More About 2006/2007
The answer to all football’s problems is the next manager away.
Either that or it is the guy on the bench, or the guy coming back from injury, from suspension or - in the case of Bradford City at the moment - the guy coming back from loan.
Ben Muirhead is returning from Rochdale to cover the suspended Joe Colbeck and immediately the hopes of a City - well 1% of a City - are heaped on his shoulders.
I find Muirhead a curious player. Initially his brand of blind alley run with no end product drove me mad but everyone else seemed to love Ben!!
. When Bryan Robson and Colin Todd had had a word with the former Manchester United winger he seemed to rid his game of some of the more wasteful parts and began to realise that charging at the full back and losing the ball might look good but winning a throw seventy yards from goal with infinitely preferable and so he did that.
Ben Muirhead got some end product to his game and was all the better for it but at this time Ben!!
was replaced to Grrr Ben
and finally Muirhead
and his popularity wained. Loan at Rochdale was assumed to be the last we would see of the quiet Doncaster lad.
But now he is back and charged with the job of contending with the hot and cold blowing Omar Daley for the right wing role in four games that could shape the future of the club. Absence has made the heart grow fonder of Muirhead and big things are expected.
And at once one recalls the player ripping through defences a league above and looking oh so impressive. When Chris Waddle left Valley Parade City were in relegation trouble despite his entertaining play but it was Shaun Murray - the oft forgotten mid-1990s midfielder - who took the role that Waddle enjoyed and made it matter to the team. Sometimes - and David Wetherall will hope this time - it is about the shape of the peg rather than quality.
Colin Todd has until the summer to watch the Bradford City team that sacked him struggle to maintain a place in League One and then the former Bantams boss has agreed to join Danish club Randers FC as their new manager. Good luck to him.
I doubt that history will record that Colin Todd did a good job at Valley Parade - history is so often formed by ill feeling - indeed he will probably be ranked alongside the likes of Jack Napier and John Docherty as one of the club’s most unpopular ergo worst bosses but as David Wetherall’s struggle to get winning ways back attests to if Todd was the great problem at the club sacking him has been far from the great solution.
Appointed by administrators Todd’s job at Valley Parade was done with one hand tied behind his back but in the interests of not giving whichever players he could afford to bring to Bradford City the kind of negativity complex that so often takes hold at clubs this fact which was never really discussed above a murmur.
Indeed more than once BfB heard suggestions that the club was “sorted”, “fixed”, “ok now” and generally had “put all that financial business behind them”. Having looked at the books I can tell you, dear reader, that this is far from the case.
So Todd manfully brought in players and some worked out well and other did not and he bolstered the team with loan players and some worked out well and some did not and he looked for all the world like a man pushing to keep his head above water in a job he could not do. Without wanting to dismiss David Wetherall’s efforts as gaffer it is increasingly clear that the good job was keeping City bubbling under.
And they said
Another season of mid-table mediocrity under Todd.
If only.
Todd’s failing as a manager at Bradford City was not results - his record is much better than Bryan Robson’s who is rarely reguarded as lowly - but rather public relations. While a genuinely pleasent guy to be in the company of Todd appeared truculent and obtusely defensive when speaking about his team. He famously fell out with The Pulse’s commentators on a weekly basis when questioned about the style of his results. One can only imagine how much he would have wanted to grab the mic from Tim and Sticks and state as clear as a bell These are the best players we can bring in with the pitiful resources the club has. Boo Dean Windass if you want but if you drive him away then you will go down.
The other strike against Todd is that - that Bradford City were you and not us for the hired hand.
So management of Bradford City - and in a way of any club - is as much about public relations as it is about results with the good feeling that a popular gaffer can bring begetting improved performances on the field. The club - chairman and all - are pointed in the direction of one man regardless of which league we are in.
Todd will watch that from afar and probably with moderate success and truculence put down to foreignness.
AFC Bournemouth 1 Bradford City 1 - League One 2006/2007
Bradford City 1 Oldham Athletic 1 - League One 2006/2007
Ask me about why Bradford City have struggled this season and I have a single, clear , unequivocal answer for you. I look at the goal that was chalked off at Scunthorpe and I remember Steven Schumacher’s red card against Blackpool and I add to that the incongruous decision to send Joe Colbeck off after City took the lead against Oldham at Valley Parade and I say without doubt that the most important factor has been the decisions given by referees.
More of which later. City took a long trip to Bournemouth for what was tagged as a must win and with Eddie Johnson filling in for Mark Bridge-Wilkinson in the midfield it seemed that the Bantams would leave empty handed despite heroics by Donovan Ricketts but a very late header from Spencer Weir-Daley in the 92nd minute left the Bantams with one of the four points many were suggesting City needed from the Easter weekend and hope seemed to return.
Against Oldham that hope was manifested and dashed.
Moses Ashikodi used his pace to get onto the end of a Billy Paynter flick down and lashed a shot in half way through the second half and it should have been enough to give City the win. Of course it was not because as it traditional this season the referee had yet to come into play.
Mr R L Lewis gave City a throw in at the Midland Road/Bradford End of Valley Parade and Oldham’s players grabbed the ball only to throw it away to the corner flag when they saw that the decision had been given the other way. No card was shown despite what it expressly stated in the rules of the game. Ten minutes and one City goal after that Joe Colbeck was given a second yellow card for banging in a cross after taking the ball over the touchline.
Two incidents which are denoted identically in the rules - in fact the are covered under Rule 12 Point Four: Cautionable Offences which says
A player is cautioned and shown the yellow card if he… delays the restart of play
Both offences denoted the same way in the rules so I am desperate to know why Mr Lewis believes that one results in a yellow card and the other does not? I assume that League One is played the rules of football FIFA set out so why is one offence cautionable and one not?
Without assigning a reason for it - I’m looking for answers not giving them - to give the same offence one punishment for one side and another for the other is bias.
It matters not what the opinions on the players involved are - many said that Colbeck was stupid to get himself sent off and cost us the win - but I believe that considering that this decision, that the Schumacher sending off at Blackpool, that Eddie Johnson’s disallowed effort against Yeovil, that David Wetherall’s goal at Scunthorpe compared to Robbie Williams’s for Blackpool are going to cost us our place in this league then we deserve an explanation why the most simple tenant of the game - that the rules are applied equally for both sides - is not being applied at Valley Parade.
To add insult to the technical offence that Colbeck committed Oldham’s goal scorer Luigi Glombard played the game protected by a yellow card shield recklessly tackling Mark Bower - take a look at Rule 12 again - before finally getting booked for “over celebrating” his goal. The connotation of the rules of football - the spirit of the game - are not that a player can swing wildly for the ball endangering his opponent and not be cautioned then feel the force of the law for being happy to have equalised. The spirit of the rule dubbed “kicking the ball away” is not to punish players who run over the byline in the attacking half and cross the ball to the keeper anyway any more than they are supposed to punish strikers who finish when offside.
The fact that it was Colbeck - so often and so ill a figure of ire at Valley Parade - dulls the edge of comment. Close your eyes and imagine it was St Jermaine Johnson in his final game at the club. Remember the fury and put it behind a player who actually wants to play for this club.
So there it is. The ball game perhaps and with four games left City need three wins from a trip to Brighton, home clash with Leyton Orient, a visit to Chesterfield and the final game of the season at home to Millwall.
Three wins would give 52 points and probably safety. I’d take the points from Blackpool, Yeovil, Scunthorpe and Oldham but it looks like this club is going to take the fall for a serious of Refereeing decisions which the charitable call the utterly poor state of officialdom in football today.