Cardiff's Tan isn't one which will just wash away...
I had a tan once. Actually, I've had a tan a couple of times - having lived in Ibiza for three years it would have been a poor show if I didn't pick up a bit of colour, but what I'm on about is something which happened not long after I returned to God's Country.
While working in a/"the" callcentre, the girlfriend of a co-worker was wandering around offering spray tans - something which I'd never normally be interested in. Given the banality of my job at that time, however, I looked at this as a way of getting a bit of painless time off, so I enquired what was involved. I was told "Not a lot", but was then informed it cost £10. Ha! Not a chance, I said.
At this point other colleagues got involved. Let me explain. I'm a pretty hairy guy - long hair, sideburns, moustache... and my hirsute nature isn't just restricted to my face. To give you an idea, my Ibiza tan never got that good due to the sun's inability to penetrate my chest-rug. So, in a nutshell, the idea of me getting a spray-tan caused much mirth and a whipround quickly followed, with a view to painting me nice and orange.
So it was, that I found myself stripped down to my boxers in the toilets getting my first (and only) spray-on tan (I later found out they used the darkest tone of what I assume is called "bronze"), before re-entering the callcentre floor to great amusement. It's a shame I can't find the photos...
What's more, as anyone a bit more savvy with the whole fake tan thing will attest, you continue to grow darker for a day or two afterwards, so by the time I got to work the next day I did look pretty bronzed indeed. Everyone was pretty gutted, as in the end I just looked like I'd spent six months in the sun. I can pull off anything...
Thankfully for me though, this was a tan which would just wash off and fade away. For our cousins up the road, that appears to be far from the case (I bet some of you were wondering where this was going) as Vincent Tan continues to cause controversy with ludicrous decisions. This week, the Cardiff City supremo has replaced Head of Recruitment Iain Moody with Alisher Apsalyamov, a 23-year-old Kazakh who'd spent the summer painting the walls of Cardiff's stadium. Yep, you read that right.
Apsalyamov is a friend of Vincent Tan's son, and they both attended the same Swiss school, so it's clearly a case of "jobs for the boys" - although it has been rumoured that Apsalyamov Senior could well be making an investment into Cardiff - I'll believe that when I see it. It's also been rumoured Malky Mackay, who has done excellently so far, has been asked to resign, and when questioned directly about this they refused to deny it. Shocking, offensive... there are so many ways to describe that but needless to say it's not how a football club should be run.
In charge of player recruitment ahead of what'll be a crucial transfer window for the Redbirds, Apsalyamov is rumoured to only have experience of football through computer games, so this move does really seem farcical. Moody was crucial in bringing in Gary Medel as well as Steven Caulker, so there seems no logic to this unless, in Tan's eyes, a potential investment of capital automatically outweighs any "footballing decision". I think there'd be a lot of fans who'd dispute that.
There's already been protests about Tan's stewardship, mostly about changing the kit and the crest, however it seems this move really has upset the Cardiff faithful. For their sake, I hope this is the last ridiculous decision that their Malaysian owner is allowed to get away with. Sadly, I doubt that will be the case.