BfB

When I was a kid, I mean a younger kid, I wanted to be Lee Sharpe.

Not that I was a Man U fan or anything, I started at the Bantams at 1991 and cemented myself as a City fan after following from Grandstand’s vidiprinter before that, but there was something about the way the young Sharpe went from Torquay to whooping Arsenal in the League Cup for the that appealled to me. I’d try mimic his tucked in run and sidestep, to some effect.

That all faded with the onset of puberty and the transfer to Leeds but I still have a glint of affection for Sharpe, affection that colours my view of someone who has been a poor performer for the Bantams for the past few years. I stuck up for him because of old loyalties.

But something is happening to Sharpey, something strange.

After three years of in out displays, or patchy football, of promising (me only perhaps) much but delivering next to nothing, Lee Sharpe is looking good.

Not good in the same way Benito Carbone looks good, just because he is, but good as in focused, good as in like he gives a damn.

Sharpe is eyeing Gareth Whalley’s place on the inside of midfield, left hand side. Like John Barnes he wants to turn his leftwingism into a more solid role anchoring, spraying a pass, feeding the ball. People who have only been watching Lee in claret and amber would rule out any chance of him converting from ineffectual shurker to quality and quantity ball player but those who saw him terrorise right backs in the early 90s might pause and think.

Lee Sharpe was brilliant, and not just in a City way but in a good enough to play for England way. If that talent comes back, and perhaps Jim Jefferies is the man to dredge it back out, then the final chapter in the career of Lee Sharpe may not have been written and City may have found a cracking player where previously there had been a crack.

And at least one City fan will be able to say that they never gave up on the guy.