BfB

The scarcity of football in these snow bound weeks seems to have set the fan’s mind set into watching pretty much anything as so after the delight of the improvised Portsmouth squad beating Coventry on Tuesday night came the supposedly wondrous triumph of Reading at Anfield where Rafa Benitez’s Liverpool side were knocked out of the FA Cup.

Benitez cut Shakespearianly tragic figure on the side lines as he watched his team capitulate to a Reading side that showed all the Hallmarks of the Royal’s great sides: They cheated a bit, moaned a lot and – for some unfathomable reason probably connected to the fact that they are the club in closest proximity to your average tabloid newspaperman’s house just outside London – they were lavished with praise for their effort.

How Benitez – mic under nose and awkward questions to answer about his future – must have longed to grab the TV crew and march it to the Referee, to Brian McDermott, to Shaun Long and demand a reason why the 93rd minute penalty that levelled things for Reading was given considering the fairly obvious nature of the dive. No penalty, no extra time, no news story from this Third Round FA Cup game.

Nevertheless Benitez is “in trouble” now and many are calling for him to be fired from his job. Unless he is stealing for the Anfield stationary cupboard, using their computers to write his CV or as in the case of one former Anfield player turned sacked manager at another club running up £44,000 work of sex line bills on the club’s phone then sacking is not an option.

The word sack is thrown around liberally in football and is misnomic. When a centre-forward plays badly he is dropped and someone else plays the position for a time while the player himself is paid to sit on his backside or play in the stiffs.

We would never say that Jim Jefferies “sacked” Benito Carbone by paying him to not do anything yet we use it all the time for the process of taking the roles and responsibilities away from managers but continuing paying them. Sven Goran Eriksson’s time out of football after England finished almost to the day that The FA stopped paying him after his “sacking” by England ad some say that we paid Sven more to sit on his backside for a year than we did Steve MacLaren to work as manager for two.

Of course a manager without any management probably starts looking for another job and might get one soon taking away the contract from the previous club just as a player in the reserves might move on to a new team but there is no onus on either to do so while they are being paid as City found out with Carbone back in 2001.

So rather than Liverpool sack Benitez – or any club sack any manager – it would probably be more accurate to suggest that the Reds might drop him and if they can stomach the idea of paying £4m a year to someone who they don’t use in the company – and a further £4m to his replacement no doubt – then they could do just that but the club would end up in a situation where it is paying £8m a year for the managerial position to be filled and – and England’s experience suggest that this could be the case – not even getting half the value of that back.

All of which concerns Bradford City only slightly and this slight way is this. In a post game discussion with a Liverpool website (us football site webmasters have a secret club – seriously) I suggested that Martin O’Neill would be the only choice for the job to which I was told my man on Merseyside has discovered that a similar thought had passed around Anfield to a point where though back door channels O’Neill had been sounded out and had said that he was not about to break his contract with Aston Villa – he had refused to do the same with Leicester City preventing him from taking up the Leeds United job once – and so either a deal had to be worked out with Randy Learner at Villa Park or Liverpool would have to wait.

So wait they do, because while they take no joy in Third Round exits they have a plan for replacing Rafa that involves bringing in a man they feel will do better rather than throwing a wide net open after getting rid of the incumbent and seeing what they find. If they are not able to get the man they want then they will stick with what they have.

Such thinking is thin on the ground at most clubs in and out of the boardroom where little attention is paid to the person following the current, to be dropped, incumbent of the manager’s position, much less to the idea that the exiting man might be falling below whatever standard is drawn for a reason which is not solved by replacing him.

John Sheridan – manager of Oldham Athletic – was fired about a year ago and replaced with Joe Royle who allowed the teams faltering play-off push to fizzle out entirely. Royle was replaced with Dave Penney who has taken the Latics to 19th in League One hovering over the relegation places and one must wonder who pitched the idea of sacking of Sheridan and if they are considering the same with his replacement. Certainly whatever the problem was that saw Sheridan relieved of duties does not seem to have been solved by his exit.

If Benitez was to be paid by Liverpool to stay at home one could argue that the next manager would not lose FA Cup games to weaker opposition but few could make a case that suggests another manager would definitely perform better in the League than Benitez. Two years ago the Red got 76 points from 38 games making a perfect average of two points per match but still finished fourth. It is not performance but rather of over performance that is the expectation.

All of which seems a million miles away from Bradford City at present save the commonality that surrounds a section of the supporters of both clubs (and many other clubs it has to be said) who look at sacking the wrong way and talk much about removing and little about replacing and certainly do not consider the financial pitfalls of paying two people to do the same job.

Care should be taken around the opinions of these people who are so ready to spend other people’s money.

I have come to the conclusion that the debate on Stuart McCall is impossible to have in an emotional vacuum that is presented with the opening gambit “Yeah, but if it wasn’t Stuart…”

The City boss is Stuart McCall and – when Peter Jackson became persona non grata in the 1990s – he is the only club legend we have. Sacking him, or pressuring him into leaving because it amounts to the same thing, is a permanent severing of that relationship. For confirmation one need only to look how Andrew Stuart McCall Junior turned his back on Elland Road after the way that Leeds United behaved towards Andrew McCall Senior. “I’ll know that a few thousand people in Bradford want me to put one over Leeds.” said the then Rangers midfielder before 1992′s European Cup Battle of Britain.

Nevertheless it is perhaps worth exploring that question of “Yes, but if it wasn’t Stuart” as we come to terms with the manager’s statement that should the Bantams not make the play-offs this season then he will not be in charge next.

Three away defeats in a row have blotted out moving fourth after a 5-0 win at Valley Parade and we are forced to ask what would previous incumbents of the manager’s job at Valley Parade had done in the circumstances that McCall admits, and few would deny, hurt him as much as anyone.

David Wetherall certainly faced his darkest day when the Bantams were so easily swept aside by Huddersfield Town 2-0 in 2006. Wetherall’s response was muted to say the least but as a caretaker – almost house sitter – manager one can expect little else so we move back to the last permanent City manager Colin Todd.

Todd was not popular with the same people who would have rid of McCall, and more besides, and approached his time at Valley Parade as casually as could be. A man who had seen the highs of football and is soon to be glorified as such on the silver screen viewed his time at City with the dispassion of a hired hand. Not that one could say that Todd did not care for the club and his charges but that he cared because of his professional pride rather than being felt from the heart.

Perhaps after three away defeats Todd would have said that winning away from home in football is hard and not to be expected and while he hoped we could improve our form and that he would do everything to ensure we did, he worked under tight restraints. Of the managers I shall mention today Todd is perhaps the only one I would rank above McCall in terms of what one might call “management ability”. Todd was going to leave at the end of the season he was fired in and one can speculate that he had grown weary of the constant unbalance of expectations and resources.

“The job gets harder every year” the man from Chester-le-Street said.

Another man from Chester-le-Street would have lost no sleep over Bradford City’s three defeats on the road. The heart that Bryan Robson put into playing for England and Manchester United was sorely lacking from his time at Valley Parade. When, it seemed, the excuse of administration offered itself Robson accepted that his then second step into management would be a failure and marked time until the end of the season making no enemies and ensuring he would be continue to be thought of as a good guy, a nice bloke.

Bryan Robson would not have lost any sleep over three defeats.

That Nicky Law might be doing now is, one hopes, a result of worries about his son’s place in professional football next season. Law Jnr is much trumpeted but, as with perhaps all the Bradford City players, he is hidden under this criticism of McCall while not putting in as much as he should. Nicky Law Snr’s time at Valley Parade can be defined in a single comment – “At some grounds the crowd is worth a goal for home team, here it is worth one for the opposition.” – and while that became the epitaph of his career as the Bantams manager it is as true today as it was then.

There is a poison in the support at Valley Parade, a cancer, that undermines any work that is attempted and that cancer is so significant than now results are not viewed to their ends but rather to the reaction of the reactionaries. I am told this is the same at all clubs but an appeal to how ordinary and how unremarkable we have allowed ourselves to become is no comfort.

As manager Law would no doubt have made the right noises about how to solve the problems of defeat but perhaps been incapable of solving those problems. As a manager he suffered the same problems of reducing resources, and had boardroom in-fighting to contend with to boot, but one suspected he saw the job as his big chance and in contrast to Robson he would have faught with all the strength he could muster against that chance dwindling.

Law’s predecessor Jim Jefferies reacted to defeats with a retreat, back to Scotland and the safety of the middle of the SPL. His character shall never recover from the smut of it being said that when they going got tough, he went. The impression from Jefferies, who was no fan of Stuart McCall and attempted to drum him out of Bradford City for the sake of winning over the dressing room suggesting a style of management that demanded fealty rather than respect, was that ultimately he cared not for the future of the club as long as he was ensured his pay out to leave a club that five months later would be making redundancies.

A stark contrast to McCall who did all he could to help in 2004 when the club faced closure and, when prompted in 2007 by Mark Lawn’s stabilising investment, answered the call and took on this his role as Bradford City manager. One wonders too about the long term interest and investment of Lawn in a situation in which his choice for manager resigns on the grounds that the effects of the job are too great.

So to answer the question “Yeah, but if it wasn’t Stuart” I would say that if it was not Stuart then I worry whom it would be. If it was not Stuart I worry that we would have someone who cared less, who did the job for the financial situation or personal betterment, who slept well knowing that the football club paid him today but another would tomorrow.

If it was not Stuart then I would worry that we would go once more down the ridiculous route of believing that the next manager, whoever he may be, will be better than the previous despite all the evidence to the contrary. If one will talk about rose tinted spectacles then one would do well to explain that contradiction.

Primarily though I would say that if it was not Stuart then Bradford City would be worse off because the chances of any successor being a vast improvement on McCall’s abilities are slight while there is a certainty that whomever should follow McCall as manager of this club whenever that change comes will care less about the club, will put less effort into the club, will engage less of his heart into ensuring the clubs improvement and will have less reason to engage whatever abilities he has into the progress of the club and in those very real, very important ways will be guaranteed to be a lesser manager than Stuart McCall.

Stuart McCall has to stay as Bradford City boss and not because he is a good guy or a Ginger God or a club legend but because sacking him will only make sure we end up in the same situation we are in now in eighteen months time and throws away any good work that has been done at the club leaving us to be run by a much of bitter moaners.

Second point first. Who runs Bradford City?

Is it Mark Lawn and Julian Rhodes representing the supporters who have backed McCall with League Two record attendances or is it forty or so Scrots and a bunch of Chavs on a message board taking time away from posting up racist abuse and commenting on how right the Daily Mail is about everything? If it is the latter then tell me now and I’ll find something better to do with my weekends if it is the former then they should hold a steady line.

First point now. Hold a line because Stuart McCall has just got started at Valley Parade. There is no point in appointing a young manager if after 18 months of doing the job you let him leave. If you want instant results go to Terry Venebles, if you appoint a young manager then you don’t let yourself be forced into letting him leave when he is just working out how the phone system works and where the cones are kept at Applely Bridge.

Patience isn’t a virtue in football, it is a necessity if you want success.

If you are happy to piss away money hiring and firing managers then give them eighteen months each and edge them out the door after that. It is practically proven to fail and for every example of instant success you can find you get pull out ten where changing a manager has made f*ck all almost no difference.

Everyone wants stability at the club. Stability does not start with the next guy it starts here and now with sticking to a manager especially one who is bothered about the club and giving him the time to get things right.

Cause in the end what is sacking a manager (or letting him leave cause some morons have hounded him out)? Is it a punishment for him or for us? Look at the say the muppet crowd got rid of the England manager. Did Sven Goran Erickson go off sobbing while Steve MacLaren took us to European glory? No fecking way. Sven got paid all the same and we had The Wally with the Brolly so tell me who got punished then?

McCall will be gutted to leave City but he will leave and we will be left with a Aidy Bothroyd, a Keith Alexander, a Alan Rape Me Pardew for a year and a half and be wondering why we carry on looking disjointed and have no passion.

How can we demand passion from out players when we get rid of our most passionate player? How can we want a stable club with we keep smashing up any stability we have?

We should not even be talking about Stuart McCall’s position at this club until he has had three or four years. It is not like we are in danger of relegation. We might not go up! Big fat hairy deal! Not going up we should be used to by now. When was the last time with eight games left City even looked like they might get a play off place? 1999?

The club have got to decide who runs it and what it is for. Is it Julian Rhodes and Mark Lawn or it is whoever shouts the loudest? Once that is decided if they could all they need to do is decide if they want to be successful and try doing the same things that work at the clubs who do well (Liverpool have got to sack Benitez ! He sold Robbie Keane! Liverpool don’t have any strikers! Hang on, 4-1!) or just want to piss around wallowing in mistake on mistake until everyone loses interest.

Note Oh yeah, I don’t want comments on this article. If you don’t like what I say then argue all you want, call me whatever you want. What people who want McCall out of City are doing is smashing up my club because they are too vindictive or too stupid to know better. If you are one of these people I don’t want to have a nice little discussion with you. Hell, I’d find it a tough choice to brake at a level crossing for you.

Promotion or not Bradford City are keeping Stuart McCall as manager after the boss signed a deal that keeps him at Valley Parade until the Summer of 2011.

This backing of McCall is a signal of intent from the club that the belief is that the team is progressing under the totemistic manager and that his continued presence at the club will ensure that progress continues.

In a way this is Mark Lawn signalling a break from the hire and fire management policy of past City chairmen and the mentality of the rest of football.

As a sample of the effectiveness of changing manager as a strategy City’s lesson could not be clearer. Sacking does not improve a club.

Thus it is hoped that stability will. One of Stuart McCall’s greatest assets is that – a tiny percentage aside – City fans want to see him succeed and he has not become the soft target for supporter ire that his predecessor were.

All of which undersells the job the manager is doing and the marked improvement City have made under McCall. Losing at home – the bane of City since the Premier League days – has been banished on the whole and the team is capable of playing impressive, flowing football.

Ultimately Lawn has looked at these improvements and ignored the seduction of the ethereal suggestion that a change will bring anything better.

Honesty, passion, commitment, stability. These are the things that McCall represents to City – always has – and the things that Mark Lawn has backed fully in giving the manager this new deal regardless of the end of the season.