BfB

Stuart McCall will be shown off as the new Bradford City manager on Monday morning and as he returns to Valley Parade for his third coming and after many years of silent mumbles from the club expect there to be there will be much talk about the two men flanking him.

One will be Wayne Jacobs – or we at BfB hear it will be – was McCall picks the steady hand of the former Bantams left back his number two. Jacobs is a serious man, a devout Christian whose commitment to the Bantams sits him alongside any to have worn the claret and amber. If the public face of Stuart McCall for some is the Scot falling off the top of a car then Jacobs is the signal of serious intent needed to put that ghost to rest. McCall is here to do business in his first job managing a football team and wants all to see it and that is why Jacobs and not the equally qualified but publicly less sombre such as Peter Beagrie stands alongside him.

Flanking McCall on the other side is a man who’s name we omit if only for clarity of spelling (Is it the stuff in the garden or the pork product?) A local businessman with seven figures to invest in his home town club he is going to join Julian Rhodes at the helm of Bradford City’s new dawn. He has been very significant in bringing Stuart McCall back to Bradford City and has put his money as well as his faith in the new manager. He does not have ginger – or strawberry blonde – hair as the men who are charged with taking the club forward do but his arrival is no less significant.

And in the background is Julian Rhodes. Never one to cling to the spotlight and uneasy in front of the media Rhodes has had Bradford City forced upon him after getting involved in a good idea nearly ten years ago only to end up keeping the club he follows together with re-mortages and hope.

Without him and the Herculean endeavours he has faced to maintain a business where there was no business hope this day would not have come.