson paid seven millions of pounds for him (in 1996 this was an extra ordinary amount of money for a footballer). He scored a hat-trick on his début against LOLverpool. The side also contained this gentleman:

That is Senior Juninho Paulista, he won a world cup!! He is widely considered to be Middlesbroughs best ever player.

These two players were among the best in the league that season, together they guided their ward to both domestic cup finals!! Despite this by Christmas relegation was a real threat, some might remember the squad was then hit with severe flu, and, manager Robson claimed he didn't have enough players to field a team, for this he was fined a meagre three points, but, it was enough to send the northerners down.

Oh they also had, Mikkel Beck!!

Four players that are amongst the best ever to grace match of the day... proof absolute that one player does not make a team, if one player could make a team, Juninho would have won a cup easily, Scott Parker would be England captain and people like Chris Kamara, Danny Mills, Attilo Lombardo, Stuart Pearce, Damien Duff and John Barnes would never have experienced the displeasure of having their teams relegated.

Wim Jonk.

Feast your eyes on this happy:

Feast your earholes on this beastly piece:

Well I'm back,
blogging has had to take a backseat recently due to work/drinking commitments, special mentions and thanks to everyone involved in the reformation of the mighty flexoff, it was indeed a fine reunion with remnants of days gone past including the sunburn and the showing having not been to bed as well as the football, and also a massive ta very much to the cains for the jubilee.b.q which was epic London times and a chance to display my chuTAFFney and bunting skills.
What better time to return to posting my outspoken and often melined opinions than on the 'day that football died.'
For those of you that didn't know, I'm a Cardiff City fan, a big one, Ive previously held season tickets galore and travelled as far as the league demands in order to watch my beloved bluebirds show their plucky spirit. If you didn't know this then you probably didn't know that for the last month or so the club has been embroiled in arguments amongst fans and board members over a potential 'rebranding' in order for us to significantly improve relations with potential new supporters and investors in the far east (our owners are a Malaysian corporation and we're now involved in a system of football academies across Asia to improve their grassroots). Any ways about two weeks ago after 'uproar' from the fans chairman of the club Dato Tien Gee (TG) announced that plans had been scrapped among serious opposition to proposed plans (IE the death threats the board received).
Since that revelation, Ive had a suspicious feeling in my guts we hadn't heard the end of things, TG had said that the investors would continue to supports CCFC but the money wouldn't be so forthcoming without this change.
This morning Cardiff City fans worldwide woke up to this...

That's Aron Gunnarsson (@arongunnarsson1) and Joe Mason modelling our new kits for the season, the home kits being the red and the away kits being the traditional blue and yellow, both kits sporting a new club crest of a red dragon over the old bluebird with the motto passion and fire embroidered underneath. As well as this came the statement from the clubs board that they had decided on Tuesday to go ahead with the proposed re branding of Cardiff City Football club in order to secure the long term future of the club in foreign markets and success in domestic competition.
Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr, outrage, shoutyness, loud disgruntlings. you've killed football, your pillaging our club for personal gain, you ruined our heritage how dare you, im sending back my season ticket, arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgggggggggghhhhh.
Stop (hammer time), I'm a tad confused as to how to feel. I'm a man that has a bluebird tattoo, i chose my car because its blue and i have bluebird memorabilia all over the flat, but its not like we're gonna rock up to the Cardiff City Stadium next season and the team wont be there.
A full re branding causes a team to lose all credibility (read MKDons), but we're not doing that. We're going to play in red and have a dragon on our badge, we're not moving from Cardiff, we'll still sing our Cardiff city songs and we'll still shout bloooobirds, but next season we'll do it with a potential continent full of new fans! Why are we doing it, well red is traditionally a lucky colour in the far east and the dragon is a symbol of ferocity and is again lucky.
I appreciate that the argument could be had that if we roll over and accept these changes then the board will keep bending us over and over again, but I honestly believe that TG and the others have the best interests of CCFC at heart and they are truly in this for the long run.
To the doubters I don't know if you mind a mere 7 years ago when not only our new badge was created (yes...you're up in arms about a badge that is not a decade old itself) but a gentleman named Sam Hamman was lord and dictator of Cardiff city football and his regime to take us forward included the appointment of one Mr Peter Ridsdale. Two gentlemen who can only be described as criminals among football administrators, their adventures included inciting violence with rival fans and creating a false company in order to loan Cardiff city fc £15,000,000 pounds at a payday loan level of interest for Sam and Peter famously told the supporters that every single penny of season ticket money received in 2009 would be spent in the transfer window to insure promotion the premiership, mere months before using it all to pay a tax bill that he'd neglected for a year which almost caused the club to be folded! all of this before presenting the club with a bill for over £1.2 million for his 'services' in mediating a takeover bid!!
It seems to me the same people that are 'up in arms' about this re branding, if we can even call it that, which i don't think we can, its essentially a kit change at best, are the same people that hark back to the glory days of big Sam and pistol peter. Well to you I say you are not the future of MY football club, you are the past, you are a past that myself and others are ashamed of. You are the past of Leeds at home and Milwall away, the past of scarves around faces, the prince of wales blockades and smashing the windows of the Philharmonic when you spy an away team jersey at the bar, you are the past of intimidating the wives and children of travelling fans, being banned from stadiums and being bussed from train stations to ground under police guard. You want to talk about the heritage of our football club, we are the only team to take the FA cup out of England (that doesn't change because we play in red), we played in Europe (in the fucking 60s!) and we've had successful promotion campaigns (we were promoted in 2003 from the old second division, wow!) combine this with successful cup runs (we lost in the fa cup final to far inferior Portsmouth side and again this year to a Liverpool side who were 2 goals down in a penalty shootout!) So I say to you what heritage have we fucking got??? What have we had to cheer about! for 25 years Ive watched the boyos be constant nearly men, the perennial underachievers while all the while you ask any other football fan what they think of Cardiff city they say 'thugs.'
I'm getting behind this change, I'm ready for the barrage of abuse from other clubs fans I'm ready for the inflated ticket prices and I'm ready to order my new red home shirt. Because in exchange for my loyalty my football will now enjoy proposed plans to expand the CCS to 30,000 seats, a brand new training facility which will bring jobs and revenue to the local area, an end to all historic debt (currently around 14 mil and accumulating an interest of around 100% per annum, cheers again sam and pete) and a guaranteed investment of £100,000,000 into the club, as much as possible of which will be made available as transfer and additional wage budget for Malky. If this is the kind of evil the Malaysians are up to then LONG LIVE TG!
To the guy who left his scarf outside the club, to the twitter moron who accused us of appeasing 'foreign devils', i don't get why you don't understand that we could not survive the way we were! we certainly couldn't progress! to those guys, I'm glad you're boycotting the games and sending your tickets back, it gives us real fans a better chance of getting tickets, don't you dare come crawling back if this pays off for us you're not welcome your not a true bluebird... we may play in red or blue or bright pink for all i care, I'm from Cardiff city, i am Cardiff city, i don't care if we're called the welsh wankers I'm still in the stand cheering.
The bickering HAS to stop, just get behind the fucking club! just let go of that hooligan image and be as ashamed of it as I am and lets take the club forward and let go of the tried so hard but fell at the last cliche.
I'm 27, in my lifetime my football club has achieved precisely zero, Ive never known the joy of lifting a trophy or waving a flag with 'winners' on it. but to top it all of for the majority of my support time line I've had to concern myself more with whether or not the club is going to exist in 12 months time over results and league positions and if the players running out in red shirts every week changes that I'm all for it, if it means we have a dragon on the badge, I'm all for it, if it means we can just go for it, I'm all for it.
COME ON YOU DRAGONS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!