BfB

A midfielder has refused to have a medical with Bradford City today seemingly ending the chances of his joining the club next season.

You can make your own mind up which of the players linked to the club is likely to be the man who has knocked back Peter Jackson in his chase for an experienced middle man. Gary Jones previous turned down City’s overtures, there is speculation that today’s refusal is Tommy Miller formerly of Hartlepool United. City seem to be finding that having finished a half dozen places above the bottom of the football league most players are finding that there are better offers, and plenty of them.

Jackson’s ambition in highlighting good players to bring in causes some consternation – the club missing out on targets in public is never good for morale – but there were few rivals for the signatures of Luke Cornwall or Robert Wolleaston and there was a reason for that. If you aim high, you get frustrated more often, but sometimes you get your man. After all it was Newcastle United who got the first bid accepted for Wayne Rooney from Everton, and the same logic won them the signature of Michael Owen.

Not all plans work out as you would want them to.

Jackson moves onto a another target and while some might worry about this one struggles to recall much of a difference in the success rate for players signed earlier to later in the close season. Ashley Ward was signed the day before City went to Liverpool for the opening day of the second Premiership season and turned out to be not much more use than a plank of wood, Dan Petrescu was signed in ample time and arguably performed worse.

There are – for sure – a group of players who you would like to snap up sooner rather than later like Brentford bound Clayton Donaldson but the idea of making all your recruitment before mid-July even when you have missed out on your top targets seems flawed. The fact that Jackson and City have tried to bring in unreachable players just underlines the need for Archie Christie and his scouting network to identify the right targets.

If City are serious about building a future rather than going gung-ho for promotion again then sixteen year old Scott Brown is a better choice than whomever can be scrambled in after all the players we want have knocked us back.

Jackson is understood to be switching attentions to Oxford United’s Simon Heslop or Anthony Grant of Southend United but that is just rumours and gossip. If only there was a way to get to Peter Jackson’s phone messages.

For Miller – if it is he – one cannot wonder if he had been signed by the club “subject to a medical” and has had second thoughts – or a better offer – which he wants to explore. The vast majority of people in the real world who accept a position at a company have a wait for contract to arrive through the post and before it goes back with a John Hancock on it are able to look for a better offer.

In the time after talking to City and agreeing the deal should the agent picks up the phone to some League One club who have shown an mild interest and tell them that his lad has a contract for Bradford City signed seal and delivered but can get out of it if that extra £200 a week they talked about might be found…

If the mystery midfielder turns up at Huddersfield Town or similar next week then City have been played for sure, but it is hard to see how one avoids that apart from going for players that no one else wants, and where is the good in that?

Post script Peter Jackson confirmed that Tommy Miller was the player in question, but denied that Miller had refused to take a medical.

“I’ve got nothing to prove to Liverpool” said young midfielder Jim Magilton when he went back to Anfield as an Southampton player for a Division One game at the start of the Nineties.

Magilton had spent his youth career at the Reds but never made a first team appearance. He went to Oxford United and made 150 appearances, then on to Southampton where his full circle moment happened. After that he ended up at Sheffield Wednesday and Ipswich where he was coverted by Paul Jewell’s City but ended his career at Portman Road. A good career no doubt but at no time did he ever eclipse the midfielders who replaced him at Anfield.

He had nothing to prove to those at Liverpool and in a way he proved nothing to them. He did not play at a higher level, he did not end up with a Champions medal, and whoever decided he was not the “good enough” was proved right.

There was a way to mark the progress of Bradford City which worked in the same way. Players come and go from clubs and City were forced to let a number of players go because of financial reasons and watched those players carry on good careers. Robbie Blake, for example, won promotions post-City and played in the Premier League.

Other players though were “got rid of” – to use the vulgarism – by the choice of the club because the club thought that it could do better. Players like Paul Bolland and Scott Kerr were young lads at the Bantams who were released and went on to good careers in the lower leagues but never rose higher than the club. The decision to allow those players – like Magilton – was never questioned.

One could add a whole host of players who the Bantams have disposed of (indeed that most clubs dispose of) who never troubled professional football again. The decision to allow Wayne Benn, Tom Penford, Danny Forrest, Joe Brown, Robert Morgan, Craig Bentham et al has never been questioned because those players have never turned up at a higher level than City.

I should qualify this with the idea that there is an impact in releasing a player on his career. Being released can be the making of a player’s career seeing him buck up his ideas but most often it kills a that career as real life problems and jobs take over.

In the last few years watching events at VP though there has been an increase in the players who were decided to not be able to cut the mustard who not only got their careers back on track but started to do well, better than the Bantams.

Michael Symes represents the best example of this. The Bantams were not impressed (nor was I especially) but turfing up at Accrington Stanley he ended up doing enough to earn a move to AFC Bournemouth where he plays his football a division above the Bantams. Perhaps one could put that down to the startling effect of being released, and perhaps one might conclude that he is only the player he is now because of our releasing him, but it is hard not to wonder why the Bantams were not able to unlock his potential.

Symes was a far more popular player than Gareth Edds who was jeered away from Valley Parade but Edds won promotion (after switching to a holding midfield role) with MK Dons and moved onto another League One club Tranmere Rovers as City idled in League Two. Not only are the players we cannot afford playing at a higher level but the ones we did not think were good enough are now too. Jake Wright’s red card at when Oxford United came to Valley Parade might have been an amusing moment in the season but the fact his current team ended the season a half dozen places over his previous one gave him the last laugh.

Gareth Evans – a part of the so called “worst team ever” – exited Valley Parade in the summer with the club deciding that they could do better. Evans rocked up at Rotherham United who finished higher than the Bantams and are preparing for another promotion push. Evans’ play in the last month of the season suggested that – perhaps – he knew he had something to go to next term but the spin from Valley Parade was most definitely that Evans was out because the club was going to improve.

I would underline that I believe that there are many players who left City and were never heard of again – one of them did the electrics for my boiler – who had the club given them the first team slot rather than someone like Luke Cornwall or Robert Wolleaston then they could have achieved something but when dealing with the likes of Symes, Edds, (perhaps) Evans and a number of others it seems that the club’s judgement on players in the longer term has become questionable. That players who we would like to have we are getting rid of.

The rapid turn around, the one year contract, the often changing manager, the levels of patience in the stands, the comparative quality of facilities here and elsewhere. All these things have contributed to the club which is letting players go who could do a job. We end up with this “worst team ever” but some of the off cuts of it are doing well for themselves.

James Hanson is being linked to Crewe, Omar Daley has gone from the club, Gareth Evans will come back wearing Rotherham United red. I’m not sure if the losing culture needs to be broken so much as a consistent plan to improve the squad is required.

Luke Sharry is playing for Grimsby Town reserves as he joins the plethora of players who – at this time of the season – face up to the idea that unless they can get someone else interested when their contract expires they will no longer be professional footballers.

Sharry will join the Mariners in the hope of winning a new deal for a club that – in all likelihood – will be playing non-league football next season. Down a division his blustering midfield play may prove useful, indeed it may have proved useful in League Two.

Sharry’s career at City has contained few reasons to suggest that he could be given a new contract by the Bantams. His chance came in the Johnstone’s Paint tie with Port Vale but a poor first half saw him substituted, never the return. The words “Blown it” were used, and were hard to argue with.

A right sided midfield who played inside – or perhaps an insider who was on the wing – City gave Sharry a chance and Sharry will not have been pleased with how that chance was grasped. He joins a list of players who promised much in pre-season and glimpses from the bench but ultimately went on their way. Craig Bentham, Robert Morgan, Tom Penford, Danny Forrest, Kevin Sanasy and on and on. The last ten years has been peopled with these players.

It would be tempting to look at the improvements to training facilities and suggest that City hampered our own youth development because of them – that with a decent pitch Forrest would be banging goals in and Bentham would be holding the midfield together – but that does not ring true.

Likewise it would be easy to look at the players and label them “not good enough” the idea being that had Sharry been obviously quality in the way that Joe Colbeck and Luke O’Brien – the past two players of the season – were then he would have broken into the team. This is probably true but only tells half a story.

For it is not the likes of Sharry, Penford, Bentham and the like who tried at City and ultimately moved on but rather the likes of Luke Cornwall, of Gareth Edds, of Michael Symes who replaced them. Moving out our young players only to move in the lads who had been moved out elsewhere. It is common up and down football and somewhere in North East Lincolnshire there is a kid with a right foot but no contract wondering what Luke Sharry has that makes him a better bet for a place next season.

The processes around young players seem to be at fault to me. The lads who come through the ranks are looked on as lottery tickets and if they do not produce a jackpot they are quickly cast aside only to be replaced by the tickets cast aside by another club.

The likes of Sharry, Morgan, Sanasy et al filled places in the squad and often went unused – less than a half dozen appearances between those three – but perhaps while the major aim of a youth set up is unearthing a Fabian Delph to make big profits in the future perhaps another – more realistic – aim should be to create a bunch of players who can fill a squad as Sharry did rather than sifting through other club’s cast offs after casting off our own.

I liked the look of Luke Sharry but – sadly, I guess – it seems he is on his way. He did not do what many people would call a great job at City but he did a job of adding depth to the squad and from the club’s point of view – financially as well as ethically when recruiting lads like him – is it not better to have that done by one of our youth rather than bringing in someone else to be reserve to Omar Daley and Scott Neilson?

And as supporters should we not stop looking at the lads coming through as hot young prospects that might be the next big thing and started giving them a chance to be members of our squad – to be footballers. We talk about the idea of a player being “good enough” without ever finishing the sentence.

Good enough for what? Good enough compared to whom? If the likes of Bentham and Penford were not good enough for League One then – obviously and manifestly – the replacements for those lads who built up a partnership for Colin Todd’s side at the end of one season were not either because twelve months later we were relegated.

The final thought is a comparison of Danny Forrest and Luke Cornwall as the proof that the grass is seldom greener on the other side.