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Sport
Paul Abbandonato

The reasons why Cardiff City sacked Steve Morison and the candidate they will look to next

There is never a dull moment at Cardiff City - and certainly no-one can accuse Vincent Tan of not being decisive.

Just 10 games into the new Championship campaign, Cardiff's owner has sacked the manager he tasked with bringing in 17 new players and totally revamping the squad during a summer overhaul.

The reason, I'm told, is because Tan feared the struggling Bluebirds would hurtle towards a major relegation fight unless he did something to arrest the slide. You can follow live updates here.

READ MORE: Cardiff City next manager odds as Luton Town's Nathan Jones and ex-Burnley boss Sean Dyche early favourites

This is down to results, whether you think the decision has been made with haste or not.

On the face of it, a record of Won 3, Drawn 2, Lost 5 isn't too bad for a completely new team, given it takes time for so many new players to gel. But Cardiff's chronic lack of creativity, and thus absence of any real goal threat, was understandably perturbing Tan behind the scenes and he wasn't seeing any real evidence of those problems being addressed.

Not properly, anyway.

They were for a brief 45 minutes up at Middlesbrough when Cardiff, boosted by an early goal for a change, scored three crackers before half-time. It was enough to win the game, but the second half was more of the same old backs-to-the-wall and no real cutting thrust.

Huddersfield away on Saturday was the final straw. Another blank in front of goal. Another dismal loss. Seven goals in 10 games is a pretty woeful record. Oh it'll come, Morison's many backers again understandably say, but when and how?

Only shot-shy Preston have scored fewer than Cardiff in the Championship this season. Rock-bottom Coventry, who've played three fewer matches, have scored as many goals as Cardiff.

Tan decreed that needed to be dealt with, one way or the other.

Was the owner too ruthless? Has he acted too quickly? Did Morison deserve more time?

Everyone will have their own view. Mine is that Morison did a fabulous job revamping the squad during the summer, getting rid of the unwanted old guard, bringing in a plethora of fresh faces more suited to the more modern football style he wanted from his team. He did this against the backdrop of a tight budget, but commendably portrayed the right message and was always upbeat about what was happening.

Huge credit to him for that.

However, Morison HAD to back this up with results on the pitch. This was to be the real acid test.

Some fans feared he was too cautious in his approach to games, needed to let gifted youngster Rubin Colwill off the leash far more. The critics would say his substitutions were by and large predictable, there was no real Plan B and perhaps the lack of a cutting edge was always going to cost in the end.

Whether that end came in May, or indeed right here just 10 games into the season.

It's such a shame that having done the painstaking and indeed excellent work throughout the summer, Morison perhaps wasn't quite bold enough with team selection to make the most of those fine transfer dealings. How often, for example, did we see Colwill and Romaine Sawyers together, two players of real craft in a side desperately lacking in it?

Go a goal up and Cardiff were fine; go a goal behind and you never had confidence in them playing catch up, clawing their way back into a game the way previous Bluebirds' sides often managed to do.

Tan, it must be stressed, isn't always ruthless with his managers. He backed Russell Slade, Neil Harris and indeed Mick McCarthy when fans were clamouring for them to go, hoping they could turn things around. He acted far more decisively with Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and Paul Trollope, plus Mackay to a degree.

The decision to dismiss Morison so shortly after backing him with a summer rebuild perplexes many supporters, but Tan could only see things getting worse, rather than better, and the trigger was pulled.

So what happens next? Morison's No.2 Mark Hudson has been put in temporary charge and, as a former Bluebirds captain and something of an icon at the club, he will be afforded latitude by lots of fans.

What Cardiff don't want to be doing is getting sucked into this habit of appointing temporary managers, giving them the job full time after impressive early results, only to then sack them. It happened with McCarthy, it's happened with Morison, it could well happen with Hudson.

But it does seem the ex-Bluebirds skipper will be given the chance to impress in the short term while Tan decrees what to do next on a permanent basis. As with McCarthy and Morison early in their tenures, it is likely to be about results.

Hudson, I'm told, is open to adopting a more aggressive approach to games. This is important. Morison had put together a decent squad for this level, but Hudson needs to choose a starting XI and devise tactics that have City aggressively on the front foot from the start of games.

If so, and if the goals come, that will earn him brownie points with Tan who wants to see far more in the way of proper scoring threat from these new players he has invested in.

Hopefully, Hudson's substitutions are a little more inventive, he fully recognises what Colwill can offer in the final third and gives him the chance to do that. Then it's up to the Welsh youngster to seize that opportunity.

The inevitable names have been put forward as the next full-time manager on the bookies' list of odds. Luton's Nathan Jones, out of work former Burnley boss Sean Dyche. Tony Pulis, Neil Warnock... the customary drill.

The one so many of the fans still covet is Craig Bellamy. In my opinion Cardiff should have gone for him previously - he gets the club, the supporters, would play the right way, has a brilliant football mind - but instead Tan opted down the Morison route.

They did, however, conduct a thorough process where a whole host of candidates were properly discussed, some of them left field figures like Michael Beale, who subsequently followed Steven Gerrard to Aston Villa.

Similar names will doubtless be raised again, but as things stand, and given recent evidence, the job is probably Mark Hudson's to gain - or lose.

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