There's an upside to going down for Cardiff

SO let’s think of the positives for Cardiff fans. No queues on matchdays, more space to park the car, fewer derisory articles about the owner in the national press, more 3 o’clock kick-offs.

Okay, scrub the last one. Cardiff are back in the Championship after their foray with the big time and straight away there’s a fixture change – to Friday night. It used to only be Tranmere who played on Friday nights but Sky fancy a piece of this one.

So Bluebirds fans can get back on the M5 this evening and head north again, only this time there’s no need to take the turn off for Villa Park or The Hawthorns, ignore the signs for Stoke and Liverpool, don’t bother deviating through Manchester. It’s East Lancashire for you lot, the only saving grace being that the trip to Blackburn is happening in mid-summer rather than mid-winter.

That said, the joy of away-days to Rotherham and Middlesbrough are still to come. Welcome back to the second tier of the pyramid.

Blackburn versus Cardiff, eh? Seems a lifetime ago that we were looking forward to Germany versus Argentina. Now it’s Rovers v the Bluebirds from Ewood Park. For Thomas Muller, read Kenwyne Jones. How time flies.

My hunch is that Cardiff are going to come down with a bump, as well.

Logging on to the local press, it appears they’ve got a few defensive issues to resolve. I know, I know, they had defensive issues to resolve last year too but the latest problem is not enough fit defenders rather than not enough good ones.