Cardiff City chairman steps in during Erol Bulut press conference as decision imminent

Erol Bulut says he hopes the decision over his future as Cardiff City manager will be made soon and the outcome is "positive" for both sides.

Bulut oversaw a less-than-ideal final home game of the season, losing 4-1 at home to Middlesbrough. Given his future is still undecided, with Vincent Tan yet to communicate his final decision on the manager, it was clearly not the result he was hoping for.

Chairman Mehmet Dalman and CEO Ken Choo were in the press room for Bulut's post-match media conference, a sight which is rarely if ever seen, and the former even jumped in to interject when the manager was asked about his future.

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When a question was put to Bulut about his future, Dalman intercepted it by saying: "Why don't you let me have dinner with him tonight?"

Clearly, a decision on the manager's future is imminent. Even at 4-0 down, those in the Canton Stand were heard singing "Erol Bulut, we want you to stay" despite a chastening afternoon on the pitch.

When Bulut did eventually answer, he said: "It's up to the board. The chairman is here (in press room) and he gave the answer before. We hope it's positive from both sides."

The manager, who will be attending the end-of-season awards evening at the stadium on Saturday evening along with the board members, did say that the top brass are happy with the progress which has been made this season.

"The last game at home, we wanted to win in front of the fans, it didn't happen. If we see the whole season, until now, I am personally satisfied with the season," he said.

"I think our fans and our board are satisfied with where we are now. We have one more game left against Rotherham. We could have had a few points more but we have built really good and progressed as a club this season. Cardiff can only build on it."

On the game itself, Bulut said: “I’m disappointed with the result, to concede four goals, but if we see the whole game, how many chances we had, we didn’t deserve to lose that game by three goals," he said of the game.

“We had enough chances to score and even to lead, but we concede in the last second of the first half. Then in the second half we concede a goal in three minutes. That was an unlucky goal.

“We had enough chances to come back but we couldn’t finalise our chances. We don’t have to forget also that we didn’t have half of the team with us today, but this is not the reason that we didn’t score. We didn’t have the final touch today.