Cardiff City manager Neil Warnock has described the late return of midfielder Leandro Bacuna from international duty as 'scandalous'.

The Bluebirds are set to travel to Pride Park to face Derby County on Friday evening in the first game after the international break, although Bacuna has yet to fly back from representing Curacao in the CONCACAF Nations League, where he played the full 90 minutes of back to back games against Haiti.

Explaining the situation around Bacuna, Warnock was quoted by BBC Sport as saying: "Leo is not even flying back until this afternoon. It's scandalous really how countries can get away with things like that.

"I know we have got to do it for television because of the finance, but (playing on) Friday night after an international break doesn't help us when they are going all over the world."

Lamenting the amount of game time played by the midfielder, Warnock continued: "You need a manager like (Wales boss) Ryan Giggs who says he is not going to play (Derby forward Tom) Lawrence in a friendly on Monday because he has got a big game on the Friday.

"Unfortunately that's against us. We need a manager like him with all our players. It's not been easy at all - it's been horrendous really."

Bacuna has started all but one of Cardiff's six league games so far this season, although Warnock has admitted that he does not know if the 28-year-old will feature on Friday, as the Cardiff manager added: "We were hoping he'd be back yesterday (Wednesday) but it didn't seem possible.

"He's been liaising with the club. We've wanted to get him here as quickly as possible, so if it meant us buying the ticket then so be it. We understand the situation of some of the international countries and it can be difficult financially.

"But we don't expect them to come back just over 24 hours before a game. That's a bit over the top really."

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Cardiff currently sit 13th in the Championship table, having won two, drawn two and lost two of their opening six league games this season.

The Verdict

I can fully understand Warnock's frustrations here.

When the pressures are as high as they are for a club manager, and with the prizes that are at stake - particularly for a club with the expectations that Cardiff have this season - you are going to want every player as fit and available as much as possible.

With injuries and suspensions of course unavoidable in that sense, losing players to situations such as this which would not usually have to be accounted for is not going to help the situation.

Admittedly, the fact that this particular game has been brought forward has also had an impact here, although even without that, the timings do seem to suggest that it may have been difficult for Bacuna to feature even if it had remained in the usual Saturday afternoon time spot, considering the amount he will have to travel after playing two games in a matter of days.