BfB

…seriously I did.

It was laying there, dismembered, on the grass near the two stone frogs named George and Geraldine after two especially repulsive girls I knew at University. It had one of his boots at the end of it too and his City sock.

This is not the first time this has happened. One time I wandered in the garden and found a bit of Bruno Rodriguez next to the thin, white reeds I try call Daffodils. It was in that location where I found the thigh of Bobby Petta, one of Owen Morrison’s arms, and that reliable right foot of Paul McLaren.

I doubt I’m alone in this problem, the finding of parts of Bradford City footballers in my suburban environment, because it seems clear that limbs must be falling off the members of our squad at an alarming rate.

Threlfall’s leg falling off is probably the reason why now he is a part of a Bradford City team which is “not good enough.”

When Threlfall arrived from Liverpool he was something of a revelation. He played the ball with a sweet left foot delivering a quality cross and scoring free kicks. There was a comment on this very website from someone who said that it would be great to sign Robbie Threlfall but he probably would not come because he was simply too good, and someone else would get him.

At the start of the season Julian Rhodes noted that the board had had to put more money into the club because “players like Tommy Doherty don’t come cheap” – Doherty’s beard might be in my shrubbery along with other vital parts of him – but nevertheless those players did come to Valley Parade and were considered good enough then.

And let us not mince words here. When they were putting five past Oxford they were good enough but on the back of a 2-1 defeat to the same team they are condemned so either bits of them have fallen off – laying in my garden – or the players have not changed at all.

Changed physically that is. Robbie Threlfall’s leg has not fallen off and I did not find it in my garden but there is a difference between the player who surged into the 3-1 win over Rochdale and the one who seemed ineffectual on Saturday.

The same can be said all over the field where poor performances were observed. In almost every case the player who is being dubbed as “not good enough” has moments one can pick out where he excelled. Springing quickly to mind come Gareth Evans and Northampton last season, or Omar Daley and Rotherham, Luke Oliver against Bury.

The players can play well, they have not changed physically, so the same high levels of performance can be reached again.

Who is to blame for this situation? The players, or so we after often told these days, although it must be said that under Stuart McCall it was (according to many people) the manager’s failing that performances slipped. While City sat 17th in the division this season BfB got an mail from someone asserting that we recognise that Peter Taylor is a “better manager” than his predecessor and perhaps in that way he is. If the art of good management is making sure someone else takes the blame?

The players have not changed physically but the same cannot be said for their mental states in which poor performances, brittle confidence and a lack of belief seem prominent.

My belief is that football is mostly a mental game. Once players are fit and trained – and these things are by no means assured at Bradford City with the club incapable of practising set plays of late because of the flooded training ground – then the difference between a Premier League player and someone in the middle of the lower leagues is pretty much in the mind. Is Gary Taylor-Fletcher the guy who scored the winner over Liverpool in the week for Blackpool or a struggling Lincoln City forward? I would suggest that he is both, depending on what he believes.

Who is enfranchised by the club to be in charge of the mentality of the players, to build the belief in them? The manager.

Famously when City beat Everton 3-2 in the FA Cup Chris Kamara told his players that Chris Waddle would be the best player on the pitch on both sides. It was a mental trick to tell the ten other players in claret and amber that they could get stuck into the eleven in blue and it worked. If Andy O’Brien could tackle Waddle in training, he could have Kanchelskis in the game.

Not that the manager is allowed to carry out this task of belief building in isolation. Internally he asks for what he needs to help build that belief – proper facilities, overnight stays, suits – and gets some but not others and one can only imagine the results of that on the squad.

(From personal experience as a contract worker if I arrive to an office and find a shiny iMac with CS5 waiting for me I know the company means business, if I find a sagging 486 with Photoshop 8 on it I’m hit by the idea that they might not be on top of their game.)

Externally the forces that press on a team are less the lower down the leagues are less – a Premier League manager at someone other than “the big four” has to cope with his players watching Sky Sports News and being told that they are rubbish compared to someone Manchester City have just signed – but still there are forces that seek to distract the player’s mind and pollute the core message the manager tries to drum into them.

“You are as good as you play, and you control how well you play.”

Play well, you are good enough. Put less than 100% in, lack discipline in your approach to the game and to the game itself, do not believe in yourself and your team mates then you are not.

You are as good as you play and so you control if you are “good enough.” The reason I like Peter Taylor as a manager is because he seems to understand the requirement for building this belief even if he has not achieved it as yet.

I did not find Robbie Threlfall’s leg in my garden because it is where it always has been, attached to the same body that impressed all against Rochdale. That his performance levels have changed a mental shift which can be shifted back.

I simply do not believe in the idea that players stop being “good enough” or that the vast majority of players who have pulled on a City shirt could not have been “good enough” had they had had the belief instilled in them.

The current players are good enough and it is up to the club – Peter Taylor for sure but not just Peter Taylor – to get the best out of them.