BfB

It will become obvious, dear reader, how little new Bradford City owners Edin Rahic and Stefan Rupp are like former Bradford City owners Mark Lawn and Julian Rhodes and how that difference is going to change the club over the coming years.

It was noticeable when talking on Radio Leeds that City’s James Mason told a story about how Stuart McCall – when he was approached for the City job in 2007 – was told by Julian Rhodes that had he not accepted the role then the club may fold. Indeed we might recall that the weekend after McCall’s final game Rhodes was faced with the same existential question over the club.

As Lawn and Rhodes recede into City’s history – where they will enjoy a luxurious place no doubt – one can expect lips like Mason’s to continue to loosen and the stories to tell themselves. When they do Bradford City will have moved on.

And moved on with Rahic and Rupp who are starting to generate warmth amongst City fans. Rahic took to a flat cap in Wednesday night and impressed people. His plan is to prepare a club for The Championship and allow football osmosis have its effect.

Having kept the season ticket prices “low” – of in German terms “high” – there was a move towards lower match day prices to £20. One wonders how far into a German model the pair will go and one assumes not to giving 50%+1 of the club away to supporters.

Rahic and Rupp’s changes to the club are glacial. There is much talk about improving the infrastructure around the club which had been previously underfunded with what seemed to be an effort from previous manager Phil Parkinson ensuring that as much of the budget was spent on the first team as it could be. It was noticeable that the new Bolton Wanderers manager has noted that he was not wandering around his new place of work in awe of the facilities he now had at his disposal.

A stark contrast to Benito Carbone’s statement that when he arrived at Bradford City he could find “Nothing that resembled a football club.”

City’s trusty facilities in Apperley Bridge have been subject to improvements but one wonders how much of Rahic and Rupp’s planning might include a move away to somewhere bigger, better, and more well suited. Peter Taylor had agreed a move to Weetwood in Leeds and Geoffrey Richmond was keen to build new facilities at the top of the M606.

City’s scouting structures have never been especially well stocked but in Greg Abbott Rahic and Rupp – and Stuart McCall – have appointed the highest profile person in that position the club have ever had signalling an increase in importance of the role. Forget Abbott as a former player City have never had a former manager in the role.

The importance of Abbott will become more obvious in time but from Rahic’s statements it seems that something of a transfer committee – or at least a transfer group think – has been build up where manager, chairman and Chief Scout get heads around a table to discuss not only the current transfer hunt but the plans for the future.

Assuming that Abbott’s future is not tied directly to McCall’s this gives City a possibility of institutional retained knowledge. Also it summons up the image of Parkinson and his Chief Scout Tim Breaker sitting down with Mark Lawn to talk over – rather than tell – which players they should be signing.

When do these changes manifest themselves? Slowly, one suspects, but in a determined way the fabric of the club around Bradford City is going to be different from this point on and different in a way which builds into place structures which have long been needed.

The season starts and one thing is obvious: Bradford City will be promoted.

That is obvious. It is obvious because I’ve read it in FourFourTwo and it is obvious because Bradford City beat Champions Chelsea last season and that must mean that Bradford City can win League One.

It is obvious because City have brought in some real quality in the form of Paul Anderson and Mark Marshy Marshall, and while seeing Andrew Davies go is hard seeing Mark Yeates and Andy Halliday go is not.

And it is obvious because City finished a place off the play offs last season, and every season Phil Parkinson has improved Bradford City’s league finish, and as we all know no one ever gets in the play offs and does not win.

It is obvious and because of that it is a thought that has passed the mind of even the most negative Bradford City supporter.

No matter how many layers of cynicism a person might surround themselves with one cannot escape that feeling on a sunning Tuesday morning that this year is the year that City return to the top two divisions for the first time since May 2004.

But wait…

A Barnsley website who had, one assumed, lost Jason McKeown’s email address asked me to preview the coming season. They asked what my realistic view on the Bradford City season was. I chewed my pen (metaphorically speaking) and considered beating Arsenal, beating Aston Villa, late serge and beating Burton, Wembley again, beating Chelsea, getting to Wembley for a major Cup Final.

It struck me that at Valley Parade of late realism is in short supply.

And perhaps in that context it is excusable if all of us go on a little fantasy safari when considering the prospects for the season that starts at Swindon on Saturday.

The counter to those thoughts are the huge gulf that was obvious between Bradford City and Bristol City in the mauling of last season and the general lack of character in the team around that time. Reality comes in wondering if the Bantams have a Marlon Pack/Luke Freeman pairing as Bristol City had or a back line as strong as the one that took Preston North End up? Or a 25 goals a year striker?

At that point obvious stops being the operative word.

The multi-polar world

The temptation is, of course, to take the team one follows in isolation and to consider that if your team has done well in recruitment, or preparation, then it will improve in absolute terms in League One. League structures are always relative.

You can be better than last year (or worse) but your position will on the whole be decided by the strength of the other teams in the League. Was the Benito Carbone team in the second year of the Premier League worse than the one which finished 17th the year before?

It certainly was at the end of the season but after the other win over Chelsea in August 2000 was the team worse or was the problem that there were no Watford, Wednesday and a woeful Wimbledon dropping like a stone to finish beneath them?

Football is a multi-polar world. Your league achievements are necessarily measured against the other teams around you. It might be obvious that City have improved (or not) but have they improved more than the teams around them in League One?

Looking at the teams in League One this season first day opposition Swindon Town lost in the play off final last season which normally denotes a challenger but they seem to have lost a lot of players and are blooding a new team.

Relegated clubs can be strong but few will fear Millwall considering how easily the were brushed aside eight months ago at Valley Parade. Wigan Athletic have a lot to do to end a losing mentality which has come into the club since it got to an FA Cup final three years ago. As for Blackpool it is very possible they will carry on where they left off last season and finish bottom.

The likes of Peterborough United, Doncaster Rovers, and Barnsley would all argue that they have as much of a right to be considered promotion contenders as anyone. Scunthorpe United, Bury and Fleetwood Town have spent money to get where they are but not Bristol City levels of money and even if they had sometimes when you spend money you get Aaron McLean.

I have a belief that Burton Albion are worth considering as having an interest in the play off places. They are a club that seem able to transcend managerial changes and maintain steady progress. Coventry City have potential and in Tony Mowbray they have a pragmatic manager.

All of which leaves Sheffield United as being everyone’s favourite for promotion. They reach semi-finals, they bubble under in League One, they have a strong fan base and get great noisy crowds. They seem to have everything that a club that is trying to get out of League One wants.

Except for the manager.

They have their second choice as manager.

Nigel Atkins manages Sheffield United now but they wanted to take Phil Parkinson to South Yorkshire. It seems that the Blades boardroom came to the same conclusion that echoes around the City manager.

Parkinson: Special One

If all league football is relative then perhaps management is absolute.

Perhaps a manager who improves a team always improves a team. Perhaps when Parkinson is given the chance to manage – a chance Hull City did not give him in his brief time at that club but did at Colchester United – he will always improve a club as he has Bradford City.

It is hard to draw a conclusion but Parkinson’s admirers are many and growing with every achievement.

From the outside when looking at the twenty four teams lining up in League One some teams have spent more, and some teams have more season ticket holders than others, but no team has a better manager in a better position to manage his club than Phil Parkinson at Bradford City.

Parkinson has carved a space out for himself. He arrived at a club where Mark Lawn was accusing the players of not passing to a prospective signing, that had had a manager who (reportedly) felt bullied out of the club, and where the dysfunctions at the club had become endemic.

The success Parkinson earned on the field gave him the scope to create the role he wants off it. Parkinson is as powerful a manager as Bradford City have had but still had challenges to his role. One could worry about how success would be maintained should he exit if one wanted but more important would be ensuring that he is allowed to do his job and shapes the club around that.

We are, perhaps, lucky that the Sheffield United approach and the moment Parkinson had to bend the knee to the boardroom were separated by six months. Imagine starting this season without Parkinson. Where would thoughts of promotion be then?

When looking at which teams will be promoted what is most often the decisive factor? It is not in the quality of players but rather the quality of manager. The thing that unites the clubs that went up was that they had experienced managers who are spoken of in terms of their quality.

What Steve Cotterill, Karl Robinson and Simon Grayson offered last season is the thing that Phil Parkinson offers this. Likewise when José Mourinho got over his defeat at City by winning the Premier League it was – we are told – because he was the best manager. Success – the theory goes – goes to the best manager.

That, at least, is obvious.

150 psychopaths

If I told you that somewhere in Bradford 150 psychopaths would be getting together you’d probably only want to know where that get together was so you could avoid going at all cost but I am going to tell you that and you are going to go to that get together.

Medulla Oblongata

The word “psychopath” has been mangled by popular culture.

When we use the word we mean a kind of a mad axe-murder set apart from society. Alfred Hitchcock, Thomas Harris, and Bret Easton Ellis have given us the timid psychopath, the charming psychopath and the slick psychopath underlining the fact that psychopaths can come in many forms but the word is always linked in our minds to murder.

This is a problem for people who study “psychopathy” because the personality disorder itself was not medically defined as being linked to violence. Some psychopathy researchers used the term “sociopath” to try get around the horrific connotations. In the precise world of medical research licence is given for the terms to be used interchangeably.

It is thought that psychopathy is caused by a misfiring in the brain so the unconditioned fear stimulus in the medulla oblongata does not work in some people as it does in what we call “normal” people.

Because of this they lack the ability to comprehend how other people have fear, and so in some cases they think that other people’s emotional states are a facade. They cannot feel what it is like to be someone else, because they cannot feel or at least a large amount of feeling is not open to them.

Most people do not understand the ramifications of that (including myself) until they are spelled out.

A psychopath has no empathy. They don’t feel bad about bad things they do.

How to find out if you are a psychopath?

According to author and Harvard lecturer Martha Stout you are not a psychopath if you have enough sense of your feelings to ask if you are one.

So worry not, dear reader.

Stout’s book The Sociopath Next Door postulates that one in a hundred of the general population is a sociopath and that the condition is much more common than we give it credit for.

Stout’s research presents us with the sociopath as a mimic and as a Little Hitler. They try to copy other people’s emotions to fit in with society not because of a need to join society but to try exploit society to control their part of it.

If by now you are thinking that you know a half a dozen psychopaths then you are not alone and owe it to yourself to read Jon Ronson’s The Psychopath Test. Ronson learns how to spot psychopaths from the man who wrote the checklist that defines what psychopathy is: Robert Hare. The list is the PCL-R and when answering the twenty questions on it one can spot a psychopath.

And when Bradford City play Shrewsbury in the first game of next season we can expect a crowd of around fifteen thousand people you will have plenty of practice because – as I promised and as Stout suggests – you will willingly get together with around 150 psychopaths.

Why Mark Lawn is not a psychopath

The ability to empathise is what stops people from doing all manner of things.

It is what stops you cutting queues in traffic understanding how angry people cutting queues in traffics makes you. Its what stops you from cutting the throat of someone who does cut a queue because not only can you imagine how horrible murder is, you always imagine how bad the family would feel, and how bad prison would feel for you, and you going to prison would effect for your family.

Of course if you do not feel empathy you might cut the queue. In fact having no empathy allows you to cut all sorts of things. Like jobs. Being good in business is about making hard decisions – or so the cliche goes – but decisions like who to put out of work are far easier if the person making the decision does not think about the emotional effects on the person out of work, on their family, on their community.

In fact a lot of the business cliches are about removing emotion from the world of work. “Leave it at home”, “Don’t bring it to the Office” and so on. You can hear phrases like this banded about every office and not by the percentage of people who are psychopaths but by many people. The workplace in this sense he been shaped to lack empathy by people who have no empathy.

Stout and her peers suggest that the business world has been remodelled around the most successful people in the business world and that the most successful people in the business world are psychopaths.

The higher up in business one gets – Stout et al say – the more instances of sociopathic behaviour one finds. At higher levels rather than one in a hundred people being a psychopath, one in twenty-five are.

This is not, oh cynical reader, building up to a claim that Mark Lawn is a psychopath.

In fact his obvious emotional outpourings on TV and in interview, his emotional attachment to the club which struggles for most of his life, and many, many other things would see him score low on the PCL-R.

I’m not entirely sure that the same could be said for everyone who has been in the Bradford City boardroom though and Stout’s findings would suggest that it is absolutely not the case and that at some point presently, or past, on of the people inserting a control on Bradford City is a psychopath.

The same is true about Prime Ministers and Presidents. The higher up you go the more the prevalence of psychopaths. Obviously some have held the top jobs. Christopher Hitchens stated that Henry Kissinger – who he charged with responsibility for the massively destructive Vietnam war – had “the mind and record of a psychopath.”

Robert Hare and others are of the belief – and I paraphrase – that psychopathy is what makes the world go round.

Deep breath, and back to football

Football is a microcosm of the world. If it happens in the world it happens in football and so if we are prepared to consider the suggestion that psychopathy is the driving force in the world it stands that we should consider if it is the driving force in football, and, in football support.

The game itself is governed by a set of practical laws and punishments. The reason to not handle a ball is not because it will make the other team feel bad, it is because the punishment will follow in short order. I’m sure that there is something to be said for the role of psychopathy in creating determination in players but it is beyond my (limited) understandings.

Off the field though what are we to make of football’s level of empathy? Very obviously not much. The FA accuse FIFA of acting badly while in turn being accused of only acting for The Premier League who propose ideas which seem massively out of step with the Football League and on and on downwards.

But Hare et al have an approach which says that structures like these are shaped by people – the people in them – and as such a question like “Are Manchester City a psychopath?” is wrongly phrased.

I think that a lot of – but not all – people at boardroom level are exonerated too. I am certain that there are people working at and owing football clubs who would score highly on the PCL-R but only because they are the product of a merger between the corporate world and the world of football support. So perhaps it is worth looking at the world of football support to see how it is shaped by psychopathy.

Where is the psychopathy in football?

The first thing to point out is that the PCL-R is a nuanced tool and that it is not applicable to entire subcultures in any other way than to look at specific people within that subculture. I’m not about to declare that football support is a psychopath.

What I wonder though is is football support (inside and outside of the structures of the game) shaped by psychopathy in the way that Stout et al suggests business is? If we look at the PCL-R do we recognise the traits we see in football supporters beyond the 150 psychopaths at a Bradford City game.

Some of the traits on the list we strike off immediately as not being knowable: Sexual promiscuity (point eleven) and the tendency to many short-term marital relationships (point thirteen) for example.

Others leap from the page at us. Who could not say of the modern football supporter that they do not display a need for stimulation. This is the third point on Hare’s PCL-R and one only need to think about the 24 Hour Sky Sports News or the relentless monitoring of players on Twitter to underline how football support seems to need that constant stimulation.

Points two and thirteen on the list are “grandiose estimation of self” and “lack of realistic long-term goals” which are a given in football. It is rare that there is not a football supporter who genuinely believes that his club is different and by different we mean better than others and often the thing that stops that being better is that the people running the club are seem to be holding it back and if only they would do differently then the long term future would be glorious.

Others one may make a case for. Over a third of football clubs have been in some form of administration over the last twenty years but rare is the supporter who takes responsibility for their role (often a minor one as a supporter) in cheering the signing of a Benito Carbone or a Seth Johnson which led to financial problems. This could be point sixteen: failure to accept responsibility for own actions if one wanted to make the case.

I could carry on mapping on the traits the PCL-R covers to the world of football but to do so would be to labour the point, and to take empathisis away from the disproprtionality that psychopaths represent.

Me. I like a laugh, me

Last season, after the Doncaster Rovers defeat, Oli McBurnie and Aaron McLean shared a joke on Twitter. If you missed this moment do not be surprised. Of the things that matter most it could hardly be more remote but it was the cause for some complaints. The two players, strikers for a team which was then struggling, should have been focusing more on scoring and less on joking was the inference as if the one took away from the other.

It is asinine even to mention it were it not for the reaction. Most ignored the joke and the follow up, other responded with utter indifference if they did note it, but a few felt it worthy of their input (point three, need for stimulation) and decided to challenge the players (point fourteen, impulsivity. Point ten, poor behavioral controls.) because they should not be larking around (point eight, lack of empathy) when something so important as a defeat had occurred (point two, grandiose estimation of self).

The thousands of people who did nothing, or did not care, or did care but did nothing are not noticed next to very few (two or three) who did showing the traits. So these traits, these traits that are part of psychopathy, frame our the world of football supporting.

As football supporters we are always being defined by the combination of psychopathic traits because they are present in a few of us but not in all of us. And of course it is dangerous to sit with a checklist like the PCL-R and looking at isolated actions declare that they are the actions of psychopaths. Ronson details how becoming a Psychopath spotter power crazes him and he is right. Once you start studying the PCL-R you start seeing psychopaths everywhere.

Aaron McLean and Oli McBurnie might seem like a storm in a teacup but nothing in the the psychopathic tendency talks about the size and impact of the actions. I’m not saying that anyone involved in that is (or is not) the sort of person who would score high on the PSL-R but many people might conclude that – for example – the people who tell Jessica Ennis they hope she is raped would score highly.

Abuse on Twitter stops players communicating through Twitter. Racist chanting by a hundred people can have a whole stadium closed down. One person can throw something in a town centre on a Saturday and we are all branded hooligans. When we are branded hooligans we are policed accordingly by a Police Force which – logically – is run by a number of people who are psychopaths.

This might sound needlessly pessimistic but I went to football in the 1980s and I stood behind fences, and I was pushed into pens, and I was marched through streets by armoured Police. The people who decided that that was the way to treat a teenage boy who had not committed, nor wanted to commit, an offence seem to convict themselves of lacking empathy and you only need to look at the massive high level cover up that followed the result of that style of Policing at Hillsborough to see lack of remorse or guilt, and the Failure to accept responsibility for own actions.

Let me be clear what I’m not saying here. I am not saying that Hillsborough was caused by mass-murdering psychopaths. I am saying that it was caused (and covered up) by institutions like South Yorkshire Police, The Sun Newspaper and the Thatcher Government which had been in turn shaped by people who would have scored high on the PCL-R.

This is hard for people to accept or understand – and of course it is a contention rather than a statement – but that is because if you are part of the 99% who have empathy you assume that everyone else has it and when you assume that you assume everyone else has the same operational controls as you.

Hare’s work suggests they do not.

So now then

What is to be done? Football is a part of a world and the world is shaped by the traits of psychopathy.

As the Internet opened up communication channels a number of maxims started to fall away from media industries. It was said in newspapers previously that one letter represented a hundred dissatisfied readers but now all hundred readers can tweet furiously and so it has become safer to suggest that one unhappy person represents one person.

Perhaps even that is inadequate. Perhaps knowing the destructive nature of psychopathy we should seek to make sure it is under represented? That we should try exclude the voice from discussion because the voice is in its nature destructive. All domains of expertise exclude destructive voices. Is the psychopaths insight into the community of football support any more valid than his input into any other part of society?

I have trouble with that path of reason and where it ends up but I have similar trouble with how any of the communities I am in is defined by its extreme and destructive elements just as we all have trouble with the idea of those 150 psychopaths at Bradford City vs Shrewsbury Town.

Another week passes and there is another story of how football supporters have behaved in a way that I do not feel reflects football supporters as I know them and this story repeated in an echo chamber by media which has a section which is determined to misrepresent what has happened leading to attacks by politicians who seem to lack empathy and are playing to a different constituency and all the time this is exploited for sales by businesses who only can look at their bottom line.

I end up remembering John Yossarian‘s comment in Joseph Heller’s Catch 22 when asked what would happen if everyone felt like him and did not want to fly bombing runs just because the enemy he had never met wanted to kill him, and so did not want to fight in the war.

“Well I’d certainly be a damn fool to think any other way wouldn’t I?”

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I heartily recommend reading Jon Ronson’s The Psychopath Test.

The collective view of history

There is a view of history which holds that if there had never been a Genghis Khan, a Joseph Stalin, a Pol Pot, then the course of the world would have been drastically different. No Mongol hordes, no Cold War, no pogrom.

This is the individual view of history.

There is a competing view that suggests that those three people, indeed any person of history, is only of history because of the rising and falling of collective events. That if it had not been Genghis Khan then someone else would have been credited for leading the hordes, and history would have remember their name instead. That large groups rather than an individual caused the world to turn.

This is the collective view of history. It is less exciting, but probably more accurate.

From Pol Pot to Pulis

Stoke City’s rise to the place of mid-table in the Premier League is largely down to former manager Tony Pulis, and Pulis puts any success he has had down to a recruitment policy based on character.

When speaking about Ryan Shawcross Pulis commended the defender’s character – which is to say his desire to win football matches – saying that a team was built on players such as Shawcross.

“You can have other players who don’t have that (character),” Pulis added, “but only for eighteen months and then you have to move them on.”

The heroes of failure

Why do Bradford City supporters not curse the name Benito Carbone? Why is Ashley Ward’s time at the club given a light disregard when the memory of Mike Duxbury can cause grown men to froth at the mouth? What is it about Darren Morgan that has some City fans reserving a place in the inner circle of failure which even Aaron McLean – seemingly leaving City this week – need not fear reaching?

And what is this word scapegoat which is applied in defence of McLean? Has his treatment been unfair? What are the mechanics of failure at a club like Bradford City that can lionise one player and condemn another.

And let me start by saying…

When Aaron McLean leaves Bradford City, few will be upset. McLean has done well in the past proving his ability but did not do well at Bradford City. The sort of ability McLean is credited with is rare for Bradford City players over the last decade. Few players have been criticised for want of motivation rather than ability.

More common in the last decade have been the players who have shown a level of effort that defined their abilities. The words “give everything” are used about James Hanson, Gary Jones, and Andrew Davies. Players like Barry Conlon, Matthew Clarke and Lee Crooks were never said to be shirking, just that they were poor footballers.

McLean gets to nestle his name alongside Ashley Ward, Nicky Summerbee and Bobby Petta in the players who idled away their talents rather than had no talent to begin with.

In the worst possible way

Aaron McLean arrived to replace Nahki Wells. Wells enjoyed a meteoric rise at Bradford City. His speed and eye for goal were impressive and he played a role in taking City to Wembley twice in three months. After an early exchange of distaste for his choice of clubs following City it seems that Wells has settled back into his place in the hearts of City fans.

One might speculate that the fact that Wells has joined a Huddersfield side in the year they have achieved next to nothing is his saving grace for City fans. Were Town in the play-offs and Wells the architect of that, then things may be different.

But Wells is not an architect. The type of player he is – they are called “finishers” for a reason – puts him at the necessary end point rather than the engine room of a team. Wells was the end of a team of Gary Jones, Rory McArdle, James Hanson et al. Those players were the big characters who pushed the team. Wells, Nathan Doyle, Will Atkinson, Carl McHugh were (seemingly, and by virtue of their exit) the “eighteen monthers” that Pulis talks about.

Being Phil Parkinson

Losing Gary Jones was inevitable. Phil Parkinson probably joins with the rest of City fans who watch the skipper playing for Notts County and wonders if there was another year in the now 37-year old midfielder, but giving him that extra year is a delay of the inevitable need to replace him.

Losing a player like Gary Jones from your team – be it from age or transfer – matters more than losing a player like Wells because of the type of strong character he is. Bringing in or building a replacement takes time and may not be achieved. Those old enough may remember the attempt to replace the massive presence of Stuart McCall with Iain Banks and wince at the memory. If you are younger, read “Gary Locke” for Banks.

It is Parkinson’s hardest job and while developing Billy Knott may be a long term solution, one suspects the City manager has concluded that he needs to bring a character into the side and is working to that end. At the moment though Parkinson puts out the team he has and that team has some qualities, although is lacking in others.

Who does not love Xaviar Barrau?

Who was the scapegoat in David Wetherall’s relegation side which was the worst team Bradford City have fielded in my lifetime? Who carries the can for those feeble months? Not Wetherall, and not his players. Spencer Weir-Daley’s many misses against Leyton Orient and Omar Daley’s giving up of the ball on the wing are critical memories but on the whole the players are not criticised. Kelly Youga (injured during his time at the club) is fondly remembered. Who does not a place in his heart for Xaviar Barrau?

Wetherall’s side were simply too poor for scapegoats. To single out one player is to allow a club and a culture at a club to be freed from blame. No one points the finger because no one has enough fingers to point.

Likewise relegation from the Premier League is never assigned to a group of players, and the likes of Benito Carbone are heroes of the club. Circumstances dictate that a scapegoat will not be found, at least not on the field.

Parkinson’s team are not so outgunned as those two examples. The are far better than Wetherall’s side for sure, and the rest of League One is – in relative terms to City – not as good as the rest of the Premiership was in 2000.

Phil Parkinson’s team are closer to success. Indeed at the moment City win and lose on the basis (seemingly, but probably not in the opinion of the management) of individual actions. Billy Clarke puts the ball an inch lower and Oldham away is a good point; Christopher Routis heads a ball into the stands against Sheffield United then City get a battling point with ten men and so on.

Just as two years ago Rory McArdle’s determination was the difference between winning and losing against Aston Villa in the League Cup semi-final. When the difference between success and failure is small there is a temptation to assign it to individuals and individual actions.

Stevie Gee

Importantly though one can only justify assigning success to individuals when margins are small. A scapegoat is the player who did not apply the marginal difference. The opposite – a player who applied the individual difference between success and failure – is what he call in football a hero

Watching the career of Liverpool’s Steven Gerrard is watching that that theory in action. In European Cup and FA Cup finals (both of which ended 3-3) he has been heroic because he has been the individual difference between success and failure.

Last season his defensive slip against Chelsea – an individual mistake – seemed to cost his team the Premier League title. “If he had not slipped” is said with a misty eye by many, but few ask what would have happened if (now Liverpool’s) Dejan Lovren foul on Daniel Sturridge in November 2013 in a Southampton 1-0 win at Anfield had been given as a penalty.

Scapegoating is arbitrary.

Had Aaron set off in time

Aaron McLean’s first game at Sheffield United for City – a 2-2 draw – had the striker almost score the goal which almost built his confidence and almost put him on a run of goalscoring, and so on.

McLean is in poor form, and plays like a player in poor form, and many people (not me) consider that the problem City face at the moment is the need for a finisher. The logic follows easily that McLean, a finisher, could be difference between wins and defeats.

My view of football is increasingly more inline with Pulis, and it is more inline with the collective view of history. When Nahki Wells was scoring for City it was not because of his abilities so much as because of the team’s abilities (which he was a part of) and had you dropped Aaron McLean in then, McLean would be the “Goal Machine” his name so cruelly rhymes with. If you put Wells into the current City team, he would struggle.

The team struggles because of the recrafting job that is needed on its core following Jones’ departure. and the wider break up of the “History Makers” team that Phil Parkinson built. The eighteen months were up, and now Parkinson starts again. The manager is not back at square one, and the fact that the gap between success and failure seems bridgeable is a frustration, and causes this illusion.

Nahki Wells was a hero of Bradford City’s success.

Aaron McLean, because of his place in our history, is a hero of failure.

Framing City at the moment seems to be the question “What to do about players playing badly?”

Guy Branston was playing badly – or so it was argued by some – and Phil Parkinson seemed to agree dropping his captain for new signing Andrew Davies who put in an impressive début despite the scoreline not differing over much from that of recent weeks. Parkinson made a big decision dropping Peter Jackson’s captain and a brave one but when AFC Wimbledon’s Christian Jolley hit a ball from outside that box that looped over Matt Duke in the City goal then the City manager must have wondered how that decision seemed to result in so much of the same.

Jolley’s goal gave the Dons an unexpected win a game where they were distinctly second best in all but the most important part of football – turning possession into attacking chances – where they were very much better. Set up in a 532 Terry Brown’s side sat deep but came forward with an imagination which seemed lacking from a stolid Bantams side. The Dons did not attack in numbers, but they were direct and most importantly available for each other.

Which was not the case with the Bantams. After Midson’s equaliser mid-way through the first half – a result of the Dons’ striker speedily moving into the gap that Luke Oliver left after an impressive headed clearance and and Christian Jolley being able to play an over the shoulder flick under little pressure from Liam Moore – it was noticeable how the two sides attacking play differed. Wimbledon’s attacks were more random, less considered and as a result more direct.

City’s work in the middle of the pitch was very good. Richie Jones put in a performance which deserved to be a part of a win and with Michael Flynn alongside him the pair were in control of the middle of the pitch but when coming forward they lacked options as a result of their play. Jamie Devitt dropped off the forward line to take the ball but in doing so seemed to duplicate the midfield play rather than adding to the attacking options. Devitt’s dropping off allowed him space but with the back five of the Dons it meant that when he received the ball he was looking forward at too few options.

Chris Mitchell put in a good shift on the right but Kyel Reid will probably not suffer a worse afternoon in his entire career. Pushed wide by a full back and with cover for that full back in the occasions in which he beat his man Reid was far too often on the wrong side of the defender when Jones or Flynn was looking for an outlet. At half time Reid had put in a wretched first half and what does one do with a player who has put in a wretched first half? Reid can and has played better, keep faith with him and he might. In retrospect Parkinson should have taken Reid off, but many player has been given a half time rocket and turned in a performance in the second half.

That was not the case and so with Reid not as an option, with Mitchell quiet (but never a player to get around the back of a five) then City fed everything through Devitt and were rewarded with the first half penalty for a foul on the striker – dispatched by Flynn – but suffered from a predictability.

Devitt is a curious player. Excellent control, able on the ball, and looking dangerous when he touches it he puts one in mind of Chris Waddle or Benito Carbone because for all those abilities and skills – for all the good things he does – he seems to add a weight on the side that causes a sort of wind resistance. Like Waddle Devitt sets a pace and patten of play but – like Waddle – the City team he is in look limited when they play the ball through him.

Everything is predictable when it all comes through Devitt who slows the play down and while he looks good doing it he seemed to slow the attacking pace down. He and James Hanson attempted combination flicks, attempted, link ups, but in the end City’s best chances were a good delivery from the flank that Hanson headed and Seb Brown saved superbly holding well and Hanson’s hitting the post when charging down a Brown clearance.

The challenge for Parkinson is how to make the decisions on the distinction between the players who need to be replaced, the players who need to be backed to play better, and the players who need to play better in the team. Time for the manager to earn his money and make those decisions.

If he can do that – with Jones and Flynn purring away looking for passes, outlets and ways to attack – City could go far. As it is without a way of going forward on the field City under Phil Parkinson are stuck in neutral.

Benito Carbone made his Bradford City debut against Fiorentina playing 41 minutes of adored football in front of a Bantams crowd which loved him at first sight. The Italian against the Italians, it seemed to work at the time.

Another Bradford City number ten makes his debut for the club. Signed from Matlock Town, and against Matlock Town, the excitement around Ross Hannah has at time rivalled that of the little Italian.

Not in any national way of course – the transfer has but the odd mention outside of West Yorkshire – and not really in the local media either who have sensibly avoided talking up the 52 goal former non-league striker but nevertheless supporters are excited in a way seldom observed amongst the reserved of the Valley Parade terraces.

Hannah’s own infectious enthusiasm helps as does the fact that during the Summer the player – who hung up gardening shears – followed in the path of Shearer and picked up a golden boot type of award for scoring a hat or two full of goals last season.

The excitement of Hannah is measure in the back page of school books and on ripped up fag packets. It is in poorly formatted 442 formations on Internet message boards. No one elects not to put RH up front – like BC before him – because the assumption is that RH will do the business.

So Ross Hannah faces the club at which he turned his career around in his first game for the Bantams and is part of a stronger, older City team than the one which beat Silsden 7-1 but one which is still younger than most recent Bantams sides.

Hannah is expected to start the game with James Hanson and Mark Stewart also getting a run out up front and perhaps some of the players who helped bag seven at Silsden will feature. The midfield has many options although Richie Jones is not one of them – he is excluded not being up to fitness as yet – but expect Alex Flett, Lee Bullock, Dave Syers and Chris Mitchell to feature.

Goalkeepers Rhys Evans – back again – and Iain Turner try out for the number one jersey while Luke O’Brien seems to be set for left back over Robbie Threlfall. Guy Branston and Steve Williams will start what Peter Jackson hopes will be a partnership and Simon Ramsden is expected to make his long awaited come back.

Shove in Lewis Hunt, a few trailists, the odd other player from the Silsden game and you have a mixture of initials to be scribbled on bits of paper.

Pretty much all of them have RH in them though.

Benito Carbone, David Hopkin, Paul McLaren and now Tommy Doherty. Players who have offered so much when originally signed by Bradford City; players who – for whatever reason – failed to live up to the expectations of others; players who left the club financially much worse off and looking somewhat foolish.

Tommy Doherty has today officially departed the Bantams, less than 12 months into a two-year deal. He is destined to go down in the club’s history as one of its poor signings. In many people’s eyes he failed to show the right attitude or application. For others though, the fault lies more with the club.

The Doc was City’s best paid player this season. A stella signing by manager Peter Taylor which probably prompted that ‘pre-season favourites’ tag the club has so badly failed to live up to. Many of us remembered his stunning performance at Valley Parade for Taylor’s Wycombe in February 2009. As he rocked up at Valley Parade, we licked our lips in anticipation of watching his superb passing ability over the coming months. The Bearded Wonder; the talisman; our own Paul Scholes.

But while the club spared no expense laying on a new playing surface that he could sweep the ball across, other pre-season plans – namely a new training ground demanded by Taylor – did not come to fruition. Let us not argue once more the effect this might have had on the season, but let us agree that – overall – it has been proven the foundations for this season were built upon sand. In money terms, Doherty was a significant investment for this club. But the infrastructure was lacking, hampering Taylor’s ability to get the desired return from his investment.

Doherty attempted to build up an understanding with new team mates on the same inadequate training pitch that Carbone and others struggled on. And rather than reach the heights enjoyed at other clubs, Doherty like others couldn’t live up to high expectations and in time became painted as a villain.

Worst of all, the club’s over-stretching in persuading such players to sign – instead of spending money in other key areas – keeps coming back to haunt it. Doherty may not have commanded the same level wage as Carbone; but, as they now struggle to pay their players on time and have offloaded the Irish midfielder a year early, it looks like a similar type of mistake.

Not that the club should be solely blamed for how disappointing Doherty’s City career proved. An injury picked up in pre-season refused to go away, and in each of his 21 Bantams appearances he was far from fully fit. Nevertheless his ability was there for all to see. At times he sprayed the ball around majestically, spotting runners and options that no one else in the ground – especially in the stands watching – had seen. As someone who enjoys watching teams pass the ball around with patience and skill (Spain in last year’s World Cup didn’t bore me, even if they did many others), for me it was a thrill to watch Doherty on the ball.

The problems, however, stemmed from the lack of players on his wavelength. With confidence especially low early in the season, it would be common to see Doherty pick up the ball deep and find no one was either embarking on a run or offering themselves as an option he could pick out. As we fans demanded he produce a defence-splitting pass, there would be growing frustration if his attempt to do so lead to possession being surrendered or the ball being worked backwards.

It all came to a head when Port Vale came to Valley Parade, early September. Having earlier produced some breathtaking passes as City tried to overturn a 1-0 deficit, momentum shifted back to Vale and Doherty lost the ball on a few occasions. Then a pass was played to him in a dangerous part of the pitch, and his chipped backpass to Jon McLaughlin allowed Justin Richards to race in and score a comically easy goal. The next time Doherty touched the ball, hundreds booed.

That afternoon probably sealed the type of relationship Doherty was to have with City fans. He was clearly angry to be treated in this way, and when he and club’s form picked up a few weeks later and Doherty was subbed late on to standing ovations in two consecutive games – Oxford and Bury – it was telling that he did not bother to clap supporters back or thank us for our support. On his return to Wycombe in November, he was sent off for an angry reaction to a challenge and again was clapped off by City fans. No response, no acknowledgment, no love for us it seemed.

A month later Doherty finally undertook an operation that he’d apparently needed pre-season, and that was to be the last we’d see of him playing for City. In its own way this hurried the departure of his manager, as the team’s style without their playmaker deteriorated drastically and it became increasingly dismal viewing. Taylor’s exit always threw up a big question mark over Doherty’s future – he’d walked out of Wycombe when Gary Waddock replaced Taylor at Adams Park – and with rumours swirling in recent weeks it seemed this early departure was inevitable.

Could he have given more to the club? Probably. Could City have done more to maximise his talents? Most definitely. But as we face up to a summer of worry and despair over the club’s financial future, Doherty’s place alongside Carbone, McLaren and co. as a foolish use of money is almost certainly assured.

On The 2010/2011 Season

I met a traveller from an antique land.

The modern history of Bradford City – which is to say the everything from the return to Valley Parade onwards – shifts on a fulcrum moment which happened ten years ago this month that City kick of a fourth consecutive season in the bottom tier of English professional football.

August ten years ago and – with bare faced cheek and a brassneck – I went to my boss and asked him if I could leave half way through the day because I wanted to go to the press conference that unveiled Benito Carbone as a Bradford City player. Carbone – at a cost of just under £55,000 a week – was the pinnacle of something that rose at The Bantams and – in the last ten years – fell.

Much has happened in that last ten years – two administrations, three promotions, BfB has had 112 more writers doing about 3,500 articles, the hole in the ground, a riots, the boss in question now is chairman of Bradford Bulls – but nothing has matched that moment. Geoffrey Richmond sitting at the head of a room of supporters and journalist proudly proclaiming the promise that his new recruit represented.

Two vast and trunkless legs of stone stand in the desert.

Valley Parade played host to former tenants Bradford Park Avenue and – soberingly and as a result of that time ten years ago – its current tenant Bradford City and is a transformed arena. The main stand rises high and is most often half empty or half full (your point of view on that) ready to host Premier League football which is a distant memory now.

Rippling away from Valley Parade the effects of City’s rise and fall fade. Peter Taylor tried to prepare for this season in different training facilities but that proved impossible – for now at least – and Apperley Bridge continues to be the host for the club’s day to day activities. Carbone said of City on his arrival that “nothing resembled a football club” including Apperley Bridge in his swathe of comment.

Players have come and gone most notably Dean Windass who partnered Carbone up front in the Italians first game. Windass returned but left the club after death threats following a sending off.

Managers have come and gone most notably Stuart McCall who was the captain and assistant manager when Carbone was signed. He, along with other players of the day Wayne Jacobs and David Wetherall have reputations tarnished not by the continued involvement with the club but by the club’s decline from that day onwards.

In the wider football world though that day – and Bradford City in the Premiership – is a footnote. The other team in Paul Scholes’s wonder goal, the prototype for the likes of Hull City and Blackpool and a step on the evolutionary ladder from Barnsley’s single season in the top flight. Not forgotten but hardly remembered and remembered as one of many teams who tried and failed.

An ebullient Geoffrey Richmond stood on the field – a dozen City fans around him – in a blazing eyeball to eyeball argument with a Daily Express journalist who questioned his motives and motivations. It was a rare sight. The Empire builder questioned, raging against the coming tide which he would not be able to keep back.

He resurfaced briefly at Notts County and Leeds United, and then he was gone.

And on the pedestal these words appear: “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

So ten years on Bradford City under Peter Taylor prepare for the new season and it is hard to imagine being further from that August press conference. The pitch – sun drenched on that day – has been improved at last but little else can be said to have.

Pre-season was low key to a point of hardly being considered during the tour of Essex which saw four games in seven days. The jailing of one former striker and one new one provided the news and perhaps there was a sense that nothing else from the club would match that so – other than the progress of the new grass – little emerged from the club. There is no good news, so there is no news.

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare the lone and level sands stretch far away.

The best which can be said about Peter Taylor is that he has augmented what he found on arrival at the club rather than trying to rebuild salvaging some of the last two and a half years of work that Stuart McCall had put in. A look at Taylor’s assumed first eleven shows that the keeper Jon McLauglin, defender Steve Williams and striker James Hanson were all plucked from nowhere to be key members of this season’s side.

Indeed it is to Taylor’s great credit that one can skip through the team: Right back Simon Ramsden, Zesh Rehman at centreback, left back Robbie Threlfall was a target of McCall and co at left back, Lee Bullock was converted to a deep role by McCall, midfielder Michael Flynn and striker Gareth Evans brought in by the previous manager. Taylor has recruited Tommy Doherty for his three in midfield while Omar Daley – with 97 appearances for City – pre-dated the previous manager.

Rather than start again Taylor has taken what he found and added to it giving City a rare route to having some stability at the club. That he has only a one year contract is a matter of great worry – for every prediction which tells you City will be promoted you can find one which says we will end in mid-table which would result in the board not offering a new deal to the manager – with City highly unlikely to find as good a replacement for this manager as was found for the last.

His football is pragmatic to a point of unattractiveness at times but Taylor is perhaps the only reason for optimism at the club this season. A man who appreciates the value of building while standing in the bare, lone and level sands.

Jake Speight has played around the non-leagues in the last few years and has probably while at Northwich Victoria or Droylsden had to train on some run down school playing field with shoddy facilities and had to get into his kit somewhere else for the want of a changing block and then get to the pitches by car.

He will be looking forward to leaving those days behind now he at a proper football club. He will be disappointed.

Speight and his new team mates start training at Apperley Bridge today after the club made a decision to abandon the plan to move to Weetwood. Manager Peter Taylor – the driving force behind the desire to move to better facilities – fronted the club’s explanation saying “All the boxes had to be ticked before going to the other place and they weren’t. A couple of things we wanted couldn’t be guaranteed, such as being able to train on certain areas on certain days, and I wasn’t prepared to take that chance if it wasn’t right.”

So the club take another chance, the chance of history not repeating itself. Speight arrives costing money, Tommy Doherty signs, James Hanson has a new four year deal and like Dan Petrescu, Benito Carbone and many, many others they are given training pitches and a way of training which have repeatedly be found wanting.

Found wanting by players. Lee Sharpe revealed that the players affectionately called City “The Dog & Duck” because of the training situation while Benito Carbone described The Bantams has having “nothing that resembled a football club” after his arrival.

Found wanting in the weather. When Bradford City’s second year in the Premier League went to hell it is often forgotten that Jim Jefferies side could not use Apperley Bridge because the rain has caused flooding. This is not uncommon and last season Michael Flynn recalls not being able to do a passing drill on the field because the ball could not be trusted to move or run true on the surface.

Found wanting in practice as for years and years as City have underachieved and while there is a school of thought that places that blame at the feet of Jim Jefferies, Nicky Law, Bryan Robson, Colin Todd, David Wetherall and Stuart McCall as if each manager inherited a discreet event when they arrived but – like Taylor – I would suggest there is a common factor and while one cannot say it is definitely Apperley Bridge it seemed to be identified by the current gaffer as a significant problem.

So the plan to move is off and Taylor tried to look on the bright side saying “To be fair to Apperley Bridge and the groundsman there, they have been terrific for us. I’m really pleased for the groundsman especially because he is a Bradford supporter and he used to work his socks off.”

However one has to wonder how this plan – seen as vital by Taylor not three months ago – has been allowed to fall apart. When a deal with announced why were ends left untied? After the announcement that we were moving to Weetwood – in knowledge that the deal had not been signed – did Mark Lawn, Julian Rhodes et al carry on looking for a facility understanding that the promise they had made to Taylor had not been fulfilled and they had not found him the training facilities he wanted?

The words “Plan B” used to be thrown around at this club on the field in an entire inappropriate way but it is appropriate to ask if Weetwood was Plan A what was City’s Plan B? Is this is?

Players like Robbie Threlfall were brought to the club with the idea that they were swapping Melwood for Weetwood and not on the idea of getting back in the minivan outside Valley Parade and being driven through Bradford traffic before training can begin.

The players arrive back at pre-season today and – after this – the season starts with a slump.

For eight years former Bradford City Premiership boss Jim Jefferies has been in charge at Kilmarnock before his – and of course his number two Billy Brown’s – exit early today in a storm of reports about directors talking to captains about tactics following a summer of arguing with the board about offering a job to the one time City midfelder Gary Locke a job.

Jefferies – who was overlooked for the Scotland job despite strong favour in some sections of the country – had a decent record at Rugby Park taking them to numerous top six finishes but never getting close to the top two. Not dissimilar to his record with Hearts before he arrived at Valley Parade to replace Chris Hutchings in 2000.

Hutchings had struggled to win points with most talented team assembled in Bradford City’s history in the top flight that season and Jefferies – on arrival – was trumpeted as one of the top ten coaches in the UK. On his second day he had rubbed chairman Geoffrey Richmond up the wrong way with the head honcho deciding after 48 hour that he was not able to work with the new man and a look back at the Bantams shows that the club had been in a slide caused by Richmond’s six weeks of madness.

Isn’t it time we looked back at what we perceive as a failure for Jim Jefferies and re-evaluate his time at Bradford City? Like Hell it is.

Jefferies arrived at Valley Parade proudly waving a white flag above his head saying that relegation – with over half the season left – was a near certainty and Richmond’s instinct to sack the Scot on his second day in the job was spot on (What would have been the worst that happened had he done so? Jefferies and Brown could have been added to the list of creditors?)

Not content with waving that white flag Jefferies proceeded to cherry pick a few players from the first team – the likes of Benito Carbone and Stan Collymore – and give them a few months in the reserves no doubt to encourage them out of the door for the wage bill but effectively making his relegation prediction more likely.

Jefferies attitude to the Bradford City dressing room seemed to read good spirit and strength as disruption and a divide of his power and set about slicing it in half. Out went club legend Peter Beagrie – woefully minimised with his swansong being a later dance around defender at home to Coventry City showing what the Bantams were missing – and in came the likes of Eoin Jess and the aforementioned Locke. Kevin Kyle – the captain who had seen the fall out at Killie – was linked to City during this time and after a year in the job the manager brought in the ineffectual Juan José Carricondo. Jim Jefferies called the players by their nicknames – Juanjo, Lockey, erm, Jessie – but only those players he has brought into Valley Parade.

Thus Jefferies is summed up. A manager who made the critical error of judgement that a player who could turn a few tricks for Hearts in the SPL could replace one for one a player who could do the same in the Premiership. In the annals of Bradford City not enough is spoken of the waste of time, effort and money which was paying Juanjo after having Benito Carbone in the second eleven.

Chris Hutchings suffered injures to David Wetherall and Andrew O’Brien and lost Lee Mills to alcohol problems but while Hutchings struggled to keep his players in the squad Jefferies frittered them away on what in retrospect seemed to be one man’s experiment to discover what anyone could have told him before he started: that an average player in Scottish top flight football is a long way inferior to his counterpart in the English top flight.

The most irritating thing about Jefferies – who once again leaves a club complaining about interference from above as if his time at Valley Parade should not have warned chairmen about giving him a free hand – is that Wigan Athletic kindly provided a second take on the Paul Jewell leaves and is replaced by a short time by Hutchings story and their ended happily under Steve Bruce who came not with the Jefferies surrender but with spirit and fight that kept them in the top flight.

I would not have considered Bruce one of the top ten managers in the country before then, his achievements at Wigan probably changed my mind on that.

One is tempted to ask how different would Bradford – City and the City – be had that appointment been made differently. Kevin Keegan and Glenn Hoddle were reported to be talked to and Prof Rhodes confirmed that Berti Vogts has applied for the job but instead – and with a flourish from the media who sang his praises dubbing him one of the best managers in the country – we got Jim Jefferies, and shafted.

However if the appointment was a mistake then that mistake was compounded and doubled by Jefferies attitude at the club. What was good at the club – and administration came as a result of overspending but relegation did not – was broken. We went into the season watching Peter Beagrie watching Eoin Jess but having haemorrhaged the biggest gold rush in the club’s history in the process and while others can take some blame for that the wages and free transfers given to players ousted from the club simply cause the manager didn’t like their faces was a not insignificant factor.

The football Jefferies side’s played was not entertaining and often characterless – massively so in comparison to the teams Paul Jewell had played six months before – and the celebrated coach flitted from a 433 to a 442 bringing back players he had cast away only moths before as if to confirm that his experiments had failed. It was football management as a tepid passionless process in which our club was the subject of experimental and non-committal whims. He left and not long after there were pieces that we are still picking up now. It would be wrong and foolish to blame him for all of these but he certainly did nothing to help and plenty to hinder.

Put simply Jim Jefferies could not have cared less Bradford City or Bradford City supporters and his level of attention to the club following his departure – none – speaks volumes.

Revisionism comes often in football and is cyclic. What was the solution to yesterdays woes is often brought back as tomorrow’s solution to today’s problems and tonight Jim Jefferies and Burnley were mentioned in the same breath.

One hopes that Burnley can learn the lessons from our mistakes, one hopes that we can learn too.

Many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on your point of view – I know I saw it in a movie this Christmas – and so as City trundle into 2010 at home to Cheltenham one is given cause to reflect on the utterances that come from Valley Parade and the relationship they have with that most precious of things: The truth.

Lee Clark – manager of Huddersfield Town – has made it clear that he has recalled goalkeeper Simon Eastwood from his time at Valley Parade after what is charitably described as “an up and down” time at City while Stuart McCall suggests that City let the shot stopper go in favour of bringing in a more experienced man. That one club did not want him to stay and the other wanted him to go seems to say enough about the keeper’s time as VP shot stopper.

Eastwood will be replaced in goal – in all likelihood – by Jon McLaughlin who is not the experienced man McCall is seeking but is well fancied by many fans the majority of whom have not seen him play. Blind faith in City players always heartening though and the months put into Eastwood’s development which could have gone into McLaughlin seem to have been waste but sometimes a gamble pays off and other times it does not and Eastwood is set against the success of three other rookies in Scott Neilson, James Hanson and Steve Williams.

Which manager is telling the truth? Perhaps both are, perhaps both are not. Probably both tell half of it. McCall was unsure about keeping Eastwood until he had someone else lined up, Clark wanted him back for fear for his development which is stunted. The truth depends greatly on your point of view it seems.

Stuart McCall’s point of view after the Shrewsbury Town game last week was that it was referee Peter Quinn who won the game for the visitors and not the side from Shropshire. Certainly the vocal comment on Quinn’s performance would suggest that there was a broad agreement with the City boss although other demanded McCall stop using “excuses”

As a position to be in McCall stood on invidious ground. He faced criticism that had City not missed early chances – Simon Whaley’s pinging a shot off the bar being judged in the same way as Gareth Evans’s fluff – then the Referee’s interjections would have been irrelevant (or so the logic goes) and thus McCall is excuse mongering.

How the City gaffer does not point out that appeasing an official for making two such massive errors – errors unsupported by his non-flagging linesman in the most serious case – on the basis that one of the teams had not already scored is avoidance of a much higher order I do not know. When it comes to excuses the “he got two decisions wrong but it was our fault for not having scored” borders on the masochistic.

McCall was not able to be honest after the game – although he tried with his “Shrewsbury have not won that” comment – and nor were BfB our Rochdale honed sense of what will get us sued preventing us from writing the original article that said “Player X and Player Y are cheats, plain and simple.”

I have sympathy for Peter Quinn for that reason. Some of the Shrewsbury Town players were far better at cheating than they were at football and if someone needs to be giving out excuses it should be Paul Simpson for playing those players at all. An honest man would not. To be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten thousand – or so Dr Who says.

Simon Ramsden is expected to return for City at right back displacing Jonathan Bateson – who had his best game in a City shirt against Shrewsbury – with Zesh Rehman and Steve Williams being reunited as Matthew Clarke starts his suspension. Luke O’Brien continues to play the season red cardless one of which will be high on the impressive Louis Horne’s new year wish list.

Omar Daley is expected to be kept on the bench once more as he returns to fitness with a stacked January of rearranged away trips in mind – Daley’s pace is incredibly effective on the road – giving Scott Neilson the right wing place opposite Simon Whaley who also impressed against Shrewsbury. Lee Bullock and Michael Flynn continue in the middle.

James Hanson and Gareth Evans continue up front with Peter Thorne and Michael Boulding injured. Hanson continues to win admirers while Evans struggles to impress all. Personally I can forgive Evans the fluff against Shrewsbury – I recall Benito Carbone doing the same against Southampton – because of the striker’s reaction.

Head up, on to the next chance, honest.

A lifetime ago I stood in a half time queue to buy an expensive pie at Old Trafford as Chris Hutchings put out a Bradford City side playing 442 against a Manchester United team which was sweeping all before it. Hutchings had put Ashley Ward and Benito Carbone up front and at half time we were struggling.

“We need to drop Carbone back into the midfield and go to 451.” I said matter of factly as I edged closer to my £2.50 pie. “I’d rather see us get beat 5-0 than play wit’ one up front.” came a voice from the queue in front – someone I’d never met but his point was valid. Nevertheless my riposte proved to be precedent: “Well tonight you will get your wish.”

I was right – City left Old Trafford having been stung by a 6-0 defeat – largely because we were utterly incapable of getting the ball in the midfield but so was he because the idea of watching a rear guard action with a ball being hit to Ashley Ward is no one’s idea of a good night out. Yes we suffered a heavy defeat but, at least, we tried to play some football and there was a certain pride in that, braggadocic pride at best, but pride.

On Saturday – ten years on from Old Trafford – the Bantams had 26 shots at goal and played some wonderful, entertaining, enjoyable football – we even got an apology from a Referee – in an luscious football match but we lost.

The Bantams are not getting poor results but sit in mid-table having played in some brilliantly attractive high scoring draws. Trips to Northampton and Barnet brought 2-2 results which were great to watch as were the wins at Cheltenham and Shrewsbury but were the Bantams to put up the defensive shields of Port Vale or Lincoln City would we have had eighteen points on the road not nine.

Likewise at home we have eight of eighteen points – a draw with Crewe which we would have had had it not taken Referee Carl Boyeson three days to see the penalty we all saw at the time would have given us the same home record as we have away – but have been treated in the last few matches to the most enjoyable football since Peter Beagrie, Robbie Blake and Lee Mills graced the side.

In manager speak City need to “tighten up” which is to concede fewer goals while scoring the same amount but one had to wonder when taking an ale in Fanny’s at Shipley talking to five or six smiling strangers all of whom were joining me in waxing lyrical about the admirable effort and plentiful enjoyment of the Crewe defeat if a tightened City side would illicit such fanfaronnade.

Yes, we all want to win but would we give up the football of the last week for it? Hopefully the choice will not have to be between one and the other. It was Sexy Football, but Sexy Football went out of the window at Chelsea when they wanted to win something. The talk between supporters is a quantum leap away from last season’s back biting and while last season was characterised by disagreement this is increasingly admired for the beauty, or sexiness even – in what is beheld.

Nevertheless after two seasons of the football of expectations after eight seasons of constant narrow decline it is good to have a new criteria on which judge the side: Pride, and the swell of it on a Saturday night.

BfB struggles. A server move hit us two weeks ago and nothing has been the same since.

Things that used to work no longer do, comments are broken, Jason could not log on, links that were added vanished, errors littered the front page, the guy in charge of shouting at the people who hosted the server (me, in other words) lost his job and things dragged on without an update for ages.

Things dragged on at Valley Parade too. Simon Ramsden came into the club to play right back and a war of words started between Rochdale FC and City boss Stuart McCall with Keith Hill – manager at the Spotland club – accusing the City gaffer of lying about how much was offered to the right back who joined City and stating that the Bantams were telling the current squad that they could afford to pay x while offering y

If McCall wants to make anything of it then we have dealings with Rochdale’s solicitors. They were very zealous in the past. The date of Tuesday night on 23rd of February 2010 should be interesting.

If McCall has wrongly told some to sign up for less then they have believed him with Matthew Clarke, Lee Bullock and Peter Thorne putting pen to paper. There was much upset about Nicky Law Jnr going to Rotherham United but I would suspect that shouting loud enough to the players leaving Premiership and Championship clubs this summer on frees would find far too many players who are in the Law/Kyle Nix attacking midfielder role and what City need is to retain Dean Furman.

Furman seems to be interesting Oldham Athletic. I’m not surprised. Oldham are also said to be trying to get Benito Carbone but face competition from Walsall. The Saddlers are managed by Chris Hutchings – obviously Carbone’s time with the former City boss for four months in 2000 was not wasted.

Some have said that Carbone might come back. The stuff of dreams. Dreaming is good. Carbone seems to be constantly at the end of his career but City are – at the moment – in the middle of a close season of uncertainty. Oldham have sniffed around Graeme Lee but he – as with the other big earners Chris Brandon, Paul McLaren and Michael Boulding – shows no signs of going. One hopes if they do stay this unwillingness or inability is not held against them. As Jim Jefferies’s time following Hutchings at Valley Parade showed the only thing worse than having high earners on the wage bill you can not shift is having high earners on the wage bill you can not shift and you leave in the reserves.

If Lee, Boulding, McLaren, Brandon line up for City next year lets all make sure that we get good value out of the money we have to pay them even if we are in the middle of getting rid of them.

McCall is in the middle of trying to bring in Gareth Evans from Macclesfield Town but worries about the potential cost of the 21 year old striker. One wonders what Keith Hill would say about City’s abilities to afford Evans. How City’s pursuit of the young Evans or the 37 year old Carbone will end is not known but City seem to be in the middle of building another squad which the bookies think will challenge for promotion next season.

The Bantams though are talking down chances. A League Cup first round tie at Nottingham Forest is viewed on as unwinnable and the opening game at Notts County is “tough”. A look at the City squad with the addition of names linked reveals little when viewed through the prism of last season’s “World Beaters” and how the wheels fell off the wagon with weeks left on the season. Put simply any eleven players pulled together for a League Two campaign could be the next Brentford and the fact that the Bantams join Lincoln and Shrewsbury in the fixtures shows that spending money is no guarantee.

So in the middle of the mid-year break it is hard to say which way the Bantams will go next term. Things at BfB still do not work properly but they will be fixed in time. Such is the problem with writing in the middle of things. It is not knowing how things will end it is the shape of them when they do.

John Hendrie is telling Bradford City’s players that were offered contracts by the club that they should sign now knowing that the offers on the table at Valley Parade will not get any better and better offers will not be found on anyone else’s tables either.

So the likes of Lee Bullock and Matthew Clarke are told to sign and while the offers for them will not get better so – one assumes – the offers elsewhere for Paul McLaren, Graeme Lee, Michael Boulding and Chris Brandon are not going to improve. City might want to get these four off the wage bill but it is almost impossible to see all four of them exiting.

Rochdale – always keen to press for good governance in football – have decided they need to trim ten from the squad and like City ask three players to find new clubs. The Spotland club have fallen in the play-offs first legs and have decided that next season they need to be more frugal. They are not alone.

All over Leagues one and two players who are out of contract are not being offered new ones and set about trying to find comparable wages elsewhere. At the back end of July one can expect the League Two footballer with a family who picked up £60,000 last year to be ready to take £40,000 and pay the mortgage but for a few months at least they will try get at least comparable terms. Who wouldn’t?

The likes of Rhys Evans – released by City last term after an impressive season – is primed to be picked up by someone in the bottom two divisions but considering twelve months ago he was free to sign for City it is hard to see a queue of people forming at his door to pay through the nose for a player they passed up on previously. Wage offers are lower all around football and Evans – like many players who performed well last season – will be lucky to get an improvement in terms.

How long Evans, Paul Heckingbottom and similar waits to accept comparable or worse are personal concerns and could provide an interesting type of out of window transfer option for clubs next season. Should an Evans opt not to take a reduced deal in the summer after getting no interest then once the transfer window closes he – being out of contract and free to be recruited at any point in the season – becomes a limited and thus more valued commodity.

Evans would be in a better position to dictate terms to a team looking for a keeper after a poor September then he is in the summer presenting the option of paying that bit extra for a good player now rather than spending months until Christmas without.

Such a risk though has two significant downsides for a player. Firstly they spend the first Saturday in August watching football rather than playing it and – in essence – have become ex-players, retired footballers, people who used to be pros and while one does not want to damn all those who kick balls in anger they do not easily move into other professions. If the football season kicks off and you are sitting at home how long is it before you start to look for a brickies job? After all Ian Wright and Dean Windass both had to work brick after becoming ex-footballers in their twenties.

Secondly there will be a feeling that while the slump in the wider economy drags football down it is impossible to predict either where the end of the recession is or what state football will be when it returns to ruder health. Darlington FC are struggling to kick off next season, Fisher Athletic will not do having gone bankrupt this morning. Less money in football over a longer period could mean that the contracts offered today may be higher than those offered in six, twelve or eighteen months.

All of which could create curious quirks in football. Shrewsbury Town are – we are told – profitable and to collect the £500,000 from Manchester City should Joe Hart play a competitive England game. When that deal was signed £500,000 was a significant sum now it would be a King’s ransom – enough to collect the likes of McLaren, Lee and Boulding to your club.

In such a situation a team that swam against the downturn could expect to have the levels of dominance in League Two that Peterborough United and MK Dons had two years ago. Money does not maketh the team – we know that from last year and years before – but not having it certainly does not help either. It is not so much that you are able to take huge steps forward just that everyone else takes a step back.

So City are in limbo waiting for the four players to leave – which they probably won’t – or the offered players to sign which they probably will or both. One hopes that Stuart McCall does not feel the need to ape Jim Jefferies failed attempts to rid the club of high earners shown when he dropped Benito Carbone and Stan Collymore to the reserves for three months and that if the quartet of high earners at here in August they are in the team.

With that in mind it seems entirely possible that the Bantams could kick off next season with seven or eight of the regulars from last term. A team of McLaughlin | Arnison, Lee, Clarke, O’Brien | Colbeck McLaren Bullock Brandon | Boulding and Boulding would be possible and while we might not have bee massively impressed with those lads last year if the rest of the division is weaker then it would seem harder to not get promoted than to go up.

These are famous last words. City cannot afford such a situation with the current cash flow situation and without a cash boost. If the likes of Peter Thorne were not kept then the £600,000 lost last term would be lessened but where would City find £400,000 – £500,000?

Martin O’Neill is rumoured to be joining 36,999 other people at Elland Road to watch what Fabian Delph can do to help get Leeds United promoted tonight and to prepare a bid of £6.5m for the former City youngster and depending on who you believe the Bantams could pocket 10% of that.

Willy Topp was not the player we thought he was when he signed. Being fair he was never going to be.

Aside from the obvious difference when he arrived he changed his name from Billy because, well, because he though Willy Topp and Dick Head were a little too close together the Chilean who promised goals delivered none.

Topp was to be the new Robbie Blake. He was to be the tricks and the flicks that lifted Stuart McCall’s first generation of Bradford City out of League Two. One good turn against Shrewsbury Town deserved another but did not get one and an impressive goal in the reserves apart Topp hardly even registered on the Bantams radar.

Nevertheless he figured in the minds of many. Topp should be given a chance – we heard and in some cases said – but reports of injuries, returns to his homeland for rumoured curious reasons and poor training seemed to add up to one thing. When put in the squad at Bradford City Topp could not match the efforts of others.

In many ways Topp should be where Barry Conlon is now – Topp started the season as City’s cult hero and Conlon as a boo figure – but the application of the Irishman on the field puts his rival into the shade.

Stuart McCall watches Barry and Billy, Leon Osbourne and The Bouldings and Peter Thorne every day in training and the Chilean has started to figure bottom of that list. Without wanting to suggest a blind faith in McCall’s judgement one has to assume the Topp offered nothing in excess even of the younger players in the squad like Rory Boulding who figured above the Chile man on the bench on Saturday.

Other suggest that Topp was hamstrung by a manager unwilling to try out a formation that would suit him supposing that a 433 would have benefited Topp allowing him more room to show off his skills and this may be true but at what cost to the rest of the squad? Chris Kamara played a team to fit in Chris Waddle but faced relegation until the star man left and he was replaced with more down to Earth football. All of which assumes that if unleashed with a formation change Topp would have been worth the effort. His impressive flashes numbered fewer than those that Kyle Nix produced last season.

On Topp’s exit City are second in League Two and nothing has suggested that that extra place could be earned by bending the team to fit in the Chilean. On the contrary the moral of City’s season to date has been the triumph of effort, believe and the rewards of doing the right things most often rather than hopefully employed low percentage solutions.

In a way that is the lesson that Topp gives us as he leaves. While eyes look at Billy with hope and optimism Michael Boulding – who’s arrival at City was met in places with a grimace rather than the smile of Toppy – was scoring goals and running himself into the ground and has a half dozen goals to his name.

It is impossible to form an argument that Topp should feature above Michael Boulding, Conlon or Thorne and in the end – distressingly – all the man from South America offers is tricks and mirrors while three strikers deliver goals.

Topp may go on to great things – few will wish him bad on the way out – but City have learnt another lesson on going for solid, consistent ability rather than unknown and perhaps talent.

Of course there will persist in the mind the Topp – when “given a chance” – would have been as sublime as Benito Carbone or Peter Beagrie but the reality is the player sitting on his hands while others strive and succeed.

Willy Topp joins a list with Jorge Cadete and Bruno Rodriguez. The players who we thought were going to be.

Michael Boulding has an impressive goal tally for sure and he has been tagged as a target for City for a long time this summer but in terms of alarm bells there is very few that the 32 year old has not clanged.

Boulding joins City after the sort of on off chase which never has brought us much joy in the past. His father insists that the decision to join City has nothing to do with cash but one cannot help but be reminded of the transfers of Ashley Ward, of Lee Power, of Benito Carbone when thinking of this deal.

City’s best signings grasped at the chance to come to Valley Parade with both hands.

Then there is the injury picked up in training with minutes to go of a training session before a game which saw him able to go home rather than to Farsley. In itself not a problem – an injured player should rest – but hardly that desire to settle in to City.

Nevertheless Rory Boulding played that night. What are we to make of Rory and the deal that brings him in his brother’s pocket? How much elevation does the younger get to please the elder? How does McCall deal with Michael if if offers the opinion that Rory deserves a starting run out?

We are to hope that Michael is just pushing for his kid brother not pushing him into places he should not be. These are alarm bells but in a world where Christiano Ronaldo is a slave perhaps this is just Michael using player power and making his own decisions.

The biggest alarm though sounds when one recalls Mansfield’s brilliant, spirited display at Valley Parade last season after which I commented that the team would not be relegated should they play like that more often.

Boulding scored in that game. His 25 goals in a relegated side that can play so well but often did not makes one wonder how the striker fits into that or any of the many teams he has played for? Is the one of those players who while impressive gets more out of a team than he puts in?

Chris Waddle’s time at City was brilliant to watch but Shaun Murray got us out of the bottom two. Wayne Rooney’s second season at Everton was much worse then the year after he left and Tim Cahill took his place. These were good players who for whatever reason did not fit.

Let us this is not the case with Boulding. Let us hope that there worries are unfounded and that the alarm bells are pre-season tension playing on the mind. After all all indications are that this reason is very much make or break.

We welcome both Boulding brothers with the same – if not more considering Michael’s three clubs in the last month – enthusiasm they join us with.

In 12 months time though this double signing and how the relationship between the two is handled could very much decide Stuart McCall’s future.

He is a stocky character – this Barry Conlon – and his has broad shoulders.

Those broad shoulders carried a lot of weight after his signing from Mansfield at the start of this City’s supposed promotion season and when his “fight in an empty room” style of bustling forward play lacked it’s foil in the then injured Peter Thorne he needed those shoulders to carry the criticism he was loaded with.

He worked hard – this Barry Conlon – after missing a penalty on his debut and his reward is ours. His name is sung loud after he – this Barry Conlon – shoulders the responsibility of a penalty that made sure a game that should have been sure five minutes from time.

This Barry Conlon chips low his penalty given after Darren Kempson had stopped David Wetherall scoring and the win is as sealed as it is deserved. This Barry Conlon hears his name sung loud.

That Conlon’s spot kick had to make the game sure was a criminal offence of a decision by the latest in a long line of appalling officials with a linesman allowing a goal for Marc Pugh after his headed was rather randomly powered into the hands of City’s latest on loan goalkeeper Scott Loach but Paul Heckingbottom. The ball was nothing less than a foot on the right side of the line and moving forward.

That the appalling and newest “worst decision ever” was made pulled the blinkers over an excellent save from Loach who has joined from Watford to replace QPR bound Donovan Ricketts. Loach performed well in goal for sure but his mouth open fearless style that saw the 19 year old shouting the sort of instructions that mad Gary Walsh a better keeper than Matt Clarke was more noticeable. He signed as many autographs as he could after the game too. Good kid.

Ricketts is no doubt getting his feet under the table in West London – good luck and thanks for the memories to him – although had he been at Valley Parade he might have wondered how the Referee could see troublesome striker Guy Madjo “make a gesture” to the home supporters and not be called to book on it. Ricketts might have wondered why he was sent off for such an offence at Southend and Madjo was not. He might wonder if Madjo had the same provocation. He might wonder many things and he will probably hope that at his new club the rules are applied more even handily.

In the end that is all I, dear reader, want from officials. Evenhandedness.

Peter Thorne played for QPR – they paid £2,990,000 for for him than they have Ricketts – and it is not hard to see why people thought highly of the striker who from the tail end of his career looks like he should have made more of himself. Sharp, he was, as he finished off a deflection following a pacey run up the field from Omar Daley as City pushed out from a corner which came too soon after a former Bantam Dave Hibbert’s header that put the visitors back into the game after half time.

Hibbert took his header well looping it past Loach but Matthew Clarke will hope to make his aerial clearances more decisive in future. City’s upturn in performances – all but undefeated since Christmas – coincides with Clarke displacing Mark Bower in the side. In the last month City have grown in confidence and now the side can assimilate changes and maintain direction. Tom Penford arrived in the place of Paul Evans in McCall’s holding role and performed well all evening.

City’s upturn also has much to do with Stuart McCall getting the best out of Omar Daley who has moved from central figure to a more suitability less involved player in the Bantams side. McCall has given Daley a remit of using pace and sticking to the flank and then the solo Reggae boy cut past the left back and across the box firing a shot that took a huge deflection to go in from it struck one that Omar is play finisher and not playmaker.

Playmaker.

Let the word float in the air. Think about what it means. Savour it like wine around the mouth. The playmaker.

Seven minutes in and it is the strength of the man, the turn that left three – four maybe – blue shirted defenders chasing shadows. Willy Topp skipped to the box and found Kyle Nix to allow the Aussie to finish superbly and while Nix deserves every plaudit thrown his way it was Topp’s show.

This Willy Topp – who played 55 minutes before being replaced by Barry Conlon as the Chilean builds match fitness – has a clutch of attributes that picked him out at this level. His touch is superb giving him time and space which he uses well so far and his strength is impressive. This Willy Topp knows how to use his body to keep the ball and when he has it he knows what to do with the ball.

And he wants to make play and he has he scope to be the most exciting player at Valley Parade since Benito Carbone and he can go far – further probably than Bradford City and he can hear his name sung loud as long as he follows the example of the balding Irishman with the broad shoulders.

Stuart McCall tells us not to get too excited at the prospect of Willy Topp coming to Bradford City – like his insistence that the Chilean be called Billy not Willy one can expect his words to fall on deaf ears.

Topp is expected to feature on the bench for the League Two game with Rotherham United – the very typification of a dour would be derby game – and for the time he cools his heels to the second he strikes in anger in claret and amber the thoughts of all will be on this latests great white hope.

Topp follows a path along the decline of this club that started with Benito Carbone who promised the abilities that club needed – in the case of Topp and Staurt McCall’s Bradford City those abilities are obviously needed – but for a multitude of reasons were not delivered upon. Topp would do well to follow Carbone’s example – the little Italian gave his all for City every game – rather than the path of Juanjo.

For Topp and Juanjo – Jim Jefferies perfect playmaker – are aligned. Both come into teams that lack inspiration and both are looked on to turn around the fortunes of the club. Such big aspirations on small shoulders Topp – like Juanjo – cannot make a team no matter how well he plays.

And it is oft forgot that for every wretched performance the Spaniard put in his offered moments of impressiveness – his debut winning goal springs to mind – that showed that when he wanted to, he could.

Had he wanted to for Nicky Law then Juanjo could have changed the path of Bradford City. Law’s meat and spuds variety of football was always going to isolate the tricky former Hearts man but more dedication could have seen him win over supporters and managers and – assuming his flashes could be turned into performances – provide the excitement that was lacking from that City team.

Topp comes into the same situation. City are trundling along and one can imagine that the 12,000 on the trundle are waiting for something to make noise about, something to get excited about. Topp – regardless of McCall’s insistence – carries that weight.

One hopes he carries it well, or at least better than others have.

Three summers ago we weighed up who “The most exciting signing in the club’s history” could be before seeing the dominative Italian walking into a maelstrom.

Benito Carbone was the zenith of the summer of madness and now that the battle that began between Geoffrey Richmond and some at the club has been won and the history written by the winners Carbone was always a bad idea.

He was a giddy head rush of an idea. He was starting on a bottle of Jack Daniels while lounging on your freshly cut lawn knowing that you will pay for the hangover and that you had not finished the weeding. He was football transfer as binge.

Like all head rushes it felt great at the time.

Today things are different. Bradford City are making a major signing at a Press Conference at Valley Parade this afternoon but no one is whispering and rumouring. The club sign Alan Combe seems to be the most popular assessment of the events although names from Danny Forrest to Teddy Sheringham have been mentioned.

We have modest ambitions these days.

When Carbone signed many thought City had spring boarded into the top half of the Premiership. Even if today’s major signing was the little Italian there are few who would thing that this one player would face anything more than a play off push at the very best.

Perhaps we have learned something in the time between August 8th, 2000 and today. We have seen Benito Carbone and a cast of others including Stan Collymore, Ashley Ward, Dan Petrescu, David Hopkin et al be able to do nothing individually and in some cases collectively against the decline of the Bantams.

Add to that the catastrophic wages of Carbone that caused a strut on the day but cost so much in the longer term.

The lesson is that you cannot focus on one man and ignore other problems. That whomever we sign today the aim of the game is to get the best out of the squad.

Promotion in 1999 depended not on the great works of Stuart McCall and Peter Beagrie but on the fact that work a day squad men like Robbie Blake and Jamie Lawrence emerged as quality players. If we are to get on at this club then it is not important if we sign Alan Combe, Danny Forrest or Teddy Sheringham, it matters that we get the best out of Michael Standing and Danny Cadamarteri.

That said though if we break the bank to sign Freddy Adu I’ll be wandering away from VP a happy man.

Perhaps this is where one hundred years of history has come to an end. 3-0 defeat on a cold and rain soaked night in Hull which could be the last football game Bradford City ever play. Word around the few from Bradford who came across is that the numbers for the CVA do not add up and this club is left looking for a miracle to stay in existence beyond Friday. Perhaps when you look across the hundred years of this club, or maybe just the past twenty years, the balance sheet would show we are owed a miracle.

It is being said that Gerling, the biggest creditor Bradford City have, will refuse the £700,000 payment for the debt of £7m and as a result put the club into liquidation. They will not get anymore money from liquidation in fact they will get substantially less, but they feel that if they do not there will face a rush of clubs trying to follow City down this tortuous, wretched route just to rip up a few balance statements. If they are bloody fools. Who would choose this route? Who would go through this by choice?

So the future for City if this is the case is that we have no future. Unless the numbers come up on the 1st of August then the 31st of July will be Bradford City’s final day as a football club of any real significance. I cannot get my head around that just yet. I am not sure I ever will be able to.

I can remember the mistakes we made. Signing Benito Carbone, Dan Petrescu, Ashley Ward et al in the summer of 2002 but even the most pessimistic would never have seen here from there. Only the harshest of judges could say that a few badly done transfer deals should result in one hundred years of football history being wiped out.

The real problem is that I do not feel that we have done enough wrong for this punishment. What was our crime again? Did we over reached trying to live in the Premiership? I guess we did but surely that equation damns English football for all time. What is the point of this game we would call beautiful if it is as predetermined as a WWF match up?

Should the likes of Bradford City never try get better? What is the punishment for failure? Obliteration? Leicester City, Derby County, Ipswich Town. All tried to move up a rung in the Premiership and had some success but I fear for those clubs.

No, I lie. I fear for this game that I am beginning to call God Forsaken. This is not the sport that we grew up watching. Football was above all things fair. Effort was rewarded. Good pros and good players got just deserts and when things were well-managed success was achieved. If things went wrong then clubs won nothing and scraped by, but they got by in the vast majority of cases.

So who is next? If Bradford City can not be a viable proposition with a year ago 15,000 season ticket holders and a 25,000 capacity stadium then who will be next. My money is on Chelsea, Sunderland, Everton or even Leeds or one of the other clubs that tried to break into the top flight of the top flight and failed. Expect shockwaves when that happens. People will cry crocodile tears over Bradford City.

But not us. Our tears will be a genuine and as real as they are at any funeral. This is not the ending of a business, it is the death of our communal dream. If you do not understand that you do not understand football.

The numbers might come in on Thursday, I pray to God that they do. This article will then seem like the reactionary nonsense of someone too close to proceedings to get perspective but driving back from Hull with the water feeding off the tyres of cars in front and effortlessly being wiped away from the windscreen it seems like we are on the brink of the end of our World.

Bradford City were Richard Siddall, Gus Uhlenbeek, Lewis Emanuel, Paul Evans, Robert Morgan, Mark Bower, Michael Standing, Craig Fishlock, Paul Gedman, Andy Gray, Andrew Lee. Subs: Danny Forrest, Keith Brodie, Tom Penford.

For some it will be Benito Carbone reverting to type. The temperamental Italian finally showing his true colours and leaving City in the lurch following his refusal to take a place on the bench for Tuesday night’s 1-0 defeat by Preston.

For others Beni will have been justified in walking out of Valley Parade within two hours of kick off after being told that he would be sub to a defender who had a few decent games up front. Certainly there are few other than Nicky Law who would have thought that Andy Tod represented a better striking solution than Benito Carbone.

Whatever the justification for Beni’s walking out the effect on the team was clear. City were insipid in a game that was easily winnable. Carbone’s departure had obviously effected the players, although for what reason is unsure. Did they play bad because of the upset of seeing Carbone go, was it some parting shot that the striker made on his way out of the door or was the little Italian so popular that a wound to him was felt by the team.

Whatever it does seem that Beni had blotted a perfect copybook at City where he has been a model pro. The solution for Beni was to cool his heals on the bench for an hour and then burst back onto the scene. By walking away Beni seems everything that they have told us he is and more. He seems uncommitted, he seems to not give a damn and what’s more, he seems small and petty.

Benito Carbone is not manager of Bradford City, just like when Stuart McCall and Jim Jefferies were at loggerheads, McCall was not the manager. Nicky Law is and he has the right to pick the team as he sees fit and like Jim Jefferies he lives and dies by that selection. If Nicky Law, who watched Carbone trudge around a Middlesbrough reserve game lifelessly last week before deciding not stick with the team that scored two in eight minutes at Barnsley, decides that Beni is not worth a place in the starting line up that decision must be respected by the player.

Carbone will probably be hell bent on getting out of Valley Parade now and perhaps that is best. In so many ways he represents what we tried to be. If we are to get back to the Premiership then we will do it the same way we got there. By building a team and making the right buys. Beni is a superb player and yes he can take defences in this division apart on his own but as his walk out proves, too much store is put in a player like that. We need to spread the danger in the forward line (Peter Beagrie, Lee Mills, Robbie Blake and Jamie Lawrence), not isolate it to a simple approach be it the skills of Carbone of Tuesday night’s long humps to Tod and Ward.

Carbone will face a two-week fine, which gives Nicky Law an unexpected £80,000 to play with. My advice would be to add it to the bid for Breckin and Burt. Should Carbone go soon then that with the money raised for Robbie Blake should be used to bring in more players of the Burt/Breckin mould: Young, talented, eager to get on.

City need a reboot. Jim Jefferies made it his mission to take on the squad and bring down the age separating wheat from chaff but the Scot failed in that. There is still too much overpaid chaff at City. Carbone is not wheat and on his day he is worth every single penny of his £40,000 a week, but driving away from Valley Parade before kick off he is worthless, especially as he leaves his team mates only five points off the relegation zone.

One would have thought that City could do with a player like Carbone in that situation, but this morning, the morning after Beni walked away from Valley Parade, the phrase “A player like Carbone” has the same ring for City fans as it does in many other areas of football, and that sort of player we can do without.

If Benito Carbone can be brought back to the fold then all the better, but he will be forever tarnished at the one club in football that thought he was something other than they said he was. Benito Carbone the troublesome Italian? You betcha.

The papers were full of it, “OK 4-0, but don’t think this makes you any good”.

It seems that the boys of the press are sticking by the mid-table, 10th, bottom half, probably not go down predictions that they had tagged City with despite the thumping of Barnsley on the first day. No surprises there. The paper don’t need a memory, if they had one they might ask why the man who they said would not be at the club at Christmas if things were going bad scored an overhead kick for us in division one.

But the question remains. Are City the real deal or is this just opening day delight before the averageness that awaits?

Personally I thought City looked a class above Barnsley and I did not think Barnsley looked that bad. The discipline that saw Gareth Whalley on the goal line to clear Kevin Gallen’s shot just after Ashley Ward had scored his first penalty was the best example of what City have got and the other sides have not. Barnsley attacked pretty well, but defensively they and a lot of other teams in the division are a shambles.

David Wetherall, Robert Molenaar and on his day Andy Myers are good enough to get into any back four in this league but there is more to it than that. City are post-war London. The blitz has gone but the spirit is still there. The oneness that repelled some very good teams for the past two years is a sponge for the Nationwide league’s better forwards.

Whoever the members of the back four are, now that the cursed Ian Nolan has gone, will not matter because the motto and the mindset will be the same. For all the headlines of Benito Carbone’s overheads or Ash Ward’s Man of the Match display, its at the back that City separated themselves from Barnsley.

So if you are going to stay strong at the back and your forwards are likely to create you something, and lets face it Carbone, Ward, Blake, Jess et al are all creative Peter Beardsleys before they are deadly Gary Linekers.

The next 45 games are going to tell us if City are the real deal or not, but yesterday should have seen the guys at the papers reassessing the Bantams. They have us pegged as a Watford, bounced out of the Premiership with tails between our legs, but we had confidence build up by the solid back end to the season (Leeds excepted). It will take winning until March before they sit up and take notice of us on Fleet Street.