BfB

Uwe Rösler is definitely joining Bradford City who are definitely going to be selling Bratwurst at half time and definitely paying one and a half million for Reece Burke who definitely posted a picture of himself in a City kit and he will definitely replace James McDarby who is definitely joining Parkinson at Bolton with Jamie Proctor who would definitely have scored twenty five goals this season as would Dylan Mottley-Henry who is definitely in the Barnsley first team by Christmas and definitely would have been brilliant for us as would George Green who is definitely the English Antoine Griezmann and Stuart McCall missed out in him because he is definitely not a proper manager and definitely just signing his mates which is odd because we definitely have not signed anyone but when we do sign people we will definitely be signing cheap German players who will definitely not be good enough but will be in the team because Edin Rahic definitely picks the team and all this definitely would not have happened if the Germans had not forced out Parkinson because the old boardroom definitely would not have forced a manager out and we definitely are going to be awful this year and definitely will be rubbish and under prepared and Greg Abbott definitely let Nahki Wells go because he does not know a good player when he sees one and why didn’t we sign Tom Bradshaw anyway because without him there is no chance at all of promotion and without Josh Cullen there is no chance of even winning a game and the young players are definitely not going to be given a chance because Omar Daley is definitely coming back.

But I expect promotion.

Definitely.

Napoléon Bonaparte is reported to have said that that if the French army was left without someone to fight then they would fight themselves, or within themselves more probably and given that the Corsican was a veteran of his country’s revolution one could see the origin of the thrust of his point.

In football it is given to being the same. The summer is long and there is nothing to do other than recall the Icelandic victory and look at the slow building of a team at Bradford City after the exit of Phil Parkinson. That team takes some interesting shapes but as new Head of Recruitment Greg Abbott freely admits it is behind where it needs to be.

Work must be done for signings to be made and – it would seem – is being done.

Watching George Green on Saturday was a long awaited pleasure for me who had followed his career so closely but as was observed at the time Green is a player who would be a good signing but probably not a good loan signing. To borrow Green from Burnley one suspects that a club will have to promise to play his every week and even ignoring the lack of first team experience he has had at any club – a handful of Tranmere Rovers games – promising to play someone else’s attacking midfielders every week is an act of folly in League One where a gnarled defensive can get you – well – fifth.

Which is not to say that Green will not have a forty six game season for someone and be the finest player in the division – he may – but management is managing risk and there is a risk inherent in giving a starting shirt to a player who has not been blooded in the professional game. This was as true with Billy Knott as it is with George Green. It is true of Dylan Mottley-Henry too.

Dylan Mottley-Henry joined Barnsley of The Championship having been released by City months ago. It is a good move for Mottley-Henry but one doubts Adam Hammill will be sitting out many games to make room for him. To keep Mottley-Henry Bradford City – be it Parkinson or Stuart McCall – would have had to give the player a professional contract. No one knows how tight money is with the new regime at Bradford City but Championship money allows for more spending.

Mottley-Henry has a six month deal at Oakwell and if that does not work out then his cost is absorbed into the running of a Championship club. Less than the gates for when Newcastle United visit South Yorkshire. If the promising winger impresses then Barnsley reap the rewards, if not they hardly feel the pain. That is the difference between promotion and losing in the play-offs as starkly as it can be put.

Mottley-Henry, like Green, offers a risk which McCall and Bradford City are adverse to. Which tells us something else new about this new Bradford City, at least for now.

Steve Davies has been released by Bradford City along with Christopher Routis, Billy Knott, Alan Sheehan, Dylan Mottley-Henry and Sam Wright. Greg Leigh, Nathan Clarke, Ben Williams, Jamie Proctor, Joe Cracknell and James King have been offered contracts.

Davies leaving the club seemed to be inevitable after a season which he failed to secure a place in the starting eleven. The same could be said for Billy Knott who was always individually impressive in games but played a kind of attacking midfield which Phil Parkinson seldom uses. Knott and Davies could both be retooled into the withdrawn striker role which Billy Clarke plays but Parkinson obviously has not seen enough from either in that position. Davies’ legacy is a late goal against Millwall in the league game at Valley Parade and any number of kicks and niggles that earned him the nickname “The wind-up footballer” so easy did it seem to be to get under his skin as seen at Coventry City.

Knott scored against Leeds United, and played against Chelsea, and shall always have a place in my heart and I suspect yours.

That Jamie Proctor has been offered a contract to stay – and the contract offers in situations where the player will be at the end of a deal always tend to be of the take-it-or-leave-it variety – says something about his usefulness in the squad. When Phil Parkinson is asked to choose between Proctor and James Hanson his decision seem to be given the weekly grind of a season – and the injuries that brings – he might as well have both if the money is right. Otherwise Proctor is free to look elsewhere.

One suspects that along with Proctor Nathan Clarke, Greg Leigh, Ben Williams have all been given an understanding of their position in the pecking order. Clarke might have thought he did enough at the end of the season to warrant a chance in the starting eleven but his similarity to, and inferiority to, Rory McArdle has allowed him to leave if the offer he has is not suitable. The younger Greg Leigh is in a similar situation as understudy to James Meredith.

That Parkinson is prepared to let record breaking goalkeeper Ben Williams reject a deal and exit the club says a lot about his position and – one suspects – the hunt being on for a new custodian with often loaned out Manchester United man Sam Johnstone supposedly of interest to City.

All of which leaves City with:

• Perhaps Ben Williams
• Perhaps Joe Cracknell
• Stephen Darby
• Perhaps Nathan Clarke
• Rory McArdle
• James Meredith
• Perhaps Greg Leigh
• Reece Webb-Foster
• Mark Marshall
• Filipe Morais
• Tony McMahon
• Josh Morris
• Paul Anderson
• Billy Clarke
• James Hanson
• Perhaps Jamie Proctor

While not quiet having the effect of overshadowing the lack-energy display against Peterborough United at the weekend the injury to Paul Anderson and Phil Parkinson’s search for a replacement has taken some of the attention away.

As Parkinson started looking down his list of wingers available – seemingly not keen to give Dylan Motley-Henry a place in the team which his squad status demands – the club and community were in regret over Anderson. The BBC noted benignly that Anderson had broken his leg while City themselves bemoaned the bad luck involved.

Bad luck is if you slip on ice and break your leg.

If someone jumps at you with a studded boot without taking care for your safety, and of the referee who is supposed to be in charge of your safety ignores it and all the builds up to it, I think you are entitled to put it down to something other than misfortune.

Indeed Anderson did not break his leg. It was broken and it was broken by Michael Bostwick.

Let us not blame Michael Bostwick

That Bostwick made the challenge he did is not the bone of contention. He approached the prone Anderson a minute after breaking his fibula in two to acknowledge and perhaps apologise for it. Both were probably appreciated by Anderson and by the City players but neither were strictly necessary. Bostwick was not even spoken to by Referee Paul Tierney.

Tierney saw the tackle – we assume – and decided that the break was an accident (in that it was an unintentional outcome) rather than an intended outcome. He is probably right that Bostwick did not try to or want to break Anderson’s leg but one hopes Tierney is given pause to question the cause and effect of his application of the rules around the aggressive play that Peterborough used on Saturday.

The Posh battled and that battle resulted in any number of tackles which could have and did not injure players. They were not especially guilty of this over and above other teams (including, at times but not on Saturday, City) but they were guilty of it.

We enjoy seeing physical committed football and it is a way to win games. To fight for the ball is a good thing as long as it is done within the remit of the rules which – Tierney’s judgement is – Bostwick did.

By way of example

Consider – if you will – Anderson’s injury in the context of him playing a chess match with Bostwick. It is unthinkable that a Chess player would break another’s leg. Breaking limbs, indeed grazing hands as they reach for pieces, is just not done in Chess.

It is a ludicrously extreme example. Imagine a Badminton game where a leg was broken. A physical sport and one where players have been know to be physical with each other there is at least a convention in Badminton that if the ball is near your opponents head so that to hit it would be to hit him or her then one does not swing at it.

At the other side I’m sure there are sports in some dystopian future in which the aim is to inflict pain and that Anderson’s broken leg is a victory for Bostwick. Who knows? My point is that there is an ability within the sporting context to set what is considered acceptable force in pursuit of victory and what is not.

And I would suggest that Tierney has his calibration of that wrong and – so much as he represents the views of Referees and Authorities who agree with him – English football has that calibration wrong.

Low expectations

Tierney and his ilk convict themselves of having low expectations of the English lower league footballer.

A tackle like Bostwick’s – and again I do not blame him for playing within the rules as played every week – is considered acceptable in League One because of a low expectation of the players involved in the game. Who can expect more of a League One midfielder than that?

But to expect a player to deliver less because of a perceived lower ability is to ignore the evidence that emerges from growing leagues in football. Leagues like the Japanese Football League which for obvious reasons is less physical and has fewer technical skills in the tackle but is not more violent as a result. It is not that in the J-League tackles like Bostwick’s are sent off more, they are just not done.

The calibration of the football culture – more recently established than the third tier of the English game – has made recklessness in tackles inappropriate.

The opposite is true in the Australian League – eye wateringly brutal at times – coming as it does in the culture of Aussie Rules and Rugby League.

There is an ability to tune the calibration of what is acceptable in football which – at the moment and in the English game – is I would suggest – a little off towards the physical side of the game that left its mark on Paul Anderson’s leg.

But the crunch

None of which is to suggest that Michael Bostwick has to foul to be a good player. His opposite number Gary Liddle typifies the idea of a player who can be commanding and aggressive without being dirty. Liddle is forceful but in control of what he does.

Liddle is the modern type of central midfielder a far cry from some of the players who played that role for City. Players like Greg Abbott and Mick Kennedy spent entire games kicking player as much as ball. There is no comparison between those players of the 1980s and Bostwick, let alone Liddle, but the fact that thirty years ago those players could be popular in the game and are not now suggests that it is possible to change what is acceptable in the game.

Is watching Liddle worse than watching Abbott or Kennedy? I would argue that Liddle winning a ball firmly is better than Abbott’s hard but fair because of the skill that goes into the tackle.

There is nothing lost by forcing players at all levels to be better at tackling if they are going to tackle.

“Creativity is more than just being different. Anybody can plan weird; that’s easy. What’s hard is to be as simple as Bach. Making the simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity” – Charles Mingus

Bradford City’s 3-0 win over neighbours Farsley was a given but the players in the first half who ran up a three goal lead through two James Hanson headers and a low finish by trialist Sanchez Watt deserve credit for starting the 2015/2016 season with good tempo but the theme of the afternoon was how this new generation of Phil Parkinson’s side was to do with the team’s syncopation.

Within thirty minutes James Hanson had shown that his much converted prowess in the air would figure heavily in Bradford City’s arsenal this season with Phil Parkinson having spend both forty five minute periods playing the 442 with a withdrawn striker which had seemed to be his modus operandi in his first few years at City. Full backs were instructed to go beyond wingers – which they did resulting in a third goal – and a thin slice of the performance suggests that next season will see the tactics of simplicity at Valley Parade.

Which is to say that most of the afternoon in West Leeds was spent wondering how creative this version of Bradford City would be and how important creativity is to a football team.

“Creativity comes from a conflict of ideas” – Donatella Versace

The head of Hanson is a tried and tested route to goal for Bradford City. Hanson flicks on, Hanson heads in, let us take it as read that Rory McArdle – not playing today but wandering the stands – will be hitting diagonal balls towards Big Jim all season long.

This presents two problems. What is Big Jim is not there? There is an argument that the main problem with the now departed Andrew Davies was not that he suffered injury and suspension is was the impact on the team in his absence. Take out Andrew Davies and the rest of the squad would be given am excuse for defeat. Of course we got beat by Preston North End and Bristol City – the mental process goes – we did not have Davies in the side.

This is the idea that a player is almost “too good” for the team he is in and that removing him improves the team. It is counter-intuitive and often seeps into debate as justification for making a team worse and one could dismiss it for that if it were not for the occasions when it is accurate. Chris Kamara’s Bradford City with Chris Waddle beat Everton, and Waddle was the best player by a country mile, but the team lost and drew a lot and only when Waddle exited for Sunderland to be replaced by Shaun Murray, Tommy Wright and other inauspicious names did staying in the division look possible.

The best player left but because the team had to do more than just giving the ball to Chris Waddle and seeing the outcome then there was a general improvement. Without Andrew Davies will the rest of the players be unable to use the excuse – and I use the term in the context of mental reasoning and not about what is said in the T&A – of Andrew Davies’ absence? We shall see.

And we shall also see if the same is true of James Hanson. Steve Davies sat out Farsley too and he may be a Hanson in waiting but none of the other forwards looked capable of replacing Hanson. Those forwards included Billy Clarke who picks up this season where he left off last as prolific but probably not prolific enough and Luke James who caused some problems with his energy but suffered in comparison to Sanchez Watt who enjoyed the forty five minutes before him.

Watt scored and showed a left footed touch to play the sort of ball which will be useful to overlapping players. He slowly got into the game and started to demand the ball more than wait for it. He looks every inch a confidence player who has not got confidence, or at least not where he needs it. Parkinson has a few weeks to decide if he and Steve Parkin can get into Watt’s head and press the right buttons. If they can Sanchez Watt would be a real asset. If not he floats away as it seems he will do.

(If he does though he will still give me this Abbott and Costello moment for the ages heard from two men over my right shoulder.)

Man One: “Who is that?”
Man Two: “Sanchez Watt.”
Man One: “I don’t know what?”
Man Two: “That’s his name.”
Man One: “What?”
What Two: “Watt.”
Man One: “That’s what I’m asking?”
Man Two: “Watt’s his name.”
Man One: “Yes.”

(Humour like that – and I swear that is verbatim – is worth ten pounds of anyone’s money.)

That aside aside there is an obvious problem with Hanson being a single point of failure within the team which was auditioning central defenders with the ability to play a long pass. Gary Liddle best asset as a defender is his abilities in midfield and Alan Sheehan took the second half in the middle of a back four with Greg Leigh playing left back for a half in which he registered nothing of note.

More impressive was the six foot five Jamie McCombe who seemed to quickly find a place in the Bantams side. McCombe is thirty two and has had his own injury hell but I would be very surprised if he were not a City player next season.

Which is not to say that he was especially good against the limited opposition – he was serviceable – but he fit into the role Parkinson has for him so well. Tall enough to offer a threat from set plays, comfortable on the ball enough to play it with control, and massive. Youth player Kesi Omolokun was the fourth central defender on show. He was untroubled during the second half.

In the second half midfield Christopher Routis epitomised Mingus’ point about being weird not being the same as being creative. Routis continues to be an impressive physical kicker of a ball but one who seems to lack a position. We know he is not a central defender in League One and as a midfielder he tackles sometimes and uses the ball badly. I want so much to be proved wrong about Routis because if his abilities to kick a ball could be put into a position then he would be very useful but I cannot see how it will happen.

And trying to force Routis into central midfield makes that a player like Sam Wright – full of energy for the first half and able to take responsibility for the ball – would have his development curtailed. A product of the youth set up Wright burnt himself out after a half hour but he showed his willingness to take positions and offer options to team mates as well as his control of the ball. It is not to damn him with faint praise to say that he could be a man to take a space on the bench this season but rather to suggest that doing so would bring better results than constantly trying to shoehorn Routis into positions he does not show the discipline to play.

Discipline being a key for Parkinson. Routis winning the ball in midfield and having options in front of him – only to see him smash a ball high and wide – is no more useful at Farsley than it would be at Wembley. Routis has a choice between trying to score blistering goals against weak opposition and trying to show how he can perform in a team. He makes his choices, Sam Wright made his, and I know who I believe the club should reward with first team football.

Josh Morris looked able next to Wright in central midfield although one might think that he is best used on the left flank with James Meredith going past him. Morris run and shot off the bar showed a player who enjoyed having the ball but most of his play focused on usefulness and that was a good start. Daniel Devine took a role in the second half but would need to do more to commend himself.

At full back Tony McMahon returned and Luke Hendrie – son of John (although I shall try to not hold that against him) – played at right back with McMahon strolling through the second forty five minutes and Hendrie overlapping well but defending poorly in the first half. Hendrie has spent much of his career to date as an attacking midfilder – a position which borders on fiction – and that showed but there seemed to be some potential going forward but a lot of work to be done as a right back.

Sons of Fathers include Harrison Gilkes – the son of Michael – who was generally unimpressive in the first half on the left flank running at players and losing the ball. Dylan Mottley-Henry and Joe Brennan took the second half wide positions and both looked eager. A note too on Filipe Morais who showed accuracy which gave a second route to the head of Hanson. Increasingly Morais looks key to Parkinson’s plans.

In goal Ben Williams causes me worries, and Joe Cracknell has nothing to do.

“Creativity is the thing that everybody wants and nobody wants to pay for” – Me, this week

And so considering the game the questions arise around how creativity should function in Phil Parkinson’s side. We have always known that Parkinson as a manager wants a controlled, dependable creativity. The Versace idea of creativity as being a clash of ideas is something which City tried last season and got success at but that success was limited. It game us – one could argue – the greatest season to support Bradford City we’ve ever known: Chelsea, Sunderland, Leeds; and it saw an improvement in the League One position but it saw fluctuating results.

Players have come available this close season – players like George Green – who represent that idea of idea clash creativity. The Gascoigne figure bewitches the mind but Parkinson wants the Mingus idea of creativity. He wants a lex parsimoniae creativity of simple football played in small, well practised units.

Parkinson wants the creativity of dependability, metronomic in making chances. To get this he needs reliable routes to goal. That Morais will find Hanson from dead balls is already obvious as is Rory McArdle hitting Hanson long but Parkinson wants Meredith opening the same path, he wants a player entering in the second phase of attacks, he wants full backs able to go past wider players. He wants to collect a team or reliable attacking routes to goal and he is building that from his 442 formation.

At the moment he has James Hanson’s head. It is not wonder he did not want the striker to go.

The 3-0 defeat to Preston North End will be hard to take for Phil Parkinson and his Bradford City team but contained within it a number of sobering lessons.

The game turned almost entirely in the fourteenth minute when a hopefully ball forward to Joe Garner was demurred from by Christopher Routis, who then ended up on the wrong side of Garner, and then brought Garner down, and was then sent off.

Following that City enjoyed a good deal of good play and Jon Stead will look back at a shot well saved by Sam Johnstone (who frustrated City in a 1-2 reversal by Doncaster earlier in the season) but after half time when Gary Liddle – press-ganged into central defence – slid into Jermaine Beckford the direction of the match was sealed.

The three goals flattered Preston who played well and one was left with the feeling that but for a fourteenth minute sending off one could have seen a superb football match but with the certainty that for the visitor’s had enough talents they did not need all the help City gave them.

Mistakes

I’m not going to criticise Christopher Routis for his sending off but I am amazed by Phil Parkinson believing that the Swiss was ever going to be suitable to play central defender in this match.

Routis is titularly a central defender and perhaps it says he is a central defender on his passport but the skills that are needed to play a League One football game as a central defender (especially against Beckford and Garner) he does not possess. Rory McArdle does. Andrew Davies does. Gary MacKenzie does. The Preston three of Tom Clarke, Bailey Wright and Paul Huntington do.

And while hindsight is 20:20 playing Routis in the position was a mistake by Phil Parkinson and one that had consequences in short order. Without Davies and without MacKenzie one might suggest that Parkinson had only two central defenders left in McArdle and Routis and was forced into the selection but to that I would say he then had only one and had to play someone out of position.

Christopher Routis has shown time and again that he cannot play a central defensive position in League One. Parkinson made a call playing him there rather than dropping Gary Liddle into the back four and was rewarded for that with the performance one had come to expect from Routis even when Routis is playing well.

He does individual things well some of the time and is poor in team patterns. The curious thing about Parkinson’s decision to play him was that there were four very good examples of what good look like when it comes to defending in League One. It looks like Tom Clarke, it looks like Rory McArdle, and it does not look like Routis.

Not mistakes

Why Parkinson felt that Routis was capable is in his judgement and his judgement is sound most of the time. Routis aside Parkinson will look back on a team that showed much against a very good Preston North End side although there are areas of concern and lessons to be learnt.

Going forward City’s cutting edge depends on Jon Stead and Jon Stead’s mood seems to govern much. Against Preston he was not the Jon Stead who put Chelsea to the sword and was subdued. James Hanson – on the other hand – maintains a constant level of performance. It is not hard to see why managers have been frustrated with Stead in the past but Parkinson has a decision to make on the mark he sets on Stead.

The Jon Stead of Chelsea is a player one would take the edge of the budget for, the Jon Stead of Preston is somewhat lower in value, and only those inside the club know what offers have been made to the forward. With Aaron McLean still earning for City whilst in semi-retirement at Peterborough for another season there is a need for the City to have a player who can provide (in both scoring and creating) goals in games like Preston at Home.

If that is Jon Stead then one would be overjoyed – he has a #sowhat cult following and all – but the lesson of Preston for Phil Parkinson is that of the two Steads and the judgement the manager must show is which one will get get most of the time should he be signed, and how much is that worth?

There is value to be had elsewhere. City have no goalkeeper signed up for next season. Ben Williams saved a penalty and has some talents but if Parkinson wanted a keeper to control his penalty area and clean out crosses then Williams is not that man.

Which is not to take anything away from Williams but rather to say that this game with Preston is the type of match that Phil Parkinson needs to take lessons from.

We know what good looks like

To get promoted from League One you have to be good. Good looks like Bradford City’s performance with ten men in many ways. Short of a man the players worked hard and worked hard for each other. At times it was – to use a cliché – difficult to tell which side had the full complement of players but when Daniel Johnson first and later Chris Humphrey fired the kind of shots one takes when one has a man, and a goal, advantage the difference was obvious.

Good looks like confidence, and City can add more of that, and it looks like self belief and that is sometimes lacking from the Bantams. Mostly though those things need to be tweaked rather than overhauled and after the game one was left with the idea that City with eleven men would not be far away from Preston. That City have the right framework in place for promotion, but need to improve in some areas.

Phil Parkinson does not need a template for knowing what a team which can be promoted looks like but – if he does – Preston North End might represent it.

(Aside: Dylan Mottley Henry made his début and looked keen.)