Why Cardiff City and Swansea City fans may agree on ex-Rangers man who crossed the South Wales divide after Ibrox stint | OneFootball

South Wales rivals Cardiff City and Swansea City supporters will agree over the disappointing career of Declan John.

The South Wales derby between Cardiff City and Swansea City is one of the fiercest rivalries in the United Kingdom, but there is certainly one thing and player that they can agree on: Declan John.

In spells with both the Bluebirds and the Jacks, the former Wales international significantly underperformed the overall expectations of both sets of supporters, and they will be in agreement that his time at both clubs left them frustrated.

John had initially appeared to be an exciting prospect when he broke into the first-team at the Cardiff City Stadium when the club were in the Premier League during the 2013/14 season, but he could never quite get to grips with what was required at the club with whom he came through the academy setup.

Then, at Swansea, he again massively underwhelmed during a three-year stint back in Glamorgan, and his career has turned become a nomadic, journeyman-like experience.

John never kicked on at Cardiff and never performed at Swansea

Having made 20 appearances during that 2013/14 campaign, as Cardiff were relegated from the Premier League, there would have rightly been a view that, at a lower level and at the age of 19, John could kick on to become a real asset in the Championship in the 2014/15 season.

However, John could never find consistent game time under the management of Russell Slade, with just six appearances across the campaign for Cardiff, five of which came in successive matches during the autumn, of which only two were starts as they picked up four points from that run.

He eventually found himself loaned out to Barnsley in the latter stages of the campaign, where he begun to show some promise, having been shifted to a left wing-back role at times, but, again, it was still fairly underwhelming.

Again, he struggled to get a look in at Cardiff in the 2015/16 campaign and found himself loaned out for a loan spell at Chesterfield that ended with him out of the side and the squad by the end of the season.

Having made 23 first-team appearances by the age of 18, John went on to play just 42 more games by the time he moved on loan to Rangers in January 2017 at the age of 21.

His time at Rangers began in slightly better fashion, but, yet again, after a promising start, he found himself on the fringes at Ibrox and returning to Wales to make the controversial move to Swansea.

Across his first season with the Swans, he made ten Championship appearances, but was often left out of the squad until a run in the team towards the end of the campaign.

That run in the side was not enough for Steve Cooper to integrate him further into the first-team, and he made just five appearances for the club in his final two seasons, with a loan stint at Sunderland that saw him not play a game for the Black Cats before the COVID-19 interruption and premature end to the 2019/20 campaign.

Discovering some form at Bolton but similar issues haunted John

What had been a criticism throughout John’s career was his defensive capabilities, and at clubs in the Championship that wanted to gain promotion to the Premier League, such as Cardiff and Swansea, and a giant in Rangers in the Scottish Premiership, John needed to offer more than he was doing in attack to merit his place in a team due to his defensive issues.

In the second-half of his final contracted season at Swansea, John moved to Bolton Wanderers in League Two and played a key role in the Trotters’ drive up the table from 18th to automatic promotion in the second-half of the campaign.

Playing as an out-and-out full-back, Ian Evatt eventually shifted formation to a wing-back system mid-way through the 2021/22 League One season, and then aided John even more, albeit there were growing concerns again about his defensive ability at an even slightly higher level.

By the early winter of 2022, with Bolton having brought in a more defensively resilient left-sided defender in Jack Iredale, John found himself to be a forgotten man at Wanderers, despite coming back into the fringes of the side for their play-off campaign, and was actually a key man again as they won the 2023 EFL Trophy.

However, a previous falling out between Evatt and John had led to his departure becoming inevitable, and he eventually joined Salford City on loan for the 2023/24 season, back in the fourth-tier.

Without a club for a few months after his release by Bolton in the summer of 2024, he joined St Mirren in November, and remains back in Scotland, albeit again, never trusted to play as a left-back, but always at wing-back.

His quality on the ball and ability to attack marked him out as someone with huge potential, so much so that Cardiff, Rangers and Swansea did take gambles on him.

However, defensive awareness and questions over his attitude have since seen that potential going forward consistently undermined, and he is a player whereby both Cardiff and Swansea supporters can agree that he simply wasn’t good enough.