BfB

If football matches are won in second of brilliance then those seconds are earned in committed and combative performances as City showed today.

It was Omar Daley’s brilliantly acrobatic volleyed finish from eight yards out – converting a deep and purposeful Tom Adeyemi cross – which ended as the difference between the teams and few would say the goal or the performance did not merit a win but that win was well earned in the moments around the Jamaican’s impressive goal.

It was in Gareth Evans running down a long strike to win the ball forcing it to Adeyemi to cross and in the rest of Adeyemi’s performance which was his best in a City shirt so far and provided an energy around the midfield which – combined with David Syers – took control of a midfield battle that gave the win. Bury’s Damien Mozika and former City man Steven Schumacher provided a strong and balanced middle two but City’s two were marshalled by holding man Lee Bullock and in taking out the middle two the visitors were rendered engine-less, less capable of driving the game into the Bantams.

The win was in David Syers’ truly awful miss with an hour on the clock and an open goal that was only better – or should that be worsted – by a Stephen Torpey one yard over the bar from one yard. As rank horrible as Syers miss was his reaction to that miss – a shaking off and gearing up to win the game – was the stuff of real success and real quality.

All over the pitch there were similar performances of players showing character and one was reminded by an offend said adage that one can forgive a player a mistake, but not not caring about a mistake. Jason Price recycled the ball well all afternoon – or until his replacement by the endlessly useful James Hanson – but when his lack of pace saw a chance fizzle out when freed in the middle of the pitch Price’s reaction was to keep on keeping on.

Muse, for a moment, about the difference between teams which look good and teams that do well – between Manchester United and Manchester City – and consider that the difference is in this attitude which for today was in place in Peter Taylor’s Bradford City team.

Luke O’Brien cropped up at right back to rob the ball from Bury’s Ryan Lowe after City had been left screaming for penalty following a battered down cross ninety yards further up the field. Curse the unfair decision – indeed Lowe was penalised for a handball which was hardly deliberate – but City and O’Brien kept going and this match report is not about how City were robbed by a dodgy referee as a result of that.

However – and if you are a Referee protectionist then look away now – City struggled through a first half that was defined by some truly atrocious decisions by Referee Colin Webster.

Webster booked Mozika for challenging with his elbow – always a curious thing to write up considering leading into challenges with an elbow is recommended as a sending off offence but leeway is given – and then less than a minute later watched the same player dragging back Syers by the shorts in the penalty area. Webster watched the offence and for reasons best known to himself and contrary to the Laws of the game decided to do nothing about it.

Other decisions – if an elbow is an elbow, if Efe Sodje’s foul on Gareth Evans was a “last man” and should have resulted in a red car – are judgement calls and one has sympathy with them but to watch a foul by a player you have just formally warned with a yellow card and to ignore that is just not officiating the game correctly.

I do not enjoy pointing out the failings of Referees – I would rather they read the rules of the game and applied them as written – but Webster needs to read those rules and understand them more fully before he officiates another game because today he showed that he does not know them well enough to referee a football match.

The players deserved better – both teams – because credit Bury with a stoic and committed display which could have merited a point or more had they had a little more luck but when they enjoyed their best chance they found Lenny Pidgeley – who signed a new contract to stay at City until the end of the season – as a solid block in the centre of the goal.

City though will look back to Gareth Evans’ lob which bespectacled keeper Cameron Belford saved superbly or Tom Ademeyi’s blistering, fading drive which Belford took from the air and consider that this was no win of outrageous fortune.

Hard work, and well deserved.

The lawyer still inside me – I’ve been retired nearly four years now – can’t resist a quick look at Lee Bullock’s suspension. It’s not the rights and wrongs of whether he should have been given his two yellow cards against Hereford – Bullock himself is quoted as saying it was his own fault he was sent off. It’s not even the rights and wrongs of any of his earlier yellow cards, especially that one from Mr Attwell at Morecambe for an innocuous foul on the half-way line, when Mr A didn’t wave his piece of plastic after several more serious offences were committed in more dangerous areas of the pitch.

What gives me pause for lawyerly thought is the received assumption that Bullock will be serving just a one game suspension, despite having been sent off and, in the same game, having been given his fifth yellow card of the season to date. I pause further to wonder whether this ‘received’ assumption might yet be changed by a letter not yet received from the Football Association, perhaps one of the thirty million somewhere in a Royal Mail sorting office. More likely, these days, even the FA have access to e mail and fax machines. So there’s still the possibility of a different length of suspension.

But let me carry on with the one game assumed ban and quote a passage or two from the F A’s own disciplinary procedure. Paragraph 6(a) (i) of that procedure covers five recorded cautions – ‘suspended automatically for a period covering one first team match’. Nice and easy, then.

Although I shall need to come back to paragraph 6(a), let us move quickly on to 6(b), which deals with ‘players sent off under law 12(7)’ – two bookings in the same game, to me and you. The player ‘will be suspended automatically from FTCM commencing forthwith, until such time as his Club’s First Team has completed its next FTCM.’ (FTCM is a first team competitive match)

Now they may look identical provisions, but I assure you they are not. The reason they are not identical is back in paragraph 6(a) again. As far down as 6(a) (viii) the procedure says that ‘Any period of suspension arising from recording cautions will commence on the seventh day following the date of his last offence.’ (It says ‘recording’, but it must mean ‘recorded’. The lawyerly instinct for looking at individual words also survives, I fear.)

So, now let’s put the two pieces together and see what happens. The two-yellows-in-one-game suspension starts ‘immediately’ and the five-bookings suspension doesn’t start for seven days. No problem there, then, since our next game just happens to be seven days after the Hereford game that gave rise to both suspensions.

But just think how it might have been if the fixture list had been only a fraction different. Suppose we’d been playing Port Vale in the JPT during this midweek. If that had been the case, the two-yellows-in-one game suspension, starting immediately after the Hereford game, would have ruled Bullock out of the midweek fixture. But the five-bookings suspension, commencing on the seventh day following the date of his last offence, wouldn’t have kicked in until seven days after Hereford, i.e. at Macclesfield. The fixture list and the FA’s procedural rules would then have combined to ensure that Bullock served a two game suspension.

So, I ask myself, can it be right that the length of suspension is determined by a quirk in the fixture list? Well, to me the obvious answer is ‘No, that can’t be right.’ And that takes me and my judicial mind right back to where I started. I was used to dealing in what legally speaking are called concurrent and consecutive terms. In short, three months and three months concurrent still add up to three months; three months and three months consecutive add up to six months. I would only use concurrent sentences where the offences arose out of the same circumstances. By definition four of Lee Bullock’s cautions arose out of different circumstances in different matches.

Does one ‘first team game’ and ‘one first team game’ add up to one or two? If the answer is ‘It depends whether you have a first team game in less than seven days’, then the rules are pretty poor and, I would say, unjust. I doubt if the answer does depend on that, although I may be being kinder to the F A than they deserve. I believe the rules should mean that one plus one equals two, no matter when your next first team game is due to be played. I doubt if the F A deal in concurrent sentences. And that means that Lee Bullock should miss Macclesfield and Notts County. But the FA are the only people who really know the answer – unless, of course, Lee Bullock knew all along and deliberately got himself that second yellow a few minutes from the end!!

It won’t be long before the FA tell Bradford City either that their own rules are unfair or that Lee Bullock will miss two games. Anyone ready to place their bets now?

In every football team, particularly those enjoying success, there are the fan’s heroes. In the main these are the eyecatching players, usually strikers because they score the goals. but there are also the unsung heroes who don’t get the recognition they deserve!
 
Stuart McCall is fond of comparing his current team with the side of ’84-’85 which won the old 3rd division championship. Stuart himself and John Hendrie immediately come to mind. But for John Hendrie there was Mark Ellis (who played on the left even though he was right footed) and for Stuart McCall there was Martin Singleton – The unsung heroes of the side.  

Today’s team is no different. the eyecatching players might be Scott Neilson, Gareth Evans and Michael Flynn but for Evans we also have James Hanson and for Flynn we also have Lee Bullock – the current unsung heroes.
 
Now I’m not in the habit of watching particular players but, before Saturday’s win over with Hereford I’d decided to pay particular attention to Lee Bullock to see how he was growing into his more withdrawn midfield role. I watched him for around 80 minutes until his totally unjustified sending off. In that time he regularly won the ball (often breaking up dangerous Hereford attacking moves in the process) and passed it, usually forwards, to a team mate in space.

Now cynics might say he was just doing his job but, it was more than that! He was doing his job well. In the whole 80 minutes I only saw him make one misplaced pass. To my mind Bully epitomises the unsung hero – doing a good job week in and week out but, because he’s not eyecatching, he won’t win many man-of-the-match awards during a season.
 
Bullock fell foul of a Referee who sent him off for a second bookable offence. In a season when we’ve had some shockers (the league seemingly saving their worst for games involving Bradford City) This chap was bad.

Fans don’t ask for much. just impartiality and consistency. OK, this ref was consistent – he got just about everything wrong, awarding free kicks for challenges which weren’t even unfair and waving play-on after late tackles, pushes in the back or deliberate hand balls. 
 
It’s a common lament that things will even out over the season. If this is the case then surely we’re due some first rate referees some time soon.

No matter what they do some people will never be popular. They will watch as others are given plaudits and get few of their own. On birthdays, at Christmas, they will get few cards.

It seems that few of the Bradford City squad will count amongst these unpopular ranks with a series of performances this season suggesting that the players contrast to those who took the field in claret and amber last season by virtue of that fact that they seem to like each other. In this 1-0 victory over Hereford United the kind of spirit – of collectiveness – was evident and proved telling.

City have a side which works hard for each other. It is raw and mistakes are made but those mistakes are viewed as team errors rather than the dagger staring which followed problems last year. Stuart McCall talks about how the mid-eighties team he played in still keep in touch because of friendships which transferred onto the field.

Stuart probably gets lots of cards at Christmas but if rumours are to be believed one of those will not be from Chris Brandon who it is said does not get along – does not like even – the Bantams Gaffer who got his team back to winning ways following two defeats with chief complaint from the City fan number eleven being that the manager will not play him in central midfield.

So perhaps Brandon’s favour was earned as he started the game in a three man middle alongside Lee Bullock and Michael Flynn in a Bantams midfield to go to battle with a Hereford United side who were expected – and did – drop two lines of four behind the ball and try play on the counter attack.

Any ire Brandon has at McCall – and the same rumours suggest that the midfielder maintains that he only remained at the club because of his boyhood support rather than a lack of interested parties who would match his never lessened wages – would be more appropriate if the playmaker put in the type of performances that made him undroppable rather than seemingly adopting an attitude that if given a chance to excel in the midfield he would excel.

How would McCall look Flynn, Bullock, Stephen O’Leary or James O’Brien in the face – how would the team ethos be effected – by cementing Brandon into a side that cried out during the second half when the Bantams needed the game taking by the scruff of the neck while he continues to be a frustratingly capricious player.

That City needed the game neck scruffing came after a first half in which the Bantams near total dominance came that produced only a goal when Gareth Evans followed in a fierce shot that came in from Michael Flynn’s right foot at the edge of the box following a series of corners City won and attempted to take short.

Evans pushed the ball into the goal five minutes before half time and celebrated on his knees shaking a fist up at the visiting Hereford supporters which left one wondering what the away fans had done to deserve the number nine’s ill advised displeasure and why the Referee did not issue him with a yellow card.

For this question was on the lips of all when Referee Colin Webster looked at a two feet off the ball lunge by Ryan Valentine on Scott Neilson that left the City winger hobbling for the rest of the game and should surely have resulted in a red card – considering that Lee Bullock was booked five minutes before for returning the ball to the corner taker when Webster had decided that a City man got the last touch from the previous cross – and only gave a caution.

It seemed obscene that minor infringements are given the same punishment as tackles as bad as Valentine’s and one had to wonder why the left back piled in on the right winger. Nothing thus far in the game had suggested bad feeling and unlike Graeme Lee’s hatcheting of Michael Boulding last month there seems to have been little chance for the little winger to have amassed enemies from former clubs. Perhaps Neilson had done some especially poor plumbing at Valentine’s house at some point.

Either way Neilson seemed to have not been especially popular and Valentine had received something approaching the benefit of the doubt and it was that sort of doubt which City ended up cursing in the opening ten minutes of the second half after Kenny Lunt dribbled the only shot on target of the game from the visitors at Simon Eastwood from twenty five yards out and the Bantams had the ball in the goal twice with Webster’s linesman ruling out both goals.

Firstly Neilson – not popular with the linesman next closest to Valentine either, perhaps it was his aftershave – was hit by a Gareth Evans and ended up with the ball at his feet to pop into the goal once balance was regained but the flag ruled the goal out despite appearing (from my position, which it has to be said was better than any of the officials had) to have been onside.

Minutes later more excellent pressing had Luke O’Brien – who has really stepped up his performance this season and looks a very able player – cross for James Hanson to dart in front of his defender and diving head home only for the same flag to rule the goal out and the same impression that City’s number seventeen was level or behind the defender when the cross was made.

Apologies for being so boring as to refer to the Rules of Football – worth a read although I do wonder if League Two games are played under these auspices – but the instruction is that the attacking player is given the benefit of the doubt in offside decisions and I simply cannot believe that that has been the case in both these decisions. Unless the linesman can say with certainty that one of both players were offside – and I could not – then the rules say he should not flag for an offside. Is he has that certainty then he is wasted in football and should be telling us what happens in the Zapruder footage.

Hanson had a second header brilliant pushed over the bar by away keeper Adam Bartlett but after the strangeness of the Valentine decision and the two goals chalked off the Bantams players looked for inspiration rather than suffering under the toils of unfair Refereeing. The excuse was become crafted in the minds of the players that should the Bulls snatch a goal – and the closest they got was a backpass that Simon Eastwood struggled with – then City would have been hard done to despite doing their best.

If Chris Brandon wanted to press his claims to be the undroppable man then this was the moment the game needed to taken by the scruff and for ten or fifteen minutes City dropped back and allowed the game to be played in their half. What should have been a good few goals to nil was in danger of becoming an obnoxious draw. Brandon was withdrawn for James O’Brien, Stuart McCall off the Christmas card list, although the win that probably resulted in the switch to a more robust middle three will maintain the manager’s popularity which after two defeats was being tested for a few.

McCall ended the game furiously confronting Referee Webster after a last ten minutes which saw the Bantams galvanised by a red card for Bullock which was in no way deserved and seemed to come out of some dark corner of Webster’s mind rather than the rules of football.

Bullock was involved in a tangle with Lunt and pulled down the former Crewe man in the middle of the Hereford half. Webster allowed the payer to wander away and then – on seeing the number perhaps – sent off Bullock who from his fifteenth minute booking had committed not a single offence and given away not a single free kick.

The rules of football – yes those pesky things again – have this to say give the referee seven reasons to book a player: unsporting behaviour, dissent, delaying the restart, not retreating at free kicks, entering the pitch without permission, leaving the pitch without permission and “persistent infringement of the Laws of the Game”.

Bullock had committed not a single offence and given away not a single free kick since being booked after fifteen minutes and the single foul that followed – and Bullock seemed convinced that Lunt had made more of the offence but regardless – does not merit a yellow card through any of those seven reasons outlined above. “Persistent infringement” cannot – by definition – be a single offence and unless he has not read the rules of football then Colin Webster knows this but decided that he would make up his own rules.

This was a disgraceful Refereeing decision which had no justification in the rules of football. They say that winning teams never complain but Stuart McCall should raise Hell over Colin Webster and his Refereeing using his own rules.

That Ryan Valentine was allowed to dive in for another bad tackle on a City player and walked away without a resultant red card was perhaps justified by the word “persistent” above but there are no way of running a football match that say that Bullock should be sent off and the Hereford number three should not have been.

Edrissa Sonko roughly handled Webster as the game petered out and was only yellow carded but the sending off which will cost the Bantams a player who is putting in the performances that Brandon needs to if he is to demand a place in the side pushed City over the finishing line. The Bantams had dug in but only after feeling a second type of injustice at the hands of the man in the middle who – for whatever reasons – went to great lengths to apply a different set of rules to the two teams on the field as best illustrated by Bullock committing one trip and being sent off and Valentine hacking once and fouling while remaining on the field.

So what should have been a comfortable victory for City was an unenjoyable slog of a match and became the opposite of the defeat to Crewe to be proud of. The chase is rarely fun in football.

Webster left Valley Parade unpopular as he no doubt will leave many grounds until he starts to referee on the basis of the rule book rather than his own whims and fancies.

No Christmas cards, no birthday cards and certainly not enough Valentine cards.