So Michael Chopra is going back to his native north-east to join Sunderland - and Cardiff City are rubbing their hands in glee at making a 1000 per cent profit in just 12 months.

Raking in £5 million-plus for a player who cost £500,000 a year ago is good business, maybe. But what happened to that so-called Premiership ambition the Bluebirds have been talking about for years?

I can barely remember the last time we were in the top flight, yet chairman Peter Ridsdale, his predecessor Sam Hammam and manager Dave Jones have been assuring us success-starved Ninian Park fans that the club is going places.

"The money could go on to make us stronger. This is good business for us and after all, we are in a business'' - Cardiff boss Dave Jones


When we won promotion back to the second flight in 2003, we were told that this was just the beginning. The target was to get into the Premiership for the first time as soon as possible.

Plans for a state-of-the-art new stadium were unveiled, and we waited for the building of a new empire both on and off the field. The last dynasty crumbled and fell in my youth - yes, I’m old enough (just!) to remember us as a First Division team in the early 60s. I also recall us beating the likes of Real Madrid and Sporting Lisbon in Europe - and almost reaching the Cup Winners’ Cup final in 1968.

From tthen on we spiralled…down, down, down until in the early 1990s we almost slipped out of the league.
Hammam’s arrival as chairman in 2000 gave the suffering fans something to cling onto at last. And with Lennie Lawrence in control of team affairs, we finally became full members of the league again in 2003 - after 18 years in the wilderness.

That was just the beginning, we were assured. The idea, one imagined, would be that we would hold on to our main assets for the first time in decades, and build around them in the quest to reach the stars.

So what happened? A youngster called Robert Earnshaw, Zambian-born but as Welsh as cheese from Caerphilly - his home town - started banging in goals at a rate of knots. The little striker bagged 85 in 175 games and it seemed he was the centre of all of our ambition. Indeed, so ambitious were the club that in 2004 we sold Earnie to West Brom for £3 million. Good business - or a lack of ambition?

At the same time a young Yorkshire lad called Cameron Jerome, who had been released by Middlesbrough, was banging on the door of the first team. In he came to replace Earnshaw - and proved an instant hit. Twenty goals during the 2005-06 season had Premiership sides scouting round for the teenager. Predictably, we sold him to Birmingham in a deal purported to be worth £3.5m. Good business - or lack of ambition?

Armed with the Jerome millions, shrewd manager Jones went out and bought 22-year-old Chopra from Newcastle. Ironically, the deal was struck just before Michael Owen was injured in last year’s World Cup - otherwise the Magpies may well have thought again.

Chops was an instant hit at Ninian Park. He started scoring goals for fun and Cardiff roared to the top of the Championship with 36 points from their first 17 games. He even scored both goals in a 2-1 win at Sunderland, for heaven's sake - and was eulogised as Championship Player of the Month for September and then PFA Championship Player for October.

That golden return to the top flight after 43 years really seemed on - not because of ambition, but because of an amazing piece of business by Jones in signing a true marksman.

However, it all turned sour at the back end of the season as Chopra’s goals dried up, the team lost confidence, and Cardiff embarked on a run of a dozen game without a victory. Ultimately, the Bluebirds finished 13th but still the ambitious talk continued.

Work on the new stadium started and we were assured there would be influential signings and that the aim was to get into the Premiership next season. Yet the biggest name to arrive during the summer has been Trevor Sinclair, signed on a free from Manchester City on Wednesday. Big name, maybe. England international maybe. But he’s 34, for goodness sake - hardly an ambitious signing!

We were also told Robbie Fowler might join us. That seems to have dried up for financial reasons. But again we are looking at a player whose best days are behind him. Ambitious clubs sign players on the way up…not down.

So now Chops is seemingly on his way with manager Dave Jones assuring the South Wales Echo: "I am sorry to see him go, everybody in the camp is. But there is a price for every player.

"The money could go on to make us stronger. This is good business for us and after all, we are in a business. And for Michael it means Premiership football - we cannot stop him. We wish him all the best with Sunderland."
So that’s it, then. First Earnshaw, then Jerome, now Chopra. All our goalscoring heroes gone, one after the other.

Ambition? Seems to me more like a case of three strikes and we're out. Unless, of course, most of that £11.5m we've raked in for Earnshaw, Jerome and now Chopra is invested in quality players. But after 40-odd years of hurt, I'm not holding my breath.