Articles written by Roland Harris
The word is that Luke Beckett has agreed terms with City and is our second capture from those strange lot down the road in two days as Stuart McCall starts making a City team that can go up two divisions.
31 year old Beckett has been on his holidays with a contract in his back pocket that will run a year with another year if either side thinks things have gone well which usually means he is being paid a fair price and shows City’s aims this season. Promotion or rip it up and start again.
Beckett joins Chris Brandon in making the short but glorious trip from Huddersfield and as with Brandon he has been linked with City before with Colin Todd opting to sign Eddie Johnson rather than Beckett two years ago.
Beckett’s role in the team can be summed up as Barry Conlon with goals and we can expect to see him partnering Peter Thorne up front next season with Conlon and Billy Topp fighting for positions. As Conlon showed this year this is a league where scrapping is needed and Topp might have to wait 12 months until League One before he starts to be a regular.
Brandon is a hard working midfielder but he is not Stuart McCall’s new Stuart McCall so he has to be balanced with another box-to-box midfielder like which might be Lee Bullock but Hartlepool fans consider Bullock an attacking midfielder. Brandon could join the midfield on the left flank tucked in to balance out Joe Colbeck as a flying winger on the other side but perhaps Stuart will go with Bullock and Brandon with Kyle Nix on the left and Colbeck on the right.
It seems that as Stuart starts his signings City are getting options and perhaps the gaffer is going to go for four quality forwards, six quality midfielder and let the pieces fall into place rather than fixing his team in his mind in June as he has had to last year because of having too few quality players.
I’m on my feet cheering Hull City on a Saturday afternoon and I’ve got two fists in the air and I’m watching the Tigers win promotion and I’m happy.
Hull City really hate Bradford City but I don’t know why and no one I know does. I guess they don’t like the way we went off to the Premiership after nicking their stand that time but whatever it is they hate us and we are a bit confused as to why. I have the same thing with a guy called Tim Johnson and I think me and Tim could get along well if only he got over the wanting to punch my face in thing. We are the same with Hull.
Especially because Hull have got Dean Windass leading them.
I always feel like Dean Windass was robbed from me. I loved having Dean Windass up front for City and from the minute he left for Hull I knew we were in trouble that season. Deano was the only player who had a club where the net was and he worked hard and he was smart as anything on the football field and without any of those things we were never going to win many. It would be like City now letting the goals of Peter Thorne, the work of Barry Conlon and the tricks of Billy Topp go on the same day.
But the worst thing about Deano leaving was that it was a self inflicted wound. Deano left and at the time he was getting death threats from a hand full of idiots who call themselves City fans but are really just sad cases. We ignore them cause they really are a minority.
But these guys were fed by the fact that we never appreciated Deano. All through his City career the boos were not far away. He was booed when we signed him for getting into the team over Robbie Blake and in the Premiership for not being Blake and the people who booed him when he played for us booed him when he came back for other clubs and scored against us.
Then when he returned to City the boos were not far away and some fans were so quick to get on his back. Deano was never perfect and his sending off against Bournemouth was stupid but he played with passion and he won matches for City and he did it time and time again.
But he could do ten things right and one thing wrong and some people would ignore the ten and jump on him for the one. Some people just enjoyed getting on Deano’s back cause they thought that being able to criticise Deano meant they were smarter football fans. It was personal abuse and nothing to do with what Deano did on the field which was head and shoulders above Eddie Johnson, Andy Cooke, Spencer Weir-Daley, Moses Ashikodi, Danny Cadamarteri, Michael Branch or any the other partners Deano had.
So when he had an offer from Hull City on the table alongside the death threats he probably looked at the team he has keeping up on his own and compared them to the club where he is a legend and thought why does he need to play for a team who boo him and moan about him. If he had thought “Lets see what they can do without me” then he would have been right. Letting Dean Windass go got us relegated and the people who made the climate that made him want to leave should know that they are responsible for that.
So I’m cheering Dean Windass’s brilliant twenty yarder at Wembley and thinking how that could have been a goal for us cause Deano would have stuck at VP for the rest of his career had it not been for some so-called fans driving him out. I hope Hull City do ok in the Premiership and I’m not jealous cause they will have thier Rodney Marsh.
But I am jealous of them for having Deano because he should be out player and some of us threw him away.
The dust has settled on the season now and Stuart McCall has decided City were not good enough saying we were a four out of ten team.
The dust has settled on the season now and everyone is getting ready to not be interested in the European Championships and Euro 2008 but Stuart McCall is sat behind his desk at VP trying to find out how to make his four our of ten team a nine or tenner. He hasn’t asked me for suggestions but I’m going to give them anyway.
First I’d tell him to have not made as many changes as he has which is not like me at all cause I normally favour throwing out bathwater and babies on the hope that we might get cuter babies but Eddie Johnson, Darren Williams (Who seems to have done nothing wrong except remind people of Holloway) and Tom Penford were used to the way that Stuart got City playing. The big problem this season was that it took City four months to get into the zone and get used to each other so letting go of the players who were used to each other was not a great idea.
Second I’d say that he should look again at that four out of ten. Chop the first four months off the season and take the season half of it and City are a playoff team. A good start to the season and we could end up being the best side from January to January (not that that gets you promoted) which says to me that we need a couple of tweaks and not a load of changes.
The changes we need are about smarts. We need to get smarter and stop giving the ball away so much (getting rid of Paul Evans goes half way to this) especially when we are away from home. At home we just need to make sure we understand that the best way to attack is to get the ball as often as possible so we need a guy in the midfield to win it back and that guy is not Lee Bullock or Kyle Nix. Stuart needs a Stuart and he needs one who can come in on the first day of the season and be good. Everyone in football is looking for one of them.
Third he needs to change the law so Donny Ricketts can come back. Scott Loach did nothing Ricketts couldn’t do and made the same mistakes. People were just less bored of him is all so he didn’t get groaned at. Shame to see Donny go and I don’t think he got enough of a send off.
Lastly Stuart needs to fix his team in his mind before the first day and stop the chopping and changing of forwards. We need partnership and understanding to get out of this league.