New Cardiff City Financial Crisis according to News of the World

Alarming headlines will give Cardiff City fans a Sunday morning shock as tomorrow's edition will carry a story that Cardiff must pay the taxman £2.7M this week or face going bust.

It has been known that Cardiff City had a winding up order over an undisclosed tax amount but Peter Ridsdale has maintained it wasn't a problem, the club were in control of it and it was being amicably sorted.

However the newspaper claims that the club failed to meet its promised first instalment before Christmas of £1.2M and will face a new winding up order and certain transfer embargo unless it is paid this week.

The news will dismay more than 10,000 Bluebirds fans who have committed to next term's season tickets now under the impression it will help provide £3M for Dave Jones to launch a prmotion assault. If this story is true, we can guess where this money will be going although the paper also claims that the club have agreed verbally to sell rookie defender Adam Matthews to Manchester United for £4M - the club will surely be desperate to see that deal concluded quickly.

Ridsdale has given crednce to this story by being quoted in the newspaper, "We will have the money to pay the Revenue and we will pay them this week. I personally spoke to the Revenue before Christmas. I told them we can pay at the beginning of January and they were happy with that. We have a good relationship with them. They know what's happening. There will be funds coming in this month and I'm confident there will be no issue with the Revenue after January. We will have money to pay our tax bill and we'll have money to do things to the team."

"Fitting out the stadium cost £7m more than we envisaged so there has been a hangover from that but funds will be coming in shortly and the club is in healthy shape."


I'm sure we can expect more spin and a statement from Publicity Pete in the next day or so but these bad news stories are coming too thick and fast. Whatever happens, Ridsdale is suddenly appearing deeply flawed in the eyes of many Cardiff City fans and certainly someone in whom all trust is being lost.