BfB

Put your self in the place of a professional footballer this summer. You have an eye on the World Cup like everyone does but that is not within your province as you find yourself out of contract having had a season in League One or Two.

South Africa is far away, West Yorkshire offers you a chance and that chance is a meeting with Peter Taylor and Mark Lawn about a new contract at Bradford City.

Such is the situation as Lawn reveals the Bantams have had discussions with some players. Talking to the Telegraph and Argus Lawn beamed

Two or three have come back to us and made it known that they’d like to play for Peter (Taylor).

Football transfers have changed beyond recognition in the last fifteen years. At the top level players are able to stride like Gods between clubs being flattered and wooed between clubs. Barcelona’s pursuit of Cesc Fabrigas is reported to include half of his salary of £9m paid on his first day.

Somewhere between Fabrigas and the lads City are trying to sign the balance of power shifts and players are left trying to impress potential clubs. A call after a meeting to say you would be excited about working with Peter Taylor is a wise move, but one suspects that the players involved would have been as excited about any gaffer, or at least say they were.

Players flatter the clubs that chase them, clubs flatter the player and one hopes that Peter Taylor has enough experience in the market to help Mark Lawn see through the flannel. Lawn negotiated the deal that saw Chris Brandon end up as a drain on the club but unable to play another game.

Much is being made in the message that comes out of Valley Parade about Taylor and it is not hard to see why. Taylor is Lawn’s man and much has been made of the new manager and his ability to get City into fighting shape over this summer to result in promotion next. He is not alone with new Gillingham boss (and former captain of Taylor’s Gills) Andy Hessenthaler being told that promotion is expected this term on the day of his appointment.

So Lawn begins to try maximise the Taylor factor with stories about the attempts to improve the quality of the pitch and the newly found training facilities being trumpeted as the tools a manager needs to do his job afforded to him by Lawn to get the job done. Let us not consider the £650,000 previously spent on players in preference to these changes.

Backing Taylor – and giving him what he wants off the field – is good sense but has so far not proved to be good business with season ticket sales down. Suggestions of how to address this problem are plentiful but it is worrying that should Taylor’s side not be riding high in January when next season’s tickets are to start to be sold then demand may fall further.

The Taylor factor depends on success – certainly more so than the support of Stuart McCall or Colin Todd the former being iconic, the latter clear on the restrictions he was working under – and should that success not follow then Lawn is hoisted on the petard he has created.

Every season we would like promotion but one worries if The Taylor Factor means that this season, for some people at the club, we need it.