It looks like Connor Wickham is coming, and that’s a great start, but Cardiff’s post-window recruitment drive shouldn’t end there. It’s time to load up on free agents. All of them.
Cardiff are pretty well stocked in all areas. They have strength in depth and good players miss out on the matchday squad every game, but Cardiff need more. They need new. They need players that are unaffected by an increasingly terrible season. They need players that are not demoralised by four different managers in the last five months.
Wickham is a calculated risk. In his pomp, he was briefly like the Erling Haaland of the Championship, displaying that all too rare combination of pace, power and brute strength, but his pomp was when he was still a teenager, a decade ago now. Injuries have taken their toll and prevented him from reaching his true potential. As a result, he’s currently looking for his 10th club, but is hot off a very impressive first half of the season at Forest Green Rovers.
Wickham offers something that Cardiff currently lack and have sorely missed; presence. A focal point in the attack. Someone to hold up play and knit the attack with the midfield. Jordan Hugill performed this task last season to great affect, so it was bewildering when Cardiff didn’t bring someone in to fulfil this function permanently in the summer. Especially seeing as the manager at the time was exactly this kind of player.
As Cardiff well know, bringing a player in midway through the season after an impressive showing in League One is no guarantee of success, as Max Watters proved. He has since made the opposite move after a difficult few months at Cardiff, where he started the season as first choice.
Cardiff should not stop there though. At this time of year, it’s always very slim pickings in the free agent market, but there are a further few standouts this year, that appeal for a variety of reasons.
Lewis Grabban is one of those that has played for so many teams, you can’t quite believe that he never played for yours. Having recently turned 35 without a club, he will be everyone’s potential quick fix for goals in the coming weeks. The Neil Warnock of strikers, and if that doesn’t sell him, he has also already thrived under Sabri Lamouchi.
During the 2019/20 season, Grabban bagged 20 league goals as Nottingham Forest came a final day collapse against Swansea away from making the play-offs. In his four years at Forest, he netted in an average of every three games, and we would certainly take that ratio at the moment. Forest were even trying to keep him for their maiden Premier League campaign, ahead of their kamikaze 30 man signing spree, but he turned them down in favour of a move to the middle-east. It didn’t pan out and he’s again looking for a new club. I don’t expect he’ll be looking for too much longer.
Similarly, Grabban’s former team-mate, Tyler Blackett, is also up for grabs. The former Manchester United youth graduate is a left back by trade, but can also play as a left-sided centre back. The 28-year-old, also a former colleague of Andy Rinomhota at Reading, was actually signed by Lamouchi, but he only lasted a further four games after the Swansea humiliation, so their paths barely crossed. They could rectify that with a reunion, which would allow Callum O’Dowda to wreak havoc further up the pitch.
The alternative in this position would be Danny Rose. The forthright full-back seems to have developed a rather toxic, outspoken reputation, but this is still a player that played 29 times for England and once looked set for a £50m move to Manchester United. Now 32, maybe someone who tells it like it is would be refreshing in a rather timid dressing room that suddenly looks short of leaders. Or alternatively, it could prove the final nail in the coffin of their fragile confidence.
I appreciate that Lamouchi hasn’t got time to get players up to full match fitness, but it’s still surprising how dismissive he has been of the free agent market. He’s admitted that he has more than enough already on his plate, but new blood gives everyone a lift. Even if its just a placebo effect, it could prove invaluable if it keeps everyone on their toes and gets supporters back onside.
Ultimately, if you’re chasing a game, and Cardiff usually are, you want to throw on someone like Grabban or Wickham. Similarly, if Blackett or Rose were to liberate O’Dowda and allow Jack Simpson to be stood down, mercifully, why wouldn’t you? Now is not a time for subtlety.