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Dave Jones wants to make stunning Cardiff City return and fulfil Premier League dream
Former Cardiff City manager Dave Jones has revealed his desire to return to his old club and help them implement solid foundations to achieve promotion to the Premier League.
Many City supporters would tell you some of their best times watching their beloved Bluebirds were when Jones was at the helm between 2005 and 2011. During that time, the club reached the Championship play-off final and the FA Cup final in an era brimming with excitement.
Jones's Bluebirds fell just short of promotion to the Premier League on more than one occasion, but have achieved it twice since he departed as manager. The former Everton defender, 68, believes he has unfinished business with Cardiff and his representatives have spoken with the hierarchy over the possibility of Jones being able to assist moving forward, whether that be as an interim boss or, more likely, a sporting director.
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Jones believes the most important ingredient might be missing from Cardiff, due to the high turnover in managers in recent years, which has resulted in them losing their DNA and identity, which was so evident during his lengthy spell in the Bluebirds' dugout.
"Part and parcel of it, when I was there, was that it was all about the culture and identity of the club," Jones tells WalesOnline.
"People who run businesses feel that running a football club is the same, but it's totally different. The football world is a crazy world.
"You are relying on individuals to pull together to be a team and you need a club philosophy to do that. But they've had a lot of managers over the last few years and they keep bringing in their own philosophies, which means that identity gets lost.
"I'd love to go back. I felt hard done by when I left, considering what I'd done for the club. I didn't finish it off. But I'm sure there are lots of reasons, like whenever we got somewhere we had to sell, but that was my remit.
"But the club then had a DNA and went on to do reasonably well. And now the last four or five years it's not worked out for anyone who has come in. But if you keep chopping and changing managers, or you've not got football people coming in, then that can happen. I don't know, because you'd have to be in it to see it, live it, breathe it and find out where the problems are.
"A lot of people who work in football clubs, their hearts are in the right place, but they haven't got that mentality within the football environment to push it on. It's quite a dog eat dog environment and you have to be ruthless in what you do. But the biggest thing you have to do in any club is find its DNA, what the club is about."
The Liverpudlian has been in football a long time — first as a player with Everton, Coventry City and Preston North End and then as a manager with Stockport, Southampton, Wolves, Cardiff and Sheffield Wednesday — and has held consultancy roles since his last job in management at Hartlepool in 2017.
During his time at Cardiff, Jones signed players who either became club legends or netted the club some real cash - or both. The likes of Peter Whittingham Michael Chopra, Jay Bothroyd and Ross McCormack just roll of the tongue when you think back to that time. While youth was also given its time, too, a certain Aaron Ramsey was reared and brought through by Jones, while other academy products like Joe Ledley also got their opportunities.
He believes he has all the tools, transfer knowledge and confidence in promoting youth in the right way in order to be a successful technical director, and could implement a long-term vision to help the Bluebirds become a sustainably successful club. It's the type of position many Cardiff supporters have cried out for over the years – bemoaning a lack of football knowledge at board level.
"My head is full of knowledge, bursting with knowledge," he adds. "I've done other things at other clubs, helped young coaches. I've not picked the team or told them how to go about certain things, but I've been more of a soundboard for them.
"We've all been there and it becomes a lonely job when you're not doing well, but that's what a sporting director or technical director's job is – to support the manager or head coach in what he wants.
"The best way to look at it is, the manager is short-term, the sporting director is for the long term. The manager looks game-to-game, which they have to, to get the results, and the guy above him then has to look for the future of the club and make sure those bonds are strong and not flaky.
"It's being on sandy ground. If it's shifting all the time, there are no guidelines within the club, because every time you chop and change a new coach tries to bring in something new. Then, eventually, you lose the DNA of your club."
Chairman Mehmet Dalman as recently as this summer put the question of appointing a sporting director to Vincent Tan, but the Malaysian owner has appeared lukewarm at best to the idea. Sign up to our daily Cardiff City newsletter here.
Tan has never really countenanced such a proposal since the days of Iain Moody, Malky Mackay's right-hand man a decade or so ago. Jones understands that, but believes his strong working relationship with Tan means there is a trust between them.
"He has had his fingers burned in the past with the last one he had. It would be more about trust," Jones says of Tan's apparent reluctance to appoint a director of football.
"With Vincent, it's nothing to do with him wanting full power. He was never like that when I was there. He let me get on with it, coach it, look after the football side. I just think he had a bad experience with one and it's stuck with him.
"I got on really well with Vincent and always got on well with him. He said to me once that I was the only manager who made him money rather than cost him money!
"My remit was to build a football club that was struggling. They needed to find someone who was going to settle everything down. When I took over they got promoted the year before and really struggled in the Championship. When I went I had more staff than players, because the club had to sell to survive. I took that job on that remit.
"I knew every window we'd have to sell players for a minimum of £5m and over the course of the season we had to get £10m in. Then we started to win games, fans came back, we moved into a new stadium, cleared the debts, had a training ground, everything was flying. The one thing I didn't deliver was promotion.
"We came close many times, but if your best players keep getting taken away from you at the important part of the season, you'll always struggle.
"But I loved my time there. I have still got a place down there. I loved everything about the club. I was there eight and a half years. Even under Sam Hammam or Vincent, I always got on well with them."
Cardiff currently find themselves managerless, at the time of writing, and once again firefighting near the bottom end of the table for the third time in four seasons.
Clearly there is no easy fix and Jones agrees with that sentiment. He believes this is a long-term project for someone and it will require patience. In his own words: "I have longevity. I'm not a short-term fix for anybody. I am a long-term person because if you're going to build something, it doesn't happen over two months. It's a process you've got to go through."
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Omer Riza is the man in caretaker charge and he has been for more than 50 days following Erol Bulut's sacking. It was the worst start in Cardiff's 125-year history after seven games, but under Riza results have improved drastically and despite heading into this international break in the relegation zone, he has restored some hope.
Promotion to the Premier League is highly unlikely this season, of course, but to plot that course to the top, the work must start now, Jones argues.
Because the fire still burns within him to see his old club, one which he still adores, get back into the top flight and he believes he still has value to add. Whether Jones is in the dugout or the boardroom, it doesn't matter to him. A Cardiff promotion is a big, beaming omission from his bucket list and he is desperate to tick it off.
More importantly, he wants to help the club build for success in the future and break this cycle of disappointment.
"It's a great club and it deserves to get back to where it belongs. It's got the infrastructure and the fan base," he says.
"When they have gone up, the one thing they haven't done is build to stay in it. And the Championship is the hardest one to get out of and the Premier League is the hardest one to stay in. That tells you the foundations weren't there. They are on sandy ground.
"A similar thing happened at Wolves, but if you look at Wolves now, they realised the mistakes they made and turned themselves into an established Premier League club. Cardiff have the infrastructure and fan base to do that. It's two of the three ingredients, you just need the players and the staff.
"Nothing would give me greater pleasure than going back to somewhere I love. I loved living there, my children loved it. If the opportunity did arise, why would I not take that chance? If there is an opportunity, then fantastic. If not, I wish them all the best.
"I only had good memories, just the one thing, that final bit, the promotion [that I didn't get]."
