Erol Bulut: No regrets over taking job, says Cardiff City manager
- Published
Cardiff's goalless draw with Blackburn in midweek means they have one win in their last seven league games
Erol Bulut says he has no regrets about taking the Cardiff City manager's job last summer.
Bulut has stressed that he is keen to build the Championship club - and has dismissed talk that the Bluebirds are in a relegation fight.
After a promising start to the campaign, Cardiff are on their worst run of the season as they prepare to face Stoke City on Saturday.
"For me it was not an easy decision to come to Cardiff," Bulut said.
"I made the decision for me and I did not make the wrong choice. I think I made the right choice to be here.
"I made the correct choice to be with this team, to build something at Cardiff City with the board, the players and the coaches.
"I knew it was not an easy job I was taking. Given how we started and how we went in the first few weeks, we put the expectations high."
Cardiff showed promise in the early months of the campaign, when they produced enough consistency to suggest they were capable of pushing for the play-offs.
But Bulut's side now find themselves 14th in the table, 13 points adrift of the top six and nine above the Championship relegation places.
Stoke are 19th in the second tier, six points worse off than Cardiff and only three clear of 22nd-placed Queens Park Rangers.
Remarkably, every club below Cardiff in the table has changed their manager this season.
Bulut is in discussions about extending his Cardiff contract, which expires at the end of the season, and the former Fenerbahce manager has talked about building for the future.
Stressing that heightened expectations were a good thing, he said: "I want it like this, it is great. But now we are talking differently, but don't come back on the bad things. Think positively.
"We made a lot of good things all together and we have to build on this.
"This will be the decision of the club, whether they want a new manager or not. If they want to continue with us or not, I cannot decide.
"But I try to do my best for the club and I know it was not easy to get players, to get players to sign contracts."
Bulut said there is a need for time to put measures in place for the club to improve.
He added: "Many, many big teams with big budgets are behind us. We cannot say we have invested really big amounts to get players in to be at a different level.
"So we have to go step by step. Of course I would like it more to be in the top six, but this is a big step from last season to this season.
"You cannot build a building when you want to build 50 floors in one day. For this you have to have time."
Despite his team's current form, Bulut has rejected talk that Cardiff are facing a third straight relegation fight.
"I think in football, nothing is guaranteed. But I think with the team that we have right now, with 13 games to play, we don't have to think about the relegation places. That's my opinion," he said.
"The players know about the situation. We have many games to play, so as soon as possible we have to play so we don't have to think about last year or before last year."
Cardiff's Ivory Coast striker Yakou Meite is available to face Stoke having been sidelined for the last two games with injury.