More About Brighton and Hove Albion
Moses Ashikodi returned to Watford for a scan on what is a suspected broken leg sustained in the win over Brighton as the anticipation in the run up to City’s biggest game in years began.
The Bantams face Leyton Orient at Valley Parade with the possibility to get out of the League One relegation zone and push towards safety. Orient say that City would rather be in their position than ours and that may be true with 43 games gone. When 44 have been played things could be very different.
Nevertheless Ashikodi - who has built and impressive partnership with Billy Paynter - will not take part in the run in. The striker’s return will allow Spencer Weir-Daley a crack at the cult hero status Mozza was cementing.
Weir-Daley is a good match for Ashikodi - both offer pace and finishing - but perhaps lacks the aggression that the Watford man brought to the forward line. How curious that the future of this club sits in the partnerships and fitness of a Watford, a Southend and a Nottingham Forest player. How ironic that out man with the most bottle is off saving a different club from relegation.
One wonders if Windass is keeping an eye on events at Valley Parade. One wonders if he is feeling the anticipation.
Brighton and Hove Albion 0 Bradford City 1 - League One 2006/2007
Football is great in the sun. At least it is for Bradford City fans. I think it goes back to wins over Wolves and Liverpool and the bright sun that those games were played in. When the sun comes out and spring is in the air City seem to start the good stuff.
The good stuff being Billy Paynter’s goal in the first half that gave the Bantams a life-saving 1-0 win at Brighton.
Paynter struggled all afternoon after getting clattered in the first minute and stooped in to score after Kelly Youga had heading against the bar. Moses Ashikodi ended the game on a stretcher and the fact that both City’s borrowed forwards could end up out for next week’s massive game with Layton Orient is worrying but the fact that next week means something is down to a dogged display from the Dave Wetherall men today.
Watching Young and Ashikodi and Paynter today got the mind racing to what City will be like as a team next season. We have no idea what division we will be in, who the manager will be and we don’t know if any of these guys sweating and running in claret and amber will ever set foot in Bradford again after the end of the season.
City were lucky for sure with Brighton three times pinging the bar and posts and for long periods we lacked real firepower but doggedness saw us though. Stand in outstanding midfielder Eddie Johnson take a bow after a quality performance that suggests City might have an inbuilt replacement once Marc Bridge-Wilkinson returns to Port Vale in the summer.
So games 44 and 45 of the season see the Bantams facing Leyton Orient and Chesterfield with Leyton promising a place out of the relegation zone for the winner and Chesterfield after that perhaps sending them down should results go the way. One note on the fixture list if Leyton Orient’s last day meeting with Huddersfield Town, an easy three points should Town not need them, and the fact the Londoners have to entertain to Nottingham Forest. Chesterfield have play off chasing Oldham on the last day and Northampton next week. They will see a win agianst us as crucial.
City face Leyton Orient at VP, away to Chesterfield and then finally at home to Millwall. Game is most definitely on.
As I wandered to work listening to the odd tune it struck me that this weekend at Brighton Bradford City’s time in out of the basement of English football could - for all intents - come to an end.
Having only briefly gone to City in the early 1980s Division Four period I shuddered at the idea that having started this decade in the Premiership City could end up playing at a level of football so low that a large chunk of the Bantams support were probably not born when last it was seen at Valley Parade.
What does League Two/Division Four football look like? Is it entertaining? Is it bullish? Which skills are required to win in a league that is one step off not being professional? Is the gap between here and there similar in scope to the Premiership/Championship jump?
One hopes we do not have to find out but should we lose at Brighton’s Withdean Stadium it will be likely we will.
If it does all but mathematically end on Saturday then what better place than the athletic track stadium which most ironically represents the problems of the majority of modern football clubs.
Brighton and Hove Albion have some passionate supporters who struggle manfully to try get the club into a new stadium in the City. At the moment attendences average at around 6,200 in a City of 155,919 people and an area of just under half a million.
The 6,200 of Brighton struggle against the same sort of massive disinterest in the struggling club that most fans find. The majority of people in places like Brighton and Bradford do not give much of a damn about the football club and certainly are not about to pay taxes to support it or see it given preferential treatment for planning applications and the like.
Of course were Brighton and Hove Albion to get to Wembley - or as we did up the Leagues - one can be sure that more than 6,200 would be in attendance.
The Brighton stadium plans are a microcosm of most of footballs problems. A small passionate group looking to enhance something that when working well is a massive civic institution - and when badly still a significant one - against a face of at best indifference and at worse nimby hostility.