BfB

The perception of Mark Hughes from outside of Valley Parade is something which we – as people within Bradford City’s bubble – struggle to understand, but as he exited we were able to glimpse through him an unflattering view of the club.

Regardless of what you thought of Hughes, and his time at City, with distance the complexities are flattered out, and Hughes’ name is added to a list. That list includes Simon Grayson, David Hopkin, and Gary Bowyer, and it is a list of people who are said to have tried to but that ultimately were incapable of managing an unmanageable football club.

The distinction between the people who have run the club: Ryan Sparks, Julian Rhodes and Edin Rahic; is also flattened out and while we might think this is unfair to all concerned what riposte is there to the idea that untried Kevin McDonald, 32, is looked on as the same type of appointment as untried Michael Collins, 33.

Popularist

The few weeks when Collins was Bradford City manager were a symptom of the unmanageable club, where a CEO – tired of an experienced, truculent manager – decided that he wanted someone with less experience who was less truculent, and who he could impose his will on.

That Sparks is fundamentally different from Rahic is a given, but what value that difference if the outcomes are the same? If it is obvious that the Collins appointment and the McDoanld one are different, then why are those differences not observable by people outside the club?

Sparks, ever the popularist, is not imposing his will in the way which Rahic was reported to have, but rather the will of a vocal section of supporters who had decided that Hughes – experienced, truculent – needed to be replaced by a manager who do the things they wanted him to do. Play the players they wanted, play the formation they wanted, play the way they wanted.

Mewing

As Richie Smallwood – superb against Swindon Town – played a pass across the back line to Brad Halliday to rapturous applause, it was difficult to know where those demands made of Hughes stood. The charge sheet against Hughes had included his playing Smallwood at all, and when Smallwood played, the player’s sideways passing, yet the here those two things were to be cheered.

Hughes also stood accused of trying to – to borrow the simpering mewing of client journalist Simon Parker – “play Premier League football in League Two” which we were told on Wednesday was not possible only to watch on Saturday as Swindon Town in the first half, and City in the second, passed the ball at speed and accurately through the lines.

McDonald’s first team as Bradford City manager could have been picked from any starting line up Hughes put out in 2023. The seven players at the back were the same as would have played in last season’s push for the play-offs, as was Jamie Walker, as was Andy Cook, and the team played in the same way. During the first half City played 25 passes from the back third to the front and only four of them resulted in retained possession, in the second half the number reduced and City looked better for it.

Pointing

Finally, Hughes was accused of failing to play Bobby Pointon – goalscorer yesterday – who Hughes had played four times, so perhaps the charge is that he should have played Pointon more. Hughes talked about how Pointon was being educated in the game, and certainly he was right to do so.

Pointon – in keeping with a lot of players who have jsut come out of Academy football – is largely focused on football in one direction and his crossing and his build up play is good, and sometimes very good, but his failure to take up defensive positions is a problem and one which right back Brad Halliday spent most of the afternoon coping with.

This is not a bad thing. It is how young players develop and is good to watch. The capacity for the young player to retain their game while becoming a more rounded footballer is definitive in them having a career in the longer term but in the short it adds to the cognitive load for the surrounding players. At times, Halliday operated Pointon as a puppet, demanding him come back or move forward, and it is to Pointon’s credit that he did as his full back said.

Pointon took his goal well enough – a kind of thrust of the Pelvis that The Alhambra would have recommended – and can reflect on a good performance. Reflect he must.

Respect

My experience watching Bobby Pointon play football is largely unpleasant, in the same way in which it would be watching a twelve-year-old play a local pitch when his aggressive parent was watching. The problem with aggressive parents at youth football is well documented and the FA’s response is a Code of Conduct which bares reading. “Encourage all the players (not just your child)” stands out as having some relevance here.

Nothing Pointon does can ever be wrong. He misplaces a pass and while he holds a hand up to apologise the anger directed at the player Pointon is apologising too for “being in the wrong place” is all around. When he crosses to no one, the forward should have got it.

If Pointon does not play, the players who are on the field are viewed with suspicion. Pointon comes off after an hour of running, “Why is he taking Bobby off?” You can almost hear the engine starting and the words “Get changed in the car, lad.”

Toxic

Support is good, but this seems like a toxic version of support in which Pointon has been both weaponised against the manager, and has had his learning environment shattered by wishful thinking which has already manifest the potential he shows.

This being gravamen of the problem is that it does Bobby Pointon no good at all to be told after a good performance that he has put in a great performance. The difference between Pointon and Adam Wilson yesterday was that Pointon’s close range finish went in and Wilson’s two chances resulted in a ball screwed wide, and a well saved shot.

I’ve no idea of the character of Bobby Pointon, but both he and Wilson need to be in training on Monday and trying to improve, and this probably becomes substantially more difficult when you get a man of the match award for a developing performance. If Pointon can do that, he will do it despite his thousands of aggressive parents.

Return

Defenders of Rahic are rightly rare, and I am not one of them, and those who are critical of him can largely be assigned to two camps. One camp suggested that the footballing side of a football club should be in the hands of people with football expertise.

Those people – and I probably include myself in them – looked at the Dortmund model of Michael Zorc as a Director of Football working with Jurgen Klopp and saw much that was good. Football decisions were to be made by the manager but could have collective input, although that that input needed to be qualified, and Rahic lacked that qualification.

The other camp agreed about Rahic but thought they should be allowed to pick the team or rather that the team should be picked along the lines they wanted. It was not that people other than the manager should not input on tactics, formations, how the team should play and who should be in it, it was that specifically Rahic should not.

Lennon

So Kevin McDonald beat Swindon Town with Mark Hughes’ team playing Mark Hughes’ formation in Mark Hughes’ style, getting the sort of one-nil result which Mark Hughes used to get. I enjoyed it, but I’ve no idea why the people who did not enjoy watching Mark Hughes’ team did.

Wandering away I was reminded of listening to Oasis having grown up with my parent’s Beatles albums as my first music. The former being derived so clearly from the latter that it was very obviously able to replicate what had gone before – “I Am The Walrus” – but incapable of coming up with evolving on that work. “The White Album” is an endlessly fascinating work, but “Be Here Now” is almost unlistenable.

Hughes left City as his attempts to evolve the system led to a patch of poor form, and that poor form was viewed as being definative. It was a grievous fault, and grievously hath he paid for it. Now honourable men write newspaper columns about honourable men looking for a new manager, but do so in a climate of absurdity.

Wanted

Bradford City will have a new manager soon because the same logic that tells the world that the club is a place where managers can only fail, tells it that if one gets it right at Valley Parade, the potential is more significant than it is at most League Two clubs. Hughes knew this, Sparks knows this, the next manager will know this too.

And as with Smallwood’s sideways pass, the charges brought against Mark Hughes will be forgotten and Sparks will be sitting opposite Real Football Managers talking to them about wanting to play exciting football, and nurture the club’s talent, and we are not sure if we like three at the back up here, and retaining possession isn’t that just passing the ball around the back, and will you always play Bobby Pointon…

We are all very certain that this is far distant from the club as run by Edin Rahic. From the outside, though, you could understand why some might not care to make the distinction.

After the Second World War a group of men got together in an Amsterdam Hotel and made a decision that the conflict they had just lived though had been caused by the rise of irrationality, and that it was an imperative that irrationality be combatted.

That group of men took a hand in forming the post-war consensus that maintained a global peace for over fifty years and created a new world free of the chaos of irrational individuals.

Those men were known as The Bilderberg Group and the weapon which they wielded against the forces of chaos was a simple one. They were going to be competent.

Sigmund

When Mark Hughes arrived at Bradford City he did so with a shrug. It seemed a curious thing to the outside world that a manager who had only carried out his role at International level and in the Premier League would decide to take charge of a League Two club.

The footballing world reacted with a shrug, albeit a grudgingly impressed one, were happy to prefix his name to the club while those around Bradford City sought refuge in Freud’s aphorism that they would never want to be in any club which would have them for a member.

Whatever had brought Mark Hughes to Bradford City it seemed to confirm that there was something wrong with Mark Hughes, and this fault had caused him to step into the world of a chaotic mess of a football club.

Derek

Derek Adams has suffered relegation with Morecambe following his return from Bradford City where he had a short spell as manager, but very few people want the unaffable Scot to leave that club, who have no money to spend and no real way of resourcing a League One club.

Adams’ time at Bradford City is not at all fondly remembered, but the changes he was a part of may prove significant. Professional to his fault, Adams’ legacy at Valley Parade and his promise at Morecambe is that he will control the chaos around a football club and impose order.

Adams’ appointment coincided with a number of changed at Valley Parade which, to most, are rooted in the appointment of Chief Executive Ryan Sparks. Sparks took the role saying that the club were setting a higher standard, and were no longer going to accept mediocrity, but really his revolution at Valley Parade has been one of competency.

Competency

Having worked for Bradford City in the chaotic times of Edin Rahic’s regime at Sparks set about remaking the club along the lines of a modern football business. Dysfunctional systems were replaced with processes which had stable outputs.

And while this might not be to the taste of every supporter, with the club increasingly falling into the unagreed upon shapes put down by rivals, it is effective in minimising instability.

To his great credit, Sparks has created a functioning business in an industry which is built on disorder.

Mancini

Over ten years ago Mark Hughes was fired from Manchester City following a fulcrum shift of overseas investment. That investment has dominated English Football since. The Abu Dhabi United Group’s money has changed Manchester City into an ultra-efficient football business which stands as marked contrast to the scattershot approach to football that occurs across the City at Hughes’ former club, Manchester United.

That decision to replace Hughes set him on a course which would ultimately lead him to Valley Parade, but it may have ramifications for Manchester City with the man who replaced him, Roberto Mancici, having been paid to do a second job while doing the job he had taken over from Hughes, to get around rules on funding.

This and any number of other misdemeanours the Abu Dhabi Group made on their path towards creating the utterly competent football business of Manchester City are to be the subject of punishment by the Premier League in the coming weeks.

All Around

Football is chaos. It relies on the performances of individuals who are in the least stable time of their lives and makes them rich, adding further instability.

To add to this problem clubs are bewitched by creating newsworthy events around dismissing managers and signing players to stand out in a crowed media landscape. Success, for most clubs, comes from the sort of stability which the system they participate in abhors.

This is the chaos which Manchester City were escaping, but it may catch up with them yet dragging them into the seething morass of football.

Hughes

Sparks found Hughes and in doing so found a fellow in competency. Coming over like a capable professional able to stand aside from the chaos that enfolds around them, Mark Hughes is the Hannah Waddingham of football managers.

Hughes assessed the squad over his opening months, and changed it to the team which took to the field in August 2022 that obviously had strengths but were susceptible to losing the ball and not regaining it, and were weak in the space in front of the back four.

Richie Smallwood, captain and would be pivot midfielder, is significant here. There is a persistent meme that Smallwood is performing poorly. Smallwood’s trajectory follows a script best typified by former Bradford City manager Peter Taylor and Tommy Doherty where the latter struggled to perform, and the former struggled to find a solution, and the season declined as a result.

Smallwood struggling to fill the role Hughes had for him in the first half of the season, but his performance levels were managed, and his usefulness kept until Adam Clayton was recruited, allowing the captain to move a little forward on the field and perform exceptionally well.

Spark(s/y)

The Winter of 2022/23 recruitment was product of the stablity Sparks had built and Hughes was the benefactor of where the team could be altered, and altered in some fundamental ways, without breaking because the competency brought to it had created an anti-fragile environment.

Hughes’ team steadily improved in a league characterised by the wild swings in form of rivals. That City flirted with the top three was more a product of those swings in form than it was Hughes’ side, who carried on with a metronomic gathering of points through a series of controlled performances.

Those points took Hughes and City into a play off game with Carlisle United, the first leg of which was won last night, with an unfussy first half goal when Jamie Walker put a low finish in at the Bradford End. The rest of the match, entirely in keeping, was about City ensuring that everything that could be controlled was controlled, and that City were not the victims of chaos.

What’s Next

This then stands as Hughes’ contribution. The club is transformed into a competent member of the football community, with the manager’s warm statesman like persona disarming antagonism.

Having seen a weakness in football and found the correct way to apply pressure this is an achievement for which Ryan Sparks can take credit. Football is an inherently unstable game, and chaos is everywhere, but if one can insulate oneself from the chaos one can be successful as other teams break themselves apart.

The weapon which Sparks is wielding, and the one which typifies the club as it goes into next week’s second leg against Carlisle United, is to be competent.

Strider

There is another world in which you know Ryan Sparks as the gruff Northerner on Series Fourteen of The Apprentice.

On The Apprentice Sparks, instantly likeable but also really not likeable at all, tells a few quips while he throws around buzzwords but gets fired by Lord Sugar in week six. As he is in the Taxi going home he is talking about how he has achieved his goals and is going to smash targets going forward and it occurs to you you’ll never think of that person again in your whole life.

Which is a way to say that Sparks – the Chief Executive of Bradford City starting at the end of 2020 and continuing as the club recovers from the Pandemic – often appears inauthentic. His “speaks my mind” persona seems a little too practiced, his mantras around commitment and hard work a little too well versed. One is reminded of Tolkien’s comment about “looking fairer and feeling fouler.”

When I am in communication with the man who used to be Communications Officer at Bradford City – a communication entirely mediated by others but clearly very carefully crafted by Sparks – I find myself asking if I really would buy a used car from that man?

Gomez

I’ve read almost everything I can find about Derek Adams since it became obvious that he would be coming to replace Mark Trueman and Conor Sellars as Bradford City manager and the portrait painted is of a football manager who demands high levels of commitment from his players, who is tactically innovative but not adventurous in attack, and who is only interested in achieving success to a point of that being a character flaw.

Which is not an assisnation of that character just an observation that the drive that once saw Adams banned from the touchline for eighteen matches would seem to be homousian with the drive which has made near to, or actually, Morecambe into a League One club.

No one describes Adams as nice, or personable, or friendly. He is not Stuart McCall being the warm face of the club or Paul Jewell joking with reporters. He is the Phil Parkinson or Colin Todd uninterested in trying to win the favour of the fans with anything other than a successful team. Adams may be the same but he is no one’s idea of the smiling face of the club.

Determination and probably explains why – despite bringing unprecedented success to the Seaside club forever in the shadow of Blackpool – Adams has already agreed to become Bradford City manager and started work having given the club its retained list. The entire adult population of Morecambe could fit inside Valley Parade. There are issues of potential at play here.

Looking for a good little runner are you? Something that will get you from A to B and on weekends: C? I have just the thing.

Highs

As he has probably had his final day working as a manager in football it is worth pondering the path of Stuart McCall’s life in the game. McCall – sacked as Bradford City manager by Sparks at the end of 2020 – must have got to understand to the highs and lows of football.

In his career he scored in the World Cup Finals, got to Wembley in the FA Cup when getting to Wembley was the be all and end all, scored two in the FA Cup final, won promotions and trophies but you do not need me to tell you about 1985 and 1989, and how his playing life was intersected with tragedy.

After leaving City for the sixth time he was quickly on Sky Sports telling funny stories about being manager and showing a genuine warmth for Bradford City. Even after his fall out with Edin Rahic he walked away with a warm smile and wishing good luck albeit with the unspoken addendum of “you’re gonna need it.”

With reflection – for me – McCall comes into focus not as The Glorious Hero of May 1999 or The Crushingly Defeated Manager of 2020 but rather as a balanced human being. A Kipllianian man happy to say that while there are worse ways to earn a living all this – kicking a bit of leather around every weekend – is not really that important in the grand scheme of things.

It is a good runner, it has not given anyone any problems, but I’m not going to say it is impossible that it will breakdown. You have AA membership, right?

Marine Juniors

If there was a phrase which would define Sparks in the same way that “I know football”, “Administration”, or “Peppercorn Rent”, or whatever random nonsense spewed from Mark Lawn’s cakehole defined his predecessors in the boardroom it would be his statement that the club would no longer “tolerate mediocrity”.

Sparks said this after removing Trueman and Sellars from their Managerial roles but quickly walked it back with the aid of a supplicant local media. Sparks – former Communications Manager – did not mean those two people he had just sacked were the subject of the comments on the day he sacked them. Quickly Sparks added that he thought Trueman and Sellars would become great, with time and experience, but that City were not in a position to offer those things.

It smacked of Geoffrey Richmond praising Chris Kamara the week after sacking him after David Mellor suggested a racial component in that decision and made for an interesting follow up article where Sparks got to outline the hope that the pair stay at the club, which is a hope I share.

We only sell the best here, every vehicle gets rigorously tested in our workshop. I know this because I get my cars from our lot.

Reversion

That Trueman and Sellars have been stood down – a phrase Sparks favours – is a crucial decision for the club. It was obvious that – on the field – they had benefited from a reversion to the mean in City’s form which was always going to happen for a club so obviously average in League Two but also obvious that they had done things which facilitated that improvement.

When the play off push that seemed to be April 2021 faltered it highlighted both their successes and failures. They had over performed to take City above the middle of League Two but that over performance could not be sustained.

Once that became clear in Sparks’ mind he move in an unusually rapid fashion to make a change. This is on the face of it Sparks at his most The Apprentice where his word – word now three times signed on contract in the last twelve months – is a flexible thing to be treated as soft because everyone knows football is a results based business, right?

Under that surface it was Sparks affirming that – as much as he might not like to say it – two rookie managers are not an appointment one should expect to lead to great things. “Mediocre” is a harsh word to use – and one he regretted – but recognising the shape of the problem early is important.

Yes, I noticed that myself, a little bit of a knocking on the engine but I’ve got the full service history and this car has never even had a day off the road.

Interesting

Adams will arrive at Bradford City and start a recruitment drive by bringing Cole Stockton and Yann Songo’o from Morecambe. Both have “interesting” histories but Adams trusts them to have the mentality he wants. He has re-recruited both before

This is Adams at his most Phil Parkinson, his wannabe Marcelo Bielsa, his Morrisons Own Brand Jurgen Klopp. Attitude and a willingness to work hard are the defining characteristics of a player. Work hard for the group, or the group does not need you.

There is a rude awakening for many players in the squad who are far too ready to take too little responsibility for the level of performance of the team. The Adams administration – expect to hear a lot about his GPS tracking during games – is a long way away from McCall’s gut reactions.

Tactically Adams favours a player in front of the back four shielding – Songo’o takes the role for Morecambe – and three or often four midfielders running channels to create space and angles for attacking moves when with the ball and to close off passing lanes without it. Without the his teams sit deep behind the ball and break quickly in transition.

Expect Watt, Cooke and Sutton to be running 10km per game or not be at the club any more. Expect Vernam and Crackshaw to be charged with finding pockets of space to break into rather than waiting for the ball before going forward.

The silhouette Adams creates is one of a man who feels that his understanding and his abilities should take him higher in the game. His previous experiences – perhaps his previous compromises – have prevented that.

In Bradford City he sees an opportunity to achieve those aims with the key being that he need not to compromise those principles again.

Looking at buying that from Ryan are you? It’s a great little runner. I hope you don’t buy it because I want to buy it myself come payday.

Likemind

In Adams Ryan Sparks has found a likemind in a way that Sparks could never have in the even handedness of McCall. Football is not life and death, as McCall well knows, and it is not dividing people along a line marked “mediocre”. Largely football is about people and how to get the best out of people in a way which might not always be the best for that person.

However – for all this may read as a criticism of Sparks – I do not mean it to because for all his Apprentice Affectations and Ill Communicators he has identified the defining problem at the heart of Bradford City. Sparks is correct to say that standards have not been set high enough.

Phil Parkinson – as manager – can be said to have set high standards on the field but he clashed with the boardroom over the standard of the pitch. For all that was happening on the field the standards were not higher throughout the club, at least in the manager’s opinion.

Indeed much of the problem before, during and after Parkinson’s time was that people around the club exempted themselves from the standards set and one thing that Sparks has identified correctly is that not only do standards need to be raised chiefly in football, but across the board too, but that he needs to be subject to those standards too.

Sparks is not the autocrat barking that others should do better while doing little himself. He is taking off his (blue) suit jacket and rolling up his (white, crisp) shift sleeves and getting involved even if it does get dirt on his (brown, pointed, brogue) shoes.

I really think this is the right car for you.

There

Derek Adams seems to be a manager who has a clear plan for how he wants a club to be run and Ryan Sparks either found him for that reason, or got convinced by him on the way, but importantly the pair are fundamentally right. The success or failure of the next few seasons – or failures in their implementation of it – does not change that.

Football is ultimately a cruel construction best done by people maladjusted to a part of life in which joy is not a zero sum game. The best football managers – the Cloughs, the Fergusons, the Sebes – took no joy in seeing other teams playing well, in being a part of the well played game.

This is a character flaw, obviously, but it might also be the sine qua non of success in football. That there has to be – to try not to be rude – something a little bit wrong with the people who do prize the movement of a bit of leather in the right direction so highly.

We might have to conclude that those people might have a skewed sense of priorities in the wake of 150,000 deaths in a year both highlights and underlines the discrepancy of demanding so much from our Football Managers and Administrators while accepting so little from our Leaders.

But that we want them to have those priorities and, perhaps, that we need them to have them too.

So, do you want to buy this car?

Car

Ryan Sparks has the feel of a used car salesman trying to sell you a good car.

He is trying to sell you a genuine good deal – something he believes in – but he cannot turn off that sheen in his public persona that makes you feel like you are being had.

He has the right ideas – more or less – and he is trying to sell them the only way he seems to know how but I have to say that I’m there for that. I’m in his corner. I’m on his side.

Derek Adams is coming in to make players run more, to stop them being happy with a home draw and to tell them they should be happy with an away draw. I doubt he will turn on any sheen or charm in his public persona and I expect to hear a lot about working hard, and the unit.

And I’m here for that too. I’ve been waiting for that since Phil Parkinson left the club in 2016.

Jonah

You, and me, and Stuart McCall can then – perhaps – just be happy that we do not have to be cut from that cloth which has a desire insatiable. Watching football managers over the last nine months has been seeing the elevation of the art of football above the ways of living.

Which is not me saying that football does not matter, rather the opposite. I’m saying that other things should matter to use in the way that football does. That these values of not accepting the mediocre echo around a Valley Parade which has settled for too little, too often but find resonance on every street in Bradford, in Yorkshire, in an England where the mediocrity of the used car salesman has preeminence.

Reading what Adams, what Sparks has said, what Tuchel has said after both losing and winning the Champions League in the space of nine months, what every football manager charged with caring about a game in a World where The Prime Minister says that “let the bodies pile up” and I am reminded of Bob Dylan in Don’t Look Back when he reads a report about how Bob Dylan smokes eighty cigarettes a day.

“I’m glad I’m not me.”