Former Cardiff City star Craig Bellamy has delivered an honest and considered appraisal of the automatic promotion tussle between his employers and Fulham.
The race for promotion to the Premier League from the Championship is hotting up with Cardiff City and Fulham locked in a battle for the second automatic spot behind champions-elect Wolves.
Neil Warnock and Slavisa Jokanovic are the front-runners to lead their sides back to the big time after Tuesday night’s results saw the Cottagers leapfrog the Bluebirds into second spot after respective 1-0 wins and defeats against Reading and Aston Villa.
Fulham’s amazing form – 16 wins in their last 20 games – has seen them storm up the Championship table with four games remaining.
Cardiff do have a game in hand, though, as they go from being the hunted to the hunters for the last month of the season.
Many pundits are backing Fulham to seal the second automatic spot, so good has their form been.
And now former Cardiff City player and the club’s current U18s manager Craig Bellamy has delivered his honest verdict on the promotion race when appearing as a guest on Sky Sports’ The Debate… even if he is backing Warnock’s side to avoid the playoffs.
“Look they’ve (Cardiff) got a lot of character in the squad, that’s been enough all season to be fair to them,” Bellamy told The Debate.
“We didn’t quite expect – and this is us looking at it inside the club – them to do as well as they have done, we were looking at playoffs but credit to the manager, his staff, the players as well, they’ve shown big character all season.
“We knew we were coming into a difficult stage of the season, I tell you one thing you’ve got to say is well done to Fulham by the way, I think that’s 20 games, 16 wins, the run they’ve gone on – and it’s taken that good a run because that’s how well Cardiff have done.
“Got to give credit to Fulham and even about a month ago we were saying they’re the only one team I could see challenging Cardiff. Cardiff have even gone on a brilliant run themselves … it’s a tricky period, they are games you would expect Cardiff to go on and win, but Fulham do have the easier games but saying that they are up against teams in the relegation zone or thereabouts relegation and we all know at this stage of the season they can be very difficult.
“The class at Fulham is very good, but Cardiff’s character to be fair to them they just got to get back going now… but they’ve had setbacks (before) and bounced back. Fulham are easier on the eye, a lot of teams are easier on the eye than Cardiff but their character, with the manager as well, the group of men they have might be enough – MIGHT be enough – to get them through.”
Cardiff have Norwich, Nottingham Forest, Derby County, Hull City and Reading to play in the run-in.
Fulham meanwhile have London derbies against Brentford and Millwall before finishing the season with games against relegation threatened Sunderland and Birmingham.
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