BfB

Bradford City’s 2-1 win over Colchester United in the first game at Valley Parade of the 2023/24 season was the worst game of football I’ve seen and the future that it points to is dour, and depressing, and not worth my time.

This may be existential agast – I turn fifty this week – I’m going to argue that it is not. I’m going to argue that a set of bad solutions to unproblems have promoted a ludographic change in the sport which will damaged it fundamentally.

The theme of this discussion will be making changes to solve phantom issues. This theme will cleanse itself by discussion of Mark Hughes and his new tactical approach at Bradford City, but that will be a preparation for a broader, better, more interesting point.

Details

The details of the game hardly matter.

Joe Taylor gave Colchester United the lead when Harry Lewis was pressed into a turnover after six minutes. There was a pass forward in the finishing for the goal which looked to trigger an offside decision to me, but referee Marc Edwards set a tone for an afternoon where he was poor, but not the worst thing on show.

City equalised when a long ball to Andy Cook was headed down and after a fashion a rebound was put in from close range by Clark Odour. Odour had a part in the second after half-time when he played the ball onto Alex Pattison. Pattison scored a well taken goal.

I recommend watching the highlights. Indeed, all there is, is to watch the highlights.

Arrives

Earlier, Jamie Walker was booked for pulling an attacker’s shirt as that attacker breezed by the reduce City midfield. If it were so it was a grievous fault, and grievously has Walker answered it with the Yellow Card. Minutes later he was fouled, badly and again, and then substituted injured.

This arrives us at one of many problems within football today, albeit not the main problem,

Players are given the benefit of the doubt after making a bad tackles because the rules of the game are steadfastly opposed to the idea that one player may intentionally harm another. It is, the rules suggest and against the evidence of one’s eyes, unthinkable that the skilful player that is Walker would be targetted by some gnarled defender and, in being so, hampered. This does not happen, in the rules.

Yet those same rules see malice in almost all interactions which are non-violent. Every pulled shirt is a calculated attempt to prevent an advantage, every held ball the evidence of a planned operation to waste time, every mistimed stand up tackle is a player seeking to spoil the attacking flair of another.

It is, of course, a nonsense, but one that Referee Edwards plays the game within. Players are afraid to challenge for the ball, to pressure the opposition, to risk sanction, yet conversely they are aware that they will be forgiven the most egregious actions they can take.

Synecdoche

The rules of football have mutated into this form. One is always forced to ask what problems they are trying to solve? Later in the game, Emmanuel Osadebe featured a year on since the tackle which broke his leg six minutes into the first match at Valley Parade last season.

Both that violent lunge by Liam Ravenhill for Doncaster Rovers and Walker’s shirt pull on Saturday resulted in the same punishment. Without an evaluation of bad character, Ravenhill could not have possibly meant what he did, but Walker was obviously malicious because had it been accidental it would have been worse. There is only twisted logic to be found here.

Later Alex Pattison was tackled from behind and at distance by a Colchester midfielder who was uncautioned, leading to the obvious conclusion that Walker would have been better to make an aggressive tackle from behind on a player who had gone past him rather, than tug him back.

This is unexpected consequencies in action and I’m using it as a synecdoche for a wider problem. I’m building up a theme here.

Clean

So Hughes’ team won, but in an uninteresting way.

The shape is difficult to describe, but a 3-3wb-3-1 might cover it. The back three are struggling with their relationship with the two wing backs ahead of them, and Colchester had joy when they exploited that misunderstanding.

Richie Smallwood, the one in the middle, was more or less a spectator in the game watching the ball go over him to Cook, or around him as Hughes’ experimented with donut football. The game is played around the middle, or over it, but never through it. Alex Gilliead at left wing back showed more than most.

Gilliead’s job was largely to take the ball into possession from Ciaran Kelly and play it quickly with his right foot over the midfield to one of the three runners from the attacking midfield positions. While the unit shifted around the field only the three players in that line behind Cook needed to break from the donut, with Smallwood staying isolated in the middle, doing what Hughes asked, but being asked to do very little.

So the midfield was a lonely furrow, and Alex Pattison seemed to drop deep at times just to keep the captain company. Watching this system make short work of Colchester United with some ease as it and reverse the one goal deficit was interesting, although it did so without ever really revealing what the system would look like in the full flush of success.

Is this what a Donut 3-3wb-3-1 looks like when it is working? What problem is it here to solve?

Ninety Nine

It is a given that Bradford City 2022/23 were too predictable in that Cook was the focal point of attacking and if one stopped Cook, one stopped City. It seems that this newer vintage of Claret and Amber does not have that problem and is using the League’s top goalscorer as Big Jim Mark Two, or Barry Conlon Mark Three.

In Conlon, we have the apt comparison. Hughes’ team seems set up to play as if it were the last ten minutes football from the first whistle, but to do so at a glacial pace. Players are detailed to curious positions and then some are allowed to roam off-position to benefit from the chaos.

This is not Fernando Diniz or Henrik Rydström football, but it might be a projection of the same illumination, but begs the question as to what City will do when the game requires something other than sporadic firings of attacking football.

Measured, cautious, slow paced siege football requires a siege, and a wall, and a battering ram and City are often not short of any of these things, but what if the opposition want a game of football?

Gooseberry Season

“I could have told him this, but didn’t bother. We ran a bath, and held him under.” Simon Armitage.

At the end of the first half that saw Walker withdrawn injured, the officials had added nine minutes of stoppage time. Referees are instructed to make games run longer, to make up for the time lost, and to ensure that there are more minutes played. This instruction drifted down from up on high.

When I started watching football earnestly in the 1980s a football match had fifty-five minutes of active football in the ninety minutes. That number increased in the 1990s thanks to a series of innovations masterminded by Maestro turned Bureaucrat Michel Platini to sixty of the ninety, and has remained at that number ever since.

The signal of the number of minutes yet to be played being held aloft at the end of each half was an innovation of this era, as was the back pass rule which did much to create the modern game, and which Harry Lewis spent time regretting after the first goal in today’s match. In 1988 Lewis would have just picked up the ball.

Starting this year, the requirement to add time at the end of the forty-five minutes is geared around solving the problem of time-wasting. If it is a grievous fault, then grievously have we paid for it with around ten minutes seeming to be the minimum addition to each League Two match.

That time-wasting is not evident in this game – or it seems in most games – is immaterial. The change seeks to punish offenders and with no offender to punish, punishment was meted out to us, the people watching the game, in the form of a tedious absence of football.

Legal Man

When creating law, it is of vital importance to look beyond the problem solved, to the consequences of the solution.

Time-wasting in football is annoying but it mostly happens within play. The type of time-wasting that adding nine or ten minutes to the end of each half seeks to combat is already subject to punishments which could be enforced, should referees choose to enforce them.

While it might waste one’s time in general time-frittering is not time-wasting. When England were 2-1 up over Denmark in the last minutes of the Euro 2020 semi-final Harry Kane et al frittered the time away with 72 seconds of passing the ball around the field away from the Danes, but they did not waste that time. That that move ended with a Danish foul was not something the rules of football need to look to stop. There is a difference here.

When one recalls the managers most infuriating in recent seasons: Managers like Rob Edwards, Mark Cooper and Steve Evans; one is forced to also recall those managers send out teams to keep the ball away from the opposition in play, to slow down games by drawing fouls, and play for stoppages. They waste time in that they fritter that time away, lowering the productiveness of it for both teams, but that is different to those teams stealing from the clock.

Adding nine, ten, fifteen minutes onto the end of the game will not stop a Crawley or Forest Green player falling over under a light touch to win a free kick and avoid their team coming under pressure. It does not have to, as pressure is released, or more accurately cannot build, because of the added time itself.

Homo Ludens

In his seminal work Homo Ludens Dutch Historian Johan Huizinga details the development of games and specifically how games separate themselves from the real world. Why is it that white paint on grass creates a space in which a set of rules are respected inside, which are not respected outside that space?

From that, we can ask why is it that one game is played while another is not? Why is it that the game played on a 100×70 field with 22 people is more played than one played on a 200×140 with 44? Both are constructs, agreed upon by the participants as ways of behaving.

Nick Hornby talks about this in the seminal man-culture novel of the 1990s Fever Pitch, but never gets to an answer. Bernie De Koven in his The Well Played Game gets closer suggesting that fairness, and parity, are important and that what is interesting in a game is the point of balance where winning and losing lies.

Batball

De Koven imagines a typical bat and ball game where one party is unable to return the ball as being uninteresting, as is one where both can return the ball every time, pointing to the idea that what is compelling is the moment where that return exceptionally does or does not occur.

In Tennis we might gasp at a great shot which the opponent stretches for but is unable to return precisely because of that balance. A slightly poorer shot would have been returned, and perhaps a slightly better player would have returned it, but this is where the balance lies, and where our interest is.

I would argue, and I believe De Koven, Huizinga and Hornby would support this, that football is popular because it has these moments of balance occurring with regularity. The size of the field and number of players on it minimise the importance of individuals while maximising competition between individual players.

The size of the goals create an importance around accuracy and positioning for attacking players, yet seem too large to fully cover for defenders. The value of possession is based on space which is never too small to be useless but never too big to be luxurious. Football is football because of accidents of creation which have made something which maximises moments of balance, and of interest.

Dawkins Again

Who knows what the homo habilis or homo heidelbergensis of football were? Football is football because of the balances it exists within. The single unit of the game – the goal – as Hornby notes, occurs at the right level of frequency to be celebrated every time, and regretted when they do not occur.

More goals would render them boring, fewer would render the game boring. Every change sits in this context and while it is not impossible to make those changes, they risk replicating those sports which have previously failed. Add more goals and a set of Sticks to football and you’ve made Field Hockey, and that is already a less fun game than Football.

Humans did not evolve to play football, football evolved to be played by humans. It is possible that the things we ask of players are well suited to the peak of their abilities while being well rounded in those abilities. When we ask footballers to have stamina enough to regularly play seventy-five minutes of active football in two hour long games twice a week, we ask for a different type of player, a less well rounded one who is more focused on stamina.

Football is a near universal game, and most can share a field. Shaun Wright-Phillips and Peter Crouch played in the same England team because their individual talents are of use to that team. As long as Wright-Phillips is crossing to Crouch and not the other way around a successful pattern can be formed.

Rory

A football where playing four hours a week is common has stamina as the sine qua non of each player and difference is removed. For sure, all footballers need a level of fitness, but fitness is not the defining qualities of a footballer. Each player has the scope to be defined individually. Beckham is skillful, Fowler is deadly, Bellingham is balletic, Mount is aware. One replaces all those with players who are defined as having stamina.

Rory McArdle, in City’s record-breaking 2012/2013 season, played almost every minute of every game. It was an amazing achievement from one of my favourite players, and I struggle to think of any other player I’ve watched who could match that. Extrapolate the first few games of this season and McArdle’s remarkable achievement is asked of every player in almost every team.

And I like Rory McArdle, but I don’t want every player – every striker, every midfielder, every winger, every full back – to have to be Rory McArdle.

Dilution

Following Alex Pattison’s goal to make the game 2-1 the clock showed sixty minutes, although seventy had been played, of which using the ratio of one in every three minutes of a game downtime suggests that at that point forty-six minutes of active football had been played.

The clock had thirty minutes remaining, but all knew that that be added to by another ten minutes. That equates to a further twenty-six active football minutes spread over the next forty. It is worth remembering now that these new rules do not try to change the ratio of active football to downtime. They just increase time with the effect of increasing active time and downtime alike.

The active football then becomes less attractive because players have not been gifted the ability to put in more than ten minutes more of running, tackling, crossing, shooting, and harrying over the course of the summer. The same level of football gets drawn out over longer time. There is more active football, but it is less attractive. It is football played with dilution.

Given that the time after the thirty minutes left on the clock is unknown – although we assume ten minutes – and that the players would at this stage of a normal game have fifteen to twenty minutes of football within them, they are faced with an indeterminate amount of play.

True to form the Referee added nine and played ten minutes meaning another twenty-six minutes of active football making over seventy-two minutes for the third time in eight days for players who have trained on that being an extreme rather than typical.

Marathon

A Marathon, but only after twenty-one miles does the runner find out if the finish line is in five miles, or in fifteen.

After sixty minutes, unsure of where the finish line was, both teams acted in a way which was entirely to be expected. They opted to conserve energy.

For Colchester United there was no sense chasing an equalising goal because were they to do so – and exhaust themselves in the doing – they would surely concede to the less exhausted team in the lengthy stoppage time period which was to follow. Better to send the odd outrider to try to steal something rather than mount an assault.

For Bradford City there is no reason to try to score to kill the game off because, again, they would face a lengthy and unknown period of stoppage time in which they would be exhausted and Colchester United not.

Pep Talk

This reasoning might seem to but overmuch emphasis on exhaustion as a motivating factor, but not only would I argue it was evident at Valley Parade on Saturday, but that a great deal of modern football’s meta is around exhausting the opposition. Pep Guardiola has made a virtue out of forcing the opposition to chase the ball as it moves between his players, the opposition working hard to close down, and then being exploited when tired legs cannot cover space and Guardiola’s teams profit.

At Valley Parade – and no doubt in many other games – conserving energy was the defining factor of the match and rightly so. Why bust a gut to get out of midfield to try to score when the liability of being exhusted is greater than the benefits of scoring? Colchester United had more chance of scoring as a team with energy in stoppage time than they did of not conceding as a team without it having equalised in normal time.

So every game becomes one of attrition or avoiding attrition. There are attempts at goal within the game, for sure, but there is no onus on either team to act in any way which is decisive. Better avoid being easy meat for a late feast.

Stoppage

When stoppage time comes City have a small flourish, Colchester United not so, but it comes to nothing with neither teams able to give that final push to make a fist of a game. After the whistle, a half a dozen players of each side are laying on their backs, in a way which broke the heart against Carlisle United three months ago. Ambition should be made of sterner stuff.

After giving one’s all, all season, only to lose a game, and feel like there was nothing left to give to avoid that loss tested the heart on the pitch at Carlisle. Eight months of hard work had gone to naught after extra time in a play-off defeat in late May.

But this is August, and after a win, and both sets of players look exhausted.

Random Weavings

The fundamentals of fifty years of football change before your eyes.

Why press an attack if the exhaustion caused by that will rob you in an attritional stoppage time? Why add to a teammate’s attack at a cost to yourself in the final recogning of the game? When Clark Odour charges out of midfield, why keep up with him, knowing that you need that energy for the unknown swathes of injury time? Better watch his random weavings while saving energy for yours. Fitness and tiredness will be decisive.

For many of the players, Saturday’s game is amougst the top three longest active football matches they have had in their careers, but the other two have been within the last eight days.

The Marathon, but only after twenty-five miles do the runners who have trained for twenty-six, find out if the finish line is after thirty-two miles, or thirty-nine.

Aimless

Odour or Pattison or Tyler Smith or Taylor or any other Colchester player make another unsupported run forward and there is something to enjoy in the weaving darts out of midfield, but this is not football of pressure.

Pressure is to football what Iambic pentameter is to Shakespeare. It undergirds, and important in a way which is significant. Shakespeare without rhythm is just kicking a ball about, and football without pressure is a talentless hack stumbling through Marc Anthony.

That pressure can only come when the balance between expending energy and the risks of exhaustion is well poised in the way that De Koven frames it. The risks of tiredness are greater than the rewards of applying pressure.

Without pressure, attacks become discreet memes of football, each one unconnected to the last. Defence becomes rest defence, aiming players away from goal, waiting for turnovers, but never forcing them.

This looks good on TikTok, a player dribbling past defenders in a twelve-second clip, but it is not the football we know and it forgoes afternoons for spectators in favour of clips for the swipers.

Old Man, Cloud

_(We are all doomed to dream in nostalgia. Elements of the past and elements of the future coming together to make something which is not as good as either. I do not know if this is mine.)_

_(I’ve seen changes come and go, and come and stay, and addressed them all on merit and found many to be good but this one to be alienating and bad.)_

_(If this is the rubicon I drift over in a sleep, then that is so, but being awakened I do despise my dream.)_

So What Now?

In a measured interview after the defeat, Ben Garner the Colchester United Manager said that his team had played two lengthy games this week and felt that that had contributed to the defeat in which he felt his team fell short of what was expected.

City had played three. There are murmurings that this cannot be the status quo. By the time Chelsea play Liverpool, the game runs to five minutes of stoppage time each half.

Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood.

Along one path, there is a pulling back to something more like previous seasons, where game time returns to something more reasonable most of the time, and what is asked of players is in keeping with what has always been asked.

The month of 120 minute games goes the way of walking free kicks forward and penalty shoot-outs at the end of draws in League games, and many other ideas that failed to evolve.

Along the other, a game called football continues, but it is changed, and changed to tedious afternoons like Saturday where deep sitting players conserve energy against opposition runners who push mostly two, in frequently three, forward and no more.

Then there are stories without structure, stanzas without rhythm, and games without tempo, or purpose, or point.

Post-Script

_(Making dinner and the radio is on. What was six-o-six is popularism pandered from unqualified former footballers. A Caller talks about how when supporters pay to watch ninety minutes of football, they should get ninety minutes of football.

Never mind the quality, feel the width. How ill white hairs become a fool and jester.

Make less thy body hence, and more thy grace; Leave gormandizing. Know the grave doth gape.

Jordy Hiwula’s single goal in Bradford City’s 1-0 win over Peterborough United changed the tone of the conversation around the club from a general worry that no goals would ever be scored to more of a consideration of what a fully fit Bantams would look like.

Hiwula’s goal is the only return for a first week of over seventy chances in three games and the hunt for a striker continues despite Vincent Rabiega joining on a one year deal this week.

With everyone at Valley Parade slowly admitting that the club is weeks behind in recruitment from where it would like to be Bradford City are not alone in being unprepared for the new season – Everton are only 70% ready it seems – and the five league games in August start to resemble a soft launch rather than a start with squads being assembled up to the end of August.

Take – as an example – City’s Matthew Kilgallon who for reasons personal arrived at City not fit enough to play even in a situation where only one central defender was fit. That Romain Vincelot fits so well into the position is pleasing for many reasons but all those reasons mask how acceptable being ready for September rather than August has become.

Because of this there is reason to believe that Chief Scout Greg Abbott may be able to find the striker City are looking for – Abbott, McCall, and most of Bradford seem to want a proven goalscorer – in the last weeks of the month.

Take – for example – Sheffield Wednesday’s Gary Hooper who is a proven goalscorer across four divisions, Scotland and Europe but is currently sharing time at the owls and not getting the lion’s share of that time.

With Steven Fletcher having arrived in South Yorkshire and Fernando Forestieri edging his way out Hooper has a good chance of playing. If Forestieri can be convinced to stay then Hooper is considering spending his twenty ninth year making cameo appearances from the bench.

Of course Hooper is probably out of City’s range – I doubt he is a target – but in the next two weeks it could become obvious to Hooper if he is going to get game time or not and if he is not he might decide that he would rather move on to somewhere where he gets it.

Another example is the oft talked about Adam le Fondre who has yet to feature for Cardiff City this season despite some pressing for his inclusion.

At the moment le Fondre is being well paid to go out on loan – Wolves and Bolton had him in the last few years – but as the end of the transfer window now means an inability to play for another club until the start of January the likes of le Fondre are facing a long time watching football happening around them without getting involved.

Of course this is not a new phenomenon just one with different timing. It was that players would turn up to pre-season and cast glances around the training field and play in a few friendlies to decide that New Face One and Young Kid Two were probably going to get into the team over them. Rather than bench warm for a year they looked for a move before the season started in August.

That still happened but it happens in this first month of the season. August is pre-season with fifteen points available. Last year the soft launch August pre-season told Phil Parkinson that Nathan Clarke and Rory McArdle needed a more mobile player alongside them and so Reece Burke was signed.

One shows one’s age when one wistfully recalls when a team was ready for the second Saturday in August.

So Matt Taylor of Bristol Rovers is “tired” three games into the season with the ink not yet dry on his new contract but rumours starting immediately that he is having second thoughts. Jay Simpson does not appear on the Leyton Orient team photo and speculation rises.

Which is perhaps where Abbott and McCall are poised ready for a player who shake loose who previously seems cemented into position.

To understand the problems Phil Parkinson’s Bradford City are having scoring goals at the end of the League One season – a season which has gone far better than one would have thought for much of it – one has to go back to the problems that marked the start of the season.

By August 2015 Parkinson had put the final nail into the coffin of his 4312 playmaker formation by signing Paul Anderson to add to other recruit Mark Marshall to give his team two out and out wingers.

Marshall and Anderson would be Jamie Lawrence and Peter Beagrie for the 2015 generation and City would rampage through the division with an attractiveness which joint chairmen Mark Lawn and Julian Rhodes have asked for previously.

However in the opening week trips to Swindon Town and York City, and the game at home to Gillingham, Parkinson’s plans faltered and they faltered because his team were vulnerable to counter-attacks and crosses and these vulnerabilities were caused by a hole in City’s defence.

Joke Hole

That hole was an key. The hole was a gap between goalkeeper Ben Williams and the centre of the defensive line. Whenever a ball would come into the City box Williams and the defenders would struggle with one being too far from the other and as a result opposition strikers being given the freedom of the penalty spot to exploit City again and again.

This coupled with the counter-attacking problem in that Swindon Town exploited ruthlessly. When a City attack broke down the opposition recycled the ball past the wingers and brought the ball into dangerous wide positions challenged by only the City full back, or took it past the central midfielders.

Parkinson’s first solution to this problem did not work.

Brad Jones came and left very quickly and is widely considered to have been a failure at the club. After Jones’ exit a kind of media spin was given to the remaining keeper Ben Williams – that he had “seen off” the more experienced Jones – and so could be considered solid number one material. Williams bought into that and his grown since.

Williams’ record breaking run of clean sheets has written him a paragraph in the history of Bradford City and he deserves credit for it. But how those clean sheets came about is the root of the current goalscoring problem.

Because as Jones left and Williams stayed Parkinson changed City’s approach to games, or their tactics if you will.

Mints

(Brian Clough used to say there is a lot of nonsense talked about tactics by people who could not win a game of dominoes and I’m very aware that I may add to that but I’m not a believer in the reductionist view of tactics which had taken hold at all clubs in modern football where tactics can be boiled down to how the ball is delivered to the final third of the field: long pass or series of short passes; and I’m not a fan of making the word synonymous with the word formation which is also too inexact for our uses. For the word tactics to be of use it has to be nuanced, else it is a nuisance.)

Staying with his philosophies on the game Parkinson changed how City played to stop them conceding goals. His five years at the club have shown us that Parkinson works from a solid defence forward. To this effect the midfielders would take a step back in the course of play and not commit to attacking in forward positions when City had the ball.

Flash your mind back to 1999 and Jamie Lawrence crossing from the right. In the box Lee Mills would be in the six yard box, Robbie Blake would dally at the penalty spot and Peter Beagrie would be just past the far post, just out from the touchline. That season Mills, Blake and Beagrie scored 75% of City’s goals. In addition Stuart McCall and Gareth Whalley – one forward one back – would offer short options and there would be a full back in attendance.

Consider last night at Coventry City when Kyel Reid had the ball and in the box was Jamie Proctor, and that was it.

Billy Clarke offered a short option but staying outside the box and both Josh Cullen and Lee Evans were back down field. The support from the full back was there but on the opposite side of the field Tony McMahon was not in the box looking to add to the forwards, or forward if one were more honest. Instead McMahon is stepped back making sure that if the keeper catches and throws the ball out City are not exposed.

Reverse the wings and the story is the same. This is not an issue with personnel it is a part of the way that City are playing. Everyone is a step further back than they could be, and the are further back because when they stepped forward at the start of the season they left holes which were exploited and results were terrible.

That Williams and the back four can claim a record number of clean sheets is a function of the fact that they are not fielding as many crosses, or taking on as many shots, because the midfield is balanced towards making sure that defensive holes are plugged.

Being Reice Charles-Cook

When Reice Charles-Cook – the Coventry City goalkeeper – caught the ball on Tuesday night he looked to get play started quickly for the Sky Blue team that make a fetish of possession but the quick throw to a midfielder on the wing or a player in central position in zones 4-6 are not possible because Reid, McMahon and Clarke are already in zones 4-6 getting back to zones 7-9 while – by contrast – Blake, Lawrence and Beagrie would be in zones 1-3.

Likewise when City attack Cullen and Evans do not need to venture to zone 14 – Billy Clarke lives there – so they stay in zones 8 and 11 making sure that any breakdown of play does not leave the defence exposed. No counter attacks through zone 8/11, no wide attacks leading to crosses through 4/7 and 6/9.

This approach has done wonderful things for City in the last few months – the move from struggling in lower mid-table to third in League One is a result of this approach – but were Parkinson to alter it now for more of an attacking focus then the defensive issues that mandated the approach would no doubt reappear, or at least Parkinson might worry they would.

The defence – and specifically the control gap between Williams and the defensive line – has not been solved just been filled up with players sitting back. It is control through numbers. Shrewsbury Town’s equaliser will remind you that that issue between Williams and his defensive line has not gone away.

And Parkinson knows this.

Character and confidence

He knows that if he were to add – for example – Filipe Morais to the right flank over McMahon with instructions to get into zone 17-18 then the team would return to the same concession problem it had at the start of the season. He knows that if he had Billy Clarke (or someone else) press alongside Proctor in zone 17 rather than staying in zone 14 then the result without be that Cullen and Evans came forward, making the entire defensive unit harder to control, and the concession problem would emerge again.

Parkinson might try beat opposition sides in a scoring contest a la Kevin Keegan trying to win games 4-3 but considering the statistic talked about about City’s forwards scoring one goal in thirty shots over the last two games – which I would argue were low quality shots, because of the options in the zone 17 mentioned above – one doubts that the manager will change his approach so drastically.

And why should he? That approach has taken a team which struggled badly at the start of the season into genuine contenders for the play-offs. That prospect did not look likely at Gillingham when the third goal without reply went in back on the 2nd of January. Parkinson has shown that he can build confidence from teams that do not concede, and that is what he has done this time.

The arguments over Billy Clarke’s missed goal at Coventry – it never looks any better – or his goal should have stood goal at Shrewsbury – it never looks offside – can continue but on a longer timeline City’s goalscoring is not about players missing the target but rather about decisions made to patch defensive weaknesses and to give the team the chance to build confidence by not being beaten.

Like it or not that is the character of Bradford City 2015/2016.

An away trip through South Yorkshire

Chesterfield away is a classic of the genre. A one goal victory that came when Bradford City ground the ambition out of the home side leaving only struggle.

Every pass forward was marshalled and pushed away by an imperious defensive line. Every easy clearance was made hard by strikers and midfielders who chased down what would have been the routine were it not for the attitude that manager Phil Parkinson has drummed into his team.

The goal came when Tony McMahon finished off a mazy run and low cross by Billy Clarke. Clarke enjoyed his best game in claret and amber and tormented the Chesterfield backline dropping into the hole between James Hanson and the midfield and exploiting it.

Chesterfield’s response – to bring on the aging Richie Humphrey – showed a team stepping back on their home turf. McMahon’s goal finished off the home team.

Parkinson would say after the game that City could have had four – indeed the post was pinged a number of times – but really the City manager oversells his policies. A one goal away win excites Parkinson – and excites me – because of the grind that has seen wins come Scunthorpe United, Rochdale, Doncaster Rovers, Oldham Athletic.

Those days are Parkinson at his best.

Playing away to teams that want to win mirrors the visits of Sunderland, or Arsenal, or Aston Villa, or the trip to Chelsea. When the opposition commits to victory Parkinson uses Hanson the battering ram occupying multiple defenders, and soaks up pressure with a mean back four.

The City manager’s problems come at home when teams sit back and defend the Bantams attack which is sporadic as shown by the third fewest goals scored total in League One. When City are forced to make the play in a game then games slip away from Parkinson.

Or sometimes things do not work.

An away trip to South Yorkshire

Text message before the game with Sheffield United: “Upper or lower?”

Reply: “Neither.”

Going to a football match should not cost more than going to the cinema. I’ve said this in the past and I believe it.

I think that Bradford City’s home pricing is a rare oasis of sense in a madness of a game in which this generation sells the game from the next and does so with a great deal of support from those getting fleeced.

Bradford City’s away pricing – and walk up pricing – is equally toxic to the game as a whole. Last time I checked it cost £25 to go to Valley Parade as an away fan. It cost £22 at Chesterfield, it cost similar at Walsall, it cost similar at Doncaster, or at Scunthorpe and so on.

The impact of this aggressive pricing that makes following football a thing that only some can afford is obvious to anyone who sees the aging supporter group and the gentrification which seems to come with it.

£27 to get into Sheffield United is certainly something I can afford but it is not something I will pay. It is a few pounds more than other games and those few pounds are hardly significant to me but I will not pay it.

And I do not know when the hand becomes the wrist nor do I feel like I’ve created a hard and fast rule never to be broken but I would not support this part of football’s attempts to gouge out of my pocket because they assume that because I can pay it they should sell to me, aged 42, for a price that me, aged 21, would never have been able to pay.

The combination of the two

If you enjoy a team that puts in a performance that is part frustration, part opportunism then you would have enjoyed the Chesterfield game.

I would argue that Chesterfield, or Scunthorpe, or Doncaster, or Oldham were little different to the game with Chelsea that defines 2015 for Bradford City: Minimise chances coming at your goal and maximise what one has at the other end.

But I cannot say with all honesty that all people would enjoy all or any of those games. I am cut from a cloth were I am more impressed with hard work and honesty on a field than I am by rabona kicks and 45 man massing moves.

I enjoy seeing a team with limitations which overcome those limitations, some of the time, and the processional football of the Champions League leaves me cold. I’ve no interest in football where the players who walk onto the field against Barcelona believe they are beaten before kick off.

Winning away at Chesterfield from few chances but battling to make sure that the team does not concede a chance let alone a goal is a good Saturday afternoon for me but probably only because of the narrative it creates.

It is enjoyable to watch my team Bradford City attempting to overcome limitations because I know those limitations. There is an overarching story of the emergence of Rory McArdle from understudy to as rock of defence, or about Tony McMahon finding a role having floated anchorless at the start of the season.

(There is also a story about James Hanson being not good enough for a transfer to a professional club, not good enough for the bottom of League Two, not good for the middle of League Two, not good enough for a League Cup semi-final, not good enough for a play-off second leg, not good enough for League One, not good enough for a team chasing the League One play-offs. One day he will not be good enough and I’m sure the phrase “we told you so” will be used regardless of all the times naysayers were proven wrong. Watching Hanson over the last few years is a lesson in the narrative of football.)

These things are seen over the course of months, and years, and not in isolation. Football, for me, is never viewed in isolation. I find the idea of turning on Sky Sports to watch any old game as mystifying as opening a book at a random page, reading twenty pages, and then putting it back on the shelf.

To watch the unfolding narrative of a team one needs to be able to watch often and prices over £20 are no aid to that for me but would have been a substantial problem to me twenty years ago. Is Sheffield United vs Bradford City £27 worth of entertainment when – if one considers it – one could take a friend to watch The Force Awakens in IMAX and still have change for popcorn?

I can’t remember a worst time

Sheffield United away is not Chesterfield. Without a game owing to waterlogging and without the regular training pitches owing to flooding reports return that City lack sharpness and are easily beaten. Football is a multi-polar world and games are hard enough when preparations are ideal.

The supporters – both Bradford City and Sheffield United – are subject to some racist chanting from Sheffield United fans and some chanting that is unpleasant. This will be passed onto The FA – who are perhaps the least able and qualified body in the Universe on this subject – but probably not to the Police.

The FA never seem to tire of their role as prosecutors of – some might say persecutors of – those whom the Law of the Land can find no case against claiming their lower standard of evidence as somehow better than the one that is required by any court which could not be prefixed with the term Kangaroo.

I would not want to have The Racists of Sheffield who were at Bramall Lane to be convicted for what they said or what they think. I’m happy to just consider them to be a collective of idiots and be done with it.

But I did not pay £27 so what can I say?

The focus

To suggest that football needs to understand better its audience is to allow the game – the collective of clubs and organisers – leniency on the charge that they understand full well that they increasingly greying men who populate matches are the ones who will dig deepest for tickets and that they exploit that.

The people who run football always need more money and they know that people aged 35+ in good jobs with good incomes will fund their extravagant demands for more wages paid, more promotions pushes, more mistakes and managerial pay-offs.

These people are the focus of football’s attention. In twenty/thirty years time when those people have retired to Saturday afternoons in more comfortable surroundings there will be no generation to replace them because that attention is so narrowly focused.

Oddly enough because of the odd combination of Wembley twice and season ticket pricing Bradford City are one of the clubs who have some protection against this – there is a healthy group of younger City fans who have been allowed a stake in the support – but mingle with the home fans at an away game and appreciate the difference.

Football is ploughing fields without planting seeds.

The longview

Sheffield United away is I am told a bad performance in isolation but not out of keeping with how Bradford City perform. When taken over a longer period City are averaging a point and a half a game away from home, as well as the odd Chelsea if you will.

Often the game plan of Chesterfield works but when it does not the result is as it was in South Yorkshire. Since Phil Parkinson arrived his plans have had a shifting impact on the mentality of the club.

When he arrived the club was congratulating itself for avoiding relegation out of the Football League under the hapless Peter Jackson. Now there is a consideration that the club is not ideally placed to reach the second tier of English football.

But I – and perhaps you – only know this having been fortunate enough to be able to afford to follow the club from that period to this.

I do not see how that will be possible for the coming generations of football.

As far as match reports go few are more erudite than Damien Wilkinson’s comment on Bradford City’s 2-0 defeat in Essex at Colechester United.

Colchester will probably have harder training sessions than that.

The names may have changed but the problems remain for Bradford City. A goalkeeper making a mistake, a team playing without character, a ninety minutes where there were not enough threats to the opposition goal. A replay of Saturday but one could pick a dozen games since City returned to League One where the same could be said.

It has become manager Phil Parkinson’s nadir. The manager who builds teams – including one at Layer Road at the start of his career – based on players who will play for each other turning out teams who do not play for each other.

Original sin

Brad Jones – signed with fanfare – may step down as goalkeeper for the weekend trip to Rochdale after his mistake led to Colchester’s first goal.

Jones’ mistake does nothing for Ben Williams’ ability to control the space between where he can reach and where he positions his central defenders which is more Williams’ problem than his occasional mistake. Goalkeeper – more than any other position on the field – is a judgement made and stuck to. It is worrying that Parkinson believes in a fluidity between his custodians.

Worrying but not unprecedented. The City manager moved between Matt Duke and Jon McLaughlin when they were sharing goalkeeping responsibilities. Only Jordan Pickford – probably as a product of his loan arrangement – has been cemented into the City goal.

Street fighting man

McLaughlin’s exit plays heavy on the mind.

In Jon McLaughlin – who is keeping goal for League One leaders Burton Albion – City had a keeper who some still recall as making more than his fair share of mistakes but was vocal enough and improving to a point where he holds down a spot in the team at the top of City’s division.

McLaughlin’s play aside when considering the character problem in the team which City put out I cannot help but recall the sight of the City goalkeeper sprinting fifty yards to punch Crawley Town players after they had started to fight with City, and City’s Andrew Davies.

And while I’m not suggesting that there is a nobility in scrapping on the field I think back to The Crawley Brawl as a galvanising point for that City team.

I cannot – with all my powers of imagination – see many of the current City squad prepared to do what McLaughlin did that night. I cannot picture Williams or Jones or many of the current team sprinting fifty yards to stick up for their team mates in a fight.

Character study

As City warmed up against Colchester United Radio Five Live hosted a debate where they bemoaned the lack of leadership within the current Arsenal team. Arsene Wenger stood accused of inheriting leaders like Tony Adams and not being able to create anyone to replace them once they had passed into memory.

Journalist Henry Winter suggested that Wenger’s problems were the problems of all football. That in an era of squad players who understand that they will not be in the side every game, and in the era of increased player movement between clubs that can see someone like Mikeal Arteta leave Everton for Arsenal having seemingly become a part of the Goodison Park furniture, that the sort of leadership and character of a Tony Adams was not appropriate.

Expanding on Winter’s hypothesis would seem that managers have pursued players who can be used sparingly, and who understand that they are not essential to a team and can be rotated out, and so they do not grow the characteristics of the ever-present leader.

League One football is not Arsenal’s concern but the hypothesis may hold true.

It is hard to have players who could be described as leaders when those players after often at clubs over relatively short terms. Not every player had it in them to concern themselves with the general performance. Most look after their own game and – if you are lucky – that of the player next to them in a partnership.

Leadership – the type that promotes character in the team – seems an increasingly rare commodity and one which is not suited to being rotate or traded. For a player who has arrived on a two year deal as most do the point in which he starts to grow into a role at the club seems to be the point where the club start to look beyond him.

Take – as an example – Lee Bullock who in 2010 was the player’s player of the year but having spent eighteen months at VP. He signed a new contract that summer but changes of manager and focus saw Bullock play less and move on. While not wanting to comment on Bullock’s skills as a player it seems uncontroversial to suggest that no sooner had Bullock settled in then he was being marginalised in the number of games he played, and ultimately in his position at the club.

With players coming and going in this way it it hard to imagine how a player will establish themselves as leaders in the group of players to have the effect on the field we talk about. After six months you know everyone’s name, after eighteen months you might have everyone’s respect, but if you are marginalised after that how do you lead?

It has always been thus.

Stuart McCall was made, not bought, and both Andrew Davies and Gary Jones who also typified the trait were rehabilitated having started their role at the club as curios and ended them as key men.

Parkinson needs to grow leadership from within the squad – and perhaps allow the squad to promote their own leader – and that is a process which takes time if it happens at all.

Right now we are waiting for that before the club can progress.

A side note, for the foolish only

There is no question of another manager being best suited to carry out that process.

Perish that thought.

History

Until leadership emerges within the squad City are subject to defeats and bad performances as befits any team. Two defeats – marked out because of their lifeless performances – are set in the context of a season which is in turn set in the wider context of the club’s history.

Just like the display against Gillingham in September 2001 – a 5-1 win which represents the best I’ve ever seen City play in a season which had little else of skill – the highs and lows are modulated to fit in with the overall view of the season.

The good are forgotten in bad seasons. The bad in good ones.

Much of what came before the Crawley Brawl is not remembered now. The brawl itself though – the way the squad stood literally shoulder to shoulder in the fight – seemed to jump start the team spirit of 2013 and beyond.

Colchester United 2-0 away will sink into that context too, providing Phil Parkinson can find another way to galvanise Bradford City, to create team spirit where there is none, and to enable the team to create its own leaders and character.

Before we begin

Ask me who I think the best manager is I say Brian Clough. Ask me who my favourite is I say Bobby Robson.

There are many reasons I have such high regard for the former England and Newcastle United manager and I am not alone in holding him in high esteem. The Brazilian Ronaldo was signed by Robson’s PSV aged seventeen and considered the manager a Second Father.

Robson brought a dignity to his football. When asked about Diego Maradona’s handball in 1986 he said only “Well, he knows he cheated”. When asked if he thought about what would have happened had his England side not lost on penalties to West Germany in 1990 his reply was a haunted “every day.”

When he watched his Newcastle United team beat Bradford City 4-3 and was asked about the poor defending on display he told the journalist who asked him that he has seen a brilliant game of football between two great teams and that he should go home to his family happy.

“That is what I’ll be doing.” he said.

Only one team in it

Shall we clarify how much of a favourite Millwall were presented as before the FA Cup Third Round. There was a chance of an upset at The New Den on the Saturday morning but when the game kicked off the media focus was elsewhere. The City game lurched back and forth with one team taking the lead, then the other. One wondered if there could be a cup tie giving more entertainment.

Two goals for Billy Knott and a couple of defenders struggling to cope with James Hanson who – if City lost – would probably have been the player sold in January to balance the books. The game seemed to matter.

At 3-2 with ten minutes on the clock it seemed that Bradford City would have something of an upset but Ricardo Fuller scored late and in the reply it was considered that City would have more of a chance.

Favourites now then. Valley Parade bustling after a successful campaign to hashtag-be-the-difference based on the anticipation of a fourth round trip which would take City to Stamford Bridge, home of Chelsea.

Chelsea were and are top of the Premier League. It was anticipation. The chance to be against the best.

And then it began

And it was over very quickly.

The sixth minute dismissal of Mark Beevers was already against the run of plan. The Bantams had put in three corners before Andy Halliday put a ball forward to James Hanson who outpaced Mark Beevers. Beevers who pulled him back and the Referee did as they do.

Two minutes later Hanson was heading a flicked on corner in to suggest that City should start preparing for the trip to Chelsea. Ten minutes later and another ball in was loose in the box watched – watched – by three Millwall players. Jon Stead had time to cross oceans and acres to put the ball into the goal. He did.

The rest of the story, dear reader, you know. Halliday, then Knott again and Millwall ended up paying their supporters back for turning up.

And so we asked the question

Were Bradford City good or Millwall bad?

The question did not dare suggest itself until after Saturday’s trip to Yeovil Town. Millwall gave up but – it must be remembered – they gave having started from their position of strength in the first game.

When Lions manager Ian Holloway talks about how he has never seen a team collapse in that manner he excuses himself of amount of time which passed in which the advantage in the tie – not just the replay – past from South London to West Yorkshire.

That a team has a poor performance is almost always the result of a good display by the opposition. Bradford City had got into a habit of making games difficult for opposition sides from the divisions above in the League Cup. Make every free kick difficult, make every throw in prompt, run for every ball to make the defender run too, make every passage of play into something that presents a difficulty for the opposition.

Bradford, 2000

When Bradford City beat Chelsea 2-0 in the Premier League on Benito Carbone’s home debut the performance represented something of a high watermark.

I once saw David Wetherall – defender in that side – asked if he thought that City had only won because Chelsea were so bad that evening that they beat themselves. Wetherall could hardly understand the question and struggled to answer.

He mumbled “erm, not really.”

Bradford, 2015

As Millwall manager Ian Holloway kept his team in the dressing room for an hour following the game Phil Parkinson’s Bradford City side took the plaudits.

There was a crispness to how the playmaker midfield – abandoned of late but reasserting itself – worked with Billy Knott in the forward midfield position and all over the pitch players could be proud of great performances.

The pitch was covered with high watermark performances. Filipe Morais’ ability to find the rhythm for the inside midfield role as distinct to that played when on the wing seemed like a justification for his two and a half year contract. Morais is a more useful player than first he seemed and his ability to play simple football most often sets him apart from other players who show off tricks to try convince all that they are more useful footballers than they are.

Andy Halliday was praised for his steady work ethic. The back four for their solidity. When Alan Dunne throw James Hanson into a wall and goalkeeper David Forde punched Billy Knott in the face City were even praised for how they all stood together in the brawl that followed.

For City talk moved to a game with Chelsea of course, but also to play offs and possible promotion. By contrast Holloway was telling his charges that eight changes would be made for Saturday and a new captain would be appointed as they prepared for something like a slaughtering.

And that night I remembered my favourite maxim of Bobby Robson.

Having won European trophies with Ipswich Town, and having been knocked out without a win of Euro 88. He had taken England to semi-finals but been the subject of very personal criticism Robson had experienced enough of football to advise this:

“You are never as good, or as bad, as people tell you you are.”

Yeovil, 2015

Perhaps it was the idea that the club he was playing was selling tickets for another match on the day they faced his side but Yeovil Town manager Gary Johnson sense that his team which had not won since September would get something against City.

It was in the air.

The Bantams too light in the tackle perhaps fearing suspension, too slight in the challenge perhaps fearing injury. Or perhaps a ten minute game against Rochdale followed by a mid-week cup tie on a heavy Valley Parade pitch just took it out of the team. Either way City were a shadow.

Gozie Ugwu scored the only goal of the game and Parkinson will have been pleased with a second half where his team pressed more but City suffered a second league defeat in two. This one was against the team bottom of the league.

And so in an atmosphere of discontent over tickettng for the Chelsea game Parkinson’s side were driving back into ill temper.

Not good enough was the general tone and in fact not good. The unexpected high watermark was expected to be the new standard.

Here comes the fear

Chelsea manager José Mourinho described the game against Swansea City as “the perfect game”

The Londoners were magnificent in putting five goals past Swansea City without reply. They have a fluidity in their forward four which one doubts Andrew Davies and Rory McArdle will have faced before and they have John Terry and Gary Cahill ready to go man for man with Hanson and Stead.

It would be a folly to suggest that Chelsea have all the ability by City have character because without character Chelsea would not be the top of the Premier League.

And they are top of the Premier League, and they are playing well.

Chelsea are playing the best football in the country at the moment and they have won every league game at Stamford Bridge this season.

One wonders what to expect next week in West London. One wonders what we will go home and tell the family.

Lisbon, 1992

When he was appointed Sporting Lisbon manager in 1992 Bobby Robson appointed José Mourinho – then a scout at another club – as his interpreter. Robson took Mourinho to Porto, and then to Barcelona.

When paying tribute to Robson following his death Mourinho said that Robson had told him the most important thing in life:

“You are never as good or as bad as people say you are.”

When Phil Parkinson got ready to go in at half time at Brisbane Road to give his team talk to a City side that were beating Leyton Orient 1-0 he must have been thinking about how simple this game of football really is.

At a corner the ball was delivered deep to Aaron McLean who spun off his man and ended up at the back post on his own. One touch and City never really looked back all afternoon against a Leyton Orient team who are much vaunted in third place but never really looked capable of breaking down the Bantams defence.

And while City had choked badly on Tuesday night against Walsall there was an ease to the play in a game in which the Bantams were not asked to make the attacking running. The same problems were obvious but they mattered less once McLean had got his second goal in City colours.

While a goal ahead and with the ability to sit deep and try use the power of McLean and Jon Stead up front or the pace of Adam Reach or Kyle Bennett to get behind a team which needed to win Parkinson could watch the second half confident that his team would win.

Sit deep, make possession difficult for the opposition, hit from set plays. It worked against Leyton Orient, it worked against Arsenal. Wry smiles all round.

But smiles from afar form Parkinson who was sent from the stand after a scuffle in the Orient tunnel following a handball by Andrew Davies which occurred after the half time whistle. It was Clive Thomas refereeing but it was as much as City had to cope with.

Stead’s arrival to cover the injured James Hanson and Andy Gray who – while also injured – did nothing to impress on Tuesday night gave Parkinson the luxury of an effective target man on Saturday without the worry of not having one for Tuesday night’s trip to Coventry City.

City go to Coventry City and both teams are on 48 points which would – last season – have ensured League One survival. One point is probably enough to rubber stamp survival for both and is perhaps the simplest outcome of the game. That The Sky Blues have achieved this from administration and The Bantams have done it from 7th in League Two will give both managers a chance to have something to smile about.

Not that they will smile at each other. Coventry City boss Steven Pressley called Phil Parkinson’s tactics after the 3-3 draw at Valley Parade earlier this season “dark ages football.”

The enlightenment of football probably eludes both these teams but neither have done as well as the slick passing of Leyton Orient who tried pass and move and ended up as thin waves ebbing away from a solid Bantams defence and beaten by a set play.

Pressley’s point is not lost but it assumes much. It assumes that Parkinson – a football manager given to elements of coaching modernity – has not looked at the way the game is played in League One and concluded that the most simple way of playing football is the most effective. That the enlightenment of football analysis tells him that dark ages football works.

On afternoons like Leyton Orient away it is worth reflecting that the simplest answer is often the best.

If Phil Parkinson could have been in two places at once at Layer Road Colchester on Tuesday night he would have been.

He would have been in the Bradford City dug out watching a team win 2-0. He would have been happy to see James Hanson barge his way past two defenders to power a headed goal in in the first half, he would have been happy to see Kyle Bennett score in the second and at full time he will have reflected that after a hard Winter Spring is starting to come for his Bradford City side.

But he would have been in the Colchester dug out too, ten years ago.

He would have been that rookie manager starting out in the game just as Joe Dunne is now. He would have got the bit between his teeth and got his teeth into City in a way that Colchester failed to do.

One wonders what the one Parkinson would have shared with the other. What he would impart back through a decade of experience. Ten years ago no less than Bantams gaffer Colin Todd was calling Parkinson the enemy of football. Perhaps he would have shared a smile that Parkinson – for any validity in Todd’s statement – will always be better thought of at Valley Parade than the former England player was.

Parkinson took two seasons to get Colchester to the top of League One. After 99 games he had a third wins, a third draws, a third defeats but he stuck to his principals and promotion followed. The older Parkinson might underline that point.

He might say “Son,” as all of us would, “make sure you never let those principals slide. It’s what will matter in the end.”

Parkinson’s time at Charlton Athletic was the holding pattern of his career. A nothing of a time when he was not his own man nor was he surrounded by his own men. He has, he has said, promised Mrs Parkinson that he would assure he would never get into that situation again.

Hull City things were different. He stuck to principals about how he wanted senior players to behave and as a result they stuck the knife into him, between shoulder blade, and it seemed that his chance had gone when Phil Brown took what he had and took it to the Premier League.

One wonders what it would have been like to be Parkinson in 2007 watching Dean Windass send Hull to the top flight thinking that if only you had allowed Ian Ashbee to do what he wanted then you would have been leading that charge.

“Be calm,” the older Parkinson would have said, “you are making the right decision.”

And when Bradford City turned him down to appoint Peter Taylor Parkinson had to cool his heels and not jump at a job that would not have served him well. “Be calm.”

Its hard to imagine that any young, ambitious man would have listened to an echo from the future. “Make your own mistakes” might have been the right thing to say.

And then, thinking of the persistence it has taken to stand by his principals this season, he might have added “but don’t make them twice.”