Omer Riza eager to know what the future holds after Cardiff’s latest win

Posted Wednesday, October 23, 2024 by PA

Interim Cardiff manager Omer Riza has called for clarity over his position after extending the Bluebirds’ unbeaten run to four games with a convincing 2-0 home victory over Portsmouth.

Riza’s record reads 10 points from 12 since losing his opening game at Hull – and Cardiff are now out of the Sky Bet Championship relegation zone and up to 19th.

Whether the former Leyton Orient boss takes over on a full-time basis remains open to question, with owner Vincent Tan taking his time in making a permanent appointment.

“I have chats with the owner all the time,” said Riza, who has been in caretaker charge for exactly one month. “I spoke to him this morning and he was very nice and polite.

“Clarity is always best because then you can really move forward with the plans the club’s got in place, or the plans I might have.

“Of course, it would be nice to have some clarity, but in the meantime what’s important is that we are going well.

“We’re in a better position than we were there and that’s important, because from there you can always move forward.”

Cardiff, who took only one point from six games before Bulut was sacked, were high on confidence after thrashing Plymouth 5-0 on Saturday.

They led 2-0 after 13 minutes through Regan Poole’s own goal and Callum Robinson fourth of the season, and should have won by a far greater margin.

Riza said: “The boys started really well with confidence coming on the back of Saturday.

“The first 25-30 minutes we were excellent and maybe they came off it a little bit. We need to be better in those moments.

“The second half we lost a little bit of control of the game and we got a little bit tired, which was to be expected after Saturday.”

Portsmouth boss John Mousinho kept his players in the dressing room for some time.

Mousinho later described it as the longest post-match debrief of his managerial career, even showing his squads video clips of where they had gone wrong against Cardiff.

He said: “I’ve done plenty of swearing in the dressing room. It was a really poor performance and the biggest disappointment for me was the slow start.

“We started real sluggishly, flat-footed and we don’t switch on for a throw-in. On the back of that we allowed the ball in our net.

“The basics in terms of the way started the game was not good enough and we gave ourselves a mountain to climb.

“It feels like a real blow, particularly because of how positive things have been around the football club the past two weeks.”