Paul Trollope, fresh from helping Wales reach the Euro 2016 semi-final, was to take Cardiff that extra step forward.
After all, Cardiff's fortunes improved drastically when he was brought on board as a coach by then manager Russell Slade. This, coupled with Trollope's success in France, caused a bit of optimism to creep into the minds of some Cardiff fans.
Sadly, two months into the season, that optimism has all but vanished.
It's early October and I still haven't seen a Cardiff player score a goal. Even worse than that, I can count the times on one hand where it nearly happened.
Cardiff are toothless, lethargic, and boring. There were times during the home defeat against Derby that I wished I was anywhere but there. Going to games used to be one of the highlights of the weekend, currently it's just a bland way to waste 90 minutes of a Saturday.
He is just making the same basic mistakes every single game. Trollope's insistence on playing Joe Ralls is incredibly frustrating. What does he see that the rest of us seem to miss?
I suppose he'd say something along the lines of Ralls can keep possession. Is it that hard to keep possession when you only pass it sideways and backwards all of, at most, ten yards?
He can't beat a man, he doesn't score many (nobody does), he creates few chances and he can't tackle. What baffles me the most is that we have a highly-rated midfielder in Emyr Huws just sitting on the bench. A midfielder that, by all accounts, Cardiff paid quite a bit for. In the financial situation that the club finds itself in, why sign him if you have no intention of playing him?
As well as this, despite many good performances from the bench, Kadeem Harris is constantly being overlooked for a start, even though nobody is really deserving of keeping him out.
You can sort of see Trollope's train of thought. His hope is that he can bring Harris on late in the game and use his pace against a tired defence to assist and score. Unfortunately, by the time 60 minute comes, we're usually a goal or two down. Harris, although a good player, isn't going to create three goals in 30 minutes.
Ofcourse, there are many elements that have contributed to Cardiff's dismal season thus far. The players, Vincent Tan, the fans - all must take some part of the blame. But in football, the man in the dugout is the one to pay the price of failure, and it's about time Trollope did.
Too many players are going missing: Immers, Noone, Whittingham, to name a few. Whilst there are some players who shouldn't be anywhere near the Championship. 'Strikers' Kenneth Zohore and Fred Gounongbe look so out of their depth, it gives everyone the hope of donning the blue shirt at some point. Regardless of age, weight, footballing ability, if they can claim to be a professional footballer, so can you.
This is far worse than just 'a bad run of form'.
It doesn't look like it's going to be fixed and, perhaps most significantly, it doesn't look like Trollope knows how to. His subs are baffling, both in terms of timing and personnel, and his insistence on playing the same players, in the same system, is dragging Cardiff to League One.
The Burton defeat on Saturday was the final straw. A club like that should never be comfortably beating any Cardiff side. They barely had to work to earn victory.
Perhaps the most damning statement of this current Cardiff side came from a Burton fan who posted this on Twitter after Saturday.
