BfB

Hereford United 1 Bradford City 1 At Edgar Street in League Two, 2010/2011

Thirty years ago if you were a member of St Anthony’s Primary School football team – or the brother of a member who’s Dad drove kids to games – then as a reward for a season of not much return you were given the chance to go watch Bradford City’s last game of the 1980/81 season as the Bantams took on Hereford United.

That was my introduction to Bradford City, and there is a certain symmetry to this afternoon’s entertainment as the Bantams travel to Edgar Street to meet Hereford United. The first game was a scrappy end of season affair – although at the time an impressive watch – where the visitors nicked a 1-0 win. Today a point for both teams would have secured League football for both next season and unsurprisingly a point each was the return.

Unsurprisingly because the home side set out to secure such a return trying to retain possession as far back the field as they could for as long as they could seldom venturing into the Bantams penalty area.

The illusion was a strange one. It seemed like City were penning in Hereford and certainly the Bantams were enjoying playing with a sense of freedom that allowed the likes of David Syers – playing central midfield well – and Gareth Evans to lash at goal following James Hanson’s early attempt which threatened to derail the Bull’s afternoon.

The Bulls afternoon though was taking place miles away at the Crown Ground, Accrington where Barnet played Stanley. The machinations of that game seemed to tilt to this. Barnet level at 1-1 and there was a nervousness in the home side’s play but that nervousness lifted as Accrington took a lead which proved decisive.

That took until the second half and after the first forty five minutes the scorelessness seemed like a fog never to lift. The Bantams were unthreatened – Joe Colbeck was given the reception by the visiting fans one would expect but that seemed to serve to suggest he was more dangerous than he was and while no one especially enjoys hearing themselves abuse the look on Colbeck’s face as he banged a cross into the middle which was attacked by nobody looked more like distraction than upset.

If a winger putting in crosses for no one makes a wonderfully illustrative example of the game then City’s striker with no crosses seems to make another. James Hanson – at times – seems to never lose a ball in the air and one wonders what he could have done with the type of accurate crossing that Colbeck could do, and that the likes of Nick Summerbee and Peter Beagrie did.

Colbeck’s time at City – and his time since he left and the schadenfreude some City fans seemed to follow it with – sends my mind back sprawling to that first game on the 15th of May 1981 and how football has changed since then. Thirty years allows a guy the chance to reflect and that reflection is in the level of hope which used to be the currency and how that has been replaced with an unsavoury expectation.

Reading articles about the Bantams last decade you often read the phrase “ten years of failure” and while this is true from the prevalent point of view that anything other than promotion is failure but watching this last decade they were no different to many of the two which proceeded it.

Consider – if you will – the 1996/97 season of Chris Waddle and Edinho where relegation was avoided on the final day of the season. What we had that year was built on the next. That season of struggle Chris Kamara signed players like Robbie Blake and Jon Dreyer who were on the pitch two years later at Wolves when the Bantams were promoted to the Premiership.

No one ever said that finishing 21st was a roaring success that season but no one ever lambasted all involved as failures either and after that season lessons were learnt that drew a line directly to the successes which followed.

At some point after that failure started to describe anything which not success – this is semantics – and the rhetoric is that the club and supporters demand the best and should have high aims lest they achieve nothing but the practical upshot of throwing the word failure at anything which has not been promotion over the last decade is that Bradford City systematically rip the club apart over the course of every summer, throw things in the air and see where they land.

Failure – finding it wherever it can be hinted at – is the obsession of the current football mindset from top to bottom to such an extent that progress along the path to success is talked of as being it. Those who run football clubs need to be strong and need to stress that if the right things are being done then those things will not be changed because they have not come to fruition yet.

Are Bradford City at present on this path? You will judge for yourself on that, dear reader, just as you will also have a view on the merits and effectiveness of addressing the “failures” of Colin Todd, or Stuart McCall, and how the attempts to deal with those so called “failures” have brought us to the position we are in now.

Would City have been any worse if Colbeck – squarely presented as a problem and the cause of failure – had remained at the club? Would the last few years have been so different had Danny Forrest been up front? Has the season on season change of right backs produced a player more effective than Gareth Edds or has it just given us a series of different players?

Different players who have the same problems and ultimately exit in the same way and we – as a club and as supporters – relinquish our responsibly for the impact of that. The justification for replacing players is that those players seldom go on to a higher level following their time at the club as if the confidence lost, the access to a better standard of coaching lost, the experience of playing league football lost has no impact on the (lack of) progression of those players.

Joe Colbeck wanders up and down the Hereford United wing on one side, Gareth Evans on the City wing on the other, both look like players who seem on the edge of dropping out of professional football not because they are not useful, or skilled, or have potential but just to appease a desire to smash up what is there in the name of not tolerating failure but with the effect of not allowing building.

I think back to Robbie Blake and his goal at Wolves in another final away game of the season and how many times – had the current attitude in football been the way of thinking then – he would have been bounced out of Valley Parade rather than being allowed to be a part of a team which matured.

In thirty years between two games with Hereford United expectation has overcome hope. Everything about Bradford City is about the expectation that better can be demanded. It used to be that better was hoped for, but if that hope failed then it was renewed over the summer. This is only important because in the times of hope, rather than expectations, things improved more often.

What do we have in the summer? Hope or expectation? Or neither?

Peter Jackson took his Bradford City team to Hereford United looking for a point to keep League Two status secure – a modest return – and Hereford’s Jamie Pitman had the same aim which once results started to fall into place bound the teams to a defensive display a little less. Both ended the day safe from relegation with Barnet’s defeat seeing them battle Lincoln City to stay in the division. Stockport County were relegated.

Ultimately – at Edgar Street – James Hanson proved too much of a handful for home defender Stefan Stam and after he was fouled Jake Speight scored a penalty with ten minutes on the clock. Stuart Fleetwood equalised a few minutes later with a great free kick. That shot was the home side’s only attempt on target of the afternoon but it was the draw that everyone seemed happy with.

For the summer though who can tell. Over the last thirty years – and specifically the last decade or so – football’s expectation level has outstripped its ability to bring enjoyment in a great many ways. Supporting was its own reward, but now all rewards are delayed until there is a manifestation of success. Goals are cheered, wins are welcomed, promotions are celebrated but anything other than those things – and including the build up to those things – are drawn out grimly.

Football League safety is assure and the summer yawns out ahead with its own troubles and with that the idea that the unifying mood in August will be one of hope seems very, very far away and utterly old fashioned.

Bradford City play Hereford United At Edgar Street in League Two, 2010/2011

The team huddle immediately prior to Monday’s vital game with Aldershot included not just the starting eleven, but the substitutes, manager and coaching staff. And its symbolism appeared to be taken on board by the majority of supporters in the stadium.

Sure, there are so many issues surrounding Bradford City Football Club right now, not least the feeling of being let down by this group of players. But for 90 minutes, it seemed everyone’s differences were put aside and we truly became one team working towards the same cause. The players were positively backed, the chanting probably its loudest all season. The usual groans and moans were largely reined in. The resultant 2-1 success felt like a collective effort, in which everyone deserved to share a slice of the credit.

And now we’re back to where we were, with at least one problem – the threat of relegation – seemingly addressed.

Tomorrow’s trip to Hereford is no longer the significant game it might have been; and, as is so often the case at this stage of a Bantams’ season, attention is more on those unresolved off the field questions. Nevertheless what happens between 3-5pm Saturday could have a major effect on one of those uncertainties – which can now firmly come back into focus.

Just who is going to manage City next season? Peter Jackson remains in the interim role, and arguably still holds pole position despite poor results in recent weeks reducing his popularity. The way he turned around the players from their pathetic no-show at Accrington to full-on commitment against Aldershot 48 hours later was hugely impressive.

Nevertheless results overall have not improved since it was determined Peter Taylor had to depart, and so Jackson now has several blemishes to his application to be permanent manager. The position was supposed to have been filled before Easter – along with announcing season ticket prices for next season – but the severity of the relegation problem saw those plans postponed. Next week should be the ideal time for the Board to finally make a decision.

John Hughes waits on in the wings, while Dagenham’s John Still – a star of a fantastic BBC Radio 5Live behind the scenes documentary that you should listen to if you have the time – continues to be heavily linked. Other names could still be in the frame; Jackson has let it be known, for example, that a couple of recently retired Premier League footballers have thrown their hat in the ring. They have offered to do it for free – such is the comfort of life from a career at the top – in order to get experience.

For now Jackson leads City to Edgar Street, with the hosts still harbouring relegation concerns. Having begun the season disastrously under Simon Davey, Hereford had improved significantly under the management of physio Jamie Pitman and climbed the table. However a run of one win in seven – oddly enough 3-0 against leaders Chesterfield – leaves them looking over their shoulders. While second-bottom Barnet find form, Hereford, Lincoln and Northampton have almost completely lost theirs. Who joins Stockport in non-league could be determined by who fails to climb out of their nosedive.

It is vital game tomorrow for Hereford, which makes for a very interesting assessment of Jackson’s City.  Although still needing a point to be mathematically safe, the Bantams basically have nothing to play for. As heartening as the effort levels were on Monday, all season the players have struggled to deliver the necessary level of desire supporters expect from them. If they want Jackson to be their manager – and if they want to be a Bradford City player for that matter – the greater need for Hereford to win should not be an excuse for rolling over.

Lenny Pidgley continues to keep goal, despite struggling to convince fans he should be picked ahead of the previously in-form Jon McLaughlin. The back four on Monday was – for a rare occasion – terrific and likely to stay the same. Lee Bullock’s performance at centre back was one of the finest individual displays of the season, especially considering it’s not his position. Luke Oliver is also ending the campaign well; while on Monday Robbie Threlfall at last put in a display to the standard of when he was on impressing on loan last season.

That said the demotion of Luke O’Brien is troubling and one has to wonder what he has done to merit a continuing omission from the starting line up. Many fans and the media have declared David Syers is the player of the season, despite no democratic vote taking place. He probably does deserve it overall, but for consistency and improvement O’Brien would have made a worthy rival for the award. Lewis Hunt plays right back.

In midfield Omar Daley’s wonder goal on Monday was a magic moment for those of us who continue to talk up the Jamaican, while others routinely dispute his worth to the team. Of his three games since returning, Monday was, arguably, his quietest so far. It is interesting that a team who has spent the season playing without wingers has struggled to provide Daley with adequate service since he was recalled to play his more natural wide position. Nevertheless his value has been clearly demonstrated.

Jon Worthington will patrol the centre alongside Syers, with Gareth Evans wide right. Evans is the current target of the Valley Parade boo boys, and it is sad to see a player struggling for confidence receive such little support. No one has acknowledged that it was his corner which set up Monday’s winner.

Up front James Hanson had an outstanding first half at least on Monday and will partner Jake Speight, who also impressed and was notably missed when he was subbed early due to injury. Chib Chilaka – Speight’s replacement – struggles to make an impact, though his particularly jubilant celebrations at full time on Monday did not go unnoticed.

A mass team huddle probably won’t be required pre-match; but if the players switch off again, for Jackson it might time to switch off the lights on the manager’s office for good.

About a year ago, John Dewhirst, David Pendleton and John Ashton (apologies if I’ve missed other people out) started to hatch a plan to celebrate the 100 year anniversary of Bradford City winning the FA Cup. All of their hard work came to fruition on the exact date 100 years after our most famous victory over Newcastle United in an FA Cup final replay at Old Trafford. Over 200 people packed one of the many function rooms at the Midland Hotel to come together as one. John Dewhirst stressed that this was a supporters evening and the organisers were very aware of the difficult financial pressures faced by many of Bradford City’s supporters today and that they had tried to offer tickets at an affordable price of £25 for the evening which included a three course meal. In my opinion, the evening was worth every penny.

The presentation of the room was classy yet professional with claret and amber very prominent colours throughout the room. The Gawthorpe Brass Band played their instruments to great effect to generate an emotional atmosphere on an emotional night. Apart from the many supporters in the room (many of whom could probably remember games from the 70s and even further back), others present included past players such as Ian Cooper and Joe Cooke, former player and manager Terry Dolan, members of our existing Board and even a descendant of Peter Logan who formed part of the 1911 winning team.

In his opening speech, you could hear the pride in John Dewhirst’s voice as he thanked everyone for attending. He did however pass on apologies from Stuart McCall and Greg Abbott who at the last minute couldn’t attend. However, this didn’t takeaway the gloss from a wonderful evening. It was noticeable however that there were none of the existing team present or interim manager Peter Jackson which I thought was disappointing. A friend of mine who attended the dinner had managed to see the Bradford City juniors draw 2-2 on the same afternoon over in Hull. (Apparently we were 2-0 down with 15 minutes to go but we salvaged a draw through some inspired play from up and coming winger Dominic Rowe.) My friend asked David Wetherall if he had inspired our junior team with a half time team talk highlighting the fact the it was 100 years to the day that our club won the FA Cup.

Unfortunately, Wetherall replied “no” and said that he would have liked to have attended the evening if he’d been aware of it. This says to me that our existing team and management were unaware of the the importance of 26 April 1911 and the event taking place at the Midland Hotel. This notion saddened me and highlighted the poor communication that exists between the players and supporters today.

However, not to paint a gloomy picture of a fabulous evening, we tucked into our three course meal with many of us enjoying the fine Glorious1911 Ale brewed by the Saltaire brewery with sales from the ale being donated to the Bradford Burns Unit. During the meal it was great to talk to fellow Bradford City supporters about all things City related. A couple on our table now lived in Kendal but still have season tickets to attend games at Valley Parade and also told tales of their away game experiences. I got the feeling that those of us who were fortunate enough to pay for a ticket all hold Bradford City close to our hearts and wanted to ensure that our FA Cup victory should not be forgotten. History is important. It was great to see die hards like Mike Harrison, Mark Neale and Board members of the Bradford City Supporters’ Trust in attendance.

The meal over and David Pendleton, author of the superb book Glorious 1911 explained some of the tales behind our famous victory like how the replay was played only four days after the final at Crystal Palace so only about 10,000 Bradford City supporters travelled to Manchester for the replay owing to financial constraints placed on supporters (sound familiar?). Also, owing to the fact that there were no floodlights meant that the replay kicked off mid-afternoon. The victorious team, thanks to Jimmy Speirs goal after 15 minutes, arrived back into Bradford in the evening to be greeted by about 100,000 Bradfordians. This represented about a third of the City’s population and it took the team about 45 minutes to cross the city and finally end up at the Midland Hotel. John Ashton replicated speeches that were made on that evening of 100 years ago and you could hear the sportsmanship that existed in the speeches that by and large is no longer in our game.

John Dewhirst then presented a cheque for £5,000 to Professor Sharpe who has been so instrumental in the development of the Bradford Burns Unit. This money had come from the sales of historical memorabilia including scarfs and badges. Ian Cooper then made a toast to suitably round off a wonderful evening.

Following the formalities, this young(-ish) supporter who only witnessed his first Bradford City game at Valley Parade in 1988 approached some of the former players to sign his copy of Glorious 1911. All who I approached were more than happy to sign and came across as genuine people who still have an affinity with Bradford City Football Club. Many posed for photographs and chatted to supporters which was lovely to see. Once again, a personal thank you from me to all those who put so much unpaid time and effort into a memorable night. We must never forget where this football club has come from.

Because if we get relegated, we will have to pay for it for the next ten years.

These words about Bradford City, spoken in September 1999 – a month into the Bantams’ first-ever Premier League season – read like a prophet of doom given how true they turned out to be. But when you consider whose mouth these words poured out of, the fact it was subsequently ignored is enough to make you cry in anguish.

For this quote came from then-City Chairman, Geoffrey Richmond, to FourFourTwo magazine almost 12 years ago. In fact, examine the full quote and see if your heart doesn’t sink.

I’m not prepared to have a situation whereby the club spends money that it doesn’t have and it all goes wrong. Because if we get relegated we’ll have to pay for it for the next ten years. I’ve seen it happen at other clubs and I’m not going to let it happen at Bradford.

This quote – from a magazine cutting which a friend recently passed to me – offer a new twist on the well-trodden tale of how Richmond steered the club into the mess it is still struggling to get out of. Such prophetic words of wisdom; but the fact Richmond was so understanding of the potential consequences of his six weeks of madness, but went ahead with it anyway, suggests a higher level of foolishness than even many of his fiercest critics would credit him for.

He really did appreciate the stakes involved in the reckless gambles he took.

Richmond – most noted for declaring he’d deliver Premier League football to the Bantams within five years, when he took over – perhaps has a new infamous quote to rival his “six weeks of madness” confession. Meanwhile we struggle on, wondering if we can ever put the past behind us.

The latest financial worries – is this really a crisis?

I wonder what quotes Mark Lawn will be remembered for? Having deliberately kept a low profile for a year, the current joint-Chairman has been regularly interviewed in recent weeks as he tries to bring landlords Gordon Gibb and Prupim to the negotiating table, over the possibility of reducing the rent.

On Saturday Lawn was in full flow again, this time declaring to us supporters that he is not playing games and this is a deadly serious situation. With a strange hint to those who bought season tickets last December (are we to be asked to contribute more, I wonder?) and a new revelation that City could move to a new home by the start of next season – potentially making the Crewe game a week Saturday the last-ever Valley Parade match for the Bantams – Lawn was determined to shoot down those who still doubt the Board’s true intentions.

One can understand the scepticism that prevails in many supporters. The financial information that has been put into the public arena, for example, does not suggest as bleak a picture that is now being portrayed – leaving many to question Lawn and City’s motives. City currently have to pay Gibb and Prupim around £370k per year, each, while the club’s wage budget for this season – £1.5 million – is twice what many League Two clubs operate on. As Lawn was keen to tell BfB in January, Dagenham & Redbridge was promoted last season on a £750k budget.

Perhaps instead of wasting money on a talented player like Tommy Doherty – who, BfB hears, refuses to play for City, despite being fit, and is happy to sit back and take a sizeable wage home each week – we could be using it on more important matters?

Whispers from within the club, meanwhile, suggest the £1.3 million annual running costs for Valley Parade are presently more or less covered by off the field sponsorship and income generated from renting out the offices. The season ticket money more or less covers the playing budget too. So a suspicion remains that a rental reduction is more aimed at providing a stronger wage budget, or making up for the fact previous playing budgets have been supplemented by loans from Lawn and Julian Rhodes, which won’t be the case this summer.

Behind the headline figures, City’s accounts paint a bleak picture

Bradford City’s 2009-10 financial accounts show City made a profit of around half a million – though this was only because of a near £1 million windfall from Leeds United selling Fabian Delph to Aston Villa. For the 2008-09 season City made a loss of £765,000. That came after City pushed out the wage bill to £1.9 million and – with this season’s playing budget at £1.5 million – we can intelligently assume the club will also make a loss this season.

BfB has, with the help of two people far more qualified on these matters, taken a look at City’s Abbreviated Accounts for the year ending 30 June 2010 (these accounts are publicly available for anyone to view). They paint a very troubling picture, in that the club has a net deficit on its assets. This means it has more liabilities (ie financial obligations, such as repaying loans) than assets (money owed to the club by other parties, etc). This is a terrible position for any company to be in, and some people – probably outside of the football industry – might even argue it should be wound up unless proof of future profit potential can be provided. A basic valuation technique would suggest Bradford City is worth approximately minus £500K. No wonder a rent reduction is being pursued so urgently.

The good news is that this net deficit position has improved compared to a year ago, by around £500k. The club’s cash balance assets has also grown considerably (from around £13k in 2009 to approximately £224k in 2010). However, this appears to be due to the windfall received from Delph – meaning the club’s net deficit could grow the wrong way again come the end of this season. The Delph money is a one-off bonus, rather than a sign the City are becoming financially stronger.

Clearly this financial situation cannot be sustained in the medium to longer-term; and so Lawn’s comments that the Bantams won’t exist in two years time under the current status quo actually do seem credible. Given the club has made no public comment over its accounts, it’s no surprise people are currently doubting Lawn’s bleak assessment over the future of the club. However, the financial picture that is emerging from City’s books would suggest that the Telegraph & Argus’ insistence of labelling the current situation a “crisis” isn’t the tabloid sensationalism it might appear.

But what about those liabilities? The loans to Lawn and Rhodes

One unresolved question is the situation regarding those loans that Lawn and Rhodes have put into the club over the last few years. BfB has seen documentation of a loan Lawn made to the club on 15^th March 2009, which states interest will be charged annually (payments due monthly) at 9% above the Bank of England Base Rate (which means it is 9.5% at present, and would increase when, as financial analysts expect, interest rates begin to climb again over the next couple of years).

This interest rate certainly jumps off the page in terms of questioning how good a deal this really is for Bradford City. A business looking to undertake a loan would typically find much more favourable terms from a bank than 9% above Base Rate. However, it would be questionable whether a bank would loan the sum of money Lawn has in the current economic climate, especially to a football club viewed financially as a risky investment.

So 9% above Base Rate could therefore be justified on the basis that the risk factor for Lawn is significantly high. Were City to go into administration or even bust, Lawn would find himself towards the bottom of a pile of people to receive money back from any surplus cash. Football rules on this deem that football creditors must be paid first – so Doherty, for example, would come before Lawn in getting what they are owed. It’s more likely that Lawn would be asked to accept a percentage of the money he is owed in a Creditors Voluntary Agreement, along with other creditors.

Nevertheless, on paper this looks like a potentially lucrative deal for Lawn. Though away from the black and white facts of the documentation, this writer has every faith Lawn is – and will continue to – act in the best interests of the club.

Is this all a smokescreen so Lawn and Rhodes can sell the club?

As much as Lawn wants to stress the grimness of the situation, for supporters, because there are a number of knowledge gaps, speculation and doubt has been allowed to fill in. We’ve all asked ourselves whether it’s a matter of Lawn needing to convince us supporters of the severity of the situation, in order to convince Gibb and Prupim. Are our emotions being put through the mill in order to stir some emotion inside these two parties? And is there anything we can do to help? (Trip to Flamingoland, anyone?)

Some argue Lawn is looking to offload the club and be paid back his loans. And so he is trying to make City a more attractive investment proposition by reducing the overheads, such as by moving to a new stadium with more favourable terms. However it’s dubious whether the revenue streams of moving to Odsal or wherever would be as rewarding to an investor as they are at Valley Parade.

Sponsorship, merchandise, corporate hospitality – all still likely to be generated in a stadium elsewhere, but arguably not to the same level because other parties may get a cut of it. Unless, for example, someone was prepared to switch all the advertising boards back and forth between when City and the Bradford Bulls play at Odsal, joint advertising deals might need to be negotiated – which may not be as viable for local businesses in these difficult economic times. A stadium also cannot realistically have two different names, in terms of sponsors, so City could lose the annual revenue from Coral Windows.

Lawn and Rhodes have always stated they would be willing to step aside if someone credible wanted to take over the club, and perhaps the pair feel that they are unable to prop up this club financially anymore. Any outside investor would be looking to make a profit from owning Bradford City, plain and simple. So if reducing the overheads could attract a responsible investor, the joint Chairman may feel this is the best course of action for the long-term good of the club.

Lawn’s legacy could rest on the result of these negotiations

There is so much that we supporters don’t know about the situation for us to easily fall in line with all of Lawn’s words and place our full faith and confidence that the Board’s actions will provide the best solution for Bradford City Football Club. As such, Lawn and Rhodes have to accept their words will be disputed by some, put up with some criticism and face their reputation taking a hit if these talks don’t go the way it’s hoped. Notwithstanding, the threat of moving to Osdal would appear to be much more serious than many of us give credit – the club may really not have a choice on this unless the landlords are willing to help.

In a season where we supporters can argue the players have let us down badly and the manager messed up, we hope and pray that the Board – through these talks – can deliver an outstanding performance that safeguards the future of the club for generations to come.

And if Richmond’s quote in 1999 defines his time for all the wrong reasons, let us hope Lawn’s words to us in January this year characterises him for all the right ones:

But what I can say to Bradford City fans is that I will make sure this club always stays alive, and that is one thing that I will always do. But to do that it means I can’t be throwing money around and we’ve got to live within our means.

Bradford City 2 Aldershot Town 1 At Valley Parade in League Two, 2010/2011

David Syers met the ball and headed it firmly into the back of Aldershot Town’s goal. I stood and raised two hands in the air and I heard sounds around me but I made no sound.

A contrast then. Within the first five minutes of City’s penultimate home game of the season City pressed well and Omar Daley won a throw in on the left wing. Robbie Threlfall acted quickly taking the throw from some way back and feeding Daley.

There is something about Daley which divides people – or so popular thinking goes – but there is no division when the Jamaican winger takes the ball forward. People might say pass when they see Omar heading towards goal and the certainly say it after an aborted forward thrust but when he is on the ball I’d wager that everyone wants the same thing.

The skip forward, the drag inside, the look up, the shot from twenty five yards out that arcs past a poorly positioned Aldershot keeper Jamie Young and into the far corner of the goal.

It is the goal anyone would want to score and when it ripples the goal there is an burst of relief audible and loud. Everyone on their feet, everyone cheering, everyone as one. It is times like that as Daley skids to a cheering slide and is mobbed that football is at its best.

Stay in the moment. The explosion of joy, the happiness. The weeks of following Bradford City have been grim but the moments on a Saturday justify those.

From then on it is all Bradford City coming forward with the sort of gusto that a confident team does. Michael Flynn prompted from midfield, Daley looked threatening but everyone wanted the ball and it seemed that that willingness would bring a second goal. James Hanson hit a long range effort that beat Young and bounced back into play from the post only for Jake Speight to catch the follow up with his knees and spur the chance.

Young performed better, saving a header from Luke Oliver following an Omar Daley corner, but ever corner which came over from the Bantams was battled between strikers and defenders. Young came for not one. This would prove conclusive.

Not conclusive but seemingly so was the moment though when Aldershot burst down the left flank following a Lewis Hunt overlap. Michael Flynn tracked back and a sudden snap was obvious as the Welshman’s hand reached to his right thigh.

Right leg lame, left leg darts out to take the ball in a tackle taking the ball. Flynn prostrate on the turf, probably his last kick of the season, maybe his last kick for the club, but he made the tackle. Outside of football the loudest sound I make is waking up at night with a cramp. That requires Mrs Wood to be awoken and sympathy give. One leg goes, the other tackles. Michael Flynn limps away to the sound of his name being sung.

It is the lack of that sort of personal effort which has put City into the position we are in. For a team of Michael Flynn.

Flynn’s absence saw Gareth Evans come on and David Syers move to central midfield. Evans is chunked to the ground in an attacking move and the ball attacks the weakened right hand side allowing Peter Vincenti to equalise. It is one of a series of decisions which referee Mathieson allows creating a kind of Wild West atmosphere on the field.

Tackles are hard and some use two feet. Gary Charles – one of the best defenders in League Two – pulls down Speight as he runs towards goal and is not cautioned when a red card seems the only option. Speight gets involved with defenders with pushing and shoving but no discipline. Both teams are lucky that Mathieson’s approach to refereeing does not leave them with injuries and one tackle that stamped into Jon Worthington seemed to be worth a red card.

Worthington is struggling though. Two games in three days seem to have sapped his energy and Syers is carrying much of the weight of the midfield. Evans and Daley put in effort for different awards. Daley jinks forward beating two men with a step over flick on which gets you to the edge of the seat, Evans makes mistakes but taps on a reserve missing for the last few weeks and keeps going.

Results ping around the ground. Barnet are winning, the they are not. Burton are ahead of us and then they are not and for a moment the mental image of Howard Wilkinson eating his dinner as Leeds won the 1992 Championship came to mind. Control what you can control, filter out what you cannot.

But there is a nervousness. Lenny Pidgeley is not over employed but there seems to a worry that Aldershot Town – nothing much to play for – have something in store for City. David Syers is booked. He has stepped up to a level of performance which carries the team. A real central midfield display of which one can only admire. A year ago he was a non-league footballer. Today he graduated.

Syers performance won the game but the performance as a team was excellent. Individual players taking responsibility for the collective performance. Syers gave City the steel and with that steel City took the midfield battle and – just – won it.

A free kick driven towards goal by Robbie Threlfall and Young excelled himself with a save. Gareth Evans hit the corner true and Syers heads the ball heading it firmly into the Aldershot goal just as the clock ticks into injury time. I hear noise around me but I am alone in my silence. In fifteen minutes the adrenaline kicks in and I start to rabbit to the people I’m walking back to the car with.

The game ends an age later and City have 51 points. There are mathematics which mean City could be relegated but they are slight and City are probably safe. Superb performance from David Syers, brilliant goal from Omar Daley. Individuals taking responsibility for their own performance, and the performance of the team.

The I, as in team.

Bradford City play Aldershot Town At Valley Parade in League Two, 2010/2011

Watching Nottingham Forest sneak into sixth place in the Championship at the expense of Leeds United it was remarked that one might not have predicted Forest would do so well after their defeat to Bradford City in the second game of the season.

That evening David Syers’ debut goal and an extra time strike from James Hanson gave City a 2-1 win and seemed to kick start a season which promised much. That early indication was as close as the club got to the season starting in earnest and some eight months on as City fans watch a team struggle with relegation one feels a little robbed of a year of football.

Not that we expected much from the season – Mark Lawn and the rest of the Valley Parade board did to such an extent where The City Gent’s Mike Harrison was hauled over the coals for predicting that the Bantams would be finish a place outside the play offs. Mike was – it seems – right that we would not be in the top seven.

One might wonder though what impact the predictions and preferences of supporters have on a football club. There was a school of thought – helped by the financial mechanics of the bookmaking industry – that City would be favourites this season which went alongside the predictions for Harrison (and from myself, for I was no more confident) and all these are set against a near constant stream of negativity which is tied to the club like a stone around the leg of a drowning man.

On that subject one can only look in envy at groups of supporters who realise the impact they can have on their team. City fans – it seems – have long since made a choice that the players are very much on their own and as the Bantams look for three points to end the season without relegation they do so alone.

Luke Oliver – a target for abuse regardless of his performances – sneered at City fans singing to him and his team mates that they were not fit to wear the shirt over at Accrington and will have gone into the dressing room to hear Peter Jackson agreeing but nothing in the club invites Oliver or his team mates passions.

One year contracts that make sure your future and the club’s are not tied together, abuse from supporters on the days you flog your guts out, and talk of the club not even starting next season.

For sure any professional pride you have might mean you want to win, but on the days when your opposition have the same professional pride and a crowd who want them to do well, who encourage them and who try lift them, playing for a manager who lives and breaths the club then one wonders what we want the mercenaries who we gather together every summer to care about?

Assuming the current crop of players – those who are “encouraged on” by being told they represent the worst Bradford City team in forty years – can steal three points in the next three games then the club – assuming that it can struggle into next season without the self inflicted wounds of administration – then let they be the last who are so poorly assembled.

My belief is that players are much of a muchness at this level and that the current set will be replaced by players no better, no worse, but that it is up to a club, a manager and a set of supporters to build those players into a team. The club can offer contracts of a length and a stability that encourage the players to realise that their futures are tied to the team’s performance, the manager can instil belief and desire in those players, and that supporters can – for once – decide to swallow the scream of abuse which vents their own frustration but creates or furthers the cauldron of negativity which Bradford City has become.

Or not, and we can try carry on like this.

Jon McLaughlin seems ready to return for Lenny Pidgeley in goal for the Bantams as we look to record a win over Aldershot which could end relegation fears. A defeat for Barnet at home to Oxford United and a win for the Bantams would see City safe mathematically.

Lewis Hunt will continue at right back with Luke Oliver paired with either Lee Bullock or Steve Williams should Williams have recovered from illness. Luke O’Brien will hope for a recall at left back over Robbie Threlfall.

Tommy Doherty is – we are told – fit to play but not being selected. Mark Lawn spoke about only wanting to sign players who wanted to play for Bradford City and it seems that Doherty was certainly amongst the those covered in that criticism. Not that the criticism is especially valid. Most players we approach would want to play for the club but the trick is making sure that they still want to play for Bradford City after a few months.

Instead Jon Worthington and Michael Flynn make up City’s midfield. Flynn’s efforts are seemingly the target of criticism themselves by some supporters with the idea being that since he has returned from injury he has “struggled for form” or “been rubbish” depending on your vernacular. Dropping the players who put in effort, in an attempt to get more effort, is no solution I could subscribe to.

Kevin Ellison is fit to return but will most likely be kept to the bench as David Syers and Omar Daley take the wings although there is an idea that Peter Jackson will use Daley as a second striker alongside James Hanson with Jake Speight dropping to the bench alongside Gareth Evans.

With undoubted ability – recall Northampton last season – and a willingness to work hard on many, many occasions Gareth Evans cuts a forlorn figure which perfectly represents the Bantams lack progress.

Seldom does one see a football who has so obviously had all the joy of playing football squeezed out of him.

Now we ask players like him to squeeze out just one more win, before sending them away and replacing them with the next set of hopefully to be crushed on the broken wheels that make no progress.

Accrington Stanley 3 Bradford City 0 At The Crown Ground in League Two, 2010/2011

Viewed through the singular picture of the four league meetings at the Crown Ground between the two clubs since 2007, the rise of Accrington and the demise of Bradford City could not be more evident.

After the Bantams outplayed their hosts in January 2008 to triumph 2-0 and were lucky to grab a memorable 3-2 win in October the next season, Stanley achieved a deserved 2-0 victory in February 2010 and today completely outplayed their West Yorkshire counterparts in delivering a 3-0 scoreline that flattered only the visitors. Most worrying of all is how much further in opposite directions the clubs may yet go: could we end this season two divisions apart?

Towards Accrington there can only be warm appreciation and envy for what they are on the brink of achieving. That cute little club we defeated 2-0 some 39 months ago has slowly grown and grown; moving up 5^th place today after crushing the Bantams. They could even yet seal automatic promotion; an incredible achievement for a club which pulls in the second-lowest average attendances in the division.

But then, from the outside, Accrington appears to be so united. As the players walked out onto the field at kick off, the hardcore Stanley Ultra supporters behind the goal unfurled homemade banners with the word ‘Believe’. They provided a passionate level of backing towards their players during the subsequent 90 minutes which – in volume and originality – defied their lowly numbers. The quality of atmosphere deserves to put 99% of fans of professional football clubs in this country – including us – to shame.

The players, superbly drilled and confident, responded to their fans with an energetic display that City simply couldn’t live with. On a dreadful playing surface, they passed the ball around with an urgency and skill that was a joy to watch. Under John Coleman – who in his 12 years in charge has improved Stanley’s league position every season – they are creative but organised. However the most telling difference between the two sides was the reaction to making mistakes.

Accrington ain’t Brazil, and their attempts to pass the ball around quickly on several occasions ended with the ball flying out of play or going to the wrong man. But not once could you hear groans from home fans – just positive support to get going again. Coasting in the second half, a mistake that allowed Omar Daley to shoot wildly wide saw an argument between two Accrington players spill over into the beginnings of a fight that saw others step in to defuse. They were 3-0 up, for goodness sake.

Such levels of passion and determination were woefully lacking in City. Whatever Stanley have been getting right, the Bantams it seems have been getting it wrong. Peter Jackson paused from walking down the touchline just before kick off to hug and shake the hands of City supporters in the main stand; like a politician canvassing for votes, all to aware of the spotlight upon him. While Coleman builds on at Accrington, City’s last three visits to the Crown Ground have seen a different manager in charge.

Who knows what Jackson’s chances are of getting the City job anymore? Results have become worse than they were under Peter Taylor and, as sympathetic as we can be over how difficult the job is with the players he’s inherited, Jackson must assume some responsibility for six defeats in eight.

Not that his players did much to help him. It took nine minutes for Accrington’s promising start to be rewarded by a goal, with Luke Joyce being allowed to run and curl a superb effort into the far corner. Seven minutes later Andrew Proctor was played through on goal and finished emphatically past Lenny Pidgley. While Accrington fans continued their positive chanting, the City following – easily the lowest in numbers of the four trips to the Crown Ground – was turning on their team.

The Bantams did at least begin to put up some fight and threatened to pull a goal back. First James Hanson prodded a tame effort at home keeper Alex Cisak; then a hard-working Omar Daley went on a jinxing run and saw his cross shot beaten out; next Robbie Threlfall free kick went narrowly over and then, after David Syers’ shot was blocked, Lewis Hunt’s long-range volley was well tipped over by Cisak.

Yet every time Accrington went forward they threatened to overrun a City defence which has been woefully inadequate all season. The third goal came after a long throw in was flicked on by Luke Oliver, and Sean McConville got free of his marker to head the ball into an empty net with Pidgely badly positioned. At least the referee put us out of our misery by blowing for half time shortly after, though the ugly barracking the players received as they filed to the dressing room by the away end was as miserable as anything we’d endured on the field.

Behind the back of our stand, an amateur football match was taking place on a different pitch during the first half and many City fans gave up on watching their team to view this one instead. As amusing as it was for a huge cheer to go up when the team in orange scored – their players raced over in celebration and waved at us – the contrast in the nature of support compared to Accrington fans hardly reflected well on us City supporters, no matter how trying the circumstances. The Accrington Ultras, observing our cheers for another match, chanted “S**t support” and it was difficult to argue.

The second half at least saw the damage restricted in scoreline, though it would be beyond even this writer’s optimistic nature to argue a degree of pride was restored. Lee Bullock came on for the ill Steve Williams; later on Chib Chilaka replaced Hanson but failed to make any impact. Daley’s effort that prompted the two Accrington players to fall out aside, there were no serious attempts on goal from City. Accrington had chances to make it four or even five nil and didn’t let up all afternoon.

We could put this debacle down to players not caring about the club. We can bemoan the manager as not being good enough. We can take solace in the fact many of these underachieving professionals won’t be at the club much longer. But in many ways this is failing to grasp hold of the problem and will most likely lead to repeats of these failures.

Sure some of the players were found wanting in their effort levels today, but not all of them. And the fear is that we didn’t just lose 3-0 because our players didn’t match Accrington for effort, but that we lost 3-0 because the ability of our players is that far behind.

Barnet’s surprise win over Gillingham is troubling, and for City the priority is to get that one more victory from the last three games needed to ensure survival. But after the dust settles and thoughts turn to next season it would be nonsense – even before we contemplate potential point deductions – to expect a promotion push.

This club is so far behind where we think we should be, and there will be no quick fixes. Right now it seems there are too many divides between the Board/Management/Players/Supporters and somehow we need to truly pull together and rebuild ourselves into a united club we can be proud of.

Someone like Accrington. Walking back to the car, my friend wearing a City shirt, we received non-stop taunts of 3-0 from young kids, while their parents talked excitedly about the play offs. Meanwhile The Accrington Ultras were still in full voice, marching out the home end playing the drum and chanting about their love for Stanley.

It all looked like a lot of fun. Perhaps one day we can fall back in love with our club too.

The last time Mark Lawn went to Accrington Stanley he left with his car vandalised and spent the weekend threatening to wind Bradford City up by withdrawing the loan he has made to the club. This time as Lawn heads for the Crown Ground he talks about moving City away from Valley Parade.

Speaking to the T&A Lawn confirmed what BfB reported yesterday that the club had opened talks with the Football League about what they were calling a last-ditch scenario of leaving VP to move to Odsal. One would assume that this would mean refusing to pay the Landlords of Valley Parade and the clubs offices and being open to and expecting either to both to pursue the club for being in breach leading to the club seeking a third spell in administration for protection from the creditors.

The phrase “administration as a formality” has been used before at Valley Parade by Julian Rhodes in 2004 as he looked to et the club from Gordon Gibb who voted in the CVA for Bradford City to die rather than end up in the hands of his former boardroom rival. That time City came as close as can be to going out of business as could be imagined – Ashley Ward made the casting vote – so I treat the idea of a strategic administration with scepticism.

As should Julian Rhodes. My understanding of the Football League rules about who can and cannot be involved in running a football club have it that having been involved in “multiple insolvency” evenings he would not be involved in the business of Bradford City 2011 in an official capacity.

He could buy a season ticket though – many of us have – but where that season ticket will see us sit is something which should what Mark Lawn is talking about come about will change. One wonders what consideration has been taken over this from Bradford City. Fans who are happy enough to go to Odsal might not be happy to move from seats they have occupied for over a decade and will but upset but there are supporters who do not want to go to Odsal and will be knocking on the door of Valley Parade demanding their money back.

How many of the Bradford City supporters who have season tickets now will still follow the club to Odsal? We might guess at a percentage and we might curse those who do not want to but unless someone has a figure as to how the impact of moving on supporters then should this move be considered? Has anyone at Valley Parade taken the temperature of supporters about moving from Valley Parade? Does anyone know what the supporters want?

What about the club’s business partners? Our understanding of the deal which sees Nike replace Surridge as the club’s shirt supplier will see Nike take over the club shop which is a part of the offices which City are talking about defaulting on the rent of. How secure is this deal? How transferable? Has the most iconic brand on the planet been told it will be backing a club with a level of support which no one – at the moment – could even have an educated guess at?

What about other businesses which have backed City? Are they going to be left out of pocket again by administration? Have they been warned?

Ross Hannah and Michael Rankine are non-league strikers rumoured to be in talks with City. Back in 2002 Nicky Law had agreed a deal to sign Thomas Hitzlsperger and – from Grimsby – Michael Boulding but those deals died in administration. If Hannah or Rankine were to pick up the T&A today what confidence could they have in those deals coming to fruition (let alone that the man they are talking to at the club will be there next season).

What about Mark Lawn’s loans? If City go into administration and then Lawn becomes a creditor. £2m worth of loans represents a significant vote for whatever is on the table in terms of a CVA but after a CVA has been accepted those loans are gone. Is Lawn prepared to write off the loan he considered withdrawing fifteen months ago as he drove away from Accrington?

One would love to suggest that Lawn is bluffing or that he is firing shots across Gordon Gibb’s bow to try get him to the negotiation table and see City emerge with the best deal but one cannot guarantee that. The club are talking to the Football League about how to make leaving Valley Parade work. It might not be the idea that you or I, dear reader, would have chosen but it seems to the the prevalent idea.

Bradford City play Accrington Stanley vs Bradford City At Crown Ground in League Two, 2010/2011

With League Two status in the bag – it would take Barnet being Barca to get the points to overtake City – thoughts start to turn to the summer for Bradford City and while the sun shines bright the thoughts are dark.

Dark clouds on the horizon with the discussions between Bradford City and the two landlords seemingly not having taken the form of discussions at all. Mark Lawn has complained that neither landlord has welcomed his invitation for talks about the rent but both landlords are quick to point out that those invitations were slight. There is an increasing worry that Lawn has decided to conduct this business in public and a worry that neither landlord would be especially pleased with that.

Lawn’s comment to the BBC – that City would gut Valley Parade if they had to give it back to Gibb – is upsetting. Valley Parade has been Bradford City’s home and a happy place for many City fans (and a tragic for others, but one which has massive significance) and to hear our chairman talk about ripping the fittings out is seems to add to the idea that we are going to end up at Odsal stadium.

Lawn might consider his talk to be part of a business discussion but to City fans the idea that not only will we end up homeless – but that we will dismember that home before we go – makes one worry about the future. There is a school of thought that praised Gordon Gibb (which I do not subscribe to) but I’m not keen to praise the idea that the club will take the fittings out of its nose when spiting its face.

One also had to wonder what the cost of removing everything from Valley Parade would be compared to the bill that Gibb would no doubt issue for storage.

Dark times for the manager of the club too perhaps although who that manager will be is a question. There is a strong indication that the club are looking to announce the manager before the end of the season with one train of thought saying that a new gaffer will be installed by Monday’s home game. Peter Jackson seems to have lost his chance after recent performances. There are dark times for us all when managers are picked on form.

Dark murmurs coming from the dressing rooms too about the comings and goings of players. Lewis Hunt has “won” his battle to have the contract he signed honoured but in doing so – in having to battle with the club – there seems to have been a cost on the spirit in the club. Hunt’s return saw him put in a good performance on Tuesday night as did – in my humble opinion – Luke Oliver.

The former Wycombe Wanderers (and very Peter Taylor) pair seem to be given a level of criticism which is not in comparative keeping with their performances. They seem forever linked to the previous regime and like revolutionaries in Guangxi there is a desire to purge the club of anything seen as part of the old culture.

Tommy Doherty perhaps being prime in that. Doherty is – it is said – fit to play but not being selected. Taylor’s headline signing seems almost certain to be exiting in four games time. Another to add to the list that people would title “Players that never gave their best” but that should read “Players we failed to get the best out of.”

Dark days for Simon Ramsden who has broken down in training and will not play again this season. Hunt’s twenty games are largely down to Ramsden’s injuries. Oliver and Steve Williams are expected to be alongside Hunt with Robbie Threlfall at left back trying to recapture the form that this time last season seemed to make him essential.

The midfield may see Dominic Rowe given a chance on the right hand side over Gareth Evans who seems to be losing interest in being a professional footballer for Bradford City (one wonders if he has something else lined up) while David Syers tries to get games under his belt in central midfield to prove he is able to play that position. Jon Worthington will benefit from being more employed by the home side than he was by the deep sitting Burton players.

Omar Daley is one the left wing while Jake Speight might get the nod to play alongside and James Hanson seeing Michael Flynn drop to the bench.

All these things are temporary though, but the dark clouds seem to have a worrying habit of staying around.

Like the bad guy or monster in a film who you think has finally been defeated, only to keep reappearing and causing further havoc – Bradford City’s relegation prospects have become a recurring nightmare in recent weeks. Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water and be consoled by mid-table mediocrity, it has been back to looking over the shoulder.

So as a confident Burton Albion raced into a lead on Tuesday which, in truth, they rarely looked like surrendering until Jake Speight popped up to equalise with 15 minutes to go, I – and no doubt thousands of others inside Valley Parade – was gripped by fear and pessimism about the immediate future.

Just like after we lost at home to Chesterfield, trailed 2-1 to a nine-man Stockport and were defeated 2-1 at Stevenage; I was fearful that this relegation threat – as daft as it seemed at other times – was very real. And with the club making loud noises about its long-term future being uncertain, the additional problem of a demotion to non-league could be terminal. Well-placed sources claim City’s Board has approached the Football League for their views on the ‘doomsday’ scenario of the Bantams entering administration and moving to Odsal. The League is said to relatively sympathetic, but the experiences of Chester and Boston suggest Conference officials may not be so helpful if City were to drop out of the Football League and go into administration.

Such dark thoughts occupied my mind as, in front of me, on the pitch, City’s players struggled to find the desire – not to mention the guile – to cancel out Burton’s lead. And as the atmosphere inside Valley Parade simmered backwards and forwards between discontent and positive support, I feared not just that we were in a losing battle to stay up but witnessing the third to last match ever at our 108-year home, before we start again next season supporting some AFC Bradford City on a Sunday league pitch.

Then Speight scored, and joy quickly turned to relief that things might not turn out so bad after all. And as the cheering subsided and we roared City onwards towards an unlikely – and what would have been undeserved – victory, a chant of “We are staying up” bellowed out the Bradford End. And I half-joined in, feeling much better about everything.

And then someone near me got angry, and I felt a bit stupid and very frustrated before wondering what’s the point.

The angry person was upset at the Bradford End chant, and it triggered him into a sarcastic rant about how pathetic it is that people are pleased over such a small achievement that City should now be able to survive the drop. His point had some validity; we began this season with credible hopes of achieving so much more and, as a club, we largely still believe ourselves too important for our surroundings. But still the timing of his outburst – firmly puncturing the mood of those around him just as we had something to celebrate – revealed a side to football supporting that I struggle to understand.

Unhappy that we can now be happier, because it’s not good enough to be thankful of avoiding the worst. Nothing can change how disappointing this season has been – and a huge inquest needs to take place when the dust finally settles – but limiting the damage at least should allow us to break into the briefest of smiles.

But that negative attitude has become such a widespread fabric of supporting Bradford City. 10 years ago, a Premier League club getting booed off for playing poorly against Southampton. Ever since it’s has been a downwards spiral of ever-lowering standards.

Under-performing players who in the end have to be ditched to save money. That weaker financial position leads to weaker replacements who become equally unloved, who are then swapped with even more inferior players. It has gone on and on like this. Performances always seemingly getting worse – from the disgrace of losing to Southampton in the Premier League to getting thrashed 3-0 at home to Torquay in League Two. Even the wins are tempered by the fact they generally came against teams we were recently much higher above.

It’s been on heck of a bumpy, uncomfortable fall. This past decade.

Aside from an almost year-on-year decline in league position, it’s the lack of good times and moments widely savoured along the way which illustrate how low the enjoyment factor has been allowed to fall. And this circle of decline means that even players who deserve some recognition for their efforts in claret and amber have largely been quickly forgotten or are widely derided.

Imagine you were asked to draw up a six-player shortlist – PFA-style – of the best City players over the past decade, in terms of their impact over at least one season. We’d all struggle to compile such a list, and even then widely disagree. (For what it’s worth, my personal top six from this decade of despair would be Mark Bower, Dean Furman, Stuart McCall, Donovan Ricketts, David Wetherall and Dean Windass – bet you disagree with at least two if not more of my choices). Top six team performances of the past decade? Top six moments? Not a great deal of choice to go for, is there?

But the upshot of all of this is that the pressure of continued failure and lowering expectations lies heavily on these inferior players of the present. This current team isn’t capable of much, other than preserving our league status. That might not be good enough, but one has to wonder whether the blame of failing to realise expectations beyond what the players are collectively – and individually – capable of should be fully piled onto their shoulders?

For 90 minutes on Tuesday, many received non-stop abuse for their failings. It ain’t Gareth Evans fault we’re in League Two, forced to recruit players like Gareth Evans.

Above all else, I guess I wish we could act as though we are on the same side as our players more often, instead of this near-constant outrage that they are letting us down. So when we are urging our team to equalise against Burton, but then – when they manage that – instantly turn around and slate them for not being good enough, it seems we are merely trying to inflict as much misery as we can upon ourselves – and. ultimately, it is we who suffer for that.

No one would suggest we get out the open top bus should City stay up this season. But, after staring down the barrel of the non-league gun, we should take some degree of consolation that it probably won’t turn out as badly as it might have.

Bradford City 1 Burton Albion 1 At Valley Parade in League Two, 2010/2011

At ninety minutes no one was ecstatic, but everyone was happy.

Omar Daley was happy. Happy to be back after he was recalled by Peter Jackson’s Bradford City following a fall out with Ronnie Moore at Rotherham United that left him looking at “rotting in the reserves.” The change of manager in Sheffield did not signal a change in fortunes so back he came.

Daley’s return to City saw him quickly show what City had been missing. Omar is as he always was. He runs with the ball, makes things happen, and can frustrate some. After two months sat far back though I enjoyed on the edge of my seat again. Omar’s play ranged from the sublime – his thrusting down the left should have resulted in a goal for Michael Flynn but for a out of sync flag – to the ridiculous when he air shotted following a burst past the full back.

Lewis Hunt was happy. Happy to be back in the team and – one assumes – staying around for next season. Hunt has played his twenty games this season and in this one he let no one down with a solid defensive display in a back four which struggled to cope with a changed goalkeeper to an unsettled Lenny Pidgeley.

Hunt would not have been happy to see John McGrath run in from distance before half time and head in a goal which gave Burton a first half lead but will have looked for someone not picking up a man at the corner. He probably looked in the direction of Gareth Evans who started well but struggled in the end.

Neil Swarbrick was happy. He was a referee who seemed hell bent on avoiding anything as sensational as a yellow card and certainly wanted to make sure that there was nothing controversial. Goalkeepers protected when they jumped into defenders, advantages ignored, shirt tugs not penalised in the penalty area. Steve Williams jumped to try head in and produced a brilliant save from Adam Legzdins but his shirt was near off his back as he did.

Paul Peschisolido was happy. He set out his team to come for a point and as a result of setting his midfielders deep managed to catch David Syers in a net and leave Jon Worthington wandering. The Burton manager was unhappy when this same was rearranged but in the context of the end of the season the point will have pleased him.

And Peter Jackson will be happy too. He make the change from 442 to 433 which introduced Jake Speight and Speight scored with fifteen minutes from the end to equalise moving City up to 48 points and 16th in League Two all but ending lingering relegation fears.

Speight was obviously happy. His performance was lively – like Omar he has been out of the team while the team has been suffering and static – and his goal should give him confidence. Darren Moore – returning to Valley Parade to a standing ovation – will be happy too with a good performance.

Moore took the applause at the end of the game he left the match with a warm glow. Apparently the way City fans reacted to Joe Colbeck is not the way we treat all returning players and I’m happy about that.

So, in the end, everyone is happy.

Bradford City play Burton Albion At Valley Parade in League Two, 2010/2011

“Love the club, hate the team” or so went the special demotivational chant as City played Southend United on Friday night and its is almost impossible not to suggest that both players and supporters put in the level of effort that befit the result.

Which is not to criticise anyone who went down to Southend United for Bradford City – both players and fans were on the road for twelve hours that day – but that while some things in life are about the journey others are about what you do when you reach the destination and in terms of achieving a result it could hardly be said that either excelled.

It is said that one of the City players at the end of the game as he was “in debate” with a supporter colourfully told him – as a retort to something equally colourful – that he cared not about the abuse because he would not be at the club next season.

No more dog poo training pitch, no more hostile crowds, no more ludicrous level of expectation, no more revolving door on the manager’s office, no more seeing good players dropped for loanees, no more having the chairman tell people that you have under performed despite all the things listed. One can imagine that if you really hated the team the best punishment might be to trigger one of those contract extensions.

Which is only half in jest. While being a professional football is – no doubt – a superb job most of the time but like any job the minutia of it grinds and that grind must be apparent when after being dragged to and from Southend in a day the only thing to look forward to is more of the same. Certainly looking at Bradford City and they way that the club chooses to direct its resources would hardly fill you with anticipation that next season would be any better.

The club’s public position is that it has no money so there are no improvements in the offing and there is a tendency for the promises made one minute to be broken the next. Lewis Hunt is not involved at the moment, and as a player you will have your own views on that. You might also recall signing for a club which talked about having overnight stays which – seemingly – were not needed for Southend despite one assumes being budgeted for at the start of the season.

Against this backdrop the only real prospect of improvement is not from the club but from the players working together and summoning the individual character to improve and – in short – there is very little reason for them to do that. With many five game away from being out of work the motivation to put a foot in where it hurts (and by hurts one could say “leaves injured to make a trail for someone else in the summer impossible”) must be very low.

Such is the situation the players – and by extension the club – finds itself in. Fighting for Fourth Division survival with an army of near de-mob mercenaries. If we do have a club next season I do hope we stop this obsession football has with the season long contract and start giving players good, long, proper deals. To get loyalty, you have to give loyalty.

One wonders what loyalty Omar Daley will have left. Daley is out of contract at the end of the season and needs to impress with Rotherham United seemingly changed direction from the management which signed him two months ago and City being without a manager who can be sure of being in the big chair next season. The idea that he might be going to one of the Scottish Cup finalists lingers.

Daley will return to the City team on the left wing as Peter Jackson looks to recall the walking wounded for the game against Burton Albion which is being billed – somewhat curiously – as giving the winner a safe place in League Two next season.

The game is part of a good season for Burton which was ruined by games called off and the team has struggled with the arduous games in hand catch up of which this is the final one. The games in hand which people thought would propel them up the league have not and they hover nervously above the drop.

City hover above them, but are still nervous.

Jackson – who seems to see his hopes of being City’s full time manager evaporate in front of him – is tasked with getting the performance that has been lacking from his previous two matches and will try get the spark from Daley which has been lacking. Daley is expected to be on the left wing opposite Gareth Evans on the right but he could be deployed on the other flank, or up front.

However the Daley and Evans with Jon Worthington and David Syers in the middle seems to best suit Jackson’s style of play with Michael Flynn up front alongside the also returning James Hanson. Jackson’s dropping of A in a quest for more goals seems to have failed drastically. The replacements have looked no more likely to score than the maligned forward but the ball has spent less time in the final third.

Likewise the decision to drop Lewis Hunt is probably not the only factor in the seven concessions in two games but the disturbance to what was a decent defensive unit has helped not one jot. Lee Bullock and Luke O’Brien have suffered at right back and Jackson is left looking at youngster Adam Robinson making his debut or someone else filling in. Steve Williams is back to partner Luke Oliver and O’Brien is expected back at left back.

Jon McLaughlin keeps goal.

A win will move City to fifty points – since two teams started to be relegated from League Two no club has gone down with that many – but only twice have teams with 47 points been relegated in those eight years which is motivation for Burton who would reach that total.

One wonders how Burton’s fans think of their club, and if they hate their players.

Note No comments on this. We have no time to moderate them during the day and after the game comments are best directed at the report.

Thank goodness; Omar Daley is back at Bradford City.

Supporter opinion on the Jamaican winger has always being mixed – and as he departed on loan to Rotherham United two months ago there were plenty of people pleased. But whatever your view on his ability, Valley Parade has certainly being a duller place without him.

His early recall from a loan spell gives interim manager Peter Jackson – for whom Tuesday’s vital home game with Burton Albion could be his last – a major lift giving the flagging numbers of senior players he has available. On Friday at Southend, Jackson was forced to play a front two that has scored no goals this season for the Bantams; plus a central midfielder on the right wing and an out-of-form forward on the left flank. Daley could play in any of those positions and, with City’s ongoing struggle to score goals, will be looked upon to make a positive difference.

Expect Daley to play wide left on Tuesday. Jackson has tried to implement an attacking 4-4-2 formation, which has been undermined by a lack of wide players in particular in the squad inherited from Peter Taylor. Daley can provide some of that attacking width; and, although his goal assists have been low for City this season and his crossing has never been the greatest, he is capable of increasing the amount of chances the players are creating.

More importantly – with morale so low in the wake of the last two defeats – a return of such a quality player can boost a team rapidly losing confidence. How good would it be to see City line up on Tuesday with Daley on one flank and Leon Osborne or youngster Dominic Rowe on the other? Jon Worthington can hold the midfield with Tom Adeyemi free to get forwards, while David Syers can fill in at right back. A much more balanced side.

Where this development leaves the other player in the February loan swap deal – Kevin Ellison – is unclear. An inspiring debut against Wycombe aside, Ellison has struggled to make an impact since arriving from Rotherham; although has been missed in recent weeks following an injury. While Daley’s greater qualities are pace, trickery and unpredictability, Ellison carries a sizeable positive influence on team mates and an admirable level of work rate.

A month ago Joint Chairman Mark Lawn revealed Daley could not return to City unless Rotherham wanted to recall Ellison, as the club couldn’t afford two wages. At the time of writing Ellison is still a City player, and one would assume this position has been changed in view of City’s increasingly desperate league position. Give the current financial worries that on the field leave Jackson without a senior right back, it is still a curious move.

Daley, who is out of contact in the summer and struggled to secure a first team spot at the Millers, will look to impress Jackson or the manager in waiting over the final five games. Having looked like he’d played his last game for City – a dreadful performance at home to Lincoln that saw him booed off by fans when he was subbed – it looks like Daley’s Bantams career could be extended a while longer yet.

And those of us supporters who do rate him couldn’t be happier.

With no game to watch and a body aching from gardening I rooted to the sofa for what proposed to be ITV’s feast of football and fun, or so they said, but you will have your own views dear reader on the Manchester Derby semi-final followed by the reappearance of TV talent show Britain’s Got Talent.

I’ll preface this by saying that I do not view the TV talent show as illegitimate entertainment, but that I do not view them. I like to hear a scruffy girl belting out Shakespears Sister covers as much as the next man and always have time for a dancing dog act but the reason why I find such shows not worth watching is because they have a very limited set of narratives which are quickly exhausted.

A girl who has had a bad time but singing got her though, a guy who looked like he is a moron but raises a smile, a guy who has been earnestly doing his act for years and this is his big break. In the end there is only so many ways that those who spin these things can spin these things. Only so many ways to present the same story.

Which brings us back to the Manchester Derby or – as it was known around our gaff – The match to see who we want Stoke or Bolton to beat. Not that there is any resentment to Manchester in our bit of Clayton (As evidenced by the number of The Smiths albums perhaps) but rather that one feels a sense of tedium in those teams.

United are United and we know the narrative they present. They are awesome, a freight train of football on the tracks to success. Paul Scholes put in his usual knee high horror tackle and the usual talk of how great a player he is and how it is a shame that he does that sort of thing was heard. The only surprise that the afternoon offered for the Red Devils was just how poor Anderson was. Brought on to drive the ball forward he started trying Glenn Hoddle like passing and was – in his own way – as poor as Gareth Evans was against Torquay United two weeks ago.

Manchester United players do not normally choke. That aside and for all the hilarious gags about Sir Fergs sounding curious on the wireless cause while the volume and bass knobs were in place the treble was off it was same old same old by them. They will recover. Part of the great United story is how they lose the odd game but win the war. That narrative is as tired as the girl on X-Factor who really needs this.

Across Manchester though the rise of City should provide some interest but fails to. It is not for a lack of talent in the team – Man City’s Got Talent – but rather that they tell a story which has been done to death.

Rich man comes to a club and starts spending. He ruffles feathers by replacing a popular manager with someone else but in the end the fans are seduced by the idea of success more than they are loyal to their cause. They spend money recklessly buying quantity of quality to make sure that any “dodgy signing” does not hamper them too much.

That is Manchester City but it could equally be Chelsea (or Blackburn Rovers for that matter) and there is the problem. There is no surprise in this story. It ends of course, as it has at Chelsea, and that end is probably not going to be an unhappy one but the narrative offers nothing new.

I am sure though that is is good to be involved in and that yesterday’s victory was sweet but in terms of offering something new, different and interesting Manchester City are like Britain’s Got Talent. For sure it looks different to last year – and the people on stage are loving it – but the story stays the same.

Well done to Manchester City but I think I will switch channels.

The Bantams go to Essex and get thumped.

• The Telegraph & Argus Patched-up City team looking for a favour or two from rivals ahead of crunch clash with Burton
• Yorkshire Post Bradford continue to suffer by seaside
• ESPN Shrimpers heap woe on Bantams
• The Sun Southend 4 Bradford 0
• The Guardian Southend v Bradford

Meanwhile City are said to be agreeing a deal for Michael Rankine of York City.

Bradford City play Southend United vs Bradford City At Roots Hall in League Two, 2010/2011

If Bradford City are confident going into the Friday night game with Southend United then one might wonder why David Baldwin – when talking about the £1 entry into Tuesday night’s game with Burton Albion – described the match as a “six pointer”.

City need a win between now and the end of the season to ensure League Two safety – although even without that win the teams below would have to outperform many a previous year – but it seems that that win will be the six pointer of Burton and not the evening in Essex.

Nevertheless the club are sure of a win – seemingly – with Mark Lawn talking about how City cannot afford to keep paying for Valley Parade in League Two when discussing the possibility of leaving the club’s home which is owned (in part) by former chairman Gordon Gibb.

Lawn is seeking negotiations with Gibb and with Development Securities who own the offices in the hope of getting the £700,000 a year rent reduced. How much one might realistically expect to get knocked off that figure is questionable but if one assumed City could get a 10% reduction when in this division the £70,000 seen gets swallowed up by player costs. Is is worth leaving our home over a sum which equals one Tommy Doherty for a season? Certainly Mark Lawn believes so giving City two years at the current status quo.

Nevertheless Lawn seems to be prepared to talk about City being in League Two next season and so – one assumes – he believes that that win will come. Certainly the club is showing enough faith to be able to forgo using recognised right back Lewis Hunt and watching Lee Bullock trying to play the role and giving away a goal last week one might wonder how the club have the hubris to do such a thing.

If the club are worried about relegation – seriously worried – then weakening the side seems massively counter productive leading one to think that while the talk is of six pointers and so on the belief is that next season will be another season of football in the lowest division.

City go to Roots Hall to find a Southend United team expecting the same. The Essex club are staying at this level and wind the season down having not achieved all they would like on their return to the bottom division.

Peter Jackson – who we are told is one of two names in for the job along with Essex rival Dag & Red manager John Still – takes his City team into the game with changes afoot. Jon McLauglin is expected to retain his place in goal but Lee Bullock seems set to make way for 18 year old Adam Robinson to make his debut at right back.

Robinson was promoted from the reserves and has a chance to make a play for Hunt’s position as second strong right back for next season. The rights and wrongs of the Hunt situation aside if financial reasons push City towards being forced to use our young players rather than bringing in players for cover that could be no bad thing.

Luke Oliver and Steve Williams are expected to be the central defensive pairing with Luke O’Brien returning to left back and Robbie Threlfall being dropped.

The midfield is without Michael Flynn – once more in the forward line – so David Syers will get a chance to partner Jon Worthington again and will hope to make a better fist of his performance while Leon Osbourne seems set get the call on the left. The right hand side is more questionable with Gareth Evans choking in his chance to lead the line and seeming set for being out of his ear but for the injury to James Hanson. Evans may feature on the right should he not be used up front.

Without Hanson and Evans Jake Speight is likely to be paired with Michael Flynn.

While doing the media rounds today, Bradford City Joint Chairman Mark Lawn has issued the starkest of warnings: maintain the status quo, and there will be no Bradford City Football Club in two years time.

As we exclusively revealed last week, the Bradford City Board is attempting to renegotiate the terms of the Valley Parade rental agreement. The club currently has to find £1.3 million annual running costs to use their home of 108 years, and as fortunes on the pitch continue to stall the ongoing existence in League Two is proving to be a huge hinderance.

So Lawn has, as is his way, laid it out in plain terms. No success in renegotiating the rental terms, and the club will have to move out. This could take place within a year. Lawn tonight told BBC Look North that the club cannot survive two more years in League Two at Valley Parade under the current arrangements.

The Yorkshire Post claims Odsal is the most likely destination if City move out. Much has been discussed about the home of the Bradford Bulls over the last two years, with a proposal to redevelop the ageing ground quietly falling by the wayside as the effects of the UK’s deepest recession since the 1930s have squeezed public spending and corporate appetite for construction.

At present the Bulls could lose their Super League licence, such are the inadequate facilities at Odsal. With it’s unsuitability for football seen when City moved their in the 1980s – while Valley Parade was rebuilt following the fire disaster – it seems a hugely unattractive option that wouldn’t be chosen lightly.

As would the potential path to get there. The club has previously admitted breaking the 25 year lease they are bound to at Valley Parade would likely lead to a period of administration. In recent days, reliable rumours have surfaced that the club views going into administration as a route they may be forced to take.

Such a scenario would be one to fill every City fan with dread – we need only remember that the club’s second spell of administration, back in February 2004, was initially presented to us a technicality that we shouldn’t be concerned about. Five months later, we stood on the brink of losing our football club forever.

Moving to Odsal, potentially going to administration – these are all unappealing options to anyone with Claret and Amber in their heart. Therefore the focus returns to the club achieving a positive outcome to these rental talks. The Yorkshire Post – which has confirmed the club is looking at the rental proposal BfB had suggested (not that they are acting on our idea) – has revealed Prupim, the company City rent the Valley Parade offices from, are willing to talk about a rent reduction. However stadium Landlord Gordon Gibb is apparently unprepared to talk to City. Though a spokesman for the Gibb Pension Fund told the Yorkshire Post they have had no direct contact from City.

Why are these talks being played out in the public arena? If the club is in such dire straits, why are we persisting with cheap season ticket deals and £1 offers for home games? Why are we wasting precious money on unproven non-league strikers like Jake Speight? All of these questions circulate around the head and are not a criticism as such of City; but one has to wonder whether the seriousness of the situation we’re being presented with is quite backed up by the club’s actions.

If Gibb is the key to Bradford City’s future, shouldn’t we be banging down his door and begging him to be reasonable; rather than threatening to abstain from a 25-year agreement via the local paper?

There are worrying times for the club. Lawn has revealed that we cannot carry on as we are, and the answers apparently lie with people who semingly don’t have the club’s best interests at their heart and have very different priorities.

We can only trust in Lawn and Julian Rhodes – owners and custodians – to act in our best interests and find the solutions that ensure the future of the club is preserved and we can continue for another 108 years at least. But in the meantime, as we read the situation presented so gloomily by Lawn in the local paper, we feel worried and pessimistic and helpless and scared.

So many times over the past decade we’ve endured miserable failure and tried to stay positive by declaring it can’t possibly get any worse. As this disastrous season comes to a close, let’s hope that for once we are proven to be right.

Stand at the base of the Roman Colosseum and look up and it is hard to imagine the position of the Gladiator and how he was so loathed by the populous.

The Romans considered Gladiators to be the lowest of the low – beneath contempt – and shunned them from society but as they did they venerated them. The digs of Roman sites in England or in Germany and so on and one will find evidence of the fame and adoration associated with those who were successful combatants.

That was life as a Gladiator. They would make a pot for you, the Romans, but they would never invite you for dinner nor afford you anything like the hand of friendship. Perhaps – with some reason – they thought it not worth the effort expected you to be dead tomorrow.

Perhaps in two thousand years there will be a dig that unearths evidence of Lewis Hunt’s time at Bradford City etched onto an urn but one doubts it. It seems that Hunt – who has played nineteen times for City this season – will not play for the club unless he agrees to drop the mechanism in his contract that awards him a new deal should he play twenty games. Peter Jackson has asked him if he does not mind signing a new deal on less money, and his refusal to do so and subsequent ostracisation from the first team squad, was gathered under the term “personal reasons” when that omission was talked about at the weekend.

Hunt moved to City last summer following Peter Taylor from Wycombe Wanderers seemingly set for a season of being the reserve to Simon Ramsden at right back and spending a good few months injured himself. He is 28 and City offered him a year with a year extension should he prove his worth which he obviously has. Having been given that offer, and fulfilled his side of the bargain, there seems to be very little reason why Hunt should agree that he should take less money from the club.

I recognise that Hunt is not everyone’s cup of tea and – like Luke Oliver – his honest endeavours are forever tainted by his association with the previous manager but while the right back is no Cafu he is a League Two player who has done what is asked of him and now has the club wanting to get out of the deal they made with him.

Why should Hunt be treated like this? The answer, seemingly, is because he is a professional footballer and as with his counterpart of ancient Rome is in a position where he is both lionised and loathed. He will be cheered and held to a standard in the arena but outside it he will not be extended the considerations offered to other men.

Football is full of examples of this duality. Manchester United’s Wayne Rooney is talked of as having a responsibly to be a role model (which is most often mentioned when he fails to live up to the standards other set for him, although is an example of how he is lionised) but when he does something that anyone else would take as a right and negotiates the best financial deal for himself he is greeted with a public reaction which says he has not the right to do so, or that if he does he should not avail himself of it.

John Terry is similarly lionised but is not afforded the right to a private life which those who do laud him take for granted. Sol Campbell expected to take any abuse given to him because of his “interactions” with this lionisation culture. That we have got to this situation where we will have a poster of a footballer up on the wall but would not invite one into the house is a comment on society rather than the game itself but in that situation we are and the results of it are manifest at clubs around the country.

Players are treated as disposable by clubs. They are to do what they are to excel when they are wanted and quietly disappear when they are not. When they are being courted by a club then they are made promises which – when they are not – they are expected to accept will be broken.

I believe that there is a competitive advantage to be gained by bringing together a stable squad on contracts of a good length rather than replacing them on a yearly basis. That when Lewis Hunt leaves he will be replaced with a player of similar abilities who is less settled, and that will effect his ability to put in a performance, and so underperformance continues. That is a side issue, but the last half a dozen years have shown how single season contract perform on the whole.

Lewis Hunt made a deal with the club and fulfilled his end of it. The club do not want to fulfil their side of it and by withdrawing him from the match day squad do not have to but it makes me uncomfortable to see by club putting pressure on a player to let them break the deal.

Outside of the game this would be condemned as highly questionable behaviour by any business but the footballer – as with the Gladiator – suffers from being loathed as much as he is lionised.

If you believe Simon Parker of the Telegraph and Argus then Bradford City are trying to decide between two managers: Interim boss Peter Jackson and Dagenham & Redbridge gaffer John Still.

One of these two men – it is said by Parker – will be appointed as City’s full time manager in the Summer. Extrapolation theory has it that if the job is Jackson’s then he will be given a contract at the end of the season while if it is to be Still then he will not arrive until after the end of Dag & Red’s fight against League One relegation and Jackson will remain in charge until then. Either way it is Jackson until May.

For those who do not know him John Still is a one game Leyton Orient defender turned non-league manager who took Maidstone United into the football league before exiting and then ended up as the man in charge of the merged Dag & Red (being the Redbridge Forest manager) taking them into the league and then up from League Two last season.

That is the headline on Still’s CV – that he took a team with limited resources to promotion – and it is not hard to see why such a quality would impress the Bradford City board although it is hard to compare that with Peter Taylor’s record. Indeed many things about Still suggest that as a candidate the only thing he offers which Taylor does not is that he is not Peter Taylor. His football is similar, his track record equally hit and miss, and like Taylor he would be accused of being out of touch by virtue of his age. He is sixty.

Ten years younger is Peter Jackson who has performed in a way which describes adequate perfectly. He has sorted out the basics of the team quickly: a 442, a holding midfielder, a big man little man forward line up; and that has been shown in the move away from relegation. He is all the things one suspects and more and there is something about his opportunism which endears, although for how long one wonders.

Certainly Jackson would have been upset with his charges on Saturday. Two players were given chances to impress and failed to do so. Gareth Evans – most obviously – seemed to choke when given the chance to lead the line while David Syers was not able to control central midfield in the way that Michael Flynn does. Jackson will have been disappointed with both.

Disappointed and frustrated no doubt by the fact that having given Syers that chance the manager will not – should he not be appointed – get to build on what he saw in Syers on Saturday. It is obvious to say that consistency allows a manager to work with his players and improve them and I’m sure that no one reading this article would be in much doubt to the importance I would place on giving the manager a long term contract and allowing him to build.

However assuming that – as the philosopher Jagger says – you can’t always get what you want then what sort of manager is perfect for City? What sort of manager do City need? One who can make an instant impact, build a team before the season starts, is able to conjure something out of something which some would say is nothing.

Some would be I – and Luke Oliver – would not. After four years of League Two football I am convinced that the difference between the top and the bottom is which team gets the odd break and goes for the odd pint. Togetherness, team spirit, a willingness to be brave and to take responsibility for your performance and the collective display are what matter far more than the ability to bend a ball in from thirty yards.

Looking at Still’s record – in common with most managers – there is very little to suggest he is a man of instant impacts while Jackson’s impact has already been felt. One would shy from criticising either manager’s ability but one would question their ability to turn around the team in the time frames which seem to be demanded from the Bantams.

For, it seems, the perfect manager for the Bantams is the magician. The magician like Chris Kamara who can take a team going nowhere and some how take it on a seventeen game run that ended at Wembley, the magician like Terry Dolan who could take a team heading for relegation and win sixteen of his next twenty games. Neither of those could repeat their magic trick.

So City can’t get what they want but – on occasion – they get what they need and what they need is the magic manager.

There is something laughable in the back of the mind when recalling Luke Oliver’s comment in the week that City were 2% off being a good side when watching the 3-0 defeat to Torquay United, but there is also something utterly correct in what the defender says.

After about half an hour of the Torquay game which ended with grim talk of being a new low for the Bantams City were passing the ball around to shouts of Ole from supporters as the visitors were left chasing out long shadows on a sunny afternoon. Five minutes later and a free kick nestled in the back of Jon McLaughlin’s goal, City never looked like getting back in the match.

From that point on the Bantams were dispirited and out of sorts but before that goal – before either team had tested a goalkeeper – had City had the sort of increase Oliver talks about one might have imagined that it would have been the visitors collecting the ball from the back of the net. What is the difference between passing the ball around the defence and midfield and breaking forward to score? One percent? Three percent?

City have the lowest goals per game in the entire football league and if one lops off the afternoon in which Oxford United were put to the sword by the tune of five goals that statistic makes even worse reading. City score less than a goal a game. The average number of goals in a football match is three. It does not take a genius to work out that if you only score one of that three then the other team will end up winning.

Oliver comes off as sounding oddly optimistic – saying that the manager who replaced the manager who signs him often is near a good team is the last thing one would expect – and bordering on the ludicrous but perhaps the defender makes a point worth listening to, should one contextualise it.

If we use Oliver’s 2% away from being a good side – and assume that there is an average side in between what City are in the lower half of the table and those teams who get promoted – then we can translate the defenders musings as saying that City are a 99% team.

Someone in midtable would be 100% (obviously) and a team in the mirror position of the Bantams at the top – i.e. a team in the play offs – would be 101%. Let us assume that the team that finishes rock bottom is slightly worse and give them 98.5% and the champions (who are better than “a good team”) are 101.5%. That stats are largely fatuous but I draw them to illustrate a point.

That point is this. The difference between the teams fighting relegation and battling for promotion in this division (and in most divisions) is slight. The successful teams are a tiny bit better than the less successful teams but that success – when compounded over weeks of games – becomes the difference between the good and the bad.

The margins between the good and the bad are small. For years Bradford City have been trying for a managerial revolution on a season on season basis to make that 2% jump – and apologies for the stats, they are silly – but the tiny increments which have been ignored in pursuit of that are what suppresses City’s achievements.

One thinks back to Saturday and struggles to imagine the result turning out any different – City did not muster a shot on at goal until after an hour – but this season City have been involved in more games settled by a single goal than any other team in the division and have only once come back from behind to win. How big is that gap that means that City are never the side getting the first goal, never demoralising the opposition with that first strike, never getting ahead?

Oliver is right, City are 2% off being a good team, but 2% is a not insignificant amount and the Bantams could do with looking at small improvements.

Bradford City 0 Torquay United 3 At Valley Parade in League Two, 2010/2011

Following a credible performance and result against Macclesfield on Tuesday night, that all but guaranteed League football for the Bantams next season, it seems that the players’ minds were already on their summer breaks as City put in a below par shift against the promotion chasing Gulls.

Minus goal scorer James Hanson and defender Lewis Hunt, City lined up with Lee Bullock at right back, Luke O’Brien on the left of midfield and with a front line of Gareth Evans and Michael Flynn. The system smacked of square pegs in round holes and was to prove decisive as the ad-hoc line up were found wanting when it mattered. If the mass exodus of fans after Torquay’s third goal is anything to go by, and with the chairmen looking for a financial boost for next season’s coffers, Peter Jackson’s hopes of turning an interim position into a permanent one, have taken a major blow.

The optimism brought by pre-match sunshine and a pocketed dead cert for the 4.15 at Aintree, simmered away gently in the opening exchanges as both sides began evenly, with neither side really threatening the opposition’s goal. The majority of City’s play involved working the ball aerially to Evans and Flynn, in the hope that the giant Torquay backline would mis-time a routine clearance header; unfortunately for City, they didn’t.

Torquay scored the first of the afternoon following a couple of debatable decisions from referee Mr. Miller. Jon Worthington was adjudged to have taken the man before ball in what looked to be a perfectly decent challenge and from the resulting free kick the Gulls were able to work the ball closer to the Bantam’s penalty area. This lead to Steve Williams conceding a soft free kick on the edge of the box and presented Kevin Nicholson with the chance to drill the ball into John McLaughlin’s bottom corner.

Torquay grew in confidence and started to knock the ball around with considerable ease, Gavin Tomlin and Shrewsbury loanee Jake Robinson providing the main threat for the visitors.

The second half saw City replace the ineffective Evans with Jake Speight, a change that was almost immediately rewarded with Speight just unable to stretch far enough to convert a Tom Adeyemi cross. This was to prove a costly miss, as moments later Lee Bullock, when looking in control, was out muscled on the touchline, allowing Chris Zebroski to power his way to the by-line and pull the ball back for Tomlin to accept the simplest of tap ins.

Just as the dead cert was pulling up at Beecher’s Brook, the game was put beyond doubt, as more amateur defending allowed Nicholson to play an accurate cross-field ball to the un-marked Eunan O’Kane, for him to square the ball to substitute Billy Kee, who finished from 4 yards out. Some home supporters chose to applaud a good piece of play, most decided that the exit door was more preferable; a sight that won’t fill our joint-chairmen with too much optimism when it comes to rolling out season tickets for next season.

In a late attempt to get something from the game Peter Jackson switched to 4-3-3 and introduced Scott Dobie which proved to only increase the space at the back for Torquay to counter in. A poor, lethargic performance was epitomised by Steve Williams late shot from 30 yards, City’s second best effort of the afternoon!

The contrast in ambition between the sides could be comfortably measured in light years; one side taking a good run of form towards the automatic promotion places; the other in managerial limbo, lacking direction and desire and with one eye on a beach and the big blue. All of which will alarm the powers that be and do no favours for the interim-manager; Jackson looked agitated for most of the afternoon, gesticulating and remonstrating in his usual touchline manner, towards players who seemed content to take the safer instead of the incisive option.

The club are reaching the point where their future intentions need to be communicated, with the manager, ground, players’ contracts and season tickets all high on the agenda. Until that point is reached it looks like we will have to be content with simply going through the motions.

Bradford City play Torquay United At Valley Parade in League Two, 2010/2011

Sometimes in football you are the centre of attention. Sometimes all eyes are on you. Your game, your result, your players, your Headlines the next day.

You have signed Stanley Victor Collymore and he is making his debut against your local rivals, or you have a goalkeeping crisis and the same match up sees Neville Southall playing.

You have appointing the former England skipper as manager – starting with a TV game – or you are playing in the Sunday sun for a place in the Premier League.

These times you are the subject of attention. The be all, the end all. Leeds United, Millwall or Wolves in these cases are reduced to being a supporting act in your drama.

Jake Robinson played while an unregistered player for Torquay United in a game with Hereford United in February and as a result the Gulls were fined a point.

The South Coast club chase a play-off place and losing points – they will appeal the decision no doubt – is not helping that aim nor is losing games. They arrive at Valley Parade as the main player.

Will they see the world – or the footballing aithorities at least – as against them and compound a bad week with a performance that befits a team in sulk or will they arrive determined to mark back the points lost with a display that turns what would be a creditable draw into a win?

Focus is on them, attention is on them, and we are but a supporting act in their drama.

Which is perhaps no bad thing. City’s season drama seems to be coming to a close. The win over Macclesfield Town has seen the Bantams start looking up the table rather than at the relegation places. City have one of the two games in hand left in the league with the other being Bury’s game with Burton Albion and it would take unprecidented achievement from the bottom half of the division to put the Bantams in trouble now.

The credit for that being laid at Peter Jackson’s door. One can talk all one likes about the fitness of Wayne Jacobs and Junior Lewis to have taken on the caretaker role and one could make a case that they would have done an adiquate job (and cheaper job, that point perhaps being of significance in a week when City negotiated on the basis of having no money) but Jackson has done the job put in front of him and credit is due to him for that.

Credit to him and to the players who responded to him. Jake Speight’s Twitter feed is a curious thing but his statement to Zesh Rehman – that things had improved under the new gaffer – said much about the problems that preceeded Jackson.

Jackson’s successes at City have conincided with his inclusion of Jon Worthington – a former charge at Huddersfield (perhaps they both wear black and white scaves when they are at Town games? Back to Twitter again) – and one who has made himself undropable in the Bantams side.

A ball winner and play stopper a player like Worthington provides a level of double cover for the widemen and full backs able to aniticpate and break up attacking moves on the flanks in addition to the need for wide men to track back. The Bantams struggle for goals but contrary to Paul’s opinions in the week I beieve that if a club are winning matches then they are scoring enough goals.

Worthington is undoubtedly not City’s highest earner and as the Bantams look at negotiations with Gordon Gibb around the cost of Valley Parade it is worth noting that it is not the lack of funds – but rather the inability to make best use of those funds – which have held the club back in the last few years.

City go into the game without James Hanson – injured at Macclesfield – but with the possibility of Tommy Doherty making a return following his operation. Jon McLaughlin should keep goal behind Lewis Hunt, Luke Oliver, Steve Williams and one of Robbie Threllfall and Luke O’Brien. Gareth Evans on the right and one of Leon Osbourne and Kevin Ellison will take the left hand role. Worthington and Doherty or Tom Ademeyi will take central midfield.

Hanson’s injury is expected to give Michael Flynn a role up front with Scott Dobie. Not that the names in City’s side really matter. We are cast in a supporting role on Saturday. The game is Torquay’s win or Torquay’s loss.

When one talks of job ending decisions at Bradford City: Nicky Law’s damning of City fans as being worth a goal for the other side, Paul Jewell taking meetings at Sheffield Wednesday, Colin Todd’s punch up with Lee Crooks; Jim Jefferies made his on a muddy field in Bradford in early December 2001.

No one really knows what exactly the gnarled Scot growled across the training ground to his club captain Stuart McCall as the midfielder tried to get stuck in in a training match but the effect of the words became obvious.

The shouted phrase, and what happened after, started the end of at the club Jefferies and the end of Bradford City’s attempt to return to the Premiership at the first time of asking.

The words were “You’ve lost yer legs” and nothing has been the same since they were uttered.

Hearts vs Motherwell

Hearts face Motherwell in the SPL this weekend bringing into competition for the first time the two men at the centre of that ruckus in Jefferies and Stuart McCall.

McCall’s Motherwell lag behind Hearts in the division but both are expected to make the cut at the top of the league which will pay this game little regard. Hearts look set to claim a Europa League place but in a league dominated by Celtic and Rangers this is exactly the type of SPL march that seems to pass without much notice.

Jefferies path from Valley Parade took him to Kilmarnock where he posted respectable finishes for the modest club before returning to the club he joined City from. His success – it seems – is in making Hearts the best of the rest.

McCall’s Motherwell bubble around the middle of the SPL. His aim is to get into the top six before the league is split in two and in the longer term it is to move the third Glasgow club closer to the other two. It is said that McCall got the Motherwell job after the chairman – who fell out of love with the idea of appointing the former Rangers player after seeing his decline at City – fell back in love after seeing how Peter Taylor struggled with the Bantams.

There is little significance to most in the match up of the teams if the managers, but south of the border in this corner of West Yorkshire a mention is merited.

Folklore

Skip back to the legs comment and a month or so on top of that and – so folklore has it – Jefferies assistant Billy Brown told his boss straight that to get City going in the right direction they had to break the dressing room (one assumes to rebuild it) and that they had to take on McCall to do that.

Nominally McCall was a part of the coaching staff having been assistant manager under Chris Hutchings but the midfielder had long since been excluded in that role. As City sunk on the field the feeling was that the management had to increase that exclusion.

So when the Bantams took the field post-bust up for a televised game against Manchester City they did so with the skipper purposefully missing for the first time since his return to the club three and a half years before.

The game was lost, and not long after Jefferies was resigning and returning to Scotland. McCall carried on playing, moving to Sheffield United, for three years. His final match being a reserve game for the Blades at Valley Parade.

By that time City had become locked in the slump that continues to this day. The defeat to Manchester City and Jefferies departure turned that season from one of instant return – it stated with a 4-0 win over Barnsley – into struggling under Nicky Law to get to safety as quickly as possible. Administration followed.

The merits of the decision are easily criticised in retrospect. McCall provide he had more to give and Gary Locke – Jefferies chosen replacement – found it impossible to match McCall’s abilities on the field.

Perhaps McCall had been a problem for Jefferies to build a new side around the likes of Locke, Andrew Tod, and Juanjo but that aim was to conduct a curious experiment. An experiment in trying to prove SPL players could be transplanted into the English game and play at a high level. Middlesbrough tried the same thing this season, to similar effect.

The grudge?

One wonders what City would have been like without the bust up. Would Jefferies have gone had McCall meekly have accepted his being put out to pasture or would he have stayed at the club and what would the effect of that been? Had McCall allowed Jefferies to make his mistake without an argument – and argument which at the time prompted questions about his appropriateness – then would he have been given his chance to manage City back in 2002? One can but speculate.

Ten years on one wonders how significant the event was. Certainly City were not heading anywhere good under Jefferies but admitting that the Premiership return would not happen is as good a place as any to mark the start of these troubled times.

McCall may credit Jefferies with giving him the motivation to carry on playing. Having been told he could not do something made him want to do it. Perhaps it is that which gives him the motivation to get on in management at Motherwell.

Playing four times a season, every season, and referencing something that is ten years and an era of a different club ago this is no one’s grudge match. McCall tries to prove himself as manager and Jefferies attempts (and succeeds in many respects) to return to the reputation he had before he came to England and Bradford City.

Everything else seems a world away.

BfB understands that Bradford City are attempting to negotiate with Valley Parade landlord Gordon Gibb over the terms of the current rental agreement. It would be wholly inappropriate for us to publicly disclose any details of these talks – due their high sensitivity – other than to say that City’s Board is trying to find a compromise to this ever-present problem.

As the 2008-09 and 2009-10 financial accounts show, the current rental and running costs City must pay annually to use Valley Parade are hindering their ability to achieve success on the field. City’s overheads are covered by income not generated by the football, and the playing side is paid for by season ticket sales and gate receipts in general. With season ticket sales on track to be lower next season, it means the playing budget will be reduced for City’s next manager. However, the club’s existence is currently assured by other income streams.

That said, the Valley Parade situation remains a millstone around the club’s neck. The idea of moving to Odsal was floated two years ago, but now seems as unlikely as the council’s  redevelopment of the Bradford Bulls’ home which was proposed at the time. City have attempted to talk to Gibb about buying back the stadium, but the former Chairman’s asking price is too high. A 25-year lease means City are left paying huge annual rental payments which are undermining efforts to revive our ailing fortunes.

So the Board – as Gibb’s people seem happy to disclose to other people – are looking to negotiate new rental terms that would be more favourable for City. At present City are paying £1.3 million per year in rent and running costs, and in January Mark Lawn told us that Gibb was earning a 15% annual return on his original investment.

Gibb has no reason to agree to reduced terms, but if the rent issue remained so difficult that it threatened the existence of Bradford City Football Club, he could suddenly be left with no annual return and a piece of land that would be difficult to sell in the current climate. So one must hope the club can convince him that it is in his interests to help them along the way, while still providing him with a healthy return.

One solution could be to broker a structured rental deal that can help both parties achieve their aims – City to climb up the leagues and Gibb to build his family’s pension fund. Lawn told BfB that: “This club needs to be in the Championship. In the Championship we survive and we survive well. That’s where we need to be. The overheads suddenly don’t become as bad because we need this type of stadium to survive.”

So one idea could be – and this is a BfB suggestion rather than necessarily a proposal on the negotiating table – that the rent is restructured for which division City are in. In League Two revenue is clearly more tight, and the size of rent becomes such an issue that it holds back the club. If the rent could be more favourable now, it would only enhance the Bantams’ ability to earn promotion to League One. Here the rent could be increased again, and then increased even further if and when City return to the Championship and benefit from far greater revenue. All the way along, rent would be manageable to the club.

For that to work, Gibb would have to accept the rent would be lower for now, plus an inherent risk that he would never receive the same level of return if City continue to bumble about on the field. For that reason, City would have to make the terms more favourable in the Championship (and, hey 20 years is a long time, so include Premier League terms too) than they are now, so that Gibb could potentially receive an even greater return on his investment.

All of which may seem unattractive to Gibb, but the alignment of two goals – City to climb to leagues and Gibb to make more money on his investment – would in many ways be more agreeable to all. Right now the two parties don’t get on well, and while that may not be such a problem for Gibb one would like to believe there remains some feeling for the club he once cared so passionately about.

Whatever the solution, we need to avoid looking at Gibb as the villain and beating him with a stick. The club badly needs his help and, as much as we might argue it is unfair he is getting richer because of us, if that objective was at least parallel with our objectives it would surely be the best compromise from a far from ideal situation.

We watch on with interest, as these talks are clearly vital to the club’s future.

Who was it said “Football is a simple game complicated by fools?” Never were truer words spoken.

Right now fans are debating whether we need this manager or that manager and they’re beginn ing to talk about relegation.

In an era of 3 points for a win and only one for a draw, the simple fact is that teams that win more games are more successful. Simple.

What does it take to win games – just score one more goal than the opposition. it doesn’t matter whether the game ends 1-0 or 6-5, the result is still 3 points gained.

Therein lies the problem. the same one pretty much for the last ten seasons. however many goals City concede we just don’t score enough. successive managers have all failed to solve this problem.
No lesser person than the late Sir Bobby Robson, when discussing striking partnerships said “If you have a striker who gets you 1 in 2 or better partnered by another who gets you 1 in 3 or better you won’t go far wrong.”

I look at the strikers on City’s books and I see the same problem as in previous seasons. While James Hanson might be the 1 in 3 man alongside another effective striker. The simple fact is inescapable. The rest are pretty poor.

Gareth Evans was brought in as a striker but if he’d cut the mustard he wouldn’t have been moved out wide. He suffers from the “Andy Cooke syndrome” He works really hard but doesn’t score many goals. Speight is pretty much the same.

I’ve never subscribed to the Plan B that says it doesn’t matter if one striker doesn’t score goals, the other players can make up for that.

What that really says is that if one player isn’t really doing his job. A striker not scoring goals, then the midfielders have to do more than their job. Score more goals to make up for his failings. Goals from midfielders should be the icing on the cake. added pressure shouldn’t be put on players like Syers due to the failings of Evans, Speight et al.

Lesser clubs than ours find 2 worthwhile strikers. It’s not impossible at this level but, until some City manager manages to work the oracle for us and produce a team with 2 worthwhile strikers at the same time then we’re going to continue to struggle.

Peter Jackson’s Bradford City beat Macclesfield Town at Moss Rose Ground 1-0 thanks to a first half goal from James Hanson.

The ninety minutes saw City enjoy the lion’s share of the game losing Hanson after an hour to injury. The win moves the Bantams to 15th in League Two on 47 points nine ahead of Barnet in 23rd. Last season’s 23rd placed club Grimsby Town were relegated with 44 points.

BfB has no report – transport problems – but will be back on Saturday as City face Torquay United at Valley Parade.

The Yorkshire Post has this morning revealed Bradford City made a £501,000 for the 2009/10 season – largely thanks to the sell-on clause in the deal which saw Bradford-born Fabian Delph transfer from Leeds to Aston Villa for £8 million in August 2009.

The Bantams received an initial £800,000 windfall for the part they played in developing the young midfielder. The Yorkshire Post also claims that total has risen to just short of a £1 million due to further clauses being triggered – chiefly Villa qualifying for Europe and awarding Delph a new four-year contract.

Were it not for the Delph money, City would have made a loss of around £299,000. For the 2008/09 season, where the Bantams had spent big on wages – a £1.9 million playing budget – but missed out on the play offs, the club recorded a loss of £765,000. One can take an educated guess that City will make a similarly high loss for this season, having again pushed out the boat.

All of which is troubling. Without the unexpected windfall from Delph, City would have lost over £1 million over the previous two campaigns and something similar this year – whether these totals includes loans provided by Lawn and Rhodes is unclear. The decreasing success of the subsidised season ticket scheme will add further pressure, and Julian Rhodes, Mark Lawn and the Board are left in a position where unless they keep investing more of their own money the club is left in an incredibly weak position.

The Valley Parade rent and running costs amount to £1.3 million each year. If the ownership situation could be altered this situation would ease, but it would be wrong to assume that it would lead to City making a profit each year as many of the running costs would still need to be met no matter who owns the deeds to the stadium. And that’s before we consider the costs involved if the club were able to buy back Valley Parade. People often say that you should never rent a home as it’s “a mug’s game” and City are in a similarly position of being trapped and effectively throwing money down a blackhole.

Clearly next season is going to be a tough one financially. The club has spent big on wages again this year and there were other sizeable costs last summer, such as relaying the pitch. With season ticket sales unlikely to match or better this season’s, the resultant playing budget for whoever takes over as manager will be significantly reduced and with it expectations must surely recede.  A huge consideration, when selecting the manager, must be their ability to deliver over-performance on a shoestring budget.

What of the longer-term future? Unless City can get back to the Championship, it’s unlikely revenue streams will significantly increase anytime soon – unless they abandon the season ticket initiative. The Valley Parade situation looks unlikely to be resolved anytime soon, if ever. Outside investment remains a faint possibility, but City are far from an attractive proposition. The possibility of further windfalls from other former City youngsters – most notably Tom Cleverly and Andrew Wisdom – remains, but is hardly something to build a five-year business plan upon.

Rumours have recently floated around that another administration is a possibility, but hopefully this can be filed under malicious nonsense. Nevertheless, these are somewhat worrying times for Bradford City and, as gratefully received as the Delph money clearly was, it cannot prop up the club forever.

Bradford City play Macclesfield Town At Moss Rose in League Two, 2010/2011

If there’s one recurring theme over the past decade of utter Bradford City failure, it is the futility of sacking managers. So often, it seems, a change of who occupies the dugout has been presented as the only solution to chronic under-achievement, but never has this course of action worked out in the way it was hoped. And as Peter Jackson struggles to revive the Bantams after taking over from Peter Taylor six games ago, it seems that once again the supposed remedy hasn’t cured the problem.

Jackson’s record now reads won 2, drawn 1 and lost 3. The 38% win ratio is exactly the same as Taylor delivered over 32 games. The league position remains unaltered, and is unlikely to improve enough over the final eight games to avoid a worst league finish since 1966. The cold hard facts are that removing Taylor as manager has not improved City’s fortunes in the short-term.

Of course that doesn’t mean Taylor was doing a decent job after all. He was the one who badly utilised an increased summer budget and who must assume a huge amount of responsibility for such a dreadful campaign. But the players clearly must shoulder much of the blame too, and Jackson’s failure to revive them – other than an initial short-term boost – shows that the idea under-performers could quickly become over-achievers simply by switching around who selects the formation is flawed.

Or put it another way – changing managers mid-season generally doesn’t work.

Any time this viewpoint is expressed, a counter-argument inevitably arises that points to examples of other clubs who have been transformed by giving their unpopular manager the boot. The latest one to use could be Martin Allen, who since taking over at seemingly relegation-doomed Barnet has achieved a very good come-from-2-0-behind draw against the leaders and incredibly vital win at Burton.

Indeed listening to Allen’s Burton post match assessment offered some fascinating insights. Allen has decreed that the players should simply enjoy the rest of the season, forget worrying about what they eat and the tactics of the opposition as they will simply play five-a-side in training every day. Such a dramatic change in approach has clearly worked so far, but whether Barnet stay up or go down one doubts the players will begin next season eating pies and neglecting the tactics.

It is a short-term trick because Barnet need a short-term miracle. Inspirational management perhaps, but hardly a model for other clubs to copy unless in a similarly hopeless position.

Allen’s Barnet revival is still the exception rather than the norm, and for a section of City support and members of the Boardroom to believe the Bantam’s fortunes can be altered by sacking whoever the latest unpopular manager happens to be, mid-season, after so many repeated failures remains a bone of contention. I write this as someone who had lost support for Taylor – though was not in a rush for him to leave mid-season like others. I believe Taylor would probably have turned things around had he remained, albeit no where near enough to mount a late play off charge and to be deserving of a new contract.

So what to make of Jackson? It seems unfair to dismiss his chances on the basis he has done no better than Taylor with the same set of players, because of the repeated failure of changing managers mid-season. Put Jackson in charge last summer with Taylor’s budget and a fairer comparison could be made. That is implausible of course, and Jackson looks set to be overlooked in favour of someone else who in time we hope will be a success, but over this recent six-game period is unlikely to have done any better.

City have put off putting season tickets on sale until the managerial appointment is belatedly made, and it appears the Board is looking to generate the type of feel-good atmosphere a new manager usually triggers in order to convince those yet to renew to sign up for next season. Unless Jackson can win two of the next three games between now and the big decision – starting tonight at Macclesfield – it seems highly likely someone else will get the job, as Jackson cannot provide that feel-good boost.

Is season ticket sales a fair consideration when choosing the next manager? Probably not, and it is worth recalling the negative reaction to Paul Jewell being appointed permanent manager after an underwhelming end to the season in a caretaker capacity, back in 1998. Then-Chairman Geoffrey Richmond was able to observe up close the qualities in Jewell that would become so prevalent to the rest of us that following season, after he was able to build the team he wanted rather than being stuck with a squad inherited from his predecessor mid-season.

Yet the short-term impact was a reduction in season ticket sales. Richmond remarked a year later on the decision to appoint Jewell, “We lost a couple of thousand season ticket holders…my mailbag was horrendous that summer.”

With such limited investment for next season, it’s a fact of life that the modern day Bradford City has to consider season ticket sales when deciding who to appoint. A poor return from the next three games, and it would take a very brave Board to appoint Jackson as manager next season. The loss of season ticket holders could prove even worse than in 1998.

So Jackson needs a result tonight and, after Barnet’s win over Burton, so do City. Avoiding relegation seemed all but assured after the Morecambe win, but one or two more wins are needed from the last eight matches to ensure there is no shocking ending to this disastrous season. City have two games in hand, starting tonight, but Burton’s failure to make the most of their games in hand following a winter of numerous postponements is a stark lesson of the dangers on relying upon them. When City’s home game against Burton was called off in January, Burton were considered play off candidates. Instead they face a nervous end to the campaign which City themselves hope to avoid.

Expect some changes tonight, with Luke Oliver set to return at the back and Lewis Hunt pushed to right back. Hunt has impressed greatly in the centre, but a back two of he and out-of-form Steve Williams is hardly the strongest and the commanding presence of Oliver should help a defence which has looked marginally better with him in it all season. Luke O’Brien continues at left back with Jon McLaughlin in goal.

In midfield it seemed Jackson had found a greater balance a few weeks ago as the previously overlooked Jon Worthington impressed, and the fact the last two games have ended in defeat with Worthington not involved is hardly a coincidence. Expect him back tonight alongside Tom Adeyemi or David Syers, with Michael Flynn probably dropped to the bench. Gareth Evans finds favour as a wideman but struggles for his best form, while Leon Osborne or repeated underachiever Scott Dobie will be wide left.

Up front James Hanson has had a disappointing second season and a growing minority of critics have, as usual, displayed goldfish memories in forgetting how good he can be. Who he will partner tonight is unclear, with Dobie, Jake Speight and Chib Chilaka vying for an opportunity.

The sight of Oliver up front in the closing stages on Saturday underlines how their are no new answers to the club’s predicament. Jackson must make the most of what he has, in order to earn the opportunity to show what he could really do.

Is the solution to Bradford City’s problems in a new manager?

Someone has to pick the team, train the players and so on but first and foremost perhaps we need some leadership at the club.

At the moment, I am embarrassed. The last six weeks are no way to recruit a new manager and the process will leave no one either satisfied, or with the reputations they came into it with intact.

Mark Lawn and the Bradford City board look weak and indecisive. Why take so long to pick someone for a role which seems to have such a limited shelf life? Why spend half a season appointing a manager when the last one (who was also appointed after such a process) was done away with after six months? The public perception is one of a board good at procrastination.

Peter Jackson can’t really make his mark on the job or the club until he has the job officially, so is only going to end up doing poorly and setting the message boards alight with impolite requests for his dismissal – if it can even be called that – from a role he can hardly get started in. Jackson cannot provide the leadership when he might be back on the streets at the end of the week.

This weakness in leadership is in evidence throughout the club. We, the supporters, are fed snippets by the club but none of these bits of information which suggest improvement is ever followed up. What does Omar Khan an associate director of City do? I’d like to know if he organises events so that I can go to them. What does Roger Owen do at the club? They were both lauded when they joined up, but we’ve heard little from them since and seen no evidence of any success that has derived from their presence.

Why do I receive email updates from Leeds United and Huddersfield Town, but not from City? Email is a simple, cheap form of communication. Every man and his dog has a blog these days, but not Bradford City.

The club is poorly managed and will only continue to deteriorate unless drastic changes are made. We have a hopelessly outdated website, no regular communication (I don’t even receive my season ticket in the post, I have to go and collect it!) and no spokesperson. The players talk and are hauled up before the manager, the manager issues comments and the board comment on the manager, and then board say nothing. In BfB interview with Mark Lawn the chairman admitted that he had withdrawn from talking to supporters.

News, both good and bad is spread via rumour on the message boards, meaning that much of what we are told is completely fictitious, even malicious at times. False rumours gain currency, the the true rumours are then picked up a day or so later by the T&A and appear often to ‘clarify’ misconceptions.

All of this happens and the idea persists that the new manager will solve the problems, and that he will be able to solve the problems, when increasingly it seems his job is marginalised to the point of being a lesser appointment. The manager becomes a a Lieutenant without a Major.

Sort that out first, then worry about appointing a new manager.

Stevenage 2 Bradford City 1 At Broadhall Way in League Two, 2011/2012

Bradford City are going to be looking at appointing a new manager soon and and in doing so will be asking a question as to if it is worth rewarding Peter Jackson for his work as “interim manager” with a full time contract. It seems difficult to believe the will be the case.

Two games – indeed two defeats – ago Mark Lawn talked about Jackson’s performance not being enough when the manager had a record of seven points out of twelve which edged the former skipper at just under two points a match. Having been told that those performances were not good enough one wonders if Jackson will be considered for a job the description of which seems to be “promotion form, all the time.”

Perhaps it was the idea that performance as well as results influence thinking in the mind of Mark Lawn – one half of the joint chairman and the half who was last to agree on appointing Peter Taylor owing to his style of football – that prompted Jackson to keep David Syers out at right back and put Tom Adeyemi in central midfield alongside Michael Flynn rather than Jonathan Worthington.

In theory Flynn and Ademeyi are an expansive middle two with one promoting and the other driving forward but in practice this team – as with all teams – perform better with a ball winner and Jackson’s results show that. When his team dig in, results follow, but without Worthington (or a similar player) much of the good play that City were capable of a month ago is theory, nothing more.

Ademeyi deserves a place in the team, Syers deserves a spot in central midfield, or so the thinking goes. The practice, as is often the case in football, differs.

Exhibit A: Jake Speight. Given three out of ten by one Sunday newspaper last week and generally considered to be not very good Speight was dropped today for Scott Dobie. While Speight has been doing whatever it is he does up front – you may not, or may, care for it – Dobie has been nominally out of position and seemingly either incapable of playing that role of having a lip out sulk and putting in very little.

His reward for such slight returns was to be given a role alongside James Hanson in the forward line and seldom did he seem to offer anything to suggest his was a better option. Jackson’s rewarding of Dobie’s anonymous performances make it hard to demand effort from the rest of the squad. “Play hard, because if you don’t you will be given a place in the forward line.”

Darren Stephenson or Chib Chilaka – who came off the bench for Dobie in the second half following five goals in his last two games – seemed to merit the position more and certainly seemed to put in more effort.

Not that City’s side lacked effort on the while today – nor that Jackson could not have looked back on the game without thinking that his team was hard done by – but some of what the manager was doing to impress at Morecambe with the characterful 1-0 win seemed to slip away, sacrificed on the alter of the more attractive.

The home side tipped a performance towards them from kick off edging, but not firmly beating, the Bantams and it seemed only a time before Jon McLauglin would be beaten. A shot pinged off his bar but it took a penalty by John Mousinho after Steve Williams’ jump in the first half was oddly penalised to give Stevenage the advantage. Mousinho is to Stevenage what Tom Doherty was to Wycombe Wanderers three seasons back. A player to envy.

But what good is envy? The Stevenage players continued to edge each tackle and carry on firmly in the play off zone after the win which was to follow in the second half but it is not because they are to a man better than the Bantams eleven. The idea that City’s players are inherently worse which seems to mark any half time in which the Bantams trail is not backed up by a look at the opposition teams which best us. We have League Two players, but so does every other club in League Two, and the challenge for every manager at this level is to get those players outperforming the division.

City’s second half display showed some character and Chilaka’s entrance helped matters but it seemed the Bantams were struggling on scraps. David Syers and Luke O’Brien pressed up the flanks and some supply from Adeyemi and Gareth Evans proved some delivery but it seemed that City were going to battle in vein.

Jackson will have looked at having to deploy Lewis Hunt in the middle with Syers at right back and ending up with Luke Oliver – a former Stevenage forward – back in the forward line. He will look at Tommy Doherty’s return in the reserves and Michael Flynn’s struggle to get in the game today and he will see options returning to his squad and he will probably wonder if he will get to be the one who decides how the midfielder returns to the squad, how Oliver is put back in the side, how to solve the goal scoring issues.

Syers scored, a tidy finish after Chilaka pushed the ball back to him in a crowded box, and it seemed that City might get a reward but the wrong things are seldom rewarded in the end, and Darius Charles won the game.