Cardiff City host Barnsley on the opening game of the 2021/22 Championship campaign aiming to get off to a winning start and show that they can be serious promotion contenders.

Mick McCarthy managed to perform a solid job after taking over from Neil Harris midway through last season and got the Bluebirds much closer to where the quality within their squad suggests they should be. However, they were still unable to make it into the top-six.

The pressure will now be on Cardiff to make a serious promotion push and it will be expected that McCarthy can get consistent enough results to put them in a position to make the play-offs or even further up the table.

During the off-season Cardiff have lost the likes of Harry Wilson, Sheyi Ojo, Joe Bennett, Sol Bamba and Junior Hoilett from their squad. While both Max Watters and Gavin Whyte have been allowed to leave the Cardiff City Stadium on loans to MK Dons and Oxford United respectively.

Cardiff have managed to strengthen their squad with the arrivals of the likes of Mark Mcguiness, James Collins, Ryan Wintle and Ryan Giles. It will be interesting to see how many of those come into the side straight away in their opening game of the campaign against Barnsley.

In terms of injury and fitness news heading into the opening game of the season, Cardiff had suffered a scare during pre-season with McCarthy having confirmed following the Bluebirds' loss against Southampton that the likes of Kieffer Moore, Rubin Colwill, Perry Ng and Leandro Bacuna had all been suffering after contracting Covid-19.

However, all four of those key players have now made a return to training and should be able to be fit enough to now feature against Barnsley on Saturday on the opening day of the campaign.

Curtis Nelson has had an operation on a hernia injury during the off-season as the Bluebirds look to get the defender in the best shape possible for the new campaign. While Josh Murphy has been suffering with persistent hamstring issues. It remains to be seen whether McCarthy will risk them on the opening weekend of the season.

Meanwhile, Sean Morrison could well be available once again for Cardiff after he made his return to action during their friendly against League Two Newport County. That came after the influential defender had missed seven of the last eight games of last term and all of their pre-season before that.

There is further positive news with Joel Bagan having made his return to action from a dislocated shoulder injury so he should be available for selection against Barnsley.

While Tom Sang is expected to be fit again after recovering from a toe operation that had kept him out of action for the closing stages of last term.