To amend your analogy Lawn has not bought a new car, he has sold his old one and is borrowing a new one for a bit and as he dithered over which to get he could not drive to work to do his job so now he is closer to being fired and not being able to get a shiny new car once his hire car goes back.

We are also very unlikely to go down, so Lawn was quite right to take an extra few days, and put Jacob’s in charge, while he considered the other options.

It’s like buying a new car, you might have a preferred one in mind, but you will still have a look at other makes and models.

In the summer well will know the effect of these weeks and hopefully they will turn out to be positive but if they do they have come at the expense of an increased risk and leaving huge questions as to the plans for the future of the club the joint chairmen have.

Yes, Stuart jumped before he was pushed.

If Lawn had earmarked Peter Taylor as a replacement why did he bother with a process at all? Was he especially keen that the club be unstablised for the visit of Grimsby. Taylor was the obviously outstanding candidate and could he been interviewed in isolation for his suitability and appointed the following day when he passed this interview. Instead the club lacked leadership and even know has been exposed to a needless risk of Taylor not settling, the team not performing and so on.

I personally do not consider Mark Lawn especially qualified to watch Peter Taylor manage eighteen games as Interim Manager and assess what he is doing. 18 games is about three months and anything worth achieving at a football club cannot be achieved in such a short period of time.

The fact that we are talking about 18 or 36 games shows why the last decade has been a string of poor management which is nothing to do with the quality of the appointments and everything to do with the fact that City managers are judged over three month periods.

I appreciate that you are privy to a lot more information than me, so are you therefore saying that Stuart effectively jumped before he was pushed?

If that was the case, and Lawn hasn’t lined up a replacement, then he does leave himself open to criticism.

How do we know though that he hadn’t already earmarked a replacement, but wanted to initiate a selection process to confirm their suitability, and also consider other options?

By appointing an interim manager, it gives him time to assess the job they are doing. If it doesn’t work out then they will just leave at the end of the season, better this way than to come to this conclusion 18 games into next season.

As I’ve said on here before though, the real reason why we haven’t benefitted from changing managers in the last decade, is not because it was the necessarily the wrong thing to do, but down to the fact we haven’t found the right replacement.

If the reports regarding Taylor are true, then I think we have found the right replacement.

I think the idea is not that “you” would expect Stuart to have a higher win percentage but rather than you would expect to expect him to have a higher one. You want more wins – everybody does – but if you think that more wins are achieved by this rapid changing of manager which Lawn is rubber stamped in the last two weeks then I ask you to look again at those win percentages and reflect on the last ten years to conclude that we are following a system which does not work often enough to justify its use.

If you want you can believe that the Monday meeting McCall was headed for was for Lawn, Rhodes and Stuart to sit down for a cup of tea and a cosy chat but that is certainly a long way from the version of events that has been relayed to me from many varied sources. Lawn runs the club from day to day and Rhodes takes a back seat. That is the way it has been since Lawn’s arrival. That is why he is the subject of criticism.

The reason for the criticism is that Lawn has exposed the club to a needless level of risk in (if you believe it or not) removing a manager and not having a replacement ready and the result of this unsteady ship was the performance against Grimsby. Lawn does have a succession plan but it is a feeble one and that is why I criticise him for it. Lawn’s plan seems to be able looking to see who has the best Powerpoint presentation and seeing who impresses him the most in interview. It has taken too long in view of the points we could have gained on Saturday and it raises the possibility of appointing a manager who will get the results of a Chris Hutchings or a David Wetherall which will get us relegated.

Lawn might have someone to take the job in the summer but if that is the case then why replace the manager now? It simply increases the level of risk the club has between now and the appointment of that person. Lawn might want to give the job to the Interim Manager if he performs well but should he not perform well what do we do then?

We are the appointment of Mark Cooper away from going out of the league. This is an entirely needless risk that Mark Lawn is taking with the club and my experience of chairmen is that when they take risks that do not come off we – the fans – end up saving the club.

You may want to say thank you to Mark Lawn for raising this possibility for no real reason but I personally do not. I think that this is a needless risk and even if the new manager wins the next 18 games it will still have been a needless risk and once that risk has been taken I think that the succession plan done to minimise that risk is a poor one.

This is not about Stuart McCall. It is about the chairman and the needless risk that he is putting the club into and the reasons for it. You might want to stick together with that if you will – although frankly if we are all sticking together around what Mark Lawn says then we have to adjust our position because we might still be sticking around the promise of stability he made and subsequently ignored – but I’m more interested in the good of the club and what has happened in the last two weeks has been against that without a doubt.

Mark Lawn is the chairman of Bradford City and long may that continue but in that role when he does things which are counter-productive then why should we cheer him and give him approval. He has caused more problems in the last two weeks than he has solved and there is no reasons why as the supporters of the club we should accept that and approve it.

I was not saying that Stuart has been the worst manager out of those quoted, only that you would expect him to have a higher win percentage working in a lower Divison than the rest, and one where promotion should be a realistic ambition.

What we seem to be forgetting is that it was Stuart that resigned with nearly half a season to go. Lawn merely says that if the downturn in results continue, he will be sitting down with Stuart to discuss where they will go from here, which is what I would expect any reasonable chairman to do.

If we haven’t got a succession plan as suggested, then why isn’t Rhodes also getting the blame, as he is joint chairman after all?

Is the reason why only Lawn is singled out because he dared to criticise Stuart, and question the job he was doing?

Who says we don’t have a succession plan in place? We might have a replacement lined up who is out of contract in the summer, or the interim manager might in reality be put on trial, and if results are favourable then he given the job permanently.

I just think we are really fortunate to have 2 chairmen who care about the club, and have been prepared to invest in it.

Instead of trying to apportion any blame, we should all stick together, and just accept that unfortunately things didn’t quite work out for Stuart.

First Mark Lawn did not clear the debts out of the goodness of his heart, he did it as a part of a purchase of half of the business of Bradford City and as a result he owns that half. Now I’m not saying that that is not important but that I am saying is that Lawn’s clearing of the debts is like his loan in Stuart’s second year – it is to be paid back and it is paid by by the fact that if someone wanted to buy the club they would have to get his half from him.

Secondly while Stuart has been managing in lower divisions than the others he has had – on the whole – a poorer quality of player giving the stat some relevance. I see no reason why someone would think that Stuart was a better manager than Jim Jefferies, Nicky Law, Bryan Robson or Colin Todd and certainly I would struggle to say he should be at the bottom of that list.

This debate – however – should not be able Stuart McCall and the reason why Mark Lawn is criticised is nothing to do with sacking the manager and everything to do with the cack handed way he has gone about replacing him which is putting the very future of the club at risk for no good reason.

So the reason I would make Lawn a “scapegoat” – and the reason I suggest other people are although to be honest at the moment Lawn simply has a question to answer and that is a long way from being a scapegoat – is not because I am unable to contemplate that Stuart might not be the right man for the job it is because I am able to contemplate what happens when you change manager. Mark Cooper at Peterborough, Chris Hutchings at City, Peter Withe at Wimbledon. If we make an appointment that works out like that we will be relegated.

Even if we win the next 19 games this week is still too much of a risk for a club, the club that we all got together and raised money to keep in business. I don’t know about anyone else but I know I did not dedicate my money, time and efforts of that summer so that someone could start risking the future of the club for no good reason (and perhaps a very, very bad one) no matter how much money they put in.

I think I have a pretty good understanding of how this club works so I would have to say that I’m not a true fan because if being a true fan means fealty to whomever puts money into the club to the point of not being able to criticise when the club’s future is risked for no reason then I cannot do that.