Erol Bulut reveals bold personal ambition in first TV interview since new Cardiff City deal

Erol Bulut has revealed he wants to manage in the Premier League one day and hopes he can do that with Cardiff City.

Bulut took a team which had narrowly escaped relegation and, despite two tricky transfer windows, rotten injury luck and periods of bad form, managed to steer the Bluebirds to 12th in the table.

Granted, it's not all been plain sailing, and the six-week wait for him to sign a new deal was agonising for Cardiff fans, but he eventually put pen to paper on a new two-year deal with the club.

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Quite what the next two years looks like remains to be seen. Cardiff simply have to add goals to their squad, while they need reinforcements at the back, too, if they are to mount a sustained challenge at the top end of the table. But Bulut has always been consistent in voicing his ambition and has said, in his first interview since signing the new deal, that he wants to take Cardiff into the Premier League.

"My journey with Cardiff isn't over yet. Hopefully, I'll achieve the goal that they, I, and the management all desire this season," he told SportBox.

"Let me be frank, I want to be a manager in the Premier League and to lead our team to success there. Hopefully, I can achieve this with Cardiff this season.

"In the coming years, along with Cardiff, I can coach in the top league of the world and achieve success. But as I always say, my goal has always been the highest level. Whether I can achieve it, we will see."

Bulut hopes he has created a platform from which Cardiff can now launch. The two years previous to last season was dire for City supporters and the mere sniff of play-offs — Cardiff rose as high as fifth in the league when they won the Severnside derby against Bristol City on October — had Bluebirds supporters dreaming. Sign up to our Cardiff City newsletter here.

But when Bulut explains the situation he inherited, it puts the season as a whole into a better context.

"When we look at the years before this one, there was a Cardiff that narrowly escaped relegation from the league," he said. "Actually, the year before me they actually got relegated but Reading had six points deducted, so the team stayed (in the Championship).

"We took over such a team. There is no money — I guess that's my fate, it's the same wherever I go — the last teams I went to, all of them had financial shortages. We tried to make transfers with a minimum budget and resources.

"We tried to bring in good players, but despite those difficulties, we did good work. The atmosphere was such that when we arrived, our own player doesn't want to renew his contract. The club was facing so many issues. Nobody wants to renew their contract.

"Anyway, we went to the Portugal camp (in pre-season), we brought a certain atmosphere to the Portugal camp and it became a really good environment.

"Their goal was to stay in the league. At the beginning of the season, there was a sudden shift from, 'Oh, just keeping us in the league will be enough', to 'Oh, are we going to make it to the play-offs?'

"We've created such a situation. Hopefully, this year, if we can build upon it and bring in the players we want, we aim to contend for the play-offs.

"The goal has always been the highest level, so if you ask me if I'm happy right now, the answer is no. On the one hand, I'm happy to have entered the European scene. But if I say I'm happy, then I should quit coaching today because I would have lied. I need to try harder, so I want to push forward with all my might."

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Bulut has often spoke of his ambition and wanting his players to share his goals. He has spoken about raising the bar, raising the level and it is likely to make players uncomfortable – but that is how he wants to separate the what from the chaff.

And, importantly, he wants the product to be good for the supporters. There were grumblings over the style of play last season, even taking in the aforementioned mitigating factors into accounts, and Bulut is conscious of that. He says he wants to provide Cardiff fans with better football over the course of his two-year deal.

"Being a footballer isn't easy, but being able to continue consistently is even harder. The fans want to see the money they pay the players reflected in their performance on the field; let's not forget that," he said.

"Because some fans use the last of their salary to come to the stadium and buy tickets. They also want to see good football and they want their team to win. Naturally, they want the championship. Footballers also need to look at it from this perspective."