Cardiff City finished the Championship season with a 1-1 home draw with relegated Rotherham United, meaning they finished the campaign in 8th place.
The Bluebirds finished on 68 points, nine points behind the play-off places. Despite missing out on a top six finish, there are several positives to be taken away from a long Championship season.
The most obvious positive from the 2020/21 season is City’s top scorer and player of the season, Kieffer Moore. The Welshman finished the season with 20 league goals and is the first person to reach this landmark since Peter Whittingham 11 years ago.
The striker arrived at the start of the season for just £2million and has been a revelation in his first season for the club.
The other new faces at the club, Perry Ng, Dillon Phillips, along with Liverpool loanees, Harry Wilson and Sheyi Ojo, also had an impressive season with the Blues.
Wilson will go back to Liverpool with 7 goals and 11 assists. Most notably a hat-trick just last week against Birmingham.
Towards the end of January, Cardiff found themselves on a run of six consecutive defeats, meaning they were sat in 15th place, a mere three points away from the relegation zone.
From this point, the board decided to sack manager, Neil Harris. Harris helped City finish in a play-off place in the previous campaign but his results in the first half of this season meant he would not continue with the club.
Soon after, former Wolves and Republic of Ireland boss, Mick McCarthy was named first team coach until the end of the season.
It took 12 games for McCarthy to experience his first loss as Cardiff manager. Which included an impressive six game win streak. It was he, who got fans believing a play-off place was still possible.
In December Cardiff lost 2-0 to South Wales rivals, Swansea before getting their revenge in March when they held on to get a well-fought 1-0 victory at the Liberty Stadium.
City’s biggest defeat this season came late on in the season against, now relegated, Sheffield Wednesday in a 5-0 defeat away.
It was publicly announced in January that Bluebirds defender and fan-favourite, Sol Bamba, has been diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin lymphoma and was already undergoing treatment.
Bamba made a late appearance in City’s final game of the season against Rotherham.
After the game, manager Mick McCarthy said: “It is always our intention to finish as high as we possibly can”.
“I’m a bit miffed, I thought we could have had more points with some of them draws, but then you could probably look across games and see we got a win when we shouldn’t have done,” McCarthy added.
McCarthy is expected to have a big player haul this summer with six players out of contract. He has also said we will find out soon who will be staying and who will be going.
Can McCarthy get Cardiff a play-off place next season?
