Maybe you have a vacancy for your new favourite Cardiff player. It could have been Sol Bamba or Joe Bennett, significant players in Cardiff’s recent history, both disappointingly discarded last season. Having Harry Wilson around was nice, while it lasted. Bizarrely, we’ve yet to see Kieffer Moore represent Cardiff in person yet.
Anyway, forget all those guys. Ryan Giles is going to be your new favourite and here’s why.
Firstly, and most importantly, he’s rapid. This Cardiff squad are notoriously one-paced, and that one pace is comfortable. Giles will change all that. It will take some getting used to, but don’t adjust your sets, Cardiff have finally brought someone in with genuine, frightening pace.
Giles would quicken up any midfield in the Championship, but at Cardiff, it will have a transformative quality. Sometimes you don’t know what you were missing until it finally materialises and hopefully there is no going back. It will be hard for opponents to contain Giles, but it also remains to be seen how those around him will cope with having to keep up with him.
He’s direct too. Speed kills, but without an end-product, you’re just getting nowhere fast. Giles has already chipped in with a few assists in pre-season and his quick, early crosses will be bread and butter for Moore and James Collins.
Giles is versatile too. He typically plays on the left flank, where he will provide competition for both Josh Murphy on the wing and Joel Bagan at left wing back, but he has already featured for Cardiff on the right, where there is currently a vacancy and he can cut in on his left foot.
Highly thought of at his parent club Wolves, Giles agreed a four-and-a-half-year professional contract with them last December, so don’t get any long-term ideas. He’s been with the club since he was eight and was named their Academy Player of the year in 2018. Giles has already had loan spells in League One with Shrewsbury and Coventry in both League One and the Championship, before spending the second half of last season with Rotherham.
Remember Coventry running rings around a woeful Cardiff back in November? Giles was one of their key tormentors on the right. He then went on to feature twice for Rotherham against Cardiff too, including the final game of the season, when he impressed as a left wing back.
Cardiff’s summer signings may have been reserved, but they were also shrewd and Giles looks set to become the breakout star. In a squad where there is so much reliance on key players with unreliable fitness, it will be a novelty to have bankable service and quality from out wide.
All he needs now is a song.