By Graham Thomas
When it comes to the long ride ahead of a Championship season, nothing prepares a manager better than some time in the saddle.
Which may account for the difference in approach between this summer and last for Cardiff City manager Erol Bulut.
A year ago, the German-born Turk was bold in his declarations that promotion, or a top six finish at least, was his aim for the campaign.
Bulut had never managed in the Championship before, but there was a wave of optimism around, sparked by the return of Wales midfielder Aaron Ramsey to his boyhood club.
Twelve months on and Bulut is more circumspect, cautious even, as though the memory of a 46-match marathon – unmatched anywhere else in Europe – has curbed his ambition, if not his enthusiasm.
Asked this week how his team would do, he replied: “I won’t mention a position, but we will try to push the best we can do.”
The same goes for Swansea City’s Luke Williams, Newport County’s newly-installed boss Nelson Jardim, who will be leading the club in League Two, and Wrexham’s Phil Parkinson, who has now reached League One.
No bold promises. No rash statements. Caution and consolidation seem to be the name of the game.
It’s understandable. In the Championship last season, Cardiff finished 12th – two places and five points ahead of Swansea – but a massive 34 points off the automatic promotion places and a distant 11 points off the play-offs.
Both Welsh clubs in the second tier will be focusing on avoiding the kind of relegation skirmishes that have troubled them in the past two seasons.
Steady as she goes. Anything above last season’s standing should be viewed as a bonus.
That’s not pessimism, either. It’s realism based on the extremely modest dealings both have done in the transfer window this summer – signing a succession of free, or almost free, agents and loanees.
At the same time, Leeds United lumped £10m on Joe Rodon, Burnley have burned £18m on Mike Tresor, and Coventry coughed up £6m on Jack Rudoni.
All of which is reflected in the odds on all Championship clubs for promotion this season, where the Bluebirds and the Swans are both bunched among the will-also-runs.
Of course, it’s not all about spending big and flexing muscle as Ipswich Town showed last season, when they went up automatically with a budget that was far smaller than the likes of Leeds, Southampton, Middlesbrough and West Brom.
Added to that is the fact that unlike in previous seasons, both Cardiff and Swansea have suddenly found relative calm and stability.
Last season was the first for four years where Cardiff didn’t decide to sack their manager, although the tortuous negotiations over Bulut’s new deal at the start of the summer suggested owner Vincent Tan had to be persuaded to move his finger away from the trigger.
The Swans, too, have found a manager in Williams who appears far more in tune with their ethos than the predictably off-key Michael Duff, who was in charge this time last year.
But promotion for either looks beyond them and the most they can probably hope for is to sustain themselves – and their fans – within dreaming distance of the play-offs as we get towards March and April.
Wrexham fans may argue that back-to-back promotions deserve to make them among the favourites to go up from League One.
Some expertise in the leap from League Two to League One makes the bookmakers disagree.
For Newport, the likelihood of anything more than survival is even more outlandish.
In fact, County’s Portuguese manager Jardim may have found just the right words to describe his club’s ambition and they could equally be applied to any of the other Welsh clubs.
“We are looking for a comfortable season,” said Jardim.
“That comfort gives you time to keep on working on the style, focusing on what we can control which is how we play.
“The main point for the season is to make sure there is clarity about how we are going to go about games, about our style.
“Being comfortable in the table will allow us to keep on working on the style.”
Time for a long 10-month comfort break.
