New Cardiff City head coach Brian Barry-Murphy has been left in no uncertain terms what his objective his for his first year in charge: take the Bluebirds back up to the Championship at the first time of asking.

“Vincent [Tan] was very clear about where he sees the club going and how quickly he wants to see that,” the former Rochdale manager said at his first press conference.

Irishman Barry-Murphy, 46, has joined the League One side on a three-year-deal following their relegation from the second-tier last season.

Son of Roy Keane’s sporting idol, Gaelic sport icon Jimmy Barry-Murphy, the Cork man pursued a career in football, rather than follow his father’s footsteps in Gaelic football and hurling.

He broke through at Cork City as a teenager, with Football Association of Wales chief executive Noel Mooney a former team-mate.

After a long playing career, Barry-Murphy became a player-coach at Rochdale under Keith Hill – winning promotion to League One in 2014 – before taking charge as manager in 2019. He won six of the final 11 games to keep the side in the third tier.

In 2021, he joined Manchester City to replace Enzo Maresca in charge of the side’s U21 sides and winning back-to-back Premier League youth titles. During his time at City, he helped develop the likes of Cole Palmer, Romeo Lavia, Oscar Bobb, and Liam Delap, as well as current Cardiff midfielder Alex Robertson.

More recently, he was assistant manager to Ruud van Nistelrooy at Leicester City.

Now, though, he’s swapped Pep Guardiola for Vincent Tan, the Etihad Campus for the Cardiff City Stadium.

“My conversation with Vincent was really positive and I told him I have a real deep belief in how to do that,” Barry-Murphy added.

“For everybody on the outside, including Vincent, the objective is to get to the Championship and beyond as soon as possible.

“There’s a potential to achieve something that could be really special and that’s the thing that probably excited me the most in the recent period.

“There’s no pressure to sell any player in the squad and anything we can improve in the club, I have the absolute support from the people at the top of the club to do that and that’s going to be the mantra as we move through pre-season and beyond.”

Those final comments about selling players will be music to the ears of Cardiff fans, who have had to endure the dual frustration of a number of first team players being linked with moves away, and no news on incomings as of yet.

Having relatively little experience as a first team manager, Barry-Murphy spoke well on learning as much as he could from Guardiola during his three-year spell at Manchester City.

“His influence on everybody he comes into contact with is huge,” explained Barry-Murphy.

“More than anything he spoke to me about being myself and remembering who you are, what you want the people you work with to look like, and that I have to remember where I came from.

“I know I’m in the capital of Wales with the biggest club in the country and my job is to represent what those people want to see on the weekend and it’s a very exciting thing to try and put into practice.

“I love having possession of the ball with the clear idea that we want to be as aggressive as possible and to create an excitement for the supporters so that they genuinely are looking forward to coming to the stadium every game.”

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