The cupboard was bare....

Whoever the next Cardiff City manager is, and according to the latest rumours we should know this weekend, he's going to feel a bit like Old Mother Hubbard when he looks in the playing cupboard, because it's pretty bare.

Tonight's Echo showed the Bluebirds current squad as its stands for next season, and certainly isn't going to put fear into any of the other teams in the Championship. It reads like this:



'Keepers
Tom Heaton
David Marshall
Jordan Santiago

Defenders
Darcy Blake
Anthony Gerrard
Gabor Gyepess
Mark Hudson
Dekel Kienan
Lee Naylor
Kevin McNaughton
Paul Quinn
Alex Evans

Midfield
Stephen McPhail
Peter Whittingham
Aaron Wildig
Solomon Taiwo
Jon Meades
Ibrahim Farah

Strikers
Nat Jarvis
Jon Parkin

That's 20 players. Three are first year pros. Three were out on loan last year. Of the strikers, one's a first year pro and the other only came in at Christmas and barely got a look in (and whilst a fan favourite hardly strikes fear into the opposition (apart from their snack bar).

We've got 9 defenders, but our defending was pretty ordinary last season (I'm trying to be generous, OK!).

Only about half of the players played anything like regularly for City last term.

OK, so it's only June. We haven't got a manger, so it's unlikely anything will happen until we do, but looking at that lot, he's going to have his work cut out and he's certainly going to have to earn his corn to make City competitive next season.

Oh, and Chopra has gone......