BfB

The FA Cup sixth round draw presented a home game against Reading which would not be televised on the BBC.

After being giant killing heroes against Chelsea the tone of the build up to the Sunderland game was questions as to if players would be able to repeat the achievement. Emphatically the answer was a Yes.

Yet BBC avoided the incongruousness of asking if the giant killers could kill another, smaller, giant when it dodged the Sunderland tie. They also opted against City’s sixth round tie which will be shown on BT Sport.

Bradford City vs Reading is not so much David vs Goliath as David vs Avinadav. Who wants to watch that? Elsewhere the Titans of Manchester United meet the Behemoths of Arsenal, making them both seem normal sized.

The complaints that have emanated from Valley Parade (and the surrounding area) about the lack of television coverage are financially motivated – City wanted the money that comes with hosting the Sunderland game – but much of the newspaper coverage about the decision that fed from City fans being upset was a part of a lengthy war between the Press and the BBC.

The Murdoch press has been attacking the BBC for years. The question the validity of the licence fee in what is a politically and business motivated campaign against the public funded body by an arm of News International, which in turn owns BBC rival Sky Sports. The Times is just The Sun writ respectable and serves the same ends. The business of Murdoch’s business is promoting Sky over the BBC.

The Daily Mail needs no excuse to attack the BBC in the same way and for the same reason as they attack asylum seekers. A mix of politics and the business of giving their customers what they want or what Paul Dacre thinks they want at least. The rest of the newspapers follow along with the line.

Flip the decisions around and the same newspapers who are mock-amazed at Bradford City being “snubbed” would be talking about how the BBC ignored the millions of United fans who wanted to see their heroic comeback at Preston in favour of showing a game at a ground that most weeks is half empty, so little is the Great British public’s interest.

None of these newspapers were demanding that a deal be worked out to show Bradford City vs Swansea City on the BBC in the 2013. If the public deserve to be shown giant killing why was The Sun, The Times, The Daily Mail et al not beating a drum to have a deal struck so that game could be seen live on the BBC than being shown “live and exclusive only” on Sky TV?

None of the acres of back page coverage of City not being on the BBC is about viewers getting to see remarkable football. None of it is about Bradford City fans. None of it is about trying to make the cup more “magic”. None of it cares about clubs like Bradford City at all.

It is all about newspapers using Bradford City as a stick to beat the BBC with.

And do I like my football club being used like that? Do I like my club being used by The Sun, or by The Daily Mail, or whomsoever wants to, to batter the BBC?

No, I do not.

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I would rather that Bradford City had nothing to do with The Sun at all.

At Bradford City we praise other clubs for leaving a wreath at the memorial to the fire of 1985 or donating a cheque to the Burns Unit and we do this because it shows kinship with the people of Bradford and Lincoln who died that day.

To show kinship with the people of Liverpool I think Bradford City should have as little to do with The Sun as possible.

If possible I’d like Bradford City to have nothing to do with The Sun at all.

Outside of Bradford City fans

Which is not to say that a person cannot believe that Bradford City would have made great television just that outside of City fans (who were, mostly, at the game) but I do not trust the people are “upset” about this BBC snub and magic of the cup.

Their ire does not add up.

I think that most of the year all I read in the same newspapers which talk about the BBC snubbing City is seemingly endless coverage of the minutia of the top of the Premier League. Every day in every newspaper football from the Newcastle United/Spurs position down is treated like runt cousins of the beautiful game.

Teams at City’s level can win games, lose games, sack managers, set records and on and on and have their news fit on the inside back pages after puff pieces about Premier League players and speculation about transfers that might happen rather than the results from games in League One that have happened.

The media which are now demanding Bradford City are the same people who, at best, could not care less about the club the rest of the time and, at worst, actively work against the interests of clubs like City creating a football culture which minimises clubs outside the Premier League.

In 2004 the same newspapers who now are suggesting a BBC bias against Bradford City barely even reported about the fact that Bradford City came within minutes of being liquidated. I remember Look North (for all its failings) did give the Bradford City fans trying to save the club a voice.

How many newspapers who are demanding giant killers be rewarded suggested that the £5.1bn deal should be shared through the football community? How many back pages are devoted to the club’s who struggle against administration in the football climate they create? How many sports editors run stories which tell people to turn off the subscription to wall-to-wall Sky Sports TV an go see their local club?

The supporters of Bradford City are cynically and deliberately being used by newspapers who are faux friends of fans of clubs like ours. We are being used to bash the Beeb and sell some of the newspapers. And those newspapers next week will be using their power to stop going to games at clubs like Bradford City, to stay at home with a subscription to Sky to watch Premier League or La Liga while choosing when to “cash out” on a gambling app.

Our supporters will go to the game, and take their friends, and their families, and sell out Valley Parade.

But – I hope – not buy the papers the day after.

The measure of the significance, or lack thereof, of a pre-season friendly would seem to be only measurable retroactively and by inverse proportion to how many people express the sentiment that the match was unimportant.

It began quickly in the hours past following City’s win over Burnley on Saturday with the odd Facebook update timed around five and declaring a distance from other City fans who may have been excited.

The wave continued through message boards and the like crossing the Pennines as it went with web sites not unlike this one quick to point out that it was only a cobweb blower and could be ignored.

Our own Jason Mckeown stuck a sensible note suggesting that looking from a Bradford City point of view the game might mean things are not as bad as the worst predictions would have it but as that BfB article went live The Sun were dancing a jig on the Claret’s Premier League grave.

Owen Coyle joined the chorus and one Turf Moor website summed up the day as “Burnley Lose To Bradford So What?”

What indeed. The results of pre-season games are on the whole an irrelevance but performances are not and one suspects that the dismissal of the result is much easier to do than dismissing the significance of seeing two central defenders who could be facing Torres getting out paced and looking flat footed compared to the Boulding brothers.

Likewise from a Bradford City point of view positives drawn from the game are muted by the haphazard nature of the two teams thrown onto the field. Finding a winning team from kids and those on trial is more alchemy than chemistry.

Nevertheless as last season’s reversal by the Clarets was heralded as a reality check for the enthusiastic Bantams this one should probably be seen in the same way detailing the reality that nothing is ever as bad or as good as some would have you believe.

Burnley move on and one suspects that as with Bradford City in the Premier League their battles will be done on bank holidays at Sunderland and when picking oneself up following 5-4 defeats to West Ham. Be ready for those fights and this game will be irrelevant, lose them and it will have been a warning.

Likewise should better things be seen for the Bantams this season than last then the turn around started that early July afternoon. If not then it will have been meaningless.

However on a Monday morning there is a story to tell and a pride to be had of sorts. The meaning is in the lift and perhaps not just for supporters but within Valley Parade.

After months of slipping form and disappointment, or cash cutting and players leaving, there is some good news.

Result, performance, the effect when viewed in retrospect and any upsets that may come included at this point in time this is, in whatever way, meaningful.

One thing I’ve noticed about football is that often I’m right and you are wrong. Maybes not you but other people. Most people. Most people are wrong about football.

It is not most people’s fault. They watch SKY TV and read The Sun and what they read and see must be true cause everyone around them is saying it but a million people can say one thing and still be wrong. Majority might rule but it ain’t always right.

Now I’m not always right either but when I said Colin Todd should not be sacked I was not off the mark. Nothing has improved since the manager got the bullet at Bradford City as we sink down and down the division until we sit in League Two next season.

David Wetherall’s job was to add a short term boost and nothing more and everyone knows that Stuart McCall just has to say the word and he will be gaffer. Wetherall is supposed to be a short term fix but Todd’s team wasn’t in the problems that the skipper finds his in.

Todd was not pulling up trees but he kept things going along and we would have sailed out to close season in a rather dull mid-table place but that was not good enough for some and they demanded and got a change. I think they said something about more excitement. I don’t know if they are happy now.

And of course we miss Deano and JJ and of course that is not Wetherall’s fault cause cash needed to be got in but what we paid to let the gaffer go was wasted.

I’m wrong lots of the time too by the way but I’m not wrong here and I’m not wrong when I say that what we have left after this 2-0 defeat to the league leaders is a lottery numbers chance of staying in the league.

City did well today keeping back a team on the way to promotion for so long but pressure always counts in football and sure enough Billy Sharp looks a striker on his way to bigger and better things. He lashed home and after that City were all but out of it save a Dave Wetherall header that got flagged away for some reason.

I’m losing count of goals chalked off for some reason. One thing we can all agree on is that in football if you don’t score goals you don’t win and Referees are determined to stop City scoring. Not that that seems to be stopping Dean Windass.

I guess it is not worth talking about what might have been and we should look at what is and what is is that we need wins and God knows where we are going to get them from. Easter is moving time Sir Ferguson says. We can only hope.