Articles written by Roland Harris
Scunthorpe United 2 Bradford City 0 - League One 2006/2007
One thing I’ve noticed about football is that often I’m right and you are wrong. Maybes not you but other people. Most people. Most people are wrong about football.
It is not most people’s fault. They watch SKY TV and read The Sun and what they read and see must be true cause everyone around them is saying it but a million people can say one thing and still be wrong. Majority might rule but it ain’t always right.
Now I’m not always right either but when I said Colin Todd should not be sacked I was not off the mark. Nothing has improved since the manager got the bullet at Bradford City as we sink down and down the division until we sit in League Two next season.
David Wetherall’s job was to add a short term boost and nothing more and everyone knows that Stuart McCall just has to say the word and he will be gaffer. Wetherall is supposed to be a short term fix but Todd’s team wasn’t in the problems that the skipper finds his in.
Todd was not pulling up trees but he kept things going along and we would have sailed out to close season in a rather dull mid-table place but that was not good enough for some and they demanded and got a change. I think they said something about more excitement. I don’t know if they are happy now.
And of course we miss Deano and JJ and of course that is not Wetherall’s fault cause cash needed to be got in but what we paid to let the gaffer go was wasted.
I’m wrong lots of the time too by the way but I’m not wrong here and I’m not wrong when I say that what we have left after this 2-0 defeat to the league leaders is a lottery numbers chance of staying in the league.
City did well today keeping back a team on the way to promotion for so long but pressure always counts in football and sure enough Billy Sharp looks a striker on his way to bigger and better things. He lashed home and after that City were all but out of it save a Dave Wetherall header that got flagged away for some reason.
I’m losing count of goals chalked off for some reason. One thing we can all agree on is that in football if you don’t score goals you don’t win and Referees are determined to stop City scoring. Not that that seems to be stopping Dean Windass.
I guess it is not worth talking about what might have been and we should look at what is and what is is that we need wins and God knows where we are going to get them from. Easter is moving time Sir Ferguson says. We can only hope.
Robson has too much of the Jefferies about him for me
Bryan Robson is the new City boss and he is a good City boss I’m not sure I’d have picked him if I were Gordon Gibb.
Robson is a good boss. He did some good stuff and some bad stuff at Middlesbrough and he assistant Terry Venebles at England during Euro96. He got Middlesbrough to Wembley and the Premiership twice and more amazingly he managed to get some of the World’s most impressive players to the grotty Hell hole of Middlesbrough. If Luis Figo ended up in Manningham I would not be at all surprised. Robson must have used the Jedi mind trick when he convince Christian and Adriana Karembeu to live in the dark smog City.
If Bryan Robson comes to City in the save tidal wave of euphoria he had at the start of his Boro career and at the start of his first season in the Premiership with Boro we will be doing great.
If he does not, that is another matter.
Robson is more than a chequebook manager but he used the Boro chequebook to get himself out of trouble more than once and he is, after all, the man who signed Alan Boksic for for £63,000 a week. Likewise Robson is more than just a sick them on the field boss. His tactics at Boro were much more flexible than churning out the same 442 every week in an attempt to copy what goes on at Old Trafford.
On all these points Robson is good. What he lacks, for me at least, is the drive. He doesn’t need this.
Nicky Law needed to stay at City, how else would he get £210,000 a year. Ditto Chris Hutchings, Chris Kamara, Paul Jewell etc…
Robson, like Jim Jefferies, can walk away. Robson is a millionaire, he wants to show what he can do as a manager again and I want him to be great but when the going gets tough Robson, like Jefferies before him, can get going. I’m not saying he will I just think that every day he manages will be one fewer on the golf course for him. I compare that to the managers we have had who really had something to prove: The Chris Kamaras and the Paul Jewells and I know which one I prefer.
That aside Robson is the most qualified and experienced man to ever manager this club and let’s make him welcome by making some noise at Valley Parade for a change and show him the good parts of what he has taken on.
I was reading a few papers, looking at a few websites and getting a handle on what other people were saying about Bradford City 2 Burnley 2.
A few of the reports I looked at disagreed on the Mark Bower incident. Some said that Bower committed two bookable offences, some that the Burnley striker Dimitrios Papadopoulos had been guilty of diving and one or two even went as far as to suggest that Papadopoulos should be carpetted.
With Danny Cadamarteri opinions were different.
I must confess that when I saw the incident I thought that Cadamarteri had polaxed Colin West with his elbow. I saw it again on TV and thought about how from my perspective I would have sent Cadders off, but from where the Referee Mike Dean was standing, an angle where he had a clear view of the ball looping over the City man and landing full in Colin West’s face, I would have called for a physio for the prone Burnley man and been a little curious as to why he was staying down so long.
Danny Cadamarteri didn’t touch him, but that’s not the point, Danny Cadamarteri didn’t have to. Danny Cadamarteri is always guilty.
A look through those match reports and words like “Unsurprisingly” and “Typically” appear near mentions of Cadamarteri’s alleged elbow.
It all goes back to Cadamarteri’s time at Everton. Fact: He was found guilty of hitting a woman. Fact: He was found guilty of lying to police. I’m not keen on either of these things.
Cadamarteri suffers the same problem as Stan Collymore did. High profile bad behaviour has a way of staining the character forever.
Cadamarteri, like Collymore, might not be on your list to invite to a dinner party but the idea that he should get different treatment from writers and pundits is harsh. Watch the game, write about the game. However if it’s your website or your editor approves what you said then fair play to you.
However when Referee’s act differently towards one player to another because he has “high profile bad behaviour” issues then we have a problem in the game.
Did the Ref come onto the field thinking “I will send Danny Cadamarteri off cause he hit a lap dancer”? Probably not. Did he think that Cadamarteri is “the sort of guy who is useful with his fists”? It would explain why he interpreted a ball in the face as an elbow.
Stan Collymore said that Refs had victimised him, I think Danny Cadamarteri might one day say the same.