Friday 19th March, 20104 months ago
Didn’t you used to be Hereford United?
Bradford City play Hereford United At Edgar Street in League Two, 2009/2010
Hereford United sit below Bradford City in the football pyramid at the moment – that is not that easy – and dismissed manager John Trewick who himself had taken over from Graham Turner, the manager who guided the club to promotions from the Football Conference and League Two two years ago.
The Hereford side mugged Bradford City in the first season under Stuart McCall were a big bunch of guys who assembled by Turner at the cost of only half of City’s purchase that year Willy Topp. Ben Smith who was signed from Weymouth for £20,000 in January 2007 and the rest of the squad were either picked up for free – or – in the case of nine of them including Robbie Threlfall they were brought in on loan.
Turner tried the same policy the season after with less success. The team that finished the previous season third and included the likes of Theo Robinson who now impresses for Huddersfield Town and Peterborough’s Toumani Diagouraga ended up bottom of League One with seventeen loanees coming and going in the season including once again Threlfall and former Bantam and, erm, “team mate” of Mark McCammon Moses Ashikodi.
Not that one should dismiss Turner’s methods for taking a team from the non-league to the division above City but the whole story of the rise and fall of Hereford United in the last three years is illustrative of the perils of building teams of loan players. Any progress made is done so on foundations of sand. The players brought in that brought success one year are gone the next and the manager is left scrabbling to find players of a similar or higher quality.
Loan players are a fact of life in all the leagues of English football outside of the Premiership and the odd additional face can help a club, get the mix wrong and the team is full of players who have an eye on the way back to their parent clubs. It is a mix that more often fails than succeeds, but it does sometimes succeed as Hereford prove.
Peter Taylor’s approach to loanees underlines his abilities as a manager. He has brought a half dozen new faces to the squad but few of them have gone straight into the team. Gavin Grant has not been put in over Omar Daley, Mark McCammon has not gone in over James Hanson, Luke Oliver had to bide his time rather than being put in over Steve Williams.
As with his retention of Wayne Jacobs and his keenness to sign Peter Thorne up as a coach Taylor values stability and knows how to maintain and maximise it.
The Bantams are in exceptional form having taken twelve points in the seven games Peter Taylor has managed (two home, five away) and now are looking up the table to climb towards a play off target that most think is unreachable. Other aspirations have been established: to finish in a higher place than last season, to end with a positive goal difference, to maintain a two points a game average over the next two months.
The Bantams continue with Matt Glennon in goal although Simon Ramsden will miss the game injured at right back so Jonathan Bateson is expected to fill in. Luke Oliver and Matthew Clarke continue in central defence and Robbie Threlfall stays at left back behind Luke O’Brien who is on the left flank.
Lee Bullock and Adam Bolder are building a partnership in the middle with both given a ball winning remit while Omar Daley may make the right hand side despite an injury last weekend. Should Omar fail a fitness test Gareth Evans may return or Gavin Grant could be given a chance to make his first start for the Bantams.
New face Ryan Kendall will probably start on the bench with Michael Flynn continuing up front alongside James Hanson.
Hereford’s aims are to stay in the division which – thanks to Grimsby Town’s continued inability to make a fist of staying in the league – seems likely to be achieved. The Bulls are looking to put a wretched year behind them and come back stronger next season.
They may do, they have before..
I would say that whilst loan signings can be seen as a short term measure, as far as I’m aware nearly all the loans that Taylor has made are out of contract at the end of the season, and thus the loans could be viewed in terms of a long-term goal. I think that it’s a great move by Taylor, as if those players are available from May, then he’s in a much better position to judge whether they are worthy of a contract at City or not.
Also, I would pick up a point, that I don’t think City are in “exceptional” form at the moment, with 12 points from 21 under Taylor – I think exceptional would be 16/17+ points. However, the form has certainy picked up, even if the results are on a win one, lose one basis at the moment.
I’ve always worked on the idea that promotion form is three points for every home game and one for an away game and that to expect any more is unrealistic and if you double the number of games played by teams towards the top of the league then you’ll find a pretty strong correlation.
Rochdale have played 35 and have 72 points, Norwich 78 from 36 and Newcastle United 76 from 36 and all those divisions two points from 36 games would put your team in the promotion zone. Doing better than that is – I think – exceptional. This rule of thumb works for most divisions but not for the Premier League, where there is no promotion which causes problems. One should never expect an away win in football and if one can then the division is – well – broken.
Because Taylor has had five away games and two home matches though we can’t simply double the number of games he has played and decide he should have fourteen points because away games – we suppose – are more difficult and one can only expect a point from them or rather five points – Taylor’s City have six points.
Two home games and two home wins plus those six away from home is the same type of exceptional form that those three teams mentioned earlier have enjoyed.
No point arguing, its exceptional form compared to what we’ve been used to of late.
Back to back wins away at Hereford and home to Notts County will do very nicely now and certainly put us in the frame for a late surge for the play-offs.
We can do the play offs I think. I was arguing bout this last month with my brother who then said we could and I laughed him down but now i’m not too sure. Like the guy above says, back to back wins would be really nice right now, plus they would be something to be proud of.
Saying that though I am an over optimistic person or so i’m told.Haha.
Come on City.
It is not worth an actual argument, but it is worth pointing out that ‘good’ runs at the end of bad seasons are one of the main reasons City start so many seasons with crippling expectations.
An average of 12 points from 7 games works out at 79 points for a 46 game season. Good enough to finish around 3rd. That is exceptional for a season; but it is not exceptional for just 7 games; after all, City are only 16th after those 7 games.
The form is very good, but it needs to carry on, or even get better, to be truly exceptional. If they keep the form up they will finish on 61; which, on average, will leave them about 9 points outside the play-off’s.
Just to come back a bit, on the away wins and they shouldn’t be expected, I could be wrong, but i think a few (3 or 4) seasons ago, in this league there were actually more away wins than at home during the season? Think it was only the second time ever that had happened in English Football.
However, that was a very freaky season and the norm, as stated, is that away wins are more unusual than home wins.
I think David Harris makes a good point about the loan signings,if they are all out of contract come the summer Taylor has made a good move bringing in those players to have a look at them with an eye on recruiting if they perform to the standard he wants for inclusion in next seasons squad.
I also think the playoffs this season are still a possibility,i think the squad has been improved enough to make a late surge up the league.It’s a long shot of course, but who knows with confidence being such a key thing, a few more wins and it could certainly make the last month of the season very interesting for us BCFC fans.
As a very rough rule of thumb, at this stage of the season a 3 point win is likely to gain a team one point in relation to other teams around and above.
We are 9 points from the last play off position. That means we need to win 9 more games (if we do our goal difference should improve sufficiently to work in our favour). This would give us 73 points and even that would not guarantee a play off place.
With only 11 games left this is a tough task. Draws are no good to us, I think we have to win 9 of our last 11.
Now that would be exceptional form but I cannot realistically see us doing it.