BfB

Chris Brandon has fired the parting shot that everyone was expecting after his exit from Valley Parade that was – ultimately – the only thing that City’s former manager Stuart McCall and chairman Mark Lawn agreed on – that Brandon was a crashing disappointment.

Signed in a fanfare and talking about playing for his home club Chris Brandon seemed like a great signing although supporters of Huddersfield Town sounded a note of caution saying that the player who served them against City on numerous occasions was a football nearly man – nearly beating the defender, nearly bending a shot into the far corner, nearly looking great.

Certainly once Brandon had started playing one could empathise with such a view. Brandon was unlucky during his time at the club with injury – he spent much of his first season in the treatment room following an injury pre-season – but once he did start playing then he very much fitted that description given by the supporters to the West. Brandon was a great player on paper, a great player when drawing up team sheets and thinking about football but the practice of having him on the field disappointed. His skills never did result in the defence splitting pass, the chance created, and often he would be left marooned in claret on the left wing.

It was this left wing position which seems to have irked Brandon during his time at the club. Said Brandon

I don’t think the club knew where my best position was and didn’t know my best attributes. I was on the left, on the right, in a three or playing off the front man. I can play all those positions and was happy to do so but it’s not easy when you’re being switched around all the time.

One can only imagine that Brandon would like to play those positions but his ability to be useful in any of them is questionable. As a flank player he neither plays an an orthodox wide man beating players nor does he contribute massively defensively drifting inside far too often to little effect. Likewise when deployed in a central midfield role Brandon’s inability to cope with the physical demands of the role exposed City’s midfield badly.

Of course he can play off a front man – a position that requires next to nothing in terms of defensive discipline – but again his effectiveness there was questionable. If you struggle to recall the moment Brandon latched onto the nod down or made the incisive run from deep to pop up in the box it is because it never occurred. Brandon’s upset seems to come from the idea that he is a bit of a passenger in a team and that Stuart McCall – and later Peter Taylor – should have put together a side that carried him.

Michael Flynn plays off the front man with zeal and commitment, Luke O’Brien’s play at left back has been superb, Omar Daley on the right is obviously and constantly better than Brandon’s while the central two of Adam Bolder and Lee Bullock. One would love to know which of these hard working professionals Brandon believed he should have strolled into the team past.

Brandon’s two years at Bradford City were characterised by this attitude in which the player seemed to have an inflated idea of his own position in the club. A player who having failed to show a consistent usefulness in the positions he was played in and then blamed the club – both managers he played under – for not creating a position for him.

As Peter Taylor starts to build a team he would look to do so with players who are made of sterner stuff than the outgoing midfielder. Players who will take responsibility for the side rather than wish for it to carry them.

Brandon will crop up again. Some other side will sign him and he will turn a boot impressively on TV, making a great looking pass or a fine finish and for a moment, dear reader, you will miss him but do not be fooled.

A player who got to play for the club he supported – sadly – seemed to want that club to support him. McCall, Lawn and Taylor all took objection to that and – after his parting shot – so do I.