BEST&WORST CARDIFF CITY
View From The Ninian podcaster Ben James hails Earnie and Stantona – just don’t mention the red home kit...
AROUND THE GROUNDS
XI
BEST: David Marshall, Danny Gabbidon, Mark Delaney, John Charles, Andy Legg, Peter Whittingham, Graham Kavanagh, Aaron Ramsey, Robin Friday, Robert Earnshaw, Jay Bothroyd.
WORST: Dimi Konstantopoulos, Martin John, Andy Jordan, Miguel Comminges, Jorn Schwinkendorf, Des Hamilton, Fan Zhiyi, Luigi Glombard, Guylain Ndumbu-Nsungu, Wilfried Zaha, Oumar Niasse.
PLAYER
B: The late Peter Whittingham [below]. Just a maestro, a one-off, a fantastic player and an even better human being. Scorer of great goals, provider of great assists, and loved the occasional cynical foul. He’s missed every day.
W: Where do you start? Australian goalkeeper Peter Zois played once before being shipped off due to an ‘erratic display’, then there’s Glombard, Niasse, Ndumbu-Nsungu, Schwinkendorf, and Solomon Taiwo too. We specialise in rubbish players, signed after impressing against us!
MOMENT
B: Ben Turner’s equaliser in the 2012 League Cup Final [top] was special, as was promotion in 2018. Also, the 0-0 draw with Scunthorpe to send us up in 1999 – a big memory for a young me.
W: Finding out our kit was turning red in 2012. We’d just been dumped out of the play-offs at West Ham – by the time I’d made it back across London, the very fabric of our football club had been unwoven by the owner.
GAME
B: Beating Leeds in the FA Cup in 2002. Ninian Park was electric – my first ever experience of a proper giant-killing.
W: April’s 4-0 home defeat to Swansea stung, but the most miserable match will always be losing at home to Stoke in the 2001-02 play-offs. It still hurts.
SEASON
B: 2017-18 and 2018-19 will live long in the memory – getting promoted, then making a good fist of things in the top tier, culminating in beating Manchester United at Old Trafford.
W: We’ve nearly gone bust so many times, but I try to forget 2013-14. Despite being in the Premier League, the red cloud hung over the club. It was a fractured, painful time to be a Cardiff supporter.
SIGNING
B: Bagging Whittingham for £350,000 from Aston Villa takes some beating.
W: Spending a club-record £7.5 million on Andreas Cornelius, only to flog him for a knockdown price six months later.
NICKNAME
B: Robert E
