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A first season in English football’s third tier for more than two decades might not be an obvious catalyst for fans to rekindle their love for a club that was in the Premier League less than seven years ago.

After all, nobody wants to get relegated once, never mind twice. But for Cardiff City, dropping down to League One has been a chance to reset.

The Bluebirds had been treading water in the Championship, with supporters lurching between apathy and anger before relegation eventually came last year.

An exodus of senior players, constant managerial upheaval and an unpopular owner all contributed to relatively modest expectations at the start of this season, even in League One.

Losing had become a habit, the style of play was somewhere between tedious and unwatchable, and some supporters had come to view attending games as a chore – if they went at all.

Six months into the campaign, however, and Cardiff are reborn. They are top of the table and playing exciting football with a core of young Welsh players, who are blossoming under the guidance of new head coach Brian Barry-Murphy.

The Bluebirds have not known joy like this for an age, but it comes with a warning.

Some believe Cardiff simply stumbled upon this transformation, a happy accident brought about by relegation – a rare triumph for owner Vincent Tan, whose dysfunctional running of the club had led to fan protests just a few months ago.

Speaking to fans outside Cardiff City Stadium this season, it is hard to believe that, less than a year ago, some of the same people were here staging furious demonstrations.

Now, the blue smoke from flares, the placards and the “Tan out” chants have been replaced with contentment and a newfound confidence.

“We’re going to win this league easily,” says Richie from Blaenau. “The togetherness means it’s different and we’re starting to fall back in love with the club after a difficult season last year. I think we’re going right to the top.

“It’s class to see the young players. They’re doing well, enjoying their football and they’ll have a go, and that’s all we want to see. I think relegation has been a blessing in a way.”

Kyle, 60, is of the same opinion. “It’s great fun this year, much better than last year, more exciting and we’re winning games,” he says. “It’s the only positive of relegation.

As chair of Cardiff City Supporters’ Trust and a retired chartered accountant, Keith Morgan has a broader understanding than most about the pitfalls of relegation.

“As a fan, relegation hurts. I’m nearly 69 but football still hurts you,” he says.

“If we’d stayed up last season, I don’t think Vincent Tan could have been convinced to give Barry-Murphy the job, and it would have been another season of struggle.

“There was a young lad behind me at one game last season, kicking my chair as he was bored. The man next to him warned him: ‘If you don’t stop that, I’ll bring you to the next game!’

Given his professional background, Morgan knows not to get carried away.

“Financially, it’s never good to get relegated,” he adds. “It cost Cardiff around £10m from a loss of TV revenue and solidarity payments from the Premier League, so that forced the club to think about how it could save money.

“A lot of that was saved by not renewing the contracts of players, as well as some relegation clauses in other players’ contracts.”

With 12 senior players leaving in the summer – and more departing on loan since then – Cardiff started this season as something of an unknown quantity.

For the opening fixture against Peterborough United, Barry-Murphy picked the youngest Cardiff line-up for a league game this century, with 10 academy products in the matchday squad.

They repaid his faith with a win and, 28 games later, the Bluebirds are two points clear at the top of League One and eight ahead of the chasing pack outside the automatic promotion places.

“I’ve covered Cardiff City for BBC Radio Wales for well over 20 years now and this is the most enjoyable season, and that includes the promotions under Neil Warnock and Malky Mackay,” says former captain Jason Perry.

“This is the first time I can truly see the identity of Cardiff City because there’s no coincidence that gates are up, people are smiling and enjoying it because we’re seeing a side now that presses with intensity, dominates possession, continues to look forward and use the ball so it’s not passing for passing’s sake.

As much as the mood has undoubtedly improved this season, the root causes of Cardiff’s recent troubles have not simply disappeared.

Tan remains a divisive figure, as do chairman Mehmet Dalman and chief executive Ken Choo.

They were the target of numerous protests last season, some of which saw hordes of supporters marching to Cardiff City Stadium, holding banners and singing songs demanding that Tan and his fellow board members leave.

Some of the ill feeling can be traced back to Tan’s highly controversial rebranding of the club’s colours from red to blue in 2012, even though he reversed the decision three years later.

More recently, the anger relates to his perceived lack of interest, with Tan having not attended a home game for more than two years.

Then, perhaps most damningly, there is the way he, Dalman and Choo have run the club.

Fans, former players and pundits have all highlighted the startling lack of football knowledge at board level, with no layer of expertise between Tan and the many managers he has hired and fired.

Cardiff at least tried a new method in their appointment of Barry-Murphy, forming a one-off sub-committee which included the club’s academy manager Gavin Chesterfield, former Swansea City sporting director Mark Allen and members of the Wasserman agency. However, the final decision still belonged to Tan.

“They didn’t plan to get relegated,” says Perry. “And in hiring Barry-Murphy, is it really a thorough process that we’ve got to the outcome of getting him? I don’t think so.

“It’s a filtering system, a few people narrowing it down to five choices, and those five choices go then to the owner.

“The problem will always be the owner, simply because he hasn’t got that knowledge to pick out of those five. Nathan Jones was in there [on the shortlist], there were others who weren’t similar to Barry-Murphy.

“I’ll only start calling it a process if Barry-Murphy goes and the next appointment is very similar. Then it becomes a process, get another coach who puts a team out that we can identify with as supporters and is also successful.

“But you must have knowledge of what you’re looking for. The same problems are here at this club, and they need to change for us to have success continuously.”

Given how well the Barry-Murphy appointment has gone so far, then, might Tan be convinced to use a director of football or similar on a permanent basis?

“The total opposite,” Perry says. “I think he’ll get carried away, so much so that it will reinforce his own opinion of himself, that he is the right man because of what we’re seeing now.

“He will not look at the process and put his hands up and go, ‘possibly we’re fortunate here because it wasn’t our first choice’.

“You have to be honest, reflection is a key part of football or any big business, but when you reflect you have to be honest and you have to look at your skillset. Then you have to either improve that skillset or you bring somebody in that has those skills. Unfortunately, at City we don’t have that and that is my concern.”

There is no guarantee of an instant return to the Championship. It took Cardiff 18 years to get back to that level when they were last relegated to the third tier in 1985.

Of the 30 teams to have been in the Premier League and relegated to League One, six have never made it back to the Championship.

Given how Cardiff are going this season, they should not add to that number.

Promotion will not fix everything, though.

“I came into this season determined to enjoy it,” says Perry.

“We’re doing well, playing a brand that we identify with and everybody’s happy.

Newcastle United players waited impatiently in the tunnel at the Etihad.

It was three minutes until kick-off and the Carabao Cup holders were desperate to get going as a bemused Kieran Trippier looked around and wondered where his counterparts from Manchester City were.

There was no sign of Pep Guardiola’s team.

The hosts took their time to emerge from the dressing room, but they quickly left Newcastle in a daze after racing into a 3-0 lead in the second leg of their semi-final.

On a day CEO David Hopkinson doubled down on his assertion that Newcastle will be competing for the biggest prizes by 2030, the naive visitors looked a long way off in that first half.

Head coach Eddie Howe certainly did not hold back in the away dressing room as he made a triple change at half-time.

“I was really annoyed,” he said.

Not for the first time.

Newcastle managed to rally after the break and pulled one back through substitute Anthony Elanga as they bowed out with a 5-1 defeat on aggregate.

Despite the loss, those 5,400 supporters in the away end repeatedly chanted “Eddie Howe’s black and white army”, in recognition of the head coach who ended the club’s seven-decade wait for a major domestic trophy in this very competition.

In truth, Newcastle have yet to catch fire six months into the campaign.

That may seem a curious statement.

Newcastle have reached a third EFL Cup semi-final in four years.

Howe’s side remain favourites to progress past Qarabag into the last 16 of the Champions League.

They could still get back to Wembley through the FA Cup – even if an awkward fourth-round tie against Aston Villa awaits next week.

But Newcastle sit in 11th place in the Premier League.

The players previously spoke among themselves about trying to make history once again by becoming the first Newcastle side to qualify for the Champions League in successive campaigns.

However, this travel sick team have only won two away games in the top flight this season.

Howe’s men have picked up just 11 points from a possible 36 against those sides currently above them in the division.

They have dropped 16 points from winning positions.

It has felt like a season of transition, following the damaging departure of top scorer Alexander Isak, and Howe’s response was telling when asked if he could tolerate such a word this week.

“I can,” he said. “Transition from the team is an obvious one because we brought players in from the summer and we lost players in the summer.

“There was always going to be a change to the team. Now change doesn’t have to be negative – it can be positive. We are trying to find that flow and rhythm that we have been searching for all season, really.

There have certainly been glimpses of what this team could be in recent weeks.

There was a devastating first-half display against Chelsea, a spirited hour away to Paris St-Germain and a fine opening half an hour or so at Anfield.

But games are not won in snatches.

It has been a frustration of the coaching staff that they have lacked the training time during an unrelenting run of fixtures to really work on things and piece it all together like they have during previous sticky spells.

Instead the players have come to rely on meeting rooms, analysis sessions and walk-throughs.

This is the reality of life at clubs who aspire to fight on multiple fronts, of course, but competing in four competitions was an unprecedented feat for Newcastle going into February.

The relentless nature of the schedule has had a knock-on effect on the squad – Bruno Guimaraes, Joelinton, Tino Livramento and Fabian Schar are all currently sidelined, while Anthony Gordon hobbled off with a hamstring issue on Wednesday night.

It has also had an impact on the adaptation of Newcastle’s summer signings who, aside from defender Malick Thiaw, are still finding their feet at the club.

Thiaw, Jacob Ramsey, Nick Woltemade and Yoane Wissa all joined in the final fortnight or so of a turbulent window, in which the club operated without a sporting director and missed out on a host of top targets.

Newcastle, remarkably, are still searching for a settled combination in the final third despite spending £179m on forwards.

Elanga enjoyed a lively second-half cameo at the Etihad, but Woltemade was substituted at half-time – having failed to score since December – while the rusty Wissa missed a host of good chances in both legs.

It leaves Newcastle with more questions than answers as they embark on a crunch run of fixtures.

“Where does that leave our season?” Howe asked. “We’re still fighting on several fronts.

“He’s been the best player on the pitch.”

On the night Andreas Skov Olsen netted his first Rangers goal, scoring in a win that took the Ibrox side to within three points of the Scottish Premiership summit, it was the winger on the opposite flank who staked his claim to become a guaranteed starter in Danny Rohl’s side.

In the aftermath of Sunday’s goalless draw at Hibernian, Rangers’ lack of creativity from open play came into focus again.

Teenage Mikey Moore, signed on loan from Tottenham Hotspur in the summer, was the only bright spark in Rohl’s attack during a blunt display in Leith.

It was a cameo that had sections of the Rangers support questioning why the 18-year-old had not started, but he was presented that opportunity against Kilmarnock three days later.

Within three minutes, the teenager had perfectly threaded a pass through for Djeidi Gassama to win a spot-kick, resulting in an early red card for the visitors and a goal from captain James Tavernier.

Terrorising the Kilmarnock defence throughout, the Spurs youngster then registered a second-half assist for Skov Olsen before capping off a sublime performance with a goal that proved to be the final kick of a thumping 5-1 win.

A goal, an assist and five chances created.

That alone tells the story of a busy night for Moore, whose midweek appearance at Ibrox was just his 13th league start of the season.

The forward is building a promising relationship on the Rangers left with full-back Jayden Meghoma, while Rohl can also be encouraged with how he combined with winter signings Skov Olsen and Tuur Rommens during their exciting cameos.

However, former Rangers forward Rory Loy was particularly impressed with the youngster’s movement.

Driving to the byeline, jinking in off the left, and also finding himself space in central areas, Loy described Moore’s movement as “nothing short of sensational”.

Speaking on BBC Sportsound, he added: “Two or three passes before he gets the ball, defenders don’t know where he is.

“It’s been a masterclass in how to receive the ball in tight areas. He can go both ways, which keeps defenders guessing.”

Moore’s team-mates created just seven chances between them at Hibs on Sunday.

He registered five alone on Wednesday, while his seven dribbles were also higher than any other player.

Game state has to come into that, of course. At the weekend, Rangers were playing against 11 men, away to a top-six side. Struggling Kilmarnock were a man and a goal down after a few minutes on Wednesday.

A goal-scoring performance from the England youth international in the Old Firm derby win at Celtic last month looked set to ignite his Ibrox career, but seven games without a goal contribution followed.

Despite that, the Ibrox side just appear a livelier and more unpredictable proposition with Moore in the line-up.

A mid-season injury and squad rotation has meant Moore has failed to feature in 12 of Rangers’ 25 league matches, but Rohl is now demanding consistency as his side attempt to reel Hearts in.

“We know Mikey, that should be the level for him again and again,” the Rangers head coach told BBC Scotland.

Manchester City boss Pep Guardiola wants the English Football League to change their rules to allow Marc Guehi to play in the Carabao Cup final against Arsenal.

Guehi was ineligible to play as City completed a 5-1 aggregate victory over Newcastle in Wednesday’s semi-final second leg and is also set to miss out when they take on the Gunners on 22 March at Wembley.

City signed the 25-year-old England centre-back from Crystal Palace after their 2-0 first leg win over the Magpies.

However, competition rules dictate that he had to have joined them “prior to the closure of the Winter transfer window, or the first leg of the semi-final (whichever is sooner)” to be eligible to play.

“You buy a player for a lot of money and he is not able to play for a rule I don’t understand. Hopefully they can change it,” he added.

City’s other January signing, winger Antoine Semenyo, arrived at the club from Bournemouth four days prior to their trip to the north east for the first leg against Newcastle, in which he scored.

“Antoine arrived before the first [game] so could play. And now it’s the final. Why should he [Guehi] not play? Why not? We pay his salary, he is our player,” Guardiola added.

“I said to the club, they have to ask, definitely. I don’t understand the reason why he cannot play in the final in March, when I have been here for a long time.

“The rules to buy a player depends on Fifa, Uefa, the Premier League who say, OK the transfer window is open, when you buy a player you have to play, no? It’s logic. Of course we are going to try to ask [for] him to play. Pure logic.

Asked what he thought the answer will be from the EFL, City’s Spanish boss, added: “No. But we will try.”

City have already benefited from one rule change this season that allowed players to play for two teams in the same competition, instead of being cup tied.

Algerian boxer Imane Khelif says she would take a sex test if it allowed her to compete at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympic Games.

Khelif, who won women’s welterweight gold at the 2024 Paris Olympics, has since faced scrutiny over her gender eligibility.

In 2023, she and Taiwanese fighter Lin Yu-ting were disqualified from the World Championships by the International Boxing Association (IBA) for allegedly failing gender eligibility tests.

Khelif spoke to CNN on Wednesday, saying she had “nothing to hide” and would comply with testing requirements if conducted by the IOC.

“Of course, I would accept doing anything I’m required to do to participate in competitions,” she said.

“They should protect women, but they need to pay attention that while protecting women, they shouldn’t hurt other women.”

Khelif, 26, has always fought in women’s categories. “I’m not transgender. I’m a woman,” she told CNN. “I want to live my life. Please do not exploit me in your political agendas.”

US President Donald Trump last year referred to Khelif as a “male boxer” after he had signed an executive order that prevents transgender women from competing in female categories of sports.

A new body, World Boxing, was granted provisional recognition as the sport’s international governing federation by the IOC in February 2025.

It has introduced mandatory genetic tests for athletes to “determine their sex at birth and their eligibility to compete”.

When announcing the change, it cited Khelif – and later apologised for that.

Khelif lodged an appeal with the Court of Arbitration for Sport (Cas) over World Boxing’s introduction of mandatory tests in August.