BfB

In the run up to the seventh game of the season Peter Taylor asked a striker if he wanted to come on loan to join the Bradford City cause the deal ironed out with some club or other.

The player said “No”.

Speculation on who the player was is rife but ultimately utterly unimportant but the resonance of the word echoes and the echo forms itself into a thought that Bradford City are a club to be avoided.

One can imagine the situation which Johnny Striker is in at the moment. Stuck in the reserves somewhere the idea of getting a month of games elsewhere is attractive but the team on offer is three places off the bottom of the whole football league and there are going to be few niceties in that situation. Perhaps you’ve played at Valley Parade and felt the boost that away players get when the home crowd grumble or boo and decided that suddenly the stiffs does not seem too bad.

So Peter Taylor keeps his hopes up but – at the moment – Johnny Striker is not arriving and the manager must be wondering why that player does not want to play for Bradford City and when he thought about that he would find his mind drifting to a more pressing question: who, of the current playing squad, want to play for Bradford City.

Which is not to say who wants to pick up a wage, who wants to have a run around on a Saturday afternoon and who wants to give it a good go but rather who wants to play for Bradford City. Which of the current squad who have sequestered but four points thus far this season is prepared to take the responsibility for the quality of the performance.

The Bantams displays have lacked players who have been able to take that responsibility and the results have shown it. A look around the team does not show players putting in poor performances and games are not unusually littered with misplaced passes but easy options are taken too often and games are a little too easy for the opposition.

So the question for Taylor – looking over his squad – is which of these players wants to play a game of football was passion and guts and take on the responsibility for the performance in victory or defeat for Bradford City.

Gillingham expect promotion this year – their chairman will accept nothing else – and City’s chairmen have a similar aim. The Gills are two points higher and are one wonders if the same stages of panic followed by hopelessness is gripping Priestfield. Priestfield – of course – is one of Peter Taylor’s old managerial homes where he made current Gillingham boss Andy Hessenthaler his captain. Hessenthaler as a player the likes of which City could do with at the moment and will look for a similar character in his own ranks having told his players to grown up two weeks ago.

Jon McLaughlin will start in goal for City and the back four of Lewis Hunt, Shaun Duff, Luke Oliver and Robbie Threlfall is starting to build relationships although Taylor will hope they can do it with more speed that the sluggishness of thought that allowed Stockport an equaliser last week.

Taylor has to decide between his 433 or the 442 which got a point last weekend. David Syers and Luke O’Brien are likely to continue on the flanks of Lee Bullock and Tommy Doherty in a four while a three would see one dropped. Michael Flynn – the very type of player which the club needs presently – is still out injured.

Append: Lee Hendrie is expected to come into the City team to make a debut probably at the expense of Tom Ademeyi having signed for the club on Firday .

James Hanson continues to be injured while in the absence of the new striker Gareth Evans and Jake Speight are set to continue – Speight the brightest spark of the season thus far – with Omar Daley perhaps getting a place in the three.

The permutations of players though are not the major problem for Taylor so much as the attitude of those players. The will to win, or to carry the can in defeat, is important at this stage.

Six games in to the 1998/99 season Paul Jewell’s Bradford City side had a single point from a draw with Bolton Wanderers. Seven games in and they had two after a 2-2 draw with Sheffield United but the performance in that game against a Blades side inspired by a superb performance by Dean Saunders and a City team that had clicked into place.

The result shook no trees but the performance was convincing – or convinced me at least – that there was something in Paul Jewell’s side that would happen. The wing play of Peter Beagrie prepared to make the game, the sturdy centre forward play of Lee Mills, the anchoring of Stuart McCall.

It is that performance that Taylor needs to find.

Put your self in the place of a professional footballer this summer. You have an eye on the World Cup like everyone does but that is not within your province as you find yourself out of contract having had a season in League One or Two.

South Africa is far away, West Yorkshire offers you a chance and that chance is a meeting with Peter Taylor and Mark Lawn about a new contract at Bradford City.

Such is the situation as Lawn reveals the Bantams have had discussions with some players. Talking to the Telegraph and Argus Lawn beamed

Two or three have come back to us and made it known that they’d like to play for Peter (Taylor).

Football transfers have changed beyond recognition in the last fifteen years. At the top level players are able to stride like Gods between clubs being flattered and wooed between clubs. Barcelona’s pursuit of Cesc Fabrigas is reported to include half of his salary of £9m paid on his first day.

Somewhere between Fabrigas and the lads City are trying to sign the balance of power shifts and players are left trying to impress potential clubs. A call after a meeting to say you would be excited about working with Peter Taylor is a wise move, but one suspects that the players involved would have been as excited about any gaffer, or at least say they were.

Players flatter the clubs that chase them, clubs flatter the player and one hopes that Peter Taylor has enough experience in the market to help Mark Lawn see through the flannel. Lawn negotiated the deal that saw Chris Brandon end up as a drain on the club but unable to play another game.

Much is being made in the message that comes out of Valley Parade about Taylor and it is not hard to see why. Taylor is Lawn’s man and much has been made of the new manager and his ability to get City into fighting shape over this summer to result in promotion next. He is not alone with new Gillingham boss (and former captain of Taylor’s Gills) Andy Hessenthaler being told that promotion is expected this term on the day of his appointment.

So Lawn begins to try maximise the Taylor factor with stories about the attempts to improve the quality of the pitch and the newly found training facilities being trumpeted as the tools a manager needs to do his job afforded to him by Lawn to get the job done. Let us not consider the £650,000 previously spent on players in preference to these changes.

Backing Taylor – and giving him what he wants off the field – is good sense but has so far not proved to be good business with season ticket sales down. Suggestions of how to address this problem are plentiful but it is worrying that should Taylor’s side not be riding high in January when next season’s tickets are to start to be sold then demand may fall further.

The Taylor factor depends on success – certainly more so than the support of Stuart McCall or Colin Todd the former being iconic, the latter clear on the restrictions he was working under – and should that success not follow then Lawn is hoisted on the petard he has created.

Every season we would like promotion but one worries if The Taylor Factor means that this season, for some people at the club, we need it.