Since the days of Neil Warnock, no Cardiff City manager has been more universally well received by the club's fan base than Sabri Lamouchi was back in January.
Similarly, no manager who has left during the same timeframe has elicited such a reaction of disappointment or apparent ire. This, of course, is a legacy of the somewhat unpopular appointments that succeeded Warnock and preceded Lamouchi.
The trouble is because of some of those choices, and with each fallen manager, the supporters' trust wanes. When the revolving door is whacking them on the way out in double time, that trust rapidly vanishes.
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Clearly, it's an emotional time. Cardiff have spent the last few months — well, the entire season, really — battling the threat of relegation and just when the dark clouds appeared to be dissipating, with the hope for most being that Lamouchi would be able to execute his own transfer plan, they are slammed back down to earth with the news that the club will not be renewing the manager's contract.
Look, let's consider the facts. Lamouchi hardly tore it up and made a back-half-of-the-season charge to the play-offs, like Mick McCarthy did when he came in, for example. He didn't even play an aesthetically-pleasing brand of football, like Steve Morison at least tried to do.
The bare-faced facts are that he lost 10 of his 18 games in charge. By anyone's yardstick, it's not a great record. You can argue the toss over those two final games, with some saying City were already safe, had taken their foot off the gas and tried other things. With Huddersfield Town, under Warnock, scrapping for their lives and runaway champions Burnley the final two opponents, though, I'd proffer the theory that they might have struggled to win either, anyway.
Cardiff reverted to percentage football under Lamouchi and it was, seemingly, a necessary evil. A functional style of play based on getting the ball as far away from their own goal, getting it up to two big strikers while employing five at the back as the midfield lost all its impact and influence, used more to stop the opponents' midfielders than impact the game creatively themselves.
It got some key results, though. Well, enough to keep them afloat, anyway. The Blackpool, Watford and Rotherham United wins were huge and saw Cardiff get over the line with two games to spare.
So there is plenty where, let's say, the jury had to be out on Lamouchi.
Let's also, though, argue the case for Lamouchi, because this was not his squad. It was comprised totally in the vision of Steve Morison, who was given carte blanche to build a Championship squad and, unfairly, expected to challenge for the play-offs, on a threadbare budget having never had a job in senior management before.
Mark Hudson took over from Morison and the slick-passing style of play was slowly morphed into a more pragmatic style, presumably after Vincent Tan had lost patience with seeing his team build-up slowly from the back. And, though Hudson should never have been in that position in the first place, the former Cardiff captain's reign was hugely disappointing. You'd be hard-pressed to find many people with a bad word to say about him, given his character and what he did for the club in his playing days, but those four months were really damaging.
Lamouchi took charge of a squad of players who had not won a competitive football match for three months, with their confidence through the floor and a transfer embargo slapped on the club to boot. They appointed the Frenchman just four days before the end of the January window and signed two big strikers, both of which were in motion before Lamouchi arrived, in the hope that the new boss could get a tune out of them and the squad.
After a slow start, things began to pick up. Sory Kaba was manna from heaven as he started to bang the ball into the back of the net with the kind of regularity Cardiff fans had not seen since the days of Kieffer Moore. Kaba was just as instrumental as anyone in keeping Cardiff up.
There were some very questionable calls along the way from Lamouchi. Picking Sheyi Ojo, whose form had dropped off a cliff towards the end of the season, over Rubin Colwill or Isaak Davies really irked many fans. Not starting Davies in either of those final two games was an oversight, too, while fans were left scratching their heads when Joel Bagan continued to be overlooked – even being made to travel to Burnley but not getting a run out at Turf Moor. Eli King also got a token few minutes at the end.
Lamouchi did suggest that he had thought about the future of the club, wanting Bagan, King and even Mark Harris to sign new deals. But his actions on matchday to that end did not quite tally up and it left some wondering what the future looked like for City's budding young talent after Cardiff had ploughed a lot of time and resource into it in recent years, not least investing millions into a new site at Llanrumney.
But, look, credit where it is due, Lamouchi was tasked with only one thing, keeping the club in the division. That box was ticked with a couple of games to spare.
There is a sense that, at Cardiff, probably more so than any other club in the division, the manager needs to be more than a tactician on the touchline. And that is why Cardiff fans had bought into the idea of Lamouchi.
The signs were that the manager's temperament and ability to deal with the size of the club and the many crises which often come its way were bang on the money. He was understood to be perfectly OK with the constrictions of the EFL transfer embargo, too. He had also dealt with an erratic owner at Nottingham Forest and held himself with great dignity and poise throughout that turbulent period, so many thought he had the tools to deal with Tan and all of his many foibles.
Young coaches just haven't worked at Cardiff. Neil Harris had a very good squad and was a manager who was liked by many players, but struggled to get it right. Morison and Hudson ultimately couldn't quite get it, either. Paul Trollope was of a similar ilk and people who were at the club during his tenure raved about his tactical nous, but just look how that turned out.
Look back, historically, and it's the experienced ones, the managers with big personalities, who thrive at a club like Cardiff; Dave Jones, Malky Mackay and Neil Warnock. There was real hope Mick McCarthy would succeed, too, and his first few months in charge were incredible, but the following season was an unforeseen disaster.
The Cardiff City job is a big one, the profile upon the club and expectation levels huge for one in the Championship. You need a special personality to deal with that. In many ways, it is not a job for rookies, because it can swallow you up.
Lamouchi looked to be the ideal blend of a robust character but young enough to adopt to the modern and transient nature of the current footballing landscape and its constant shifts towards what is in vogue.
His football wasn't fantastic in the few months he was at Cardiff, to say the least, but even he admitted he didn't like playing that way. There was genuine hope that the signings he was hopeful of making, some of which were described as exciting and from across the English Channel, he could add to what is a decent core of a Championship squad, alter the style of play and lift it to the requisite standard for pushing for the top half of the table, indeed higher than that.
But Vincent Tan has made his call. Lamouchi is no more. Many wish he were still manager, others beg to differ and don't feel he had done enough to necessarily land a new contract. Whatever one's viewpoint, what happens next is what matters the most.
Who will the new man be?
Many believe that experience is paramount when taking on the Cardiff job. History tells us that while Tan is prepared to gamble on inexperience, chairman Mehmet Dalman is more circumspect and tends to feel you need proper experience to manage a club of Cardiff's size. Particularly in the week to week grind of the Championship.
A quick look at the bookmakers' odds list will show you a veritable smorgasbord of managers whose last jobs are anyone's guess. There is Sol Bamba, the current assistant manager, Nathan Jones, whose last job was in the Premier League with Southampton, Neil Warnock, an old, experienced head, and then there are people like Kevin Phillips, last at South Shields FC in non-league and even Gavin Chesterfield, the current academy boss who last managed Barry Town United.
No one is suggesting that too much should be read into bookmakers' odds, of course. But with most other clubs, there would be a certain type of demographic when peering at the odds list. A certain level or age of manager who perhaps all play similar styles of football. Not at Cardiff, who lurch from one extreme to another with painful regularity – it's quite literally anyone's guess what happens next.
"I hear talk that we have no plan. Do you honestly think I would have put in so much of my money if I had no plan? Do you think we are idiots?" said Tan just six months ago.
Well, two managers have come and gone since then. So, the plan is clearly not working, nor has it been for some time in my opinion.
Understandably, there are a myriad of things going on behind the scenes. The finance-sapping, time-consuming and tragic circumstances regarding the fallout of Emiliano Sala's death continues to hang over the club and indeed everyone associated with the player and the transfer. The resultant transfer embargo, which prohibits the club from spending money on a player until the summer of 2024, is also a harmful consequence.
And then there is Tan's other club, KV Kortrijk, which he appears to be in the process of selling, which will be taking up more time and energy which could be spent on making Cardiff a success.
The constant frustration, the phrase that continues to pop up every time one of these all-too-frequent managerial changeovers take place, is; this club has huge potential, with a large fan base and excellent infrastructure. That remains true. There is rich potential. It just needs to be unlocked.
It's the decision-making from the very top, the man who holds the key to everything, that some worry about.
To be fair to Tan, under his watch Cardiff have twice reached the Premier League. They had not been at that level of football since the 1960s. They got to a thrilling Wembley Cup final against Liverpool, losing only on penalties. They have pushed on a number of occasions towards the Championship top six, they've spent record sums on players.
But the last few years have been incredibly trying, particularly for the Bluebirds fans who loved those very recent golden days and want to see them return. And it starts with the choice of manager, the most important employee at any football club.
Since Warnock, and before Lamouchi, we've had Neil Harris, Mick McCarthy, Steve Morison, Mark Hudson and momentarily Dean Whitehead.
None were a roaring success. Given that, you cannot blame Cardiff fans for being so fearful of what, or who, is next.
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