In the Premier League just a season ago and with parachute payments to spend, Cardiff are nevertheless a distant thirteenth favourite for the title this term after years of mismanagement.

The hostility and condemnation of Cardiff City’s madcap Malaysian owner has eased in recent times.

Originally seen as the archetypal megalomaniac foreign owner, undermining the wise old English football manager who got his club promoted to the Premier League in the first place, public opinion has swung around somewhat since the revelations about Malky Mackay and Iain Moody’s text and phone conversations came to light. Far from the innocent, hardworking, successful manager building both Cardiff and his reputation in the face of impossible working conditions imposed by his chairman, Mackay was shown up as a racist and a bigot. Tan, suddenly, the innocent party in it all, had been lambasted for wanting a prehistoric troglodyte out of his club.

A decision to change the club colours from blue to red, which set supporter against supporter as a battle over whether Tan’s money and Premier League football was more important than a century of tradition, was also suddenly reversed midway through last season after a Christmas heart to heart between Tan and his mother Madam Low Siew Beng who succeeded where thousands of loyal Cardiff fans had failed over many months.

But let’s be very clear here, this is another old British institution and community asset being appallingly run by foreign ownership laughably deemed “fit and proper” by the bodies that are supposed to govern and safeguard them.

The Championship is absolutely riddled with them. Leeds United, Nottingham Forest, Queens Park Rangers, Cardiff City, Birmingham City, Blackburn Rovers, Fulham, Hull City… some of the country’s biggest clubs, some of its most historic, some of its best supported all being held at the whim of foreign investors who have been naïve in some cases, incompetent in others, fraudulent at Birmingham and malicious at Hull.

The damage Tan has done at Cardiff was there for all to see on the opening day of the season last week when the team drew 1-1 at home to Fulham. City were in the Premier League little over 12 months ago, and still have two years of parachute payments remaining, but figure in few pundits’ thinking when it comes to the promotion picture from the second tier this season. FourFourTwo’s season preview has them down to finish seventeenth. The bookies have 13 other clubs more likely to win the league than them, including Brentford, newly promoted Bristol City and perennial midtable stodge Sheffield Wednesday. Sky Bet will give you a long 40/1 on it happening.

Tan may have been vindicated in the Mackay incident, but he’s worked his way through two managers since. Ole Gunnar Solksjaer was supposed to be the much sought-after great white hope of management based on his achievements with Manchester United Reserves, Molde and on Football Manager. He assembled an expensive, eclectic collection of players from all around Europe, some of whom worked and many of whom didn’t. He was sacked in September last season after winning two of his first seven matches in the Championship. In his place came Russell Slade, with an entirely new philosophy built around bringing in players who’d impressed against his Leyton Orient team in the division below — Eoin Doyle looked worth a punt from Chesterfield, Alex Revell, at 32, less so from Rotherham. The squad is a weird collection of three managers’ ideas put together with three different budgets across two different divisions in 24 months.

The Fulham match was played in front of 17,871 empty seats — a situation not helped by the unnecessary plonking of a second tier on top of the side stand of a brand new, already adequately sized stadium. In bright red of course.

Tan, like Assem Allam at Hull, has found that if you burn off your support and antagonise people when the going is good, don’t expect them to still be there when it’s not, and those that remain aren’t going to be friendly towards you. In the Premier League, where the broadcast income dwarfs the ticket receipts, supporters can be taken for granted. In the Championship, they’re vital. Cardiff had sold only 500 tickets for Loftus Road at the start of the week and while that has since doubled it's not sold out having previously been one of the biggest, noisiest visitors to West London. Cardiff fans, who once made Ninian Park one of the Football League’s most intimidating venue, and brought police forces out in big numbers when they travelled away, are suddenly beset by apathy. Another group who saw their club taken over and a series of odd decisions made, without their say, even though they've been there for generations and will continue to be so decades into the future.

It’s a story we’ll tell a dozen times this season. An owner drawn in by the television money on offer in the Premier League, riding roughshod over the very traditions of the sport and strength of the support base that make the television rights so valuable in the first place, finds himself financing midweek visits from Rotherham in front of more empty seats than paying customers.

Tan, like Allam at Hull, now rarely attends games, instead leaving the “running” of the club to chairman Mehmet Dalman and CEO Ken Choo. Seagull management — fly in, flap around and shit on everything, fly out. Cardiff continue to live with his decisions in his absence.

Links >>> Official website >>> Changing kits and declining ambition — interview >>> Cardiff City Forum >>> Inside Cardiff City — blog >>> Mauve and Yellow Army blog >>> CCMB Message Board >>> Bluebirds Forum

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GetMeRangers added 20:10 - Aug 14 Seagull management... brilliant
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TacticalR added 23:06 - Aug 14 Thanks for your oppo profile. I wonder if Tan has distanced himself from the club as he doesn't want to be associated with the ignominy of relegation? I am a bit more sceptical than you about the race angle. Mackay's computer and phone were seized during an investigation into financial transfers, not during an investigation into racism. Although I think racism is more of a profound force in British society than people realise, I can also see how it can be exploited by unpopular foreign businessmen who want to present themselves as victims.

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Northernr added 23:57 - Aug 14 Hmmm I think those texts were pretty unequivocal Tactical, although yes I think it's interesting that they were seized under a dodgy transfers angle and nothing has ever really been said about that since. Either way Mackay successfully took himself from one of the most sought after managers in the country to a complete no go in a really disastrous 12 month spell.
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