Articles written by Roland Harris
So Dean Windass has left City and I get the feeling I’m never going to see him play again cause while I think Stuart McCall will get City promoted this season I doubt that ‘ull will go down. Windass signed for Hull for £250,000 finally today.
Deano. I’m going to miss you.
I’m going to miss the enthusiasm that you played every game with. I know that sometime that went a bit over the top and other times it went silly crazy like the sending off against Bournemouth but most of the time Windass just did everything he could to make Bradford City win games.
And everything he could meant he dropped into the midfield when City asked him to and one time he played in goal (At Southend) and when he was there he did everything he could to get City winning games. One Dean Windass was worth a million Bobby Pettas.
I’m going to miss Deano The Wind Up King. I’m going to miss him pulling faces to the crowd and I’m going to miss him getting under the skin of defenders that tried to bully him. I hope that Stuart McCall does not think that people like Michael Symes, Andy Cooke and the countless other players who got pocketed by the bully boy number fives of League One are going to do any better a division below.
Deano used to get under the skins of defenders and they couldn’t deal with him. John Finnigan and Ivar Ingermarson at Reading both punched him cause they found him annoying and he probably was but he was our annoying player and he gave us the advantage. Nice guys, Green Day tell us, Finish Last.
I’m going to miss that knack he had for being where the ball was going to be. I’m sure it is not as easy as all that but he made it seem easy dropping off to where some defender was going to clear it or picking it up from a free kick and hitting it so just right that David Seaman couldn’t stop it. I’m going to miss that.
I’m even going to miss him shouting at referees cause God knows I shout at them often enough and I always think that if I was in that number ten shirt I’d be doing the same when I saw some rubbish decision by some idiot official.
That is why I’ll miss Deano. Cause he played football how I’d like to play football when he showed the passion and the grit and at other times like when he got hat-tricks in the Premiership or bent in goals from nothing he played football like I dreamed of.
At the moment we are waiting for Stuart McCall and Wayne Jacobs to be shown off as the new boss and assistant at City but they are at Valley Parade doing the jobs.
The jobs they have are pretty big. City went down last year after a pretty good start and if you look at the tables before and after Christmas City are not just edging out of League One are are kicked out with force. We haven’t done the business much in the last six months and we haven’t done the business at home for years.
Although for a time last term Colin Todd had City making hay at Valley Parade. Crewe got murdered 4-0 with JJ and Lee Holmes ripping in down the flanks. It seems that the best City teams have the two wingers in them. JJ and Holmes were like Peter Beagrie and Jamie Lawrence with one going at you and one getting the crosses in. I’ve heard people say that Holmes going back to Derby injured was the start of the reasons City got relegated and it does seem like it is the end of Dean Windass’s goal scoring at VP.
Omar Daley could be McCall’s new JJ just as he promised to be Todd’s but bet your bottom dollar that the new City boss is looking for a left winger to put in that play-making performance Beagers used to give. If he manages like he plays then McCall will want some tacklers in the midfield like Craig Bentham and he will want a ginge with fire in his belly like Joe Colbeck and he will want a good passer who can find a man like Gareth Whalley could that who he can have his McCall style player shove the ball leaving the play-making to the left wing.
But then again what is the point of having a good crosser of a ball when you do not have a striker to nod it home? The more you look at McCall’s team the more you think that he has got himself a jigsaw with about five bits missing. Sure the goalkeeper and the central defenders are in place but loads of other things are just waiting to be done.
The really important thing is that someone with some cash comes in and gets us some more pieces.
I once read a book, well I’ve read more than one book but this is the one I’m talking about, and I can’t remember what it was called but it was about a guy who had an earwhigg that had crawled into one of his ears and was digging through to the other side and the guy who had this thing in his ear kept having these memories sparked off my the earwhigg as it went through and finally it popped out the otherside of the guy’s brain and the horror was over only it wasn’t cause the insect was a female and had laid eggs and so it would happen again and again…
That is pretty much how Wigan Athletic fan’s should be feeling right now.
Before I say this I’m going to say that I’m sure that Chris Hutchings is a great bloke and he is a good coach but there is no way the guy is a Premiership manager cause I saw every one of his 12 Premiership games and most of his Intertoto cup ties, he won some of them, and I can say better than anyone just how little he was able to get to grips with managing a team.
Charlton away spings to mind where City wandered around the field trying to make up for the big hole around Dan Petrescu where the Romanian “Legend” stood stock still not caring.
After Manchester United away I got disciplined for searing at my boss cause we lost 6-0 and the reason we lost 6-0 was because Hutchings could not see that he needed to play a 451 at Old Trafford.
We all like to point the finger for who was to blame for City’s team going tits up in the Premiership and everyone in the world points at Geoffrey Richmond but in that six weeks of madness Richmond got together the most talented squad ever given to a Bradford City manager and he gave it to Chris Hutchings.
Matt Clarke, Gunnar Halle, David Wetherall, Andy O’Brien, Wayne Jacobs, Robbie Blake, Stuart McCall, Gareth Whalley, Peter Beagrie, Benito Carbone and Dean Windass and if you want more beef add Peter Atherton to the midfield and Static Ash as a non-scoring forward if you must. Throw in David Hopkin if you think that he was a perfectly good player until the second he walked into Valley Parade and remember how Lee Mills was dumped for a player who cost twice as much and was half as good (He means Ashley Ward again, Ed.) Richmond got together the most talented squad ever given to a Bradford City manager and he gave it to Chris Hutchings and Hutching squandered it.
I’m not putting everything at the door of Chris Hutchings cause that would be unfair but the man had the best Bradford City team every and got one of the best performances ever out of it against Chelsea and then like some rabbit in headlights got flattened by the Premiership.
Has he improved since? Wigan had better hope so.
Whatever it is that Hutch does on the training field and Paul Jewell says it is a load he does not do it as manager. As a manager he lacks ideas and imagination. He is low profile to the point of head scratching and this is not about him not having played for England it is about the way that he does not offer leadership for the players.
Dave Whelan obviously sees the same things in him as Geoffrey Richmond did. What does it say about GR that his mistakes are being made again? I hope for Chris Hutchings sake he has a better time of it as boss of Wigan than he did at City or after Paul Jewell’s six months off I think he might find his old number two ready and waiting for a job.