Cardiff City chairman Mehmet Dalman has told supporters to expect an "exciting" signing and ambitiously expects to sell out the club's entire allocation of season tickets.
Dalman sat alongside new manager Erol Bulut and CEO Ken Choo during the Turkish boss' unveiling at Cardiff City Stadium on Monday afternoon, with a visibly spring in their collective steps.
It has been a gruelling toil for the last two seasons, with the Bluebirds staving off relegation narrowly last year after fending off the threat the previous season.
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But Dalman admitted he felt re-energised this summer, having got his No.1 manager target Bulut, following the announcement Sabri Lamouchi would not continue in the dugout next season, and, seemingly, with some encouraging announcements to come in the coming weeks.
After the meeting with the media, Dalman, Bulut and Choo met with supporters' groups and, according to the Cardiff City Supporters' Trust, told them an "exciting" signing which "would be regarded very positively by fans" is on its way.
That came after he boldly predicted that Cardiff, who have sold around 12,000 season tickets, would max out their allocation of 18,000 with the announcements he had to make in the coming weeks.
"I reckon we will sell 18,000 (season tickets). I have got a couple of other announcements to make," Dalman said on Monday. "Erol and I have got a few more announcements to make that I think will make the fans happy."
Clearly, such talk has started fans' tongues wagging, with social media rife with debate over who could possibly trigger such a skyrocketing sales trajectory. However, we understand an announcement will not be made for a couple of weeks yet.
Dalman himself, who marks 10 years as chairman this summer, even appeared to be buoyed by the prospect of what the next few weeks and months had in store, while candidly admitting that the last 18 months or so had been a trying time for him.
"How disillusioned I became, disillusioned is probably the right word, I think just seeing that team lose momentum from previous years to where we were under successive managers who, I could just see that they didn’t know how to win a game," Dalman said of the last two seasons.
"A great manager rang me up while we were playing attractive football at the beginning of the season and he said, ‘Very pretty, Mehmet, but you guys don’t know how to win a game.’ And I think he was right.
"If you look at Erol’s track record, he wins games. Look at his ratios, he wins games. He doesn’t give many points away. If he doesn’t win, he doesn’t go and lose. That’s what we need.
"There is this question, what is the Cardiff way? When I saw the style of football Erol plays, he is not a million miles away from the way Cardiff play historically. I think you will see a style of football that will suit this club and this division, I think that’s a good thing."
Dalman was keen to stress that the appointment of Bulut was not "the cheap option", insisting that it was a "a real commitment, strategically, from the owner to the board". One, he hopes, that will start moving Cardiff towards the right end of the table in the seasons to come.
He was also brutally honest when asked to assess his decade-long tenure at the helm, which has taken in two trips to the Premier League and two battles for survival from the drop to League One.
"Probably a five or six (out of 10)," he said. "This is a privately-held company with one shareholder. We have a board, in a single ownership, it’s difficult. I’ve done it before where I chair boards with a single or dominant shareholder, you can only recommend and execute. Everything else in the middle is not the board’s decision.
"How well have I judged myself in recommending, pretty good, probably more than five or six, what about executing that recommendation? Until the last 18 months, I’ve been pretty good. The last 18 months I sort of gave up. Because it’s hard. It’s very hard here. Now this is a new incentive for me. It gets me excited having Erol here.
"I am lucky in the sense I have a consistent team here and Ken and I work very well, within the remit of our owner. At times he is a great supporter and is a great person to work with and at times it’s difficult. He has his own vision. It’s no secret.
"But I am re-engaging myself because I am excited about this man (Erol) being here. And that’s important for me.
"It’s a new trajectory. It’s not a line in the sand, there are never lines in the sand. It’s not that clear. It’s just exciting again and I've got that buzz about it."
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