Where are the Bantams?

Negotiations carry on around the future of Bradford City and where they will play next season – and going forward form that – with talk about leaving Valley Parade. Odsal is the assumed destination but Mark Lawn was quick to point out that Bradford is a big area with many sites available.

With this comes talk of City moving up the Aire Valley towards Keighley. It is thought that Bradford City supporters are increasingly based in the area to the North West of the City and that it would make sense to relocate the club in that direction. Indeed when there is talk about City fans clubbing together to buy Valley Parade there is a separate conversation which discusses if millions of pounds raised by supporters might be better spent on a new stadium rather than the ground in Manningham, Bradford.

Popular wisdom tells us the Aire Valley – rather than the middle of Bradford or its immediate suburbs – is where the City fans are, but how accurate is this? Aside from speculation it is difficult to find any hard and fast data on where Bantams fans are. So at BfB we thought we would ask.

The method

A question was asked to people who follow BfB’s Twitter feed for them to send the first half of their postcode. This message was repeated three times over the course of the weekend of the 6th, 7th and 8th of May 2011.

The assumption was that the Twitter feed would represent a cross section of supporters and that enough supporters to give a picture of the distribution of post codes would respond. It was also assumed that respondents would be Bradford City supporters who went to games.

The post codes were plotted onto a map with varying sizes of circles used to represent the number of respondents within that post code. A modification was done on these circle sizes in order to maintain a visual integrity of the wider circles.

That calculation is:
cityfans[postcode].population * (500 + (250/(cityfans[postcode].population)))

The limitations

Twitter naturally taints results towards its user base which is slightly younger than the general public. The sample size gained – eighty – represents around 1 in 137 Bradford City supporters (considering the attendance of the final game of the season) and a better study could be achieved by using a wider sample size. There is no guarantee that respondents regularly visited Valley Parade. Post Code areas are sized around populations rather and land area and so many rural areas have larger surface covered by their post code than urban areas.

The results

The map of Bradford City supporters can be found here. The data which supports that map is available to anyone who wants it (it is anonymous data which is basically a set of post codes and coordinates) but written out the eight responses were:

B16, BB5, BD2, BD2, BD2, BD2, BD2, BD2, BD2, BD3, BD3, BD6, BD6, BD9, BD9, BD10, BD12, BD12, BD13, BD13, BD14, BD14, BD14, BD15, BD15, BD15, BD15, BD16, BD16, BD17, BD17, BD18, BD18, BD19, BD19, BD19, BD19, BD20, BD21, BD21, BD22, BD24, BN3, CH48, DH1, DN14, DY1, DY6, GU12, HD4, HD6, HD6, HU18, LN2, LS6, LS12, LS16, LS16, LS17, LS24, LS25, LS28, LS29, LS29, M1, M14, M6, MK45, NG13, NN10, PL2, PR3, RG42, S1, SL4, SW9, UB7, WF6, YO16, YO23.

My take

Data analysis is a science and I could not offer a definitive answer to the question as to where the Bantams are but looking at the map it is obvious that Valley Parade (the more northern of the two markers, the other being Odsal) is situated very much within the heaviest population of Bradford City supporters.

Indeed looking at the idea that City’s fans are in the Aire Valley while it is true that there are populations of Bantams supporters in those areas these would appear similar in size to those to the South of Valley Parade in Cleckheaton and in Brighouse. The Aire Valley – so this limited survey suggests – is no more a home of City fans than any other direction away from Valley Parade.

The point

Data collected on Twitter and ink blot maps are not the definitive statement on the distribution of Bradford City supporters but they do show a challenge to the received wisdom about a migration of City fans into the Aire Valley (or indeed any other direction) showing Bantams supporters very much within urban Bradford while expanding in all four directions. York, London, Manchester and Leeds all have distributions of supporters.

If this data can be gathered over a weekend and conclusions drawn from it then one has to wonder what analysis of the Bradford City season ticket holder’s database would present and what conclusions could be drawn from that. Certainly when talking about relocating the club one would hope this data would be investigated rather than assumed.

Much of Bradford City is received wisdom: That the fans are here and not there, that these people will come to games that those will not, that this behaviour is set in stone; and one has to wonder if that received wisdom is challenged and – if it is not – if by asking the supporters (and lapsed supporters) the right questions new truths would be revealed.

The managerial question that will probably come back to bite

Manchester United’s record-breaking title triumph on Saturday was another excuse for the media to shower manager Sir Alex Ferguson with gushing praise – and with good reason. The latest league championship means Fergie has now won 47 trophies over his managerial career – making him easily the most successful British manager in history – and no matter how many times the story of the job he has done at Old Trafford is retold, it never fails to be inspirational.

A one-off, never likely to be equalled may be – but there is so much about the legacy Ferguson has built that should act as lessons for football clubs up and down the country, at all levels.

Almost as famous as the success he has achieved are the struggles Fergie endured during his early days at United. In the modern era no football club would tolerate their manager failing to live up to its expectations in the way the Manchester United Board did during the late 80s. To say they were handsomely rewarded for maintaining patience in Ferguson is an understatement, yet still no football club owner or set of supporters have afforded their present manager a similar length of time to build a club before demanding their dismissal.

Indeed the previous argument used by people backing an under pressure to “remember it took Sir Alex time at Man United” has been mocked to the point of parody. It has become an ‘excuse’ that lacks credibility, or as the excellent RochdaleAFC.com put it in July 2009, when talking about our then-manager Stuart McCall:

Can anyone still try using Alex Ferguson at Old Trafford as an excuse for not getting rid of a manager with a straight face?

Straight face or not, Ferguson keeps lifting trophies while the majority of the rest of English football gets through manager after manager, sometimes stumbling on the right one but in the majority of cases looking back on their current appointment as a mistake. Unless success is fairly immediate, the opportunity for the manager to build up the club on and off the field in a similar to manner to Ferguson is lost. For the under-pressure manager the priority is obvious. Why devote time and resource to matters such as improving the youth set up, if you’re a couple of games away from the sack?

While Ferguson has built his Old Trafford empire, 16 different managers have occupied the dug out at Valley Parade. Clearly more failures than successes during that time, and it is revealing how the club’s most successful period – 1995-2000 – occurred from a hire-from-within approach that ensured greater continuity and evolution. All kinds of strategies have been tried since, but the decline down the leagues illustrates how unsuccessful they have proved.

Equally telling is the immediate backwards direction the Bantams embarked upon after removing managers awarded an above average tenure – Colin Todd and McCall. Both driven out because they were struggling to take the club forwards, but their departures had an entirely opposite effect. Todd and McCall were as close as City have come to following the lessons of Ferguson, but in the end fear became too strong and action was taken.

This summer City are once again looking to recruit a new manager, and though off-the-field events completely overshadow this task right now the apparent neglect over making a decision is troubling. Over 40 people applied for the vacancy in February, but Head of Operations Dave Baldwin has admitted the majority have not being contacted yet. A six-person shortlist was then apparently drawn up, with only John Hughes interviewed. Later we were informed the next manager was between current interim boss Peter Jackson and Dagenham & Redbridge gaffer John Still. Though in recent days Still has committed his future to the relegated League One club. Sammy McIlroy could be a late contender after leaving Morecambe.

Has the club kept in touch with Hughes? How many of those 40+ applicants have since got other jobs or being left feeling let down by the lack of response from City and so no longer be interested – either this time or the next occasion City are advertising a managerial vacancy?

Jackson remains the likely choice as manager. He’s been asked to sort the retained list, and even made a first signing for next season in Ross Hannah. Joint Chairman Mark Lawn’s comment that Jackson is signing players any manager would be interested in is ludicrous, however. Whoever is given the job eventually, City are very fortunate that Jackson is willing to continue managing the club with such uncertainty at the moment.

Nevertheless the whole manager recruitment approach is troubling. Of course there are more important matters at the moment, but given the club has in recent days attempted to blame this poor season on Peter Taylor one might think efforts to truly get the appointment right on this occasion would be more determined and proactive. Baldwin has confirmed City will still exist next season no matter what happens, and the club surely has to start planning for it regardless of where they are playing.

At the very least, it seems unlikely the next manager of Bradford City will be given much time. Longer term building seems to be yesterday’s idea and, no matter what the playing budget might be next season, the manager who oversees it will be expected to over-perform. Whether City are at Valley Parade or elsewhere next season, the backwards steps taken over the past two years means another campaign of failure and under-achievement won’t be tolerated by many. Despite the size of the rebuilding job, progress will probably have to be swift.

You just get the feeling this next appointment will be heavily criticised, retrospectively.

Jackson has probably already had his honeymoon period, while a new manager would be quickly criticised not because of the job they have done but because of the lack of thought that went into appointing him by the club. When in the past Lawn and Julian Rhodes have been able to devote their full attention to finding the right manager they have – rightly or wrongly – been judged to have failed. This time hiring a manager is halfway down a sizeable to do list, and it will arguably be more luck than judgement if their eventual choice proves to be a success. Then again, there’s a question mark over whether it will ultimately be Lawn and Rhodes who make the decision.

Despite the fact Sir Alex Ferguson turns 70 at the end of this year, it appears a safe bet that he will still be in the Old Trafford dugout the next time City are beginning the search for a new manager.