Cardiff City have one final weekend of pre-season fixtures before the starting gun sounds for the Championship marathon.
The Bluebirds' pre-season has been largely positive, having recruited 12 new players and winning three and drawing one of their four matches so far, but most will concede there are still things on which they must improve.
While little can be read into the first four matches of the summer schedule, it is only natural that supporters might look a little closer at the starting XI Steve Morison chooses for the Swindon Town fixture on Saturday afternoon.
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Morison and his coaching staff will no doubt want to see their preferred starting XI get as close to a full 90-minute runout as possible at some point and the final pre-season match with Swindon represents the best opportunity to do just that. Some of Cardiff's first-team players will be involved in the second friendly of the weekend, against Hereford FC on Sunday, but one suspects the Bluebirds' preferred team will be fielded against the Robins.
The hotly-contested spots in midfield is perhaps the most intriguing sub-plot of them all and has been throughout the summer. Cardiff bolstered their options in that department with the signings of Ebou Adams, Andy Rinomhota and Romaine Sawyers, while Eli King appears set for a more pronounced role this season if he isn't shipped out on loan, which looks unlikely as things stand.
However, as pre-season has rumbled on, City's options have dwindled somewhat. Ebou Adams' shoulder injury, 10 minutes into his debut outing against Cambridge United, looked a nasty one and there is a slim-to-none chance of him featuring in the Championship opener with Norwich City on July 30.
Similarly, Rubin Colwill has not played a single minute so far and it is highly unlikely he will get any action against the Canaries with no minutes in the tank. While it is a struggle to see Joe Ralls, who has played just 75 minutes in pre-season before hobbling off against Shrewsbury Town on Tuesday night, being fit enough to start on the opening day of the season.
Few would argue that Ryan Wintle and Andy Rinomhota are nailed-on starters for that Norwich encounter, but with the preferred 4-3-3 system now in place, there is a battle hotting up for that final midfield berth. Who gets the nod? Well, there is a three-way tussle, it would seem, and each of them represents a very different option for Morison. Which of the three he chooses to start the Swindon game on Saturday might give us some indication as to who starts at Cardiff City Stadium a week on Saturday.
So, here, we take a closer look at the trio in contention to start the season in that midfield three, how their pre-seasons have gone and what we can expect from them...
Eli King
A player who has had a strong pre-season and certainly someone of whom Steve Morison thinks highly. Cardiff's visibly different work off the ball in pre-season could play right into King's hands in the coming campaign, with an emphasis on winning the ball back quickly and harrying the opposition in the final two-thirds of the pitch.
King won the pre-season bleep test so, by that metric at least, he is the fittest player in the Bluebirds' squad and has been a key component of that relentless press so far this summer.
He ticks play along nicely in midfield, however we are yet to see the spectacular from him. Having said that, against Derby County last season he showed twinkle toes to ghost into the box, round the defender and the goalkeeper before putting the ball on a plate for Jordan Hugill in the 1-0 win on the final day of the season.
So, will he be coming up against Canaries forward Hugill on July 30? It's a possibility. King potentially adds more defensive stability than the other options and there is no shame in comprising your midfield that way against a club who are certain to be challenging at the top of the table, especially at the beginning of a season.
Romaine Sawyers
A signing many supporters are excited about and hope can rekindle the form he has previously shown elsewhere. Even by his own admission, though, his second stint at West Brom didn't go wholly according to plan.
But in the absence of Colwill, he is probably the player who can architect something out of nothing, a killer pass in behind or just generally positive link-up play between City's midfielders and their wingers and strikers.
Cardiff's strikers do not have a huge bank of goals on which they can rely and they have already shown in pre-season that they have spurned a number of chances, including a few up at Montgomery Waters Meadow in midweek. They are going to need all the quality service they can get and Sawyers is potentially the one man who can provide that.
The downside, it appears, is that City would lose a little bit of defensive intensity, in contrast to King. Just on watching him in his first start against Shrewsbury on Tuesday, his press wasn't as constant or as quick as King's or Tom Sang's, while when attempting to create speculative chances he was a little wasteful and frustrated.
One suspects he will have a big part to play this season, though, and there will be games City target in which he will be key. Whether that is Norwich City on the first day of the campaign remains to be seen.
Tom Sang
Well, it's been said before, but there are few players to come out of pre-season with more credit in the bank than Tom Sang.
He has always had admirers at Cardiff, ever since he plugged a hole as a makeshift right-back, but you have to agree with Steve Morison that he looks a far better fit in midfield. One can only hope the player now thinks that, too.
Sang has actually been a bit of an amalgam of the aforementioned duo. He has shown tremendous energy and will to press out of possession, but has shown a guile and poise in possession that few had seen of him at right-back.
Having started the season out in the cold, not even involved in the pre-season trip to Edinburgh, it's been encouraging to see him turn out some solid performances, albeit against lower league opposition. The beauty with Sang is that you don't lose any defensive rigidity by picking him, while he is very much a go-forward player with the ball, always looking for the positive pass or room for a shot. He's useful over a dead ball, too.
Whether he has made such a comeback to go from out of contention all together to starting the first game of the season only the coaching staff will know. But, more so than any of the others, it will be very interesting to see if he is given the nod for the Swindon game on Saturday.
Credit to him, though, he's put in the work and the performances in pre-season and has now become very difficult to ignore.
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