BfB

Football used to have a place for people like Dean Windass who – talking on Radio Leeds – declared his interest in taking over at Valley Parade. He is expected to be interviewed next week.

After a long career and a good deal of highs and lows some club in the lower leagues would take the journeyman player and welcome him into their club, showing him to the manager’s office, and seeing what happened.

And often it was not much.

Sir Bobby Moore turned up at Southend United as a reward for a career well done, Sir Bobby Charlton did the same at Preston North End. Sir Bobby’s uncle “Wor” Jackie Milburn was Ipswich Town manager for a year and a bit. These were big names. Lower down the ladder of football the jobbing player got given a chance just as England stars did. Football tends to like to look after its own and any player who has been heard of got given a club to manage for a brief spell before ended up running a pub.

Reputation was the key of course. When Sir Bobby Moore walked into Roots Hall he brought a dash of World Cup magic with him. Forever painted in red and gold on a sunny day in ’66 he must have dazzled in interview and the supporters no doubt welcomed him with the same awe. Aside from the odd quote in a newspaper – tidied up by a friendly editor – footballers seldom talked about football so the idea that the England skipper might not be that clued up on running a team never seemed to occur.

And then came BSkyB. Twenty four hour non-stop talking about football from anyone and everyone who can string a sentence together, and often those who cannot.

Which brings us to Dean Windass who is exactly that sort of player who would have been given a chance by some chairman who held him in high esteem and supporters would have been impressed by his reputation. Not now though with Windass having spent the last few years struggling to be coherent in front of camera for Sky TV.

Not that I would criticise him for struggling with that job – on the hoof football analysis is tough – but the fact that his abilities thinking on his feet has been exposed means that rather than his arrival being treated with he surprise of the new Windass has already been revealed.

He is what he is. Gruff, passionate, seemingly not especially bright (again, one would hate to conclude that on the basis of doing a tough job on Sky) and hardly the stuff of the modern tactical manager. A million miles away from Mourinho.

How close to Trevor Cherry? How close to Roy McFarland? Two of City’s successful managers of the 1980s got the job on the basis of England credentials and their own reputations. When appointed no supporter could say if Cherry or McFarland talked a good game, both played one, and that was enough.

So Windass represents a kind of old school approach to appointments. The guy who gets the job because of his reputation and a good feel that they chairman gets from him and – if he does well – gets to keep it.

It seems doubtful that City are prepared to turn the clock back.

Blame it on Silvio Berlusconi. Back in the early 1990s the man who would bring the term bunga bunga into common usage was the flamboyant chairman of an AC Milan team which sported Ruud Gullit, Marco van Basten and Frank Rijkaard as the allowed three non-Italian players.

UEFA and Serie A rules mandated that a club could only have three non-Italians and so the practice was that the Lira went to a chosen trio of outsiders. Clubs were defined by the foreign players they had and Milan were the Dutchmen, across the City Inter were German with Jürgen Klinsmann, Lothar Matthäus and Andreas Brehme. It was a simpler time to watch football, and to be Silvio Berlusconi.

The future Italian PM announced though that Milan would be signing three more World Class non-Italians and – starting with the unfortunate Gianluigi Lentini – eight more Italians to create a second team which would play in European competition in the week. The one would be fresh for the weekend, the other fresh for midweek, and players would swap between the two teams.

And so modern squad football was born.

Bradford City’s own Phil Babb was a part of the emergence of the squad in the English game. in 1994 Babb and John Scales joined a Liverpool side managed by Roy Evans who already had the beloved Neil Ruddock at the heart of the back four and the maths did not match. Was Ruddock for the chop? Would Babb be out at left back (or up front, as he was at City)? What was Evans doing signing more than two top quality central defenders?

“Moving to a back three and wing backs” turned out to be the answer to the question poised by the question itself was illustrative. Growing up in the eighties my brother and myself could name the one to eleven of every team in Division One and that one to eleven was set in stone, seemingly unaffected as today’s line ups are by loss of form, injury and failing super-injunctions.

A team like Liverpool seemingly had no need for a spare defender – one sub, four four two and all – but soon the idea verbalised by Berlusconi would make the sort of questions that Evans face irrelevant. Within two years and in the run up to Euro ’96 Kevin Keegan’s Newcastle United were signing Tino Asprilla when they already had Les Ferdinand, Andy Cole, Peter Beardsley, Alan Shearer, Super Mac, Wor Jackie Milburn et al.

In 1981 Aston Villa won the League using only fourteen players all season. The modern football squad demands eighteen per match and a host of others to insure that even the League Two player is not required to take the field with the sort of injury which was played through in earlier eras after which players retired at thirty, and could not walk.

So we have a situation where Manchester City have over forty players in their first team squad as an extreme example and most teams could put out something approaching Berlusconi’s two teams a week. If you are on the edges of one of those huge squad – and Bradford City’s is 21 strong at current assessment – then you seem a long way from the first team. Unless you get to do something special from the bench you are a long way from the first team.

So while the dozen and some who regularly feature in the first team focus on getting from game to game the players on the edges – especially the younger ones – should be focusing on improvement. Enter the development squad.

It seems to have come from Archie Christie who came to Bradford with John Still when the Bantams interviewed the entire Dagenham and Redbridge backroom staff for roles at Valley Parade. Something had powered the Essex club’s rise from non-league compound to League One club and it seems that Mark Lawn and Julian Rhodes believe that Christie is it.

Chief scout and he brings in some young lads from Falkirk which seems a sensible move but not an unexpected one but as Head of Football Development Christie’s Development Squad offers something new.

Wayne Allison approves and has been recruited to coach “The Developments” as they shall be hamfistedly dubbed with his aim on taking players who have signed professional contracts after their two year apprenticeships but are not in the first team picture week in week out, or who are falling in the limbo between young player and first teamer, and concentrate on improving them as players over getting them ready for matches as the first team squad do.

Squad sizes have increased massively in the last fifteen years, but the focus of training is on preparing a group of players for the next game leaving those who play ready, and those who do not having wasted that time. The Development Squad offers a chance to make better use of those players allowing the first team to focus on preparation, and the fringe on improvement.

Of course the idea could be a failure. Dag & Red’s success might be down to something else entirely, Christie’s ideas might not be relocatable, it all just might not work but for once Bradford City have come up with a plan to improve the quality of the footballers at the club rather than trying the tried and failed method of trying to buy in promotions or assemble squads on a season by season basis.

A plan on improving footballers is a plan to improve the football club and, in effect, the first time since the Premier League that Bradford City have had a plan to improve the club that might work.