More About Dean Windass
So Dean Windass has left City and I get the feeling I’m never going to see him play again cause while I think Stuart McCall will get City promoted this season I doubt that ‘ull will go down. Windass signed for Hull for £250,000 finally today.
Deano. I’m going to miss you.
I’m going to miss the enthusiasm that you played every game with. I know that sometime that went a bit over the top and other times it went silly crazy like the sending off against Bournemouth but most of the time Windass just did everything he could to make Bradford City win games.
And everything he could meant he dropped into the midfield when City asked him to and one time he played in goal (At Southend) and when he was there he did everything he could to get City winning games. One Dean Windass was worth a million Bobby Pettas.
I’m going to miss Deano The Wind Up King. I’m going to miss him pulling faces to the crowd and I’m going to miss him getting under the skin of defenders that tried to bully him. I hope that Stuart McCall does not think that people like Michael Symes, Andy Cooke and the countless other players who got pocketed by the bully boy number fives of League One are going to do any better a division below.
Deano used to get under the skins of defenders and they couldn’t deal with him. John Finnigan and Ivar Ingermarson at Reading both punched him cause they found him annoying and he probably was but he was our annoying player and he gave us the advantage. Nice guys, Green Day tell us, Finish Last.
I’m going to miss that knack he had for being where the ball was going to be. I’m sure it is not as easy as all that but he made it seem easy dropping off to where some defender was going to clear it or picking it up from a free kick and hitting it so just right that David Seaman couldn’t stop it. I’m going to miss that.
I’m even going to miss him shouting at referees cause God knows I shout at them often enough and I always think that if I was in that number ten shirt I’d be doing the same when I saw some rubbish decision by some idiot official.
That is why I’ll miss Deano. Cause he played football how I’d like to play football when he showed the passion and the grit and at other times like when he got hat-tricks in the Premiership or bent in goals from nothing he played football like I dreamed of.
Dean Windass is having two weeks in Spain after agreeing to re-join Hull City from the Bantams on the day that Stuart McCall returns from his stay in the sun and starts work at Valley Parade.
McCall will be unveiled as Bradford City gaffer on Monday and is already looking at players to signing having moved on £175,000 worth of wages n Windass and Marc Bridge-Wilkinson. Would McCall’s plans have been different with Windass? In truth he has never had much of a chance to retain the services of a guy called back to his hometown club and McCall himself will understand that more than most.
Windass’s exit is reportedly worth £100,000 to City now and £1,000 for every game the 29 year old plays. One can only hope that suspensions count as plays and not sit outs and that the next time Dean has a fall out in a car park City do not end up £5,000 worse off.
I for one will miss Windass from Valley Parade. In final reckoning for all the issues that come with him he was a fantastic footballer with brains in his feet not between his ears. The drop off and volley against Scunthorpe United in a 4-2 win last season was for me the classic Windass goal. Movement in the head making young the legs.
McCall will find him irreplaceable and probably will not try. Colin Todd could never really find a partner for Windass nor could he decide if the striker was a line leader or a drop off man. Windass fitted neither role perfectly and was best left to his own devices to hit goals from where he wanted. McCall’s time at Sheffield United suggests he will favour a big guy/tricky guy combination and be hunting the services of Billy Paynter or someone very much in the Billy Paynter stylee.
McCall finds holes all over his team. The building block in place is a back triangle between Donovan Ricketts, David Wetherall and Mark Bower. Central midfield is the province of the next generation of City player in Craig Bentham and Tom Penford and one suspects that McCall will strengthen that position first but managers are made and broken on the strength of the strikers and Windass - for all his faults - could have been a quick route to the making of McCall.
Dean Windass probably likes to think of himself as a footballing Peter Pan. Despite pushing 40, the evergreen striker continues to bang in the goals and shows no sign of winding when so many other players his age have already hung up their boots.
Bradford City fans may be inclined to agree with the Peter Pan comparison, although at this moment not in the same way. Forget playing like a child, he certainly seems to have the mindset of one. Listening to him air his views on Radio Leeds today, you could almost hear the sound of his toys been thrown out of the pram. Windass has spit out the dummy and declared he is taking his ball home as he doesn’t want to play at Valley Parade anymore. Peter Pan is apt; he is certainly the boy who never grew up.
The reason for his outburst? The evil Captain Hook, or Julian Rhodes to us, has demanded a pirates ransom (250K) in return for his freedom. Should Hull not come up with more gold, he will be locked up and forced to spend the rest of his days in the tortuous abyss (League Two). Our hero is trying to escape, screaming for help as loudly into any passing microphone. But with the dastardly Rhodes’ Ginger-haired Smee tying him up harder, he won’t be walking the plank to freedom just yet.
Listening to Deano label City’s demands as ridiculous makes me want City to reject any offer from Hull and force him to rot in our reserves. How can £250k be considered ‘ridiculous’ when City have twice turned down double that offer for him in recent years? After each of Wigan’s failed bids, Deano was offered extended terms as a reward for loyalty. Having been well looked after by the club, he thinks its unfair we are asking so much for a player who has scored 20+ goals three years in a row. Apparently Rhodes agreed he could go, so that’s that. How dare the evil pirate ship Bradford City demand to receive what he’s worth?
The most frustrating thing about the whole episode is why he has felt it necessary to come out and say anything. Listening to his words, he sounds like a sulky Italian or ungrateful young star. You certainly wouldn’t think he was a 39 year old player with a career of almost two decades. Why couldn’t he just stay quiet and wait for the deal to inevitably work itself out? He could have left the club where he has become a hero with most people’s best wishes.
We City fans have a lot to be grateful to Deano for. In two separate spells, he has proved an excellent goalscorer and good figurehead. He is our 4th highest goalscorer of all time and has provided numerous happy memories. His goals have been crucial and plentiful. Windass is very much like Robbie Savage and Paul Dickov in been a player opposition fans love to hate, often with good reason. It was incredible some of the stick he would get, but it made us love him more. As the City Gent’s Mike Harrison once wrote, “he may be an idiot, but he’s our idiot.”
Yet City in turn have been good to him. It was by playing for us that he rose to national fame with his swashbuckling style of play and cheeky chappy media demeanour. After proving himself a Premiership player for us, he got a good move to Middlesbrough. As his career took a dip, he rejoined us and again showed his form and ability after a difficult first season back. It’s not surprising he has such a long list of admirers in other managers and several moves to sign him have been turned down.
He also clearly loved been a big fish at City. He was our hero and lapped up the ‘Deano’ chants. It seems to have gone to his head and his attitude has upset some. I’ve heard stories about Deano’s behaviour last season that cannot be put in the public domain. If true, it’s fair to say the decision to loan him to Hull last January was not completely about the money.
There’s no doubting we missed him and relegation would probably have been avoided had he stayed. There were also some idiots on message boards criticising him unfairly, but it’s fair to say the majority of City fans appreciated our number 10 and still considered him a hero. What a shame he has to act like this and upset his second love.
Last season Colin Todd famously said that Deano considered himself, “bigger than the club.” Those comments may have been tongue in cheek, but they certainly seem very fitting now. He will get his move and one day, as he compiles his inevitable autobiography, he may be ashamed of how he left this club. Although don’t bet on the boy growing up.