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Swansea v Cardiff could be the last Welsh derby in top flight for some time, says Jeff Stelling

Image: Jenkins: the Swansea chairman gave Michael Laudrup the chop this week

It's been a historic season for Welsh football with two sides in the Premier League and a Swansea and Cardiff derby is as feisty and acrimonious as they come.

Cardiff

And that brings us on to Cardiff. Although they have brought Kenwyne Jones in, they don't have that goal scorer - Wilfried Zaha came on and made an impact in the game against Norwich but he's not prolific by any means. Thirteen goals in 129 league games is one in 10 and a lot of those games were in the Championship. He's a game changer but not necessarily a match winner and that's a big concern for Cardiff and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer. They got that win against Norwich last week which reportedly prompted Vincent Tan to say afterwards: "I'm very happy with Solskjaer, he's much better than Mackay." Two years down the line he might be saying the same thing and at that stage he might be saying it with some sort of credibility, but at this stage we give him none whatsoever. Malkay got some terrific results and although Ole Gunnar may go on to be a great manager, not everything was perfect to say the least in that win over Norwich. The Canaries had 27 shots on the Cardiff goal and you're not often going to win games when the opposition have 27 shots at your goal, while they've also not kept a clean sheet in the league yet under Ole. It's very, very early days but they're going to look at their games to come and think they have a chance; they've got Villa, Hull, Fulham, Palace and Stoke all to come and they're going to be key. But, how did we get to this position with both these clubs from a season that started with such great potential.

JEFF'S GEM OF THE WEEK

First of all I must mention Torquay, who went to Portsmouth and won 1-0 despite being woken at 2am the night before when their hotel started to flood. The squad were then left in the reception area to their own devices until 5am in the morning, which proves you don't necessarily need a good night's sleep to get a good result. Under some circumstance they MIGHT have got 'Gem of the Week', but there were some great performances this week including Chelsea's win at Man City and Sunderland's at Newcastle but, I'm going for Leeds beating Huddersfield 5-1. Obviously it was the circumstances of this victory. It says a lot about what the players and the fans think about Brian McDermott that they reacted in the way they did in a local derby and Ross McCormack's hat-trick spoke volumes. That was brilliant but I do wonder, who's turn it is this week to have a go managing Leeds?

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