A blue day for Cardiff City fans as owner sacks manager

Cardiff City Football Club owner Vincent Tan brought to an end his festering feud with manager Malky Mackay by announcing the Scot's sacking, the fourth Premier League manager to lose his job this month.

The Malaysian billionaire, who has tested the patience of fans of the south Wales club with a series of controversial decisions, made little secret of his contempt for Mr Mackay and demanded he quit, but the Scot refused to oblige.

"The board of directors at Cardiff City Football Club have today relieved Malky Mackay of his duties," a statement on the club's website read. "A new first team manager will be appointed and announced in due course."

Mr Tan's stewardship of the club has highlighted the problems associated with football clubs falling into the hands of foreign owners oblivious to their traditions and heritage.

The controlling shareholder of Berjaya Philippines investment group, Mr Tan bought Cardiff in 2010 and recruited the Scot in 2011, an appointment that quickly brought rewards.

Mr Mackay's astute husbanding of limited resources led Cardiff to the League Cup final in 2012 and resulted in the club winning last season's Championship, thereby earning promotion to the Premier League for the first time in its history.

But along with the euphoria of success on the pitch, fans learned to stomach the whims of their club's owner who confessed he knew little about football when he first invested in Cardiff in 2009.

Although the club had long been nicknamed the Bluebirds, he announced last year he was changing the club's blue strip to red because of the colour's association with good luck in Asia.

Despite Cardiff's reasonable showing in this season's Premier League, matters began to unravel in October, when the club's head of recruitment was forced out, being replaced by a little-known 23-year-old.

An email from Mr Tan to Mr Mackay emerged last week in which the owner listed his grievances against the manager, mainly over transfer policy, and demanded he resign or face the sack. The feud led fans at matches to vent their fury against the owner and express their support for the manager.

Acting as a go-between has been Mehmet Dalman, the former chairman of miner ENRC.

Mr Dalman, the club's chairman, sought to broker a truce between owner and manager. He said on December 22 that Mr Mackay would remain manager "for the foreseeable future". But a 0-3 home defeat to Southampton on Boxing day appears to have sealed Mr Mackay's fate.

Mr Tan laid the blame for the feud at Mr Mackay's door. He told Sky Sports News that "far too much dirty linen has been exposed to the public gaze but, I stress, not by me.

"Indeed, I have deliberately not responded to this, hoping that the club can be judged on its football rather than personalised arguments about who said what to whom."

December has proved a cruel month for Premier League football managers, as owners take drastic action to arrest their clubs' ailing fortunes. Fulham, West Bromwich Albion, Tottenham Hotspur and now Cardiff City have all parted company with their managers. Sunderland and Crystal Palace did so earlier in the season.

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