Cardiff City fans' favourite Lee Peltier has shared the exchanges the players had with owner Vincent Tan ahead of each season.
Former Bluebirds defender Peltier, who was part of a dominant back line that helped take Cardiff to the Premier League in 2018, has told of how Tan would greet the players at the beginning of the season and show them clips of how they could improve on the pitch.
“At the start of every season he’d come in and tell you what he expected from you and show you videos of how to score goals and stuff like that,” Peltier told Second Tier podcast. “He’d come to the odd game here or there, but he wasn’t around that much at all.
“At the start of each season he’d say we were good enough. But even when we were in the Premier League he didn’t come to that many games.”
Cardiff have had a recent revival under Sabri Lamouchi and Sol Bamba, but another tough season nearer the lower end of the Championship has led to calls from some for Tan to sell the club. Peltier called for stability if Cardiff are to find success again.
“They need a bit of stability, they’re going through managers at the minute,” he said. “They’ve had a big, big change. The past two years they’ve had 30 or 40 players come through the door and you’re never going to get any consistency when that many players are coming in and out of the club. I hope they find a way because it’s a great club.
“I know there is ongoing stuff in terms of embargoes and financial stuff and that’s down to the owner. But when I was there he did back the club and he did put money into the club. They always got the signings they wanted, they were very competitive in terms of salaries. All of the stuff off the pitch now is showing on the pitch. When there is uncertainty off the pitch it does seep into the players and fans.”
The current team looks far from the promotion winning side Peltier was part of under Neil Warnock. “The whole season was absolutely unbelievable but the team on paper was a solid Championship team. We were solid all over," he recalled.
Remembering the final game of that memorable season at the CCS against Reading, he said: “I’ll never forget we were at 0-0 and Reading needed a draw, so both of us knew the scores and were scared to go and try and score in case the other countered, so it was a dead edgy game.
“There was I think 20 seconds of the game to go and I turned to Sean Morrison next to me and said: ‘Mozza we’ve done it, we’re going up lad.’ And as I’ve said it Joe Ralls has heard me and has turned around and gone: ‘F****** hell we’ve got 20 seconds left, concentrate.’ We were laughing our heads off.”
On why they couldn’t survive in the top league, he added: “I think in the first half of the season we more or less didn’t give up but we were just happy to be there. We were happy to be in the Premier League rather than giving it a go and trying to get good results.
“I think it was just too late when we sort of found our belief. And as I say it was only two or three points missed out on and if we went in there with a better mentality at the start of the season I think we’d have had a right chance of staying up.”
Read next:
