BfB

There is a worry, dear reader, that good signings are being made in League One and that shod of a manager Bradford City are not making them.

This is a problem of course. Without having a manager, a chief scout, and with having chairmen who have just arrived it at the club one doubts that anyone has a list of targets to bring in or if they do that that list is especially impressive.

The most impressive run of signings in City’s recent history came in the summer of 2012 when within a month Rory McArdle, Gary Jones, and Stephen Darby all arrived. Their arrival was Phil Parkinson’s coup and probably had not little to do with the fact that all three had played for Rochdale under Parkinson’s assistant Steve Parkin. One wonders how long a signing like Rory McArdle or Gary Jones takes to make. Jones had been shown around Valley Parade the season before he arrived but stayed at Spotland suggesting a year long chase for him but for all we know Phil might have turned to Steve one afternoon and told him the club needed a good central midfielder and Steve got on the phone.

Nevertheless the worry is that as City stand still signings are being made and the Bantams are missing out.

Using the summer transfer windows from 2010 to 2014 as a five year sample (which excludes last season, for fairness, as I’ve criticised it heavily in the past) Bradford City signed forty five permanent players. This includes loan signings being made permanent in the summer but excludes loan signings. Here is a list of those players.

Of the forty five players signed I’m going to say that fourteen were successful. By that I mean that in the season they signed they started at least two thirds of the league games the club played in the season that follow.

This criteria might seem to err harshly but the question at hand is about if the type of players needed for success are being sucked up while City are managerless and not about prospects or good pro squad men.

Any player who signed but started less than a third of the club’s games is marked as a failure.

A list of the signings between 2010-2014 who started more than two thirds of the games in the following season ordered by day and month (not year)

• 27 May 2010 – Luke Oliver – 100.00%
• 30 May 2014 – Billy Knott – 79.49%
• 7 June 2012 – Rory McArdle – 100.00%
• 9 June 2014 – Gary Liddle – 100.00%
• 22 June 2012 – Gary Jones – 100.00%
• 27 June 2014 – Billy Clarke – 82.05%
• 4 July 2012 – Will Atkinson – 68.42%
• 4 July 2012 – Garry Thompson – 68.42%
• 5 July 2012 – Stephen Darby – 86.84%
• 13 July 2011 – Ritchie Jones – 79.17%
• 29 July 2012 – James Meredith – 84.21%
• 4 August 2012 – Nathan Doyle – 89.47%
• 9 August 2010 – Dave Syers – 73.17%
• 29 August 2011 – Kyel Reid – 66.67%

A list of the signings between 2010-2014 who started less than a thirds of the games in the following season ordered by day and month (not year)

• 16 May 2014 – Matthew Dolan – 7.69%
• 27 May 2010 – Lloyd Saxton – 0.00%
• 30 June 2010 – Jake Speight – 31.71%
• 1 July 2011 – Mark Stewart – 20.83%
• 2 July 2013 – Jason Kennedy – 11.63%
• 3 July 2013 – Mark Yeates – 23.26%
• 6 July 2011 – Scott Brown – 0.00%
• 8 July 2011 – Patrick Lacey – 0.00%
• 13 July 2011 – Nialle Rodney – 0.00%
• 14 July 2011 – Andrew Burns – 0.00%
• 20 July 2012 – Alan Connell – 21.05%
• 22 July 2011 – Nahki Wells – 29.17%* See comments below
• 30 July 2013 – Raffaele De Vita – 13.95%
• 1 August 2013 – Matt Taylor – 2.33%
• 5 August 2014 – Ben Williams – 30.77%
• 5 August 2014 – Mo Shariff – 0.00%
• 5 August 2014 – Matthew Urwin – 0.00%
• 18 August 2012 – Carl McHugh – 31.58%
• 31 August 2010 – Chib Chilaka – 0.00%
• 31 August 2011 – Dean Overson – 0.00%

I shall let you, dear reader, pick more bones out of those two lists but my interpretation of them are that our recent history points to successful signings being made early – in June – and that the closer towards the start of the season one waits the less likelihood there is that the player will play a significant role in the coming year.

There is, of course, a caveat to all this and it comes in the form of the Parkin/Joned factor mentioned above. That a glut of successful signings were made in June is probably more to do with ongoing relations that it is to do with the time of the signing.

We enter into post hoc ergo propter hoc thinking here. That successful signings are made in June is a factor of having the relationships and structures in place to make those signings. In short if all the work was done (at any point) previous to the end of the last season the signings will come in June.

If we consider the end of July and start of August to be the time when clubs who do not have those relationships make signings based on who is left following the players who are picked off because of Parkin/Jones style relationships (what we call scatter-signing) then City – with no relationship at the moment – would be operating in that way were they to be bringing in player now.

Scatter-signing in June is to replicate the behaviour of August two months early.

Bradford City do not have – or do not seem to have – those relationships or structure in place at the moment. There is no one at the club who knows a Gary Jones to bring in in order to bring him in in early June.

Should Nicky Law Jnr return with Stuart McCall then there would be a June signing because of that relationship but that is not the same as sitting a manager in the office in June and telling him to bring in five faces before the Euro finish.

The clubs who are working on signing Gillingham’s Bradley Dack – who City’s Billy Knott seems to have joined the Gills in anticipation of him leaving – have been working on that signing for months. Even if City’s new manager was to be on the phone buying players today the June signings would probably be out of his reach.

And so talking about not signing players in June misses the point. It is not that the players are not signed it is that – I would say – the structure that need to be in place to bring in a Gary Jones or a Rory McArdle need to be in place before June.

New chairman, new manager, new era and all. We have to accept that Bradford City are forced to sit out the June 2016 recruitment.