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We have heard the phrase “Football is a results based business” a lot at Valley Parade in the last decade with it being brought up on Nicky Law exit, with Stuart McCall speaking the words as he left and Peter Taylor – who is enjoying mixed results on his fist half dozen games five of which were away from home – accepting the idea on arriving at the club. BfB starts The Barry Articles with the the question:
“Is Football Really a Results Based Business?”
Dave Pendleton Bantamspast Curator & Former City Gent Editor
During the heady days of Bradford City’s Premier League sojourn I remember thinking that hanging on for grim death in the lower reaches of the top flight was about the best a club of City’s stature could hope for in the unequal modern game. Even a fluky cup final appearance was off the agenda as the manager was likely to ignore the temptations of cup glory and commit all to remaining in the lucrative Premier League.
Although our expectations have been lowered quite dramatically during the last decade, the brutal truth is that success is likely to be just as fleeting in the lower reaches. The odd promotion, perhaps wild eyed we might dream of re-establishing ourselves in the Championship. Trophies? Think Johnstone’s Paint. So, in truth do the results really matter that much? Our support base, and TV income relevant to which ever division we find ourselves in, dictate that we can never compete with the majority of Premier League clubs and a fair number of Championship clubs.
If we accept that we have a level, then surely it is performances and entertainment that matter and not results? City do have a minor footballing tradition. Remember the chants of ‘we want football’ when John Docherty tried to introduce direct football to Valley Parade? Perhaps a certain style is the best we can achieve. But, I’ll guarantee that some of our fans would be enraged by neat passing, they would scream at the players to ‘get stuck in’ and ‘get it forward’. The squeaky wheel gets the oil, so yes results do matter, particularly if Mark Lawn continues to read the official message board.
Steve Baker Stalwart City fan and Bantams Bar regular
Yes of course it is. Any team, player, manager, chairman, fan or neutral wants to see football teams win football matches. Without that people wont watch games and the commercial aspect to the game falls flat. If this doesn’t exist then you would probably have 1 league in the country – what do all the non-league teams strive for? Existence yes, but you cant argue that they wouldn’t love to be in the 3rd round of the FA Cup at Old Trafford or Anfield. People will watch this, follow it with interest, drive commercial revenues which helps the club out – but all in all they are looking for a win.
We have seen in some circumstances in the last few seasons teams who don’t set-up to win, or who come for a 0-0. But that is the result they are looking for – Grimsby’s nil nil draw with City earlier in the season was a good example. That was the result they were after and its what they got. Result.
If your winning, then things seem easier. If your losing and your backs are against the wall, its tougher. Look at Rafa Bentiez’s current predicament.
Peter Taylor has done enough in my view to warrant a longer contract. He has got results that have seen us gain points, although in some circumstances, the players have let him down. I believe with a full pre-season and a few signings of his choice will make a world of difference. Winning football matches makes people (fans, players, commercial investors) interested in football.
So how can we argue its about anything else?
Jason Mckeown City Gent & BfB Writer
The result on a Saturday afternoon is the most important factor for any club – but it cannot become the be all and end all.
Club strategies have to be built on more solid foundations than the up-and-down nature of a league campaign. There are greater responsibilities and longer-term interests to be mindful of, which Bradford City clearly realise.
Financially sinking in 2002 and 2004, the Bantams fell to the point where it became difficult to feel upset about defeats. The club was on its knees, relying on the community and fanbase it represents to keep going. Was the club saved so every subsequent resource could be piled into buying players more able to win matches, or for the enjoyment fans shared in supporting a football team and the difference it makes to the area? After the rescue in 2004, we fans quickly turned back attention to the joy and despair of results – but we’ve never forgotten what we might have lost.
And in recent years, City has put longer-term interests ahead of short-term results. A season ticket initiative that puts more bums on seats than pennies in the bank; a manager in Stuart McCall who was given time and patience to develop, at the detriment of instant results; a youth set up which is costly to run and has provided only limited returns. These are not quick-fix approaches and may have cost City success, but they matter to its fanbase and community.
The result on a Saturday afternoon is the most important factor for any club – when everything else is competently managed.
David Markham T&A Reporting Legend
Results business has become a football cliché – repeated by directors as their reasons – or should that be excuses – for sacking managers. And not only managers, supporters abuse managers from the stands, write letters to the press or usually nowadays messages on websites to build up pressure and often directors capitulate.
It is true, of course, that managers live or die by results. Think of Stuart McCall, who resigned from City a month ago – another ten points and maybe he would still be at Valley Parade. If only City had converted their two penalties – Michael Flynn missed at home to Lincoln when the score was 0-0 and City went on to lose 2-0 while Gareth Evans missed two minutes from the end of the Accrington match – another two points were dropped. Think also of the needless penalty given away at home to Cheltenham and the last minute equaliser scored by Northampton to realise what a thin dividing line there is between success and failure in management.
Managerial changes are not always the solution to a club’s problems. Think of the managerial changes made in League Two this season – Peter Jackson sacked at Lincoln with the season barely a month old, replaced by a high profile ex-player Chris Sutton and yet the club are still hovering just above the relegation zone. Mike Newell, sacked by Grimsby in November, but the club are still threatened with relegation to the Blue Square Premier League.
Of course, directors would not be human if they were not tempted to make changes to obtain improved results – and it is easier to sack one man – the manager – than get rid of 11 players.
To go back to the original question, as financial pressures increase and media and fans become more and more impatient for success results become more important than ever. Lots of fans would rather see their side play badly and win rather than play well and lose.
Perhaps directors should take more care in choosing their managers and giving them contracts. And then give them more time to develop their plans instead of wielding the axe after two or three bad results or a bad start to the season. It was remarkable how managerial casualties there were in the first couple months of this season. As well as achieving good results at first team level, managers must also be given time to develop youth policies and scouting systems, which are crucial to the long term future of all clubs. Clubs yearn for stability. Few achieve it because of the ‘results business’ syndrome. Think of two of most successful English clubs – Manchester United and Arsenal – and think of how long Alex Ferguson and Arsene Wenger have been in their jobs. Is there a lesson to be learned there?
Bradford City play Rotherham United At The Don Valley Stadium in League Two, 2009/2010
Don’t send me flowers when I’m dead. If you like me, send them while I’m alive – Brian Clough
Search Facebook on Wednesday afternoon and you would find the group We Hate Keith Alexander
Football did not come to a sobering halt with the news of the death at 53 of Macclesfield Town manager Keith Alexander and perhaps did not even skip a beat but rolled on to watching England beat Egypt with the players wearing black armbands and Clive Tyldesley waxing lyrical about a man who’s team one doubts he could place on a map.
The booing of John Terry went on regardless, clubs like Farsley Celtic – the very type of low level club that as a player and manager Alexander served so diligently – continued to struggle to keep going, the people at the “We Hate…” group carried on swearing and being obnoxious. For all the shock and sadness of the death of an iconoclast manager football did not miss a beat, and that is a shame.
Alexander is lauded in death, but hardly appreciated. Tyldesley called him the type of man who is so important to football at the lower levels but is part of the very machine that tries to grind out that level of the game. Alexander’s death is shocking, but his work in life was no doubt sadly frustrating.
A man who gave his life to a the levels of game which seems prepared to allow that level to wither and die. Hardly an appreciation.
Gareth Evans will show appreciation. Evans credits Alexander with helping turn his career around at Macclesfield following his release from Manchester United and indeed it is over a tackle by Evans that the “We Hate…” group emerged.
The group – started by those lovely Notts County supporters – is hardly unique indeed the very discussion of football seems to be conducted by a not insignificant section of fans in this kind of hateful, disturbing way. A search for “Stuart McCall” turns up groups like “stuart mccall’s a ****” and “I HAT (sic) BRADFORD CITY AND STUART MCCALL BUMS DAVID WETHERALL” alongside calls for the former City boss to be given the job of Prime Minister.
Why is it that a section of football is so ready to communicate in such hateful terms? Mark Lawn considers this so much of a problem on Bradford City’s official message board that he wants to take steps against it by removing the anonymity of that site although the Facebook experience suggests that that will not be a total remedy.
Indeed as tributes were pouring in about Alexander some England fans at Wembley were booing and jeering John Terry who has been the subject of shocking abuse as football continues the culture that allows abuse to sit alongside criticism as if the two are natural bedfellows, leading to a suggestion that the one will bleed into the other.
BfB was asked to not criticise Mark Lawn and – when the joint chairman’s car was vandalised after the Accrington Stanley game – there was a suggestion that (what I consider to be very valid) criticism by one person becomes abuse by another that becomes violence.
This week a reader asked that the site not “fall into the trap of criticising Taylor after two weeks” following a news story about Scott Neilson going out on loan while Gavin Grant comes in and in a welcome and friendly exchange I details how Taylor will be criticised when he does things that people do not like – such as bringing in too many loan players, a continued bugbear of mine – and praised when he does things that people consider right such as switching back to 442 or retaining Wayne Jacobs.
No one need create a “We Hate Peter Taylor Group” because of it and no one has to vandalise a car.
Football culture has a continued problem with the inability to separate criticism from abuse and perhaps if we want to pay tribute to the memory of Keith Alexander we might look at how servants of the game such as he are regularly the subject of abuse which is as disturbing when he was alive as it is now he has passed on and see what we can do to change that.
Should the FA want to pay tribute to Alexander they might also look at the state of lower league football and the finances that sees Sheffield Wednesday – no one’s idea of a small fry club – the latest team to be talking about administration. The gold rush of the Premier League seems to be coming to an end and the clubs involved seem to have frittered away that wealth and perhaps there needs to be redress in show the money is distributed that would give managers like Alexander more of an even hand. A wider discussion for another time.
The abuse of managers and the struggles of club’s to stay in business comes to the fore when Bradford City face a team managed by Ronnie Moore. Moore had wanted City to be thrown out of football for going into administration but has since, no doubt, revised a view that would have seen his current club Rotherham United bounced out of the game.
I think Moore’s view was out of touch, unsympathetic and needlessly harsh but I understand the frustrations he had in trying to sign players and being outbid by the Bantams and feel that football could have learnt from that. Indeed City were out-offered by The Millers for Paul Shaw,Pablo Mills and – later – Nicky Law Jnr which suggests that even the smaller points Moore made have been ignored.
Rotherham are smarting from a 4-0 defeat at Rochdale in the week and have slipped to fifth from the lofty position Mark Robbins took the club to at the start of the season. The Miller’s Don Valley Stadium has seen only seven wins this season – two or three fewer than their promotion rivals – and seems to be as unwelcoming for the “home” support as it is for the visitors. The place is bitterly cold and the pitch not good for playing football on.
Not that that will stop Peter Taylor’s strong men at the front with the Bantams playing an increasingly air based game. Mark McCammon – who turned down Rotherham to join City – and James Hanson can expect the ball to come direct and to look for wide men Gareth Evans and Luke O’Brien for lay-offs to allow for delivery. Goals from under five passes are the order of the day, especially on pitches like the Don Valley.
Scott Neilson’s loan move to Cambridge United is a strange one. His replacement – Gavin Grant, who made a debut at Aldershot and was himself subject to abuse from his new supporters – is a non-contract player and should he wish can leave Bradford City whenever he wants. Neilson cannot return to the club for a month regardless and one has to wonder why the experience that is given from playing for the Bantams should be given to Grant and not to Neilson.
Peter Taylor wants Neilson to get some first team games but leaves him out of our first team. As a player he is obviously capable and has shown us such. The instability the club has been put into is underlined by the idea that one of the squad could simply wander away at the drop of a hat.
Michael Flynn and Lee Bullock both had chances to get an equaliser against Aldershot in the week and were unlucky not to do so. The pair can point back to the 4-2 defeat at Valley Parade earlier this season as proof that they have been able to boss a midfield against the Millers – goals scored from wherever you want, or offside, are not proof of a good midfield – and should prepare for battle. For all Nicky Law’s abilities “getting stuck in” was not one of them.
At the back Luke Oliver – all six foot seven of him – is expected to make a debut in the place of Matthew Clarke with Steve Williams retaining his place. Robbie Threlfall and Simon Ramsden continue in front of Matt Glennon.
Gareth Evans has just been kicked in the head by Rochdale’s on-loan winger Temitope Obadeyi. The referee, typically useless all night, tries to let the game go on as Rochdale charge forwards, but as the linesman nearby waves his flag frantically for the foul, he belatedly blows the whistle. The City players nearby rush over to check Evans is okay and say a few things to Obadeyi. The City fans, housed in the lengthways stand and right next to of the incident, loudly call for the issuing of a red card. It’s only yellow, so attention turns to a woozy Evans, being helped off the pitch by the physio.
As Evans stands on the touchline in front of us, waiting for the referee to allow him back on, we chant his name loudly and continuously. City’s number nine turns round to us to show his appreciation by applauding, before emphatically waving his arms in the style of a conductor leading an orchestra, urging us to keep going. With the chanting from away fans having being kept up since well before kick off, it’s his nod of approval for the support and the difference we are making.
And in response, we roar even louder.
On an evening of so many positives for City – terrific Wayne Jacobs-influenced tactics, colossal individual performances and outstanding goals – it was the connectivity between the players and fans which stood out to me as the highlight. This was unconditional, positive backing for the players – the level of which has not been seen since the memorable night at Lincoln City in 2007. The singing didn’t stop until the players trooped off the pitch, having all come over to jubilantly thank the fans at the final whistle. There will have been some City fans with hoarse voices the following day, mine certainly was.
And the reward for such backing was a performance of incredible commitment and quality. This was no fluke result, achieved by sticking 10 men behind the ball and grabbing a goal on the break. This was no long ball hit and hope, duck and let someone else take responsibility approach from the team. They played some brilliant football, they ran their socks off closing down the opposition, they deserved the three points and the winning margin.
Who quite knows where it came from? But it felt so good. When Robbie Threlfall netted that stunning free kick to put City 2-1 up, the celebrations were wild. Strangers hugged me, my hat went flying off, my glasses fell to the floor, at one stage I fell to the floor. And it was only after the adrenaline starting to wear off as we headed back to the car that I realised I must have twisted my knee in the process. I was suddenly hobbling, with a grin that couldn’t be shifted.
And the singing. The singing was as beautiful as a group of football fans chanting mainly out of tune can be. There was no time for rest and catching breath. One chant over, the next one begins. A new range of songs to enjoy and keep repeating in future games, the usual numbers sung more heartfelt than we’ve being able to for months.
We were one team – the players, the management, the supporters. When Rochdale attacked we cheered every time a successful tackle was made. When City possession broke down we seemed to collectively mutter “unlucky” and urge them to keep going. When the referee gave a decision against us we snarled and barracked him angrily in the hope he’d not dare be so foolish next time. When Rochdale fans finally bothered to sing, we took the mick out of how many years it has been since they were last promoted.
At Spotland the fans and players felt closer than they’ve been for a long time. Let’s do it again soon, more often, please.
