More About Geoffrey Richmond
I’m still not really sure how this happened this relegation thing.
I remember having an argument with a few people about how City were going to grind away to mid-table mediocrity under Colin Todd and I was saying that we should give the guy time cause he was doing a good job just having us in League One and then I was told that sacking him we could get promoted.
It was like a promise that getting rid of Todd would make things better. Someone must have believed it. I which this was me being wise after the event but I said it at the time.
I remember that we had a guy up front called Dean Windass who could do some stupid stuff but was the best striker in the league and people were telling me we shouldn’t play him to teach him a lesson or punish him for getting sent off and then someone said he should not even play for us again and now it looks like he won’t.
I’m pretty sure that things were not perfect and that basically things have been wrong at City since Richmond’s summer of madness but it struck me on Saturday that this club has a load of problems caused by Richmond and a load of problems caused by the way that big football screws over little football and a lot of problems caused by rubbish refereeing but we also had a load of problems caused by us.
The booing, the insisting that the gaffer is sacked, the guys who pick on one player be it Deano or Ben Parker or Billy Paynter or anyone, the mood at VP that is so negative. All stopping people coming to Valley Parade. All real problems.
So I remembered that City had loads of problems outside the camp and then it struck me as I watched half a team playing out the end of League One football that we should sort out the problems inside the ground and inside us fans first.
Back in the Geoffrey Richmond: Saint or sinner debate a phrase used to be used. It was sometimes RTG but could be RTS. The final character was not that important, the other two stood for rose-tinted.
The rose-tinted debate raged on the Internet Bantams mailing list and around Bradford for a few years and still bubbles under in all those places now. The idea was that one could look at City two ways. Firstly you could ignore the perceived pillage of Valley Parade and the club’s short route to the dump chute of administration by believing that everything would be all alright and the club was experiencing a dip in form. These people were ostensibly the rose-tinteds.
In opposition them in this sub cultural battle were the self-titled realists who saw everything going to Hell in a handcart and would countenance no call that anything at the club was anything other than incorrigible. These people had seen the future, and it was black.
Post-administration realists departed the field and claimed victory and it was hard to argue that on the whole they had been right about the future of the club come the slide from the Premiership. The club had gone bad and they had said it would. The fact that other developments which flourished were talked on with the same grim attitude mattered not, the prediction was for financial woe and so realists won, even if in the scattershot of the argument phrases like “This club will never produce a good player” were used at a time when Lewis Emanuel and Danny Forrest were pushing into the reserves.
Now the debate on the Clayton Omnibus as well as online is the future of Nicky Law, that he has none specifically, sides are drawn once more down similar lines but - and tellingly - they have swapped sides.
The rose-tinted have looked at Nicky Law and with a gulp of the realism they were encouraged to encompass they state that the problems at City are more than just to do with a manager who has the capacity to cock up tactically and see a shrinking gate, falling sponsorship and the trend of football to hogging the money at the top table of the Premiership and suggest, not unreasonably perhaps, that the last thing we want to do now is rid ourselves of a manager who while curious in some areas has strengths in others in favour of the lucky dip of the positions wanted adds and considering the bad experiences with bosses we have had in the past few years it’s no surprise they have that opinion. It’s realism of a sort.
The other voice coming up is from that camp that used the word realist as a badge. The “realists”, the same people who decried Geoffrey Richmond and called all bad have taken a leap away from reality. To “The Realists” the universal cure all is that once a P45 with the name Nicolas Ulysses Law on it is drawn up then City begin a new, that the weight of football and financial problems pushing down on Valley Parade are lifted by getting a guy who throws on more men fifteen minutes from time. The notion, when said out loud, is almost a definition of looking at a situation with a rose-tint.
So what is the point of all this? The point, dear reader, is this. The state that City are in now is bigger than Nicky Law, Gordon Gibb, the tactics on the field or the fans in the stadium and a change of manager would be largely cosmetic at this point. If changing manager after 18-30 months was the path to success then there would be European Cups at Valley Parade. It never worked in the past, why should it work now?
To use a popular metaphor City are a ship that hit and iceberg in administration and now we are sailing away from it bailing out water for all we are worth. Getting in a new manager would be polishing the brass as we sink.
Three summers ago we weighed up who “The most exciting signing in the club’s history” could be before seeing the dominative Italian walking into a maelstrom.
Benito Carbone was the zenith of the summer of madness and now that the battle that began between Geoffrey Richmond and some at the club has been won and the history written by the winners Carbone was always a bad idea.
He was a giddy head rush of an idea. He was starting on a bottle of Jack Daniels while lounging on your freshly cut lawn knowing that you will pay for the hangover and that you had not finished the weeding. He was football transfer as binge.
Like all head rushes it felt great at the time.
Today things are different. Bradford City are making a major signing at a Press Conference at Valley Parade this afternoon but no one is whispering and rumouring. The club sign Alan Combe seems to be the most popular assessment of the events although names from Danny Forrest to Teddy Sheringham have been mentioned.
We have modest ambitions these days.
When Carbone signed many thought City had spring boarded into the top half of the Premiership. Even if today’s major signing was the little Italian there are few who would thing that this one player would face anything more than a play off push at the very best.
Perhaps we have learned something in the time between August 8th, 2000 and today. We have seen Benito Carbone and a cast of others including Stan Collymore, Ashley Ward, Dan Petrescu, David Hopkin et al be able to do nothing individually and in some cases collectively against the decline of the Bantams.
Add to that the catastrophic wages of Carbone that caused a strut on the day but cost so much in the longer term.
The lesson is that you cannot focus on one man and ignore other problems. That whomever we sign today the aim of the game is to get the best out of the squad.
Promotion in 1999 depended not on the great works of Stuart McCall and Peter Beagrie but on the fact that work a day squad men like Robbie Blake and Jamie Lawrence emerged as quality players. If we are to get on at this club then it is not important if we sign Alan Combe, Danny Forrest or Teddy Sheringham, it matters that we get the best out of Michael Standing and Danny Cadamarteri.
That said though if we break the bank to sign Freddy Adu I’ll be wandering away from VP a happy man.