"Towards the end of my career at Cardiff, I probably never wanted to be in football ever again."
That's an opener from Lee Tomlin that makes you sit up and take notice. But don't be fooled. Yes, there were some bad times and eye-opening stories, but, as we chat, you realise just how much love he has for the Bluebirds.
Because when Lee Tomlin was good, he was untouchable. For this writer's money, the form he showed under Neil Harris is probably the best of any player over a six-month period in the last five seasons.
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His time in a City shirt was all too fleeting, with his stay bookended by two managers who just didn't fancy him. But the love he felt from fans and the comradeship he found within the dressing room hold a special place in his heart.
That opening line comes from a question asking him about how his journey into coaching is going. He is at Leicester City on a voluntary basis as he studies for his UEFA A Licence with the FAW and, now he is on the other side of the fence, he has some sympathy for the managers under whom he worked. He certainly sees the irony when he bangs on about work rates and hustling off the ball, that's for sure.
"After I retired, I struggled a bit," he says. "But then I spoke to James Rowberry, the former Cardiff coach and Newport manager and now he's under-16s manager for Wales, he has been unbelievable for me. He has got me on the A licence straight away, I did the B licence under him.
"Leicester have let me go in and learn as much as I can. I go in there and I'm there longer than most of the coaches there! I love it. It's quite funny. The assistant manager at Leicester under-18s, Eric Odhiambo, I've known him for years, and he just started laughing and saying, 'Do you realise what coach you are and what you're telling the lads? It's the opposite to what you ever did!'
"The big thing is working hard and your reactions when you or someone else has lost the ball. When that happened, I wouldn't work hard or react, I'd probably just stand there and moan!"
He knows he was no angel. He concedes he probably got things wrong. Take Neil Warnock, for example, the man who signed him for Cardiff in 2017. From the outside, their relationship appeared fraught and to a large extent that is probably true. Sign up to our Cardiff City newsletter here.
"Managers have their way, their style, their philosophy," he says of Warnock. "Reflecting back on my career, I know I didn't work as hard as maybe I should have, but my running stats throughout my whole career would put me in the top three (on my team) every game. Everyone will say, 'Not a chance!' But the stats prove that.
"I could have worked harder, don't get me wrong. But I put so much pressure on myself to score or assist every game. I hoped that if I didn't work as hard, I could be sharper than my opponent when it came to the 90th minute. That's the way I thought. But now, I look back and think, well, if you're not scoring or assisting, what are you actually doing for the team?
"So I can see from Neil Warnock's point of view. In the last month I spoke to him, we had a conversation and it was really good for me to get things off my chest, for him to get things off his chest. It was actually a really nice conversation.
"I didn't ask him about certain things, but I just wanted to wipe the slate clean and just say thanks for everything. I learned a lot, good and bad, but I learned a hell of a lot. So I just thanked him for that."
Tomlin, 34, now speaks with a maturity about the situation and has the benefit of emotional distance and hindsight. But his time at Cardiff wasn't a linear, upwards trajectory, particularly under Warnock.
"I don't think it's overconfident to say I felt like I probably played football too much. I think he wanted somebody that worked really hard, but then also can produce a bit of magic whenever," he continues.
"I just remember the phone call I had before (I joined), he said I'd play every single game and that I would be his Adel Taraabt. They were the words out of his mouth.
"But after a while I just thought it wasn't going to be what I wanted it to be. There were times where I could have left permanently, but no, I didn't want to. I loved Cardiff, I didn't want to leave at all. I loved the lads there and loved the fans and the club, everything about it. It was a special club to me."
Tomlin would spend six months of his first season with City out on loan at Nottingham Forest, with his old Middlesbrough boss Aitor Karanka. He remembers celebrating wildly when he learnt of Cardiff's promotion to the Premier League following his final match for the Midlands outfit. But he was deemed surplus to requirements for the Bluebirds' Premier League campaign and was out on loan again, this time at Peterborough, while City were in the top flight.
It was frustrating, of course, but he remained as determined as ever to be part of Cardiff's bid to bounce straight back up to the Premier League the following season. Even then, though, there were warning signs that he had his work cut out for him.
"There were certain things that happened that I didn't like," he continues. "I scored a free-kick against Sheffield Wednesday and players know how the manager works with certain things. I was on a high and I watched the game back and I realised how the gaffer didn't celebrate.
"I scored late on to draw the game and I seen it was just a little clap – and that's not Warnock. If you're getting an equaliser so late, you're going to celebrate, especially him and the way he celebrates.
"I just thought 'Wow'. He didn't even really enjoy it. He didn't like it. He went the opposite way of, 'Jesus, he's scored, now I've got a problem.' Or that's the way I looked at it."
It was all the more frustrating for Tomlin, he says, because he had shredded weight and returned a different animal, according to then skipper Sean Morrison.
"I remember Mozza (Morrison) said in an interview that I had come back a different person," he adds. "When we spoke he said, 'Mentally you are a machine. You are a different animal.' I had muscles in my stomach I never thought I had!
"He used to ask me how I was dealing with all of it. I used to tell him not to worry and there was a bigger picture. He could see more than anyone in training, some of the stuff I'd do against him in training, he couldn't believe it."
At that time, it really did feel like his race had been run at Cardiff. But following a disappointing start to the season, Warnock left the club in the October and was replaced by Neil Harris. This, really, is when Tomlin's City's career sparked into life. Harris told Tomlin he had spoken to Warnock about the squad and called the playmaker in for a one-to-one chat about what had gone wrong.
"Neil Harris said, 'Look, I don't know what's happened. I'm my own man, if we fall out then that's us, but you've got a fresh start, let's see what happens'," he recalls.
"The first game, Charlton away and I came on and scored the equaliser. I was buzzing with that. It just felt right. We were playing football and we were playing good. When Neil Harris came in, it was completely different.
"We became really close, very quickly and it was good to see the faith he had in me to show him what I could do – and not for him but for the lads as well. I almost wanted to say to them, 'No, I'm a good player. And I want to show you a lot as well.'"
Suffice to say, he left it all out on the pitch that season. Everything he touched turned to gold. He scored 11 goals and provided 11 assists and, truthfully, single-handedly dragged Cardiff into the play-offs during a season which was fragmented by the Covid pandemic.
He produced moments of incredible quality and in vital games, too. Match-changing contributions against Nottingham Forest, Barnsley, Leeds United, Sheffield Wednesday, Birmingham City, West Brom, Luton Town, Bristol City and Derby County sent City soaring into the top-six spots.
Remarkably, he did it with his groin tendon hanging off the bone.
"I'd got myself in a really good place with everything," he remembers of that season. "But I was playing with my groin tendon off the bone and playing some of the best football I have ever played. I had so many painkillers just to help the lads and we ended up getting into the play-offs. I didn't even train. It was just game, game, game.
"I told Neil Harris I would play through the pain. It was too much. It was way too much, really, even on the strongest painkillers. But that's how much I wanted the club to succeed. That's how much I wanted to get the lads into the play-offs. I couldn't even jog without painkillers. I needed a hip operation, but nothing would stop me."
Unfortunately, and despite another goal from him in the play-off semi-final second leg, Fulham did stop him. And they stopped City from earning promotion with a 3-2 aggregate win across two legs. "We knew before the Fulham games, if we didn't win the play-offs we wouldn't get promoted the next season," Tomlin, who was crowned player of the year that season, says.
"We thought the time was then if we wanted to get back to the Premier League. That's what hit us more than anything. We knew things were going to change at the club."
Harris told Tomlin to have surgery on his groin not long after the following season had begun. He wasn't to know it, but he'd never play for Cardiff again after that. A poor start to the campaign saw Harris dismissed in January 2021, which preceded the appointment of Mick McCarthy.
Having rushed back after surgery to help an ailing Cardiff team, Tomlin returned to the training ground with McCarthy now at the helm. It's fair to say their first interaction laid the path for what was to follow.
"After the operation, I was just getting back to playing and then Neil Harris got sacked and Mick McCarthy came in," he says. "I remember I walked on to the training pitch, he just turned, looked at me and said, 'What are you doing?' And I said, 'Training, we've got a game on Saturday.' And he said, 'Nah, get off. You're not playing for me.'
"I heard a week later that he had spoken to Warnock. They are the sort of things that happen. I just thought Mick McCarthy should come in, look at the season I had the season before, the goals I had scored, and tell me he needed me. But I think he listened to his mate and that was that. I am not going to look at it as a negative thing, people have their methods and mates in football. All I know is when I played for Cardiff I gave it everything I could.
"I didn't even play many games, 50-odd games in four and a half years. I was quite shocked at that. People will say it was injuries, but it wasn't to do with injuries at all. I was playing with injuries under Neil Harris."
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Even after that frosty first encounter, Tomlin could see he needed to get himself properly match fit. He loved the club, loved his team-mates and the fans and wanted to help, he says. He knuckled down, dropped weight again, but McCarthy wouldn't budge.
"Don't get me wrong, at the start he was absolutely right," Tomlin says of McCarthy's initial assessment. "My first game for the under-23s there was a picture of me playing against QPR and I was like 'I'm not fit!' Not even my sort of fit!
"I knew I'd rushed back to help the lads and Neil Harris out. So that wasn't a problem. I got in really good shape again and trained all the time. He said to me to go with the under-23s for two or three weeks. I needed to. Fair enough, no problem. I played for six weeks and he didn't even speak to me or look at me in the corridor. Nothing whatsoever.
"I asked Morro (Steve Morison) if he'd spoken to him, I was only supposed to be there a couple of weeks and it's been six weeks now! He said he'd said nothing. So I knocked on his door and said, 'I just want to know what's happening, gaffer. You said two or three weeks, it's been six weeks now, I've worked hard and kept my head down.'
"He said, 'I only said two or three weeks, why didn't you come and knock on my door? You knock on my door if you want to see me and want to come back.' He is the manager. You have to manage your players. So, I said, 'If that's the case, I'll play Saturday then!' But he wasn't having that.
"TC (Terry Connor) kept telling me I was training really well, saying I was the best player, how I'd get my time. But month after month went by and nothing. I remember saying to TC, 'I love you, but I've lost all fight in me. You're losing games every week. I'm here to help. I'm not trying to prove anyone wrong, I'm here to help, I'm one of the good guys!'
"Even the lads were going to Mick McCarthy and saying, 'We need Tommo'. Neil Warnock didn't do it, Neil Harris did and look what happened. In training, I'd score or do unbelievable things, but then I'd miss a shot and out of nowhere you'd just hear Mick McCarthy shout, 'Look, lads, even the magician can miss. He's not that good, is he?' I just turned and thought, 'What an idiot.'
"So that was me, it was never going to work no matter what."
The real gripe for Tomlin, he says, was that he would hear his manager say every week that he wasn't fit enough to play, but he insists that wasn't the case. He couldn't even speak out or have a right of reply. That really irked him and he felt the fans he adored were not getting the true picture.
"Every game you (the press) would ask if I was involved or in contention and he kept saying I wasn't fit enough," he says. "I was training every day, in on my days off, on my own, to get even fitter and it was still, every week, 'Not fit'. I just wanted him to be honest. It just became horrible.
"I remember the last time he said I wasn't fit enough to play and I went on Twitter and said, 'I'm fit, I've played all these games (for the under-23s), I'm training every day, I have been for months.' But then he tried to get me sacked for saying that. I got suspended by the club and was investigated, but they had to take me back because I'd done nothing wrong.
"All I said was that if you wanted to believe what he said, that's fine. But I didn't lie. I didn't say anything wrong or I wasn't negative towards anyone. He just hated it. I don't know what it was, whether it was my great relationship with the fans, I don't know.
"Some fans used to call me 'Magic Man' or 'The Magician' and he literally said it every day, I think probably trying to belittle me. Even the lads thought it was a bit pathetic, I think. The best players in the world miss shots in training. I was just done. I was done. I never wanted to be in football again after that. I just thought people shouldn't be like that."
He speaks with a real calmness about that period, though. He appears content and happy within himself and genuinely believes he is a richer person because of all the experiences he has had to endure. As he takes his next step, into coaching, he hopes it will serve to round him and make him a better manager.
"Everything that's happened, the bad things I had to deal with, it's made me a stronger and better person," he adds. "Those bad times will make me a better coach or manager down the line. I am grateful for all of those things happening, honestly.
"I try and smile, joke and laugh with everyone I come into contact with every single day. At Leicester, the staff, the players see that. All the lads tell me to get involved with all the celebrations, dancing, singing. That's the sort of coach I want to be. That's how I believe you get the best out of your players."
