John Fallon: Influenced by Pep and Jimmy, Brian Barry-Murphy plots his course at Cardiff

Cardiff City’s budget in the Championship outstripped most rivals last season and will dwarf the field of contenders one tier below.

The Welsh outfit have turned to the Corkman in their latest time of need. 

He begins the season on Saturday lunchtime against Peterborough United, mandated to steer the Bluebirds from a third tier they last inhabited 22 years ago.

Since then, Cardiff have delivered a concoction of euphoria and embarrassment for their fans, the joys of two promotions to the Premier League in the past 12 years immediately followed by relegation.

Vincent Tan, the controversial owner from 2010, descended from being carried shoulder-high by supporters in 2018 to a hate figure in the Welsh capital.

His €240m investment over 15 years at the helm is less remembered than his doomed decision within two years of changing the club colours from blue to red.

Although the Malaysian has stayed away from matches since 2023, he remains the overlord of the operation Barry-Murphy functions in.

The atmosphere inside the Cardiff City stadium when the Leesider is introduced to his new crowd at the weekend would feel a whole lot harmonious had Tan cut his losses by accepting a recent takeover bid from an American consortium led by Gareth Bale.

After leaving his hometown as a teen, Bale won five Champions League medals and captained Wales at the 2022 World Cup, their first appearances in 64 years.

He’s a national treasure, ideally positioned to restore the Cardiff identity eroded in the recent tumultuous past.

Bale is pondering his post-playing move and, backed by likeminded businessmen with similarly deep pockets, appears to have reconnecting his local club to the community foremost in his sights.

“We’d love for them to accept so we can take full control and get on with what we want to do, creating Cardiff into a club that we know it can be,” Bale said last month.

Were the centurion to get his wish, it would maintain a trend of glitz and glam across Welsh club ownership that felt unthinkable just over five years ago.

Wrexham have been resurrected through three successive promotions under the stewardship of Hollywood A-listers Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds, while Swansea City recently added rapper Snoop Dogg to their ownership group. He joins another investor Bale is familiar with, former Real Madrid team-mate Luka Modrić.

Those two staples of the Welsh circuit have the Championship scene to embrace this term, leapfrogging a
Cardiff outfit seemingly in a perpetual state of crisis.

Barry-Murphy is the man responsible for calming the storm in his singular purpose of automatic promotion.

It’s a world away from the 47-year-old’s last tenancy in management, hurtled into a battle to save the club he played for from the drop.

Six wins from his final 11 matches of the season achieved Rochdale’s mission but on a shoestring budget not even the loan signings of goalkeepers Gavin Bazunu and Robert Sanchez could ward it off two seasons later.

He left of his own accord, receptive to the idea of learning a trade which trouble-shooting circumstances at Rochdale denied him.

Manchester City for almost a decade has been the Pep Guardiola show, gradually assembling and varnishing a team into treble winners in 2023. Yet behind the Spaniard had worked a fleet of student coaches.

Mikel Arteta, Lee Carsley, and Enzo Maresca became star graduates and this gruelling 46-game campaign will test the credentials of Barry-Murphy to join the gallery.

He spent two years managing City’s elite development squad, effectively a reserve team hothousing and priming the supporting cast. Cole Palmer and Oscar Bobb were just two.

Again, he departed on his own terms. It was a shelf-life, Rolls-Royce job with benefits, albeit detached from the scraps he relished in the English lower leagues as a player.

“It sounds selfish but I have got what I wanted from that experience,” he admitted to The Athletic last year about his City schooling.

A degree of normality surrounded his next step, assisting Ruud Van Nistelrooy over a six-month relegation fight blitz that ultimately came up short for Leicester.

His Cardiff City challenge is something of a hybrid.

Big club, dormant fanbase but peripheral to the limelight.

Senior players, including Wales captain Aaron Ramsey, Joe Ralls, Callum O’Dowda. and Dimitrious Goutas have exited and the absence of recruits to replace them is reflective of the hand he’s inherited.

Still, the retained squad is considered of sufficient standard to see off the likes of Barnsley, led by fellow Corkman Conor Hourihane, Reading, Huddersfield Town and Luton Town. First, he has to outwit another manager with a famous father, Darren Ferguson.

Of all the influences on Barry-Murphy — David Moyes who signed him from Cork City to Pep — the imperative of winning imparted by his legendary father Jimmy constitutes the relevant advice in this project.

Nothing less will do.

‘Football Families’ shines light on starlets

Shelbourne’s current stars are in Champions League action tonight but the next generation features in a three-part series on RTÉ One, starting tomorrow night.

Football Families aims to provide an insight into the lifestyle of budding talent in the post-Brexit era where the traditional route to UK clubs at age 16 is closed.

Eighteen is now the minimum age, placing the onus on League of Ireland clubs to nurture youngsters across national leagues.

Initial plans to use the Shamrock Rovers academy were scrapped and episode one concentrates on the boys’ section of the Shels set-up.

Camera crews trace the various backstories of the protagonists, starting with Jayden Marshall trying to follow in the steps of brother Darragh by earning international recognition. There’s the challenges faced by Cillian O’Sullivan, similar in style and stature to Damien Duff, who was filmed for the documentary before he quit as first-team boss last month. Goalkeeper Ali Topcu and a striker who emerged through the set-up into Duff’s first team, Daniel Ring, also figure.

A recurrent theme of the production is scarcity of resources. Shels are well financed by benefactors but not to the extent comparable with UK set-ups.

October’s budget is being eagerly awaited for Government grants, but the FAI offering merely a conditional acceptance to a second invitation before an Oireachtas committee on September 24 has further soured the outlook of politicians. Acceptance is apparently subject to “ongoing legal advice”.

City woes parked for reunion of 2005 group

Despite dark clouds around Cork City’s present plight, there is some welcome respite this Saturday when members of the 2005 Premier Division winning team reunite to mark the 20th anniversary.

An epic league campaign culminated in a win-or-bust clash against Derry City at a packed Turner’s Cross, where goals by John O’Flynn and Liam Kearney sealed a first top-flight title for 12 years and a second for the club.

City supporters’ trust Foras (Friends of the Rebel Army Society) have helped arrange the event, leaning on defensive mainstay Neal Horgan to make contact with the squad and staff, many of whom are scattered across the world.

Similar to the successful 2017 season with Seáni Maguire leaving for Preston North End in the summer transfer window, City lost their main striker Kevin Doyle (along with Shane Long) to Reading in midseason.

Led by evergreen manager Damien Richardson, City held off the challenge posed by Stephen Kenny’s Derry’s team to claim the trophy.

A night of premium nostalgia and a chance to rekindle memories is guaranteed at Coughlan’s on Douglas St.

Tickets priced at €15, are available at forastrust.ie/20.

Email: john.fallon@examiner.ie