With the January transfer window firmly closed and targets secured, there remains speculation and uncertainty with regards to why nothing happened for so long and why certain targets were missed. So, I asked chairman Mehmet Dalman and this is what he said.
This was a very strange window in that Profitability and Sustainability fears saw Premier League clubs only spend about £50m, down from about £800m last year and there is a trickle-down effect from that for EFL clubs. Were the club expecting this sort of window, or did that come as a surprise?
It came as a surprise. We’ve been through a number of windows and this was the most inelastic one I’ve ever seen. How many transfers were there in the Championship during the first two weeks of January? It’s not that we didn’t go after players, they were just not available.
Much was made of Cardiff’s partial embargo being lifted and the club being able to spend. January is traditionally a conservative window, but was the intention to spend, given the opportunity?
I had a discussion with the manager that if we find the right target, we will make funds available, but we’re not going to pay £50,000-per-week salaries in the Championship. We had to make sure our books were balanced correctly for the EFL, so we had limitations for spending money.
Embed from Getty ImagesErol Bulut appeared to suggest in one of his press conferences that the financial goalposts moved late on in the window and that affected what deals you could get over the line. Can you explain what he was referring to?
There were two points that Erol made. The first one was that he wanted players in the first week of January, not in the last week of January. We all did, but they were not available. We approached Bournemouth about Kieffer Moore in December and he wasn’t the only player we approached in December. The club wanted us to match their salary, but that is £40-50,000-per-week. If we could, we would have. I understand he went to Ipswich on that sort of salary.
The second point relates to the way the EFL operates. You submit a budget and they decide whether its realistic or not. We put in what we considered a realistic budget around Christmas and they took the view that it wasn’t. It needed to be refined and it took time to refine it. We submitted a revised version mid-January and reached a conclusion.
Kieffer Moore was talked about quite openly in the lead up to the window opening. Can you explain Cardiff’s intentions with regards to that move. Was the aim to try and buy him, or was Cardiff’s offer always a loan?
We wanted the best of both worlds; a loan with the option to buy.
Embed from Getty ImagesWas there ever any attempt to try and bring in Kieffer’s Welsh international team-mate David Brooks?
We tried for Brooks and Moore. Brooks was a definite no to us, so we were surprised to see him go somewhere else. They were open for discussion on Moore and we were in discussion until the very end of the window.
There were quite detailed reports from Norway suggesting that Cardiff were prepared to make a significant financial investment to sign Valarenga striker Andrej Ilic, who eventually joined Lille. Was there any truth in those reports?
I found it difficult to pay that much money for an unproven striker. He looks good, but that was big money for a club like us on an unproven player. We also couldn’t have got him even if we wanted him anyway because of our EFL restrictions.
Similarly, Cardiff were strongly linked with a move for Trabzonspor’s Anastasios Bakasetas, who eventually joined Panathinaikos, despite Erol insisting that Cardiff couldn’t afford him. Were the club ever in talks to try and sign him, or was that a similar situation to Ilic?
There were tentative talks, but then we found out what he was going to cost and it was a massive amount of money.
Embed from Getty ImagesErol stated his desire for six new arrivals and credit to the club, they delivered in that regard. It went down to the wire in the end, but were the club always confident that they would secure their targets? It’s safe to say that panic had well and truly set in by that point!
I think we’ve had two very good windows with Erol on board. I think the summer window was one of the best windows we’ve ever had, with the EFL handcuffs we had. We got quality players in Dimitrios Goutas and Manolis Siopis, for example. In January, we didn’t panic. We had targets, but they were evolving.
How do the strict new rules now in place affect Cardiff going forward, in terms of the summer transfer window and beyond?
If you look at the league and the wages being paid out, we’re about the sixth highest. We’re not trying to build on the cheap. This summer should be pretty much up to us in terms of how we behave. There are no EFL rules we should worry about because we will have met them with the budget we set out. Then it comes down to our ability to create a budget in order to be able to spend in the market.