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He managed Bradford City #2: Peter Jackson

The peak of Jacko’s time in charge of City – Morecambe away, three games in.

By Alex Scott

Candles in the Dark

1. Peter Jackson stands sixth in the Bradford City all-time post-war appearance list.

‘Jacko’ is up on the pantheon of City heroes, not just for what he did for the club (a lot), but how, and when. He has managed to maintain the adoration of the City faithful despite culturing a comparable cult hero status at Huddersfield Town. 336 appearances is an awful amount of time to spend in the claret and amber, and whilst a discussion of his managerial tenure is pervaded by an unsettling awkwardness within which I am about to entangle myself, any mention of him as a player can be wonderfully straight forward: He’s a hero.

2. Peter Jackson holds the record for the shortest tenure of any permanent Bradford City manager.

It wasn’t supposed to go like this. Coming up through the club like he did, going through what he had to go through, he was always an obvious managerial candidate. City fans were quite happy at his appointment in general, especially succeeding someone as universally loathed as Peter Taylor. Jackson was as far toward the other end of the spectrum as you could get. A frustratingly common characteristic among the club’s recent succession of managers and their direct predecessors.

I always feel like I’m overly harsh on our owners, but I swear attempting to retrospectively elicit their long term strategy is like trying to decipher a broken optical illusion, the more you look at it, the more obtuse and random it appears. The dream and the strategy were never differentiated, the latter never seeming to be formulated at all.

3. He also holds the record for the lowest win percentage of any permanent City manager, a meagre 21%.

The team only amassed sixteen points from his nineteen games in charge, and six of them came in the first three matches, with now-impressive wins at home to Rotherham (The Tom Adeyemi Over-The-Line Game) and a 1-0 victory on the road at Morecambe. He took over at a tumultuous time for the club, with the spectre of Odsal, relegation, and disintegration hanging over his entire tenure. The squad of players were resented by the fans, and were the least successful of any in generations. But it remains that he earned ten points from his final thirteen games in charge. Safe to say that Jackson oversaw one of the more depressing periods in the oft-depressing history of the club.

4. He was, and remains, Bradford City’s youngest ever captain, and played amongst a couple of the City’s greatest ever sides.

Joining Bradford City club as a teenager, his hometown club, and his burgeoning talent led to a move to Newcastle before returning to Valley Parade for a second spell toward the end of the eighties. He spent the next four years at Huddersfield, becoming club captain, and that was where his managerial career started in earnest three years later. Speaking as someone who has never met him, Jackson’s pride in loyalty is apparent.

It was fitting that he would join Huddersfield as manager, because it was supposed to happen, but after his undeserved removal, it was also sort of fitting he wouldn’t manage again until Huddersfield came calling a second time. In the same way he was never really a careerist footballer, rather choosing to stay where he felt like he belonged, he never appeared a careerist manager. He was routinely mistreated for this loyalty and integrity, and his ill-fated spell back at Bradford City was no exception.

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5. He lifted the trophy earlier that day.

It is hard to divorce any discussion of Peter Jackson from the events of May 11^th 1985. Not that we would or should want to. I grew up after Jackson’s spells at City; in my eyes he was always the Huddersfield manager, ergo I had to root against him. But I’d had it instilled in me, like the rest of us, how important a figure he was in the history of the club, and just what he means. He was this side of Stuart McCall just about the most important man.

When he returned as manager, just over twenty years after leaving, everyone wanted him to succeed, probably too much. He couldn’t fail, because that wasn’t how it was supposed to go. It was a chance to rewrite the years spent down the A641. Even in spite of those years he remained a City legend, a member of the pantheon. I can’t ever spend enough time on this point, nor do enough justice to it. We all know it, and it has been written in many places far better than I can ever do. But we all know it.

6. 0.84 points per game.

Sixteen points. Nineteen games. I used a stat earlier which characterised Jackson as a quote permanent unquote manager, but that can only be true in the loosest of terms. He was initially appointed on a week-to-week contract (the club formally following through on its mantra du jour). After a dismal run and a deafening mutiny amongst the fans, Peter Taylor and his henchmen were placed on gardening leave to begin after a retrospectively critical 3-2 win over Stockport County.

Gareth Evans and Sliding Doors.

They couldn’t really afford to pay another manager in addition, so needed a man who was either desperate enough, or who cared enough, to work under such obviously ridiculous conditions. Jackson was potentially both, but especially the latter.

7. …against the face of the clock.

In a world and a club so laden in ego and subterfuge that it’s hard to know which way you’re facing, Peter Jackson is a beautifully transparent character. This is especially in stark contrast to how difficult it is to work out what the hell it is the ownership have been trying to do at any given point over recent years. It is almost naiveté.

After retiring, he managed Huddersfield, because that made sense. He was sacked in a historical travesty of justice for Steve Bruce. He then left football for three years. The Terriers paid their penance and fell to their lowest ebb, when Jackson returned as the White Knight. After what that club had done to him, he bloody well went back. Not because it was a good career move, I imagine he withstood a number of better offers in that interim, but because Huddersfield Town mattered to him.

After leaving for a second time, he joined Lincoln City, a club to whom he was eternally intertwined. He picked them up from the bottom of the leagues, performing well before falling ill, famously winning the Manager of the Month award the morning before he left to undergo treatment.

After leaving Sincil Bank, he did charity and care work, delivering meals to elderly citizens in the area, before the club he was always meant to manage came calling. And even though other men may not have come back again after all he’d been through, this club mattered. A lot of my profiling on this site has often devolved into quasi-fan fiction (a result of an active imagination and absolutely no access to anyone of note), but for someone like Jackson, I don’t even have to paint a picture of a man, he’s there for all to see.

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8. Jackson took over the club in February 2011 and left it the following August.

If you’ll indulge me for a second whilst I dust of my patented Random Cliché Generator… Six Months Is A Long Time In Football. And this is no more pointed than the fact that only four players appeared in both his first and final squad in James Hanson, Luke Oliver, Robbie Threlfall and Michael Flynn. In six months, basically the entire playing staff had been recycled. And lest we forget that Oliver, Threlfall and Flynn were the members of the infamous “Silsden Three” who the club attempted in vain to force out that preseason.

So the only real intended carry over among the squad was Hanson who had scored over 20 goals in two seasons, and was under contract for another three years, forcing the club’s hand somewhat. Quick game, I mentioned Jackson was in charge of nineteen matches, how many players featured amongst those nineteen first team squads? (Hint: it’s like… a lot. Like, seriously loads. Take whatever you’re thinking now, and double it. I’ll get back to this later.)

To judge “success” by any measure during a period this turbulent can only be a fool’s errand. It must be said that Jackson would have been complicit in this instability, so using it as an excuse is admittedly bit rich, but how much control he had over the direction over the club during his time is a genuine question. And regardless of instability, this was a truly terrible spell.

9. Peter Jackson oversaw one of the worst teams I have ever seen.

I like Peter Jackson, that much is painfully clear at this point, but the elephant in the room can’t really be avoided much longer. In fact, technically, he oversaw two of the worst sides I have ever seen. That 5-1 reverse to Crewe on the final day of that season was the worst performance by a City team I have ever witnessed. Bar none. And although I’ve not been around as long as some, that isn’t an easy accolade to earn. Similarly, but in a different manner, that 2-1 defeat at home to Aldershot on the opening day of the following season was mind-blowingly abysmal. Any defence of Jackson’s managerial tenure plainly for what it was is completely without merit. You can apportion blame wherever you like, but those were a collection of truly miserable performances.

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10. But it wasn’t all bad… (The Leeds away section)

Due to the cup exploits which followed last year, and especially in this, we tend to overlook that Tuesday night at Elland Road. This silver lining in many ways represented the beginning of the resurgence we are riding now. Leeds away. That was my favourite live post-Premiership City game until Villa away. They played them off the park! Not in a kick-and-rush way. Not in a blood-and-thunder local derby way, but genuinely outplayed a half-decent Championship team with a bunch of kids from the fourth tier.

Chris Mitchell keeping the ball as a deep-lying central midfielder. Steve Williams rock-steady at the back. Dave Syers as good as he ever was. Mark Stewart, Jack Compton and James Hanson running amok. They were absolutely fantastic that night, and that potential (and that Dave Syers injury) headlines this managerial career that never really was.

The fact they could never replicate that performance, or anything approaching it, probably reflects poorly on the management, but at the same time, the fact the team were blown up before they ever had a chance to become anything probably indicates something about that Jackson-Archie Christie regime that may not have been as bad as we remember. There may have been something there. And that night was the beginning of the hope which led us through the cups later that year and this. We shouldn’t forget that.

11. This gimmick is tired, and sixteen points is a deceptively difficult amount to reach.

12. The Summer of Jackson, was also the Summer of Odsal.

It’s easy for us to forget now, but that Bradford City would move to Odsal was a genuine threat for a while. My main memory from this spell was an alarming Radio Leeds appearance by the likeable and level-headed David Baldwin. (NB. I’ve briefly met him twice; he has been great both times, and he had, and will have, no idea who I am.) The fact someone like him was genuinely and frankly discussing the possibility, was a distressing prospect.

That Peter Jackson had to “manage” through that time was a difficult enough proposition as it was, forgetting everything else. But also that it was him. Someone as inextricably linked to Valley Parade as he, was to potentially be the man to lead the club away to God knows what. In hindsight, the owners were only posturing, and it was never really a threat, but it has never sat well all the same. The fans were used as pawns throughout that era and Jackson the same.

13. Peter Jackson’s authority was under question throughout his entire tenure.

He initially was on a week-to-week contract, with a group of players he couldn’t add to. After Jackson was appointed on a “permanent” basis in the close season, he immediately was superseded in decision-making authority by one Archie Christie, a de facto Director of Football Operations. As the story goes, Christie accompanied the front-runner for the managerial vacancy, his Dagenham and Redbridge compatriot John Still. Christie himself was so impressive in his presentation, the City brain trust decided he was the real talent of the operation rather than Still, hired him, and then went in search of a coach who would work beneath him on the cheap.

Smash-cut to Peter Jackson.

After a summer of optimism and development squad-building where illusions of power and grandiosity were painted around the club, the brain trust quickly decided they had out-thought themselves, blew everything up, and quickly appointed the man they in hindsight should have appointed the previous May when he interviewed for the job, one Phil Parkinson.

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14. Despite their concurrent tenures, Archie Christie is remembered more fondly.

A belief amongst a selection of City fans is that Christie probably got a raw deal at the club. His mandate from above was never as unanimous as it was painted, and he got out-manoeuvred by an owner whose impatience was left to define the worth of a long term plan. Now, with these fans, there isn’t as much sympathy with Jackson (the manager, not the player), who in all honesty probably wasn’t as well suited to working under a man like Christie as others may have been. The go-to example for this is Nahki Wells.

Again, as the story goes, Jackson had Wells on trial, and didn’t fancy him. It was up to Christie to keep him at the club, and he brought the Bermudian into the development squad as just about the cheapest guy in the entire organisation. Wells was to become the only man to make it out of that development squad. So yeah, that decision from Jackson would probably be classed as a “mistake”.

The other example oft-cited was that along with recruiting Guy Branston on big money (“mistake”), Jackson wanted to break the bank for a then-veteran League One midfielder, one Gary Jones. A deal that was scuppered from above as it didn’t fit the identified strategy, and was a ‘waste of money’. Signing one of the best players in the division, the ninth-best team in the division above’s top scorer from the season before wasn’t in the strategy, but featuring forty players in nineteen games was. (*Seriously, FORTY! In nineteen games! FORTY! The long, tortuous, scarcely-believable list is available below. Warning: contains depressing levels of Scott Dobie.)

Now, I’m not being revisionist here, I’m not saying I was on Jackson’s side in the Jones case, or in much else, I wasn’t. Even when we did sign Gary Jones I was against it. But I’m an idiot. My only point is that when we look back at Jackson’s tenure, maybe we should look at what difference Jones actually did make for us a year later, and just “what if” it for a second. That path not travelled might have been interesting. Then again, the club would have probably just released Nahki Wells and been stuck with Hanson, Stewart and Ross Hannah up top all year so none of it would have made any difference anyway, but still.

15. An emotional Jackson left the club after another pitiful home defeat, this time to Dagenham and Redbridge.

But not just going down to the Daggers, but John Still, the man he ostensibly “beat” for the gig at Valley Parade. He felt that he wasn’t up to it, and wanted to give up the job, that job, to someone else. That a man with his history would relinquish the job he was always meant to take, his storybook finish, because he felt he couldn’t do it says a lot about the man. The atmosphere within the club had become untenable, with the relationship between Jackson and the board having completely broken down. Jackson was, and sort of always was, ideologically in conflict with Christie and his methods. Nothing was working. Something had to change.

The truth is, I was relieved. I really liked Peter Jackson, I still do, and I didn’t want to resent him. I never resented Stuart McCall when he was manager. I may have thought he was out of his depth at times, but then again the stakes were never really that high, we were never going out of existence. That really felt on the cards in this case. After a summer of Odsal sabre-rattling by our owners, mercilessly and recklessly attempting to secure themselves a better deal from Gordon Gibb’s Pension Fund, to have our club’s mortality thrust so vividly in our faces resulted in the stakes being raised far above sentiment alone.

Deep down I believe that in a better time, Peter Jackson could have been a great City manager. And now that future is left to one of our parallel universes and we are left with the damn shame that it’ll never happen. I didn’t want to have to force or root for a decision to remove Jackson, I’m not sure anyone did. Thankfully we had him to take our pain, and he did it himself. The easy response has been to leave that pain and heartache where it lay, repressed, as we now cheer our tremendous success. But that still isn’t fair to Jackson, the man who has spent his career taking and owning pain, as only great men can.

16. Peter Jackson was always the best manager we never had.

Now that is no longer true, he can forever stand as one of the best men we ever had. Just in case nobody ever says it, read this is as a thank you.

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… It isn’t right that Peter Jackson isn’t a part of Bradford City Football Club any more. That a club like ours, so involved in meaning and history has left someone who means as much as Jackson on the side lines, airbrushing his managerial tenure out of the history, doesn’t sit well. Whilst in the mind of the owners he represents an error in judgement, a stark and haunting reflection of their own limitations, for the fans and the club itself he represents almost everything we hold important. Peter Jackson genuinely cares about this club, and this community, and some things are actually more important than football and points and ego. People like him are what make all of this worthwhile. Read this as an open letter.

*Deep breath… (in alphabetical order) (brace yourself): Tom Adeyemi, Guy Branston, Michael Bryan, Lee Bullock, Andrew Burns, Chib Chilaka, Jack Compton, Omar Daley, Luke Dean, Scott Dobie, Kevin Ellison, Gareth Evans, Alex Flett, Michael Flynn, Ross Hannah, Martin Hansen, James Hanson, Louis Horne, Lewis Hunt, Oscar Jansson, Ritchie Jones, Jon McLaughlin, Chris Mitchell, Liam Moore, Luke O’Brien, Luke Oliver, Leon Osborne, Lenny Pidgeley, Adam Robinson, Nialle Rodney, Dominic Rowe, Lloyd Saxton, Jake Speight, Darren Stephenson, Mark Stewart, Dave Syers, Robbie Threlfall, Nahki Wells, Steve Williams and Jon Worthington.

Tags: Archie Christie, Gary Jones, Guy Branston, Nahki Wells, Peter Jackson, Peter Taylor, Phil Parkinson

Comments 12 Comments
Categories He managed Bradford City

FIFA rules against Bradford City on Mark Stewart

7 Feb

By Jason McKeown

FIFA has today announced that Bradford City must pay Falkirk 250,000 euros compensation for the signing of Mark Stewart in the summer of 2011.

Stewart arrived at Valley Parade on a free transfer; but being only 22-years-old at the time, Falkirk claimed they were entitled to receive a transfer fee in view of their role in his development as a youth player. The Scottish club quickly announced it would be referring the matter to FIFA.

Having failed in attempts to sign Ashley Grimes and Clayton Donaldson, it is understood that then-manager Peter Jackson agreed to look at alternative players suggested by then-Chief Scout and Head of Football Development, Archie Christie. Stewart was one of the strikers put forward, but it would seem as though Jackson also knew about him anyway after stating shortly after the transfer was completed, “He has a lot of pace and can easily play down the middle or out wide on either side. I’ve seen him score goals with his left foot, right foot and his head.”

Jackson’s assessment was understandable, given Stewart had netted 17 goals for Falkirk the previous season and other clubs were also said to be chasing him. However, despite impressing in pre-season, Stewart was one of a number of players who struggled at the start of the season. Jackson left as manager four games in, Phil Parkinson arrived and shortly afterwards new signings took Stewart’s place. He now plays for Dundee.

Nevertheless, Falkirk did not abandon their claim for €330,000. Width of a Post understands that negotiations took place between the two clubs in the autumn of 2011 and that a fee of £76k was almost settled upon, but City decided that this was still too high and talks stalled. In December 2011, the Telegraph & Argus reported that, “City’s stance has never changed on the striker since they signed him in the summer. They have always maintained that Stewart was a free agent after his contract with the Bairns ran out the week before he arrived at Valley Parade.”

Now FIFA have ruled that City must pay within 30 days, although they have the right to appeal. It would seem there are two issues surrounding this debate: do City owe Falkirk money (they claim not to because Stewart was out of contract) and how much is Mark Stewart worth? On the latter, his performances both before, during and after would suggest not the €250,000 (£215,620) that FIFA have concluded.

I personally thought Stewart was an okay player and worked hard for the team, but his lack of goal threat was an obvious issue for a side that was struggling to find the back of the net.

Tags: 2011/12, Archie Christie, Falkirk, Mark Stewart, Peter Jackson

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Categories News

RIASA tie-up could prove a Mega deal for Bradford City

4 Feb

By Jason McKeown

Mark ‘Mega’ Ellis spent almost all of the 1980s playing on the left wing for Bradford City. 20 years on and long-since retired, the Bradfordian continues to supply important assists for his hometown club.

Ellis’ influence on the present day Bantams can be found on and off the pitch. He played a pivotal role in David Baldwin joining the club in 2007 (Baldwin was an apprentice at Valley Parade when Ellis was playing, though Mark admits he can’t remember him) and neither of City’s current first choice strike partnership, James Hanson and Nahki Wells, would have signed for the club without Ellis’ contribution. The latter joined City 18 months ago after impressing on a football educational scheme Ellis and Baldwin set up and now jointly manage – an initiative that it’s hoped the club will benefit further from over the coming years.

Known as the Richmond International Academic & Soccer Academy – RIASA – the Bantams are in talks about formalising an agreement that will see Ellis’ set-up take on the role of the Bradford City Development Squad. This includes the club having first option over the best players that RIASA brings through.

“Bradford City now have access to a worldwide network of youth talent,” explained Mark when I met him for a drink in the Narrow Boat pub in Skipton on Sunday evening. “We have already got a hardcore of eight who are about to start training at the Bradford City facilities at Woodhouse Grove, and there’s also a couple of lads in the squad for Bradford City’s reserve game against Rotherham on Tuesday.”

The birth of RIASA

While many footballers of the 1980s might have run a pub or gone into management after retirement, Ellis has enjoyed something of a jet-set lifestyle since hanging up the boots, running football coaching camps in America for the last 25 years. Spotting that there were a number of young Americans who could potentially make it as professional soccer players, but were lacking opportunities, Ellis began to shape an idea that would eventually lead to the creation of RIASA, albeit via one false start.

“There are so many good players over in America, who wanted the opportunity to come and play in England,” explained Ellis. “It’s not straightforward to get these players over to the UK, because they need Visas and such. But then we went to a conference in Philadelphia and someone said ‘there’s a guy called Paul Topping and I want you to go and meet him, because he has a football club in Belgium and I think you could work with him’.

“Mark Lawn, before he bought into Bradford City, would also come over to America to help run these football camps, and after becoming joint Chairmen we both went to meet Paul in Toronto. We spoke about setting up a partnership with his Belgium club, Royal Racing Football Club Montegnée.

“It helped that they had a player, Billy Topp, ready to go, he had a German passport. Paul said to me ‘I’ve got this really good player’ who I had never seen before, and basically brought him over to City for a trial. But there were so many problems and they were so unprofessional in terms of arranging international clearance and even arranging clearance from Billy Topp’s club in Chile. And so eventually Bradford paid something like £35k to get the clearance for him to play. They also paid for him to have an operation. They invested quite a bit of money on him.

“So I put them all together, but then Paul Topping decided that he didn’t need me anymore and started working directly himself with Bradford City. And so I thought ‘fair enough, you go for it’. They sent another three or four players over for Bradford City to look at, who were probably North East Counties standard at best. And I realised that they didn’t know what they were doing and so let them get on with it, knowing that it was all going to go pear-shaped.”

At this point Mark linked up with David Baldwin – by now a good friend after they first met at a charity match held for PC Sharon Beshenivsky, and who Ellis had put in contract with Mark Lawn, paving the way for Baldwin joining the Bantams – to set up RIASA. “Me, David and another Bradford lad who lives in Ohio set RIASA up,” revealed Ellis. “We investigated how we could set the structure up properly so that young footballers in America could come over to England and train, and then see if we could attract suitable interest for them.

“We approached Richmond University in London, which is the only American university in England where the boys can obtain suitable Visas. They came up to Bradford to meet us, and it went on from there. RIASA’s going from strength to strength.”

Showcasing talent

Based at Leeds Metropolitan University, RIASA is a football education scheme which provides international students, primarily from the States, with the opportunity to develop their skills and play in England; with the aim of building their experience and, for many, showcasing their talents to professional clubs in Europe.

RIASA fields teams in different leagues, so students have the opportunity to play competitive football. A long-standing partnership with Eccleshill United, thanks to Ellis’ contacts, means RIASA provide their reserve and U19 teams. RIASA did have a team in West Yorkshire Football League, but are withdrawing it in favour of playing Development Squad fixtures. The coaching team includes John Hendrie and Bobby Davison.

How are students found? “We’ve got a really good scouting network in the States,” answered Ellis. “We’ve got one overall head scout who is on a full time wage, and we’ve got five other head scouts on part time salaries who work throughout the United States, scouting the best players.

“Now I suppose the competition we are up against is the big Universities in America who can offer the best players up to $30-40k scholarships to go to their school. But even then, that’s a limited number of such scholarships available, because these Universities are also recruiting students who play American Football, Basketball, etc – these sports get all the major money over there.

“We’ve had a couple of lads who have paid themselves to come to RIASA and turned scholarship money down, in order to have an opportunity to come to England and be showcased in Europe. Richmond University get all the Visas for them and then they come up to Leeds.”

Currently RIASA had 50 students on the books. Next year Ellis expects them to have between 70 and 80, “Predominately it’s still United States boys at the moment, but we also have some Canadians, a couple from Egypt, a couple from Hong Kong, and Dubai – it’s becoming worldwide.”

As if to demonstrate this international flavour, one of the RIASA players in the Bradford City reserve game tomorrow was born in Spain and grew up in South Korea. “I think that we are getting better and better players, and I expect that, next year, we will have better players then what we have at the moment,” commented Ellis. “We have a strong pool of at least 12-14 players who we believe could play at some level in Europe, like Bradford City.

“Last season our squad had a behind closed doors friendly at Valley Parade with Archie Christie’s Development Squad. We were a bunch of college kids, while their side featured trialist players released from Premier League and Championship clubs. We lost 5-3, but we did so well and I was so proud of them. Going out there against a really experienced team and losing narrowly.”

The Boy from Bermuda

Undoubtedly RIASA’s most celebrated alumni is Bradford City striker Nahki Wells, who burst onto the Valley Parade last season and is now being talked up as the best forward in League Two. Ellis shared the story of his emergence, “Nahki was playing in West Yorkshire League games for us and had something about him, but unless you give him a chance you’ll never know.

“So I called Greg Abbott at Carlisle up and asked him about giving him a trial. And the reason I went to Carlisle first was because I was still a bit miffed off with what had happened with Paul Topping. Nahki was up there for a couple of weeks, Greg called me up and said ‘yeah we’ll take him on until the end of the year, we really like him’. Then I had to get David Baldwin involved to sort out the financial side of things.

“But then, surprisingly, Greg let Nahki go. So I went back to David and said ‘I think you should take him to Bradford City’. We then spoke to Mark Lawn about it, and that’s how we got him to Bradford. It was due to David’s position as Head of Operations.”

Yet Wells is not the only success story, with Ellis quick to highlight two other graduates who have made a success of playing professionally in Finland. One is called Christian Eissele, who last season was the top scorer of the Finland league for PS Kemi Kings. The 20-year-old is currently back in his home country of USA, training with FC Orlando City, who play in the division below the MLS and are showing a strong interest. Six weeks ago Eissele played in Orlando’s friendly against Italian Champions AS Roma.

However, Christian’s story does reveal a downside of RIASA from a Bradford City perspective: not all students have the necessary paperwork to play professionally in England. Ellis revealed of Eissele, “Probably no one knows this, but Christian played for Bradford City in behind closed doors friendlies against Stockport and Barrow, and he did absolutely brilliant. And if he had the right passport, I’m sure he would be in Bradford City’s first team squad now.

“John Hendrie is looking after him now. He might go to a big club in Norway or go back and play for FC Orlando, who should be an MLS club within the next two years. Someone like Christian could eventually play for the US national team, and all of a sudden they become eligible to play over here.”

Ellis estimates that approximately 30-35% of RIASA’s current players have the right passport to enable them to play professionally in England, if they are good enough.

The new-look Development Squad

Last November, David Baldwin told Width of a Post that the RIASA programme would act as Bradford City’s Development Squad. Although Ellis explained to me that this arrangement has yet to be finalised (“Mark Lawn approached me to say Bradford City are interested in linking up, I am waiting to speak to him again, probably after the cup final”) this tie-up will enable City to have first dibs over RIASA’s best players.

“Bradford City get to look at the best players who are eligible” confirmed Ellis. “And if someone is exceptional like Christian was, they can look at them for the future. That’s how we see it working. I’ve told all my scouts in America that the perfect player to find is someone who is excellent, and someone who has the right passport to play in England. That’s the cream on the cake.

“The idea is to get them into Bradford City. They’re all very technical in America, they get good technical coaching. They can play. Other clubs are recognising this market too. Manchester City have been over there for the last two years, Brian Marwood, their Football Administration Officer, is desperate to get into America, because he realises that there is a lot of talent there.”

With the Archie Christie Development Squad disbanded because of concerns over cost, what about the financial obligations of RIASA? “There is no cost at all to Bradford City,” stated Ellis. “For me it’s great running RIASA and to be linked with a professional club. Bradford City is not just ideal because of my connections and great memories there; but being at Leeds Met, we are based five miles away from Bradford City’s training facilities. So it takes 15 minutes to transport the boys over.

“My job now, as I see it, is to get the next player into the first team at Bradford. I would love to do that.”

The James Hanson story

Away from RIASA, Ellis admits that the rise and rise of James Hanson has left him feeling equally proud, after he played a pivotal role in the former shelf stacker getting through the door at Valley Parade, as Ellis was coaching him at Eccleshill United. “With James, first of all he was at Eccleshill and I took him into Stanley College from Shipley College,” explained Ellis. “Then I got a first team coach job at Guiseley on a part-time basis, which fitted in brilliantly for me, and straight away I said to Terry Dolan (then-Guiseley manager) let’s get James in.

“James did really well for Guiseley, so I was really battling for Bradford City to take a look at him. Because lots of other clubs were also looking at him, but no one would take a chance. In the end I got into Stuart’s ear and urged him to bring James in on trial.

“I eventually turned round to James and said ‘I’m so fed up of this, do you want to try Carlisle?’ and James, who was desperate to get into professional football, said ‘I’ll be honest with you, I’ve just bought a house in Bradford, so I’d rather not’. So it was back to urging Stuart to take him on trial, which he did. I was in America at the time of the trial, but I remember he scored in a friendly at Bradford Park Avenue and he was doing well, eventually getting a contract. I went to watch him make his full debut at Notts Forest in the cup, and it kicked on from there.

“James is a really nice lad. I know his dad as well. So I feel pretty good that both he and Nahki are doing so well.”

And when Bradford City march out at Wembley for the League Cup Final, with Hanson and Wells up front, plus Baldwin in the directors’ box, Ellis, who will be present in the stands with his dad, admits he will be an extremely proud man. So what does the much-celebrated former City winger make of the 2013 crop? “They’ve got a really good team spirit there and are really organised. You need a spirit. I always say to my lads that it’s not about you it’s about the team.

“I’m really pleased, and like everyone else I can’t believe they’ve made the League Cup Final.”

Tags: Archie Christie, Billy Topp, Christian Eissele, David Baldwin, Greg Abbott, James Hanson, Mark Ellis, Mark Lawn, Nahki Wells, RIASA, Stuart McCall

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Categories Interviews

Speaking to David Baldwin – part two

28 Nov

By Jason McKeown

Following on from part one.

On the Arsenal game, the online ticket system seemed to work really well…

Yes it has, in the main. We have a situation where 9,000 have bought online, and I think in total there have been less than 150 queries. Now that’s still a lot for us to get through resolving, and for those 150 people it can be frustrating. But if you take the measure of 9,000 people transacting and the vast majority of people finding it worked perfectly fine for them, that’s not bad.

It was definitely a learning curve and we did learn one or two things about the system and we could have been clearer about a couple of things, such as the fact every season ticket holder was automatically enrolled to use it. But in the main it has worked well.

I keep a log of every problem that ever occurs at the club, to ensure that we review and learn from it. Because repeating the same mistakes it what really upsets people. Are we perfect? Not by a long shot. Could we do better? Yes if I had the money and resources to do so. Do we do as well as we can within the resources? For the main, yes. Do we make mistakes? Of course we do. But most people within the club are effectively having to do the job of two people, that is their normal working day.

We could do more…but only if we were to sacrifice the football budget. And I’m not prepared to do that.

Are you prepared for the Arsenal game?

It’s going to be a really long, hard-working day, and the game itself will probably wash over me because I will be so conscious of the operation, and making sure things run as smoothly as they can. It’s not going to be easy to go from 10,000 to 21,500 fans.

We are going to have to hire extra staff, and with the best will in the world I don’t know any employer who has got the best out of their employees on day one of their employment. And we only get them for one day! So I hope that people are tolerant towards realising that it is an anomaly to the norm. In terms of the seating arrangements, the vast majority of people have understood why we had to do what we did. I wish I could please everyone, but I can’t. Fortunately most people are happy.

There are a lot of other considerations we’ve been working through, which people might not think about. Such as where do we house all the photographers? Is there enough room for all the media outlets who want to go? What do you do about car parking when you’ve got extra sponsors? What do you do about the fact Sky need to take over a car park for their equipment? How do you build a TV studio in an area of your stadium? Are your floodlights strong enough to be picked up by HD? What about police costs?

I hope that, from a football side of things, we can give a good account of ourselves. But then again that’s what we were saying about Wigan! We can all dream as well. I’m not being negative when I say it’s more hope rather than expectation of achieving the next round, but funnier things have happened!

Do you and the Board keep in touch with supporters’ mood? You no longer have the OMB…

Yes we do keep an eye on message boards and things, and as you know I sometimes send you comments when I have read articles on Width of a Post. I actively encourage supporters expressing their views.

With the Official Message Board, we needed to take a step away from having it. And it has been proven that people can set their own ones up. With message board posts, you go from the sublime to the ridiculous. With one statement you think ‘what planet are they on?’ but other people will make some really valid comments. It’s the sifting through to find them which takes the time.

At the same time as taking the Official Message Board down, I’ve become much more of a public communication front for the club, with the Twitter side of things and my email address is in the public domain. We’ve also increased the club’s Facebook capabilities. We’ve made sure that – for what we have given up with losing the Official Message Board, and no longer providing a platform for supporters to post views and criticisms which they want us to see – we are more accessible to speak to.

And how are you finding the Twitter experience?

Most of the time it is enjoyable. I put something up recently saying that I was offline for a little while and that, if you have any queries, to put them in email. It lessened the flow of queries, but they still came through!

That was at the height of the Arsenal ticket situation, and it was very intense responding to all the queries. But I felt it was essential, and a lot of people made really positive comments about it. The positive comments are what keep you going. It’s not ego-stroking, but just a case of when you are feeling fatigued and you are working really hard, and one or two people turn round and say ‘I had a good experience and thank you for that, it changed my perception of what the club is like’. Well to me that is mission accomplished. Long may it continue!

How are attendances holding up against expectations and financial forecasts?

We are on budget. The break-even budget from Stuart’s first year in charge was a £1.4 million budget, and it was the same in the second year. We are now at the point where, in the sixth year, our break-even figure is £1.1 million. So if you look at the spectrum of income across this period, the break-even point has reduced by £300k for a season compared to 2007.

So every penny really counts. If you buy a season ticket or if you pay to come to games, the manager gets more money to spend. It’s that simple. Because we make sure that all of the other revenue pays for all the club’s running costs. We find other ways to reduce costs, to make sure that what comes through the turnstiles pays for the players. And now we have over-spent the budget, it is only paying for two-thirds of the players. The rest is getting topped up.

Now I wish I could be in a position where I say ‘the manager has a £1.7 million budget, and that’s the break-even figure’. But we’re not. And if we stuck right to the policy of only having a budget that fits the break-even figure, we would probably have a team that’s sitting in 16^th-18^th.

It’s like a perpetual motion. The less you pay on the product and the poorer the product, the less people who will want to come and watch it. So we have speculated to accumulate a little bit this season.

I talked before about the four variants we have to bring us to the break-even point. Well the fifth variant is ticket sales. If we have a good Christmas season ticket uptake, or if we’re doing well in the league and attendances increase, or if the Flexi-card scheme is utilised by a lot of the holders, then we can boost income for this season and also the budget for next season.

You have recently released a statement on the club’s finances. Although it’s great that, for this period, there is an overall profit, it does leap out that much of this is to do with selling two youth players. How much of a part of a strategy will this be going forward?

If I was to give you an example, we didn’t want to sell Andre Wisdom. But when the big clubs come knocking and you are in the fourth division, the reality is you are not going to keep them. So if you’re not going to keep them you may as well protect your financial interests.

It would be different if we were a Championship club with a fairer platform, because you would then fight tooth and nail to keep them.

The new Elite Player Performance Plan makes it harder for us, because it’s been designed in a way where you only get a fixed fee from the buying club. But there are ways, if you can tie the player down earlier, and we have to start thinking of tying players down from 14-18 instead of doing 14-16 and then 16-18.

There are ways of protecting your financial interests and we are very astute at Bradford City in this regards. We don’t have an active policy to sell youth players, but we have an active policy to develop young players, and either keep them and get them into our first team or, if they are of such an ilk that bigger clubs take an interest, eventually sell them for a good deal.

Sometimes a player might move on to a bigger club but not quite make it, but if we’ve always been good to them and not stood in their way, they might one day return to us because of how we treated them. In the meantime they probably wouldn’t have been near our first team, because they need to develop physically as a player. Take George Green. With the best will in the world he wouldn’t have been in our first team because he was only 15 when we sold him. If we had have thrown him in the first team, he would have been bullied in League Two. You know he has the potential, that’s what Everton bought into. But if George got to 19 and he hasn’t quite made it at Everton, then I think the relationship is still there that, if he was on an exit trial, we’d keep tabs on that.

You mentioned earlier the four variants to get us to break-even, one of which was potentially buying out the contracts of these youth players, can you elaborate on this?

When you sell a player to a club at 11-12 years of age, you try to put various trigger points in the contract along the way. The first is a signing fee, then you’d get another fee when they sign their first apprenticeship contract, then another payment when they sign their first professional contract, and another when they sign their second professional contract. You might also have clauses for if they become an international, and then a sell-on clause and an appearance fee.

Now not all player sales of this type will have all of these clauses, our job is try and get as many of these within the deal as possible. But these are seven possible points in the player’s contract which would trigger a fee.

What then happens is you look at each of these deals we’ve got out there now – for example Tom Cleverley, Andre Wisdom and Fabian Delph – they have further trigger points on their contract. There is nothing stopping you from going to the club and saying ‘these are the various trigger points. If all these things happen, these are what it could be worth; therefore we’d like to suggest a final settlement for that contract’.

That’s something we could look to do as a backstop. We don’t want to do it, because these deals are always going to be worth more if you let them run their course – as long as the player continues to progress with their development. Andre Wisdom making appearances triggers more money for us as a club, at certain trigger points. If we had done a deal last year on that contract, all of this would have disappeared. Though we might have been able to strike a deal that pays around the same amount we are getting now.

So it’s a calculated risk. All we know is that these arrangements have a value, and it helps you when planning your budgets. Because if you’re going to have an over-spend, you need to look at what things you have in the back to call upon if we need to.

So is it something you are looking to do?

Not at this moment we are not. We would rather let the deals see through their course. But we are keeping the dialogue open with these clubs. One reason for this is they want to know if we have any more players like the one they’ve signed. It’s in their interests to maintain good relations with us.

That’s one thing that Archie did very well. He knew how to take an arrangement with one player and make sure he maximised it by presenting that option to other people, in order to make a decision. That’s something I really take my hat off to Archie about, he really knew how to drive a deal.

That financial summary also shows that the club is still aided by Mark Lawn’s £1 million loan, which Company House records suggest currently attracts 9.5% annual interest…

That summary was designed to give supporters a picture of where we are now. Over the period of 2007-2012 the total is £3.7 million losses. But of those £3.7 million losses, £3 million is shared capital – the three owners (Mark, Julian and David Rhodes) have each got £1 million of shared capital. That brings the trading loss down to £700k, accumulatively.

With Mark Lawn’s £1 million loan in there, it means we have spent the £3 million in shares, and we have spent £700k of Mark’s loan, and there is £300k of working capital at the start of the season. The loan isn’t showing as trading income for the club, so when we talk about break-even points and losses, the loan is simply a fluctuation of money left over to help with trade.

So the point is that between the time Mark Lawn put in the £1 million loan and now, £700k of that has gone and £300k of it is left. If someone walked into the club and said ‘I would like to buy Bradford City, how much will it cost to buy it and get rid of all the debt?’ The £3.7 million is how much it would cost to bring the club’s balance to £0.

Are there plans to pay Mark back?

There’s no demand from Mark for return payment. It was done to give us a trading position. In relation to the loan, it is not a capital repayment loan it is an interest-bearing only loan, with no demand to pay it back.

Is there a pressure to sell players in January? Nahki Wells is rumoured to be attracting significant interest…

I think it goes back to what we said earlier about the variants. Instead of ambling through a season with only a break-even budget, we have set a higher budget to try and get us out of this division. That is the objective. Therefore, in order to get out of this division you want to retain all the assets available to you to do it.

The very last variant we want to do is to sell a player. Unless we absolutely had no choice to sell a player, any player, it’s not our intention to sell a player.

As it is, we have not even been put in that position because no one has put in an offer for a player. We have had one enquiry for Nahki, and it was just a tentative enquiry, and that just drifted away. That’s not to say people aren’t showing an interest and are keen in him, which is why we were prudent as a football club and sought to protect our interest in him by giving him a secure contract.

I think Nahki is happy playing his football here, and it’s part of his development. My own knowledge of Nahki’s development goes well beyond Bradford City’s. I am the one who, through RIASA, brought him through from Bermuda. I’m the one who got him his first opportunity at Carlisle. Now you might question why did he get his first opportunity at Carlisle and not City? And the simple answer is that Peter Taylor didn’t fancy him. Greg Abbott choose to take him on, although did release him in the 2011 summer.

At that point I suggested to the manager and I suggested to Archie that they take a look at him. And in fairness to Archie, you know a few months back there was this big discussion over who actually brought Nahki to the club, it was Archie who said ‘he can fit into my Development Squad’ and signed him.

There were a lot of people who had a hand in Nahki’s progression. Mark Ellis from a coaching point of view, I watched him develop within the RIASA development programme and brokered a deal to Carlisle, and then I got him another trial here. And then from a point of view of turning him from a trailist into a signed player, the person who stuck his neck on the line and said ‘I think he’s worth signing’ was Archie.

And we have all reaped the rewards of that. It’s a good accolade to Mark Ellis that he can spot a player, it’s a good accolade for the RIASA programme that they can develop players and that this is now the new Development Squad, and it’s a good accolade to Archie for signing him. And at that time, it was his Development Squad budget that was paying for Nahki, and that budget would have been under the biggest scrutiny at the end of the year in terms of ‘can we afford this Development Squad?’

You must have felt so proud when Nahki scored that wonder goal against Rochdale a year ago…

It was a great feeling. It’s funny because whenever he has a bad game I feel guilty for the club! But Nahki’s still in his learning curve and he has less bad games these days! When he does a moment that is brilliant I am grinning like a Cheshire cat.

I can still think back to having a coffee with Nahki’s dad when he first came into the country. We invited the parents over first year, and he said ‘he’s a good lad, my lad. I think he will do well, as he is a decent player’. Obviously all parents will say something similar, and there were 25 people within the RIASA programme at the time, so I went to him ‘we’ll see, we will keep his feet on the ground’. I think very early on you could see that Nahki had a lot of potential, but as Mark Ellis said he was a rough diamond. There were a lot of things that Mark had to deconstruct from his game, in order to teach Nahki to play the game the way it is played professionally.

We have got two or three more within the RIASA programme that are eligible for UK football, who we are quite excited about. But what we don’t do is big up the players too early or start saying things like ‘look at him he will be brilliant’. There’s no need to. We go about our business quietly at RIASA.

Because Bradford is my club and the connections, City will always get first shout on these players in the same way they got first shout on Nahki Wells in the first place. And hopefully we can introduce one or two more.

So the RIASA programme has become the Development Squad, so to speak?

We’ve changed the Development Squad because we felt, long-term, it wasn’t sustainable cost-wise. The great thing about the RIASA programme is it costs the club absolutely nothing. It’s self-funding through the degree programme and all the coaching, mini bus, training and accommodation costs are all funded through the RIASA programme.

These players can train with the first team whenever the manager wants to look at them, and he can sign any of the players he wants at no cost – not even a signing fee. Because that is not what RIASA is about. RIASA is about giving international students an opportunity to showcase their skills on a platform that ordinarily wouldn’t be available to them. And what makes the programme more sustainable is if more students see it and want to take part.

It all goes to prove that the whole principle of that 18-21 age group, and finding players in a different pool, is a way of giving under-developed players a second chance.

The Belgian project (launched in 2007 by the club) was a good idea, but we had to pay a retainer, and we weren’t seeing the quality of players that we wanted to see. Archie’s project was a good idea, but you had to make an upfront commitment to costs in order to find and put these players on our books. And the danger with these is that if these players didn’t fit the criteria or the manager didn’t see them as fitting into the first team environment, then all of a sudden you’ve got all these costs and no tangible benefits. How long can you let that go on for?

The third option is the RIASA programme. So the principle of tapping into this 18-21-year-old age group has been pursued for a while by the club. But if you can do it in a way that doesn’t cost the club money, that’s going to be the best way of doing it. Nahki is the perfect example of it working!

The previous ideas have been stepping stones for the club. I look at it a bit like Windows – we’re up to Windows 8 now! Well the Belgian project and the Development Squad were versions 1 and 2, and now we are on version 3!

Have any more players from RIASA being signed up yet?

No not yet. Simply because we, as in the coaching staff, don’t feel these players are quite ready yet. So we are keeping them in our Development Squad and giving them our games, and trickling them in slowly. A bit of training with the first team now and then, and then towards the end of the season some will maybe play in a reserve game or an under 21 friendlies behind closed doors.

It’s a quiet development behind the scenes. And then when someone is ready, they drop on stage – like Nahki – and it has more of a wow factor.

In the final part of our series, David discusses the Valley Parade free school, City’s future at Valley Parade itself and how the training ground is being redeveloped.

Part one

Tags: Andre Wisdom, Archie Christie, Arsenal, David Baldwin, George Green, Mark Ellis, Nahki Wells, RIASA, Supporters

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Categories Interviews

Stop the press

20 Jun

By Jason McKeown

As news coming out of Valley Parade seemingly grinds to a standstill, two professionals who have spent several years reporting on Bradford City rocked up at the latest Skipton and Craven Bantams Supporters Club meeting, on Wednesday, to instigate a good old chit chat about all things City.

Simon Parker (Telegraph & Argus Bradford City reporter) and Derm Tanner (former head of sport at BBC Radio Leeds) spent a near 90 minutes fielding questions from around 30 supporters; ranging from their favourite and not so favourite memories of covering the club, through to who Phil Parkinson might be signing this summer.

The pair started off firmly in reminiscing mode, asked about the most difficult players and managers they have had to deal with from their time reporting on City. Simon opted for Michael Branch as his player, “He didn’t like me…and when he left for Chester, he made a pop about how at least he was moving onto something better now. Didn’t quite work out that way!”

“There aren’t too many (difficult players), even in the Premier League they were very approachable” said Derm, before opting for Tommy Doherty. “Never ever spoke to me. I was determined to interview him, but he would always keep his head down and never speak to me. The best I could ever get out of him were grunts. The worst interviewee had to be Lewis Emmanuel. I asked him nine questions once, and I only ended up with about 20 seconds I could use.”

Simon added: “The hardest interview for me was Jaunjo. Especially as I had to interview on his mobile which kept breaking up. In the end I had to make it up!”

On managers, Derm again was polite in not criticising anyone, but did opt for Lennie Lawrence as the strangest, “When the microphone was on he was fantastic, and we would be bubbly and you could have a chat and laugh with him. But once the tape finished – because we used tapes in those days – that was your lot. If you tried to have any banter with him before or after, you’d just get one word answers. He wasn’t unpleasant though.”

That led Simon to talk about Taylor. “There wasn’t any manager that was particularly nasty. Peter Taylor could be very awkward, but he gave you great answers. Again there was not much chat before or after, but he was in the zone when you spoke to him. If you asked him a good question, he would give you a proper answer. He would give you some cracking stuff, but you had to ring him at a certain time. If you rang him at 9.05am on a Monday instead of 9am, he would demand to know why you were late!

“If you caught him when he was down in Essex, which was quite a lot, and he was walking his dogs, he would talk to you for 25 minutes and give you cracking answers to five questions. From the Jamaican FA, substitutions the previous week, the referee, Ronnie Moore – and you’d have all your stories for an entire week. He was brilliant, though he always kept you on your toes and was very wary of what you were saying to him.”

Derm added, “I got on really well with Taylor. But the slightly alarming thing was that he would listen to what you had to say on the radio. Normally a manager wouldn’t bother, but he would quiz me about it and say things like ‘I’m not happy about what you had to say last night’. And the colour would drain from my face!”

Derm was also asked who would be replacing him on Radio Leeds as the Bradford City commentator, after it was announced last April that he was leaving the station. David Fletcher was the reply, a newspaper journalist and radio commentator of Halifax Town for many years (he also helped to cover Leeds United games last season). “I was talking to him on Friday night, and he is really excited.”

Matters turned to current affairs and the quest for gossip and transfer news. On Andy Gray, Simon explained, “He’s currently on his second holiday. As I understand it, Bradford are still very hopeful. But the only reason he hasn’t put pen to paper yet is he is waiting to see if any Championship clubs come in. I don’t think that if a League One club came in, he would take that over City. If he comes it will be for the right reasons.”

On the signing of Rory McArdle and future of Luke Oliver, Simon offered the opinion, “I think it means that Luke Oliver will be third choice centre half. I think it will be Davies and McArdle. Parkinson has certainly been after McArdle for a while. Apparently he did a very good job at Aberdeen and did very well at this level at Rochdale. I think Parkinson wants to re-sign Luke Oliver, but McArdle will play ahead of him.”

“I want Luke Oliver to stay,” added Derm. “I think he’s a hell of a player, and if you’d asked me that this time last year I probably wouldn’t have said that. I think we all thought ‘blimey what has happened to this guy, he looks a completely different player’. And he rightly got every award under the sun last season. He was so consistent. I don’t remember him having even close to a bad game. Whether he will want to stay, after seeing McArdle come in, I’m not sure.”

What about Guy Branston? “I think Parkinson doesn’t think he is good enough, but it’s nothing personal,” said Simon. “He did very well at the end of last season”, chipped in Derm. “But now he’s seen another centre half come in. That must be really difficult for him, when you consider that he arrived last summer as Jackson’s marque signing. He was the skipper, and talked eloquently at a fans forum at the start of the season. I thought it was a great choice. But of course it starts horribly wrong, and Jacko goes. And then Parkinson comes in, has a look at Branston and clearly thinks ‘not for me’”.

David Syers, who left the club last week, was also a hot topic. “Phil Parkinson said he rated him, but he had a price,” stated Derm. “I don’t think I’m giving much away when I say that Syers’ original deal was peanuts. And when Parkinson arrived he looked at it and thought ‘that’s a bit vulnerable’. Although when Parkinson arrived Syers was long-term injured, it was Parkinson who tried to sort a deal out and improve his contract considerably. But Syers didn’t have to sign a deal in January, and he chose not to do so at the time. What happened in-between then and the end of the season, I’m not sure.”

“There was a suggestion, and it’s nothing more than that, that Syers was thought to have been promised a more lucrative contract at the start of the season by a certain person no longer at the club,” added Simon. “It didn’t get as far as the Board, but the player himself took it as more of a factual offer than perhaps it was.”

Everyone in the room knew that the certain person was Archie Christie, which led to questions about the former Chief Scout. Simon said, “He was a very charismatic character, larger than life, you could hear him coming from about a mile away. Him and Jacko didn’t get on from minute one, which was obvious to everyone. It was always going to go bang and disappear very quickly.

“The idea of a youth development squad was very good on paper, but when you’re near the bottom of the fourth division you can’t really take as long as you want to bring players through.”

Derm also said, “Archie Christie was an excellent salesman, and he said to the Board that the problem you have at this club is you don’t sell players, and if you can harvest young players you can eventually sell them on for profit. And who in the Board would disagree with that idea? But the problem you have, which is how Parkinson saw it when he came in, was that you had all these players. Who’s looking after them? Who’s coaching them? Who’s being the physio for them? Who’s paying for their accommodation? None of this was factored in. So all that cash that the Development Squad was costing was money that couldn’t be put to the first team. So it wasn’t a case that the Development Squad was a bad idea, just that it wasn’t quite rounded as a circle. That’s why I think Phil wanted to try and put the brakes on it a bit.

“But that’s not to say that Archie didn’t have a great idea, and in two or three years we might have been sat here thinking ‘and that’s another £900k we’ve made from selling a player, and that’s more money we can put in the first team budget’. Nice idea, probably just a bit too early for the club to be able to fund it properly.”

On the Crawley brawl, which clearly presented some challenges for the reporters, Simon revealed, “Claude Davis was mouthing off to Andrew Davies throughout the match, allegedly about Davies’ family and what Davis’ mates were going to do to them. And it got nastier and nastier during the game, and it got to the point where Davies had had enough. Davis apparently has previous for this sort of thing.

“Covering the match, you got the feeling that something would have happened in the dressing room after and that someone would have been sent off. So we waited in the press box, and eventually a City official came scurrying up to tell us ‘there’s been a couple of sendings off’. I asked ‘how many?’ and he replied ‘five’! So I got on the phone to the office and said ‘I need to change a bit of my match report’ and they replied ‘how much?’ and I said ‘most of it!’”

Derm added, “Phil Parkinson didn’t arrive for interviews that night until gone 10.30pm. And he just looked completely bewildered by what he had seen.”

The pair were also asked about the club’s finances, and both admitted they were not fully sure but believe them to be okay. They also talked about the Valley Parade situation, revealing that Jack Tordoff’s talks with Gordon Gibb last year broke down because of Gibb’s high asking price for the ground, while also suggesting Tordoff might have been able to buy the stadium for the club if it had been more reasonably priced. Simon also defended the two chairmen, while drawing parallels with his own club, Portsmouth, and the dodgy owners they’ve gone through. “Anyone who wants to criticise the chairmen should be careful what they wish for.”

Talk turned to wider City matters – Dean Windass, breaking the story of when City went into administration and the challenges of finding stories to write about during the summer. Simon said, “It’s horrible. You ring everyone you know, and some people you don’t know, until you get an answer, because most people are on holiday. It’s a challenge. When you publish something people will say ‘that’s a dull story’, and they’re right it is a dull story. But that’s the most interesting story happening today. Unfortunately, the manager is chasing players and he doesn’t want people to know who those players are, for obvious reasons.”

In no time at all, it seemed, it was time to wrap it up. Simon and Derm were asked to name their favourite City player of all time, with both opting for strikers. Simon picked Peter Thorne, “He was only here for a couple of years, but a record of a goal every two games, he was superb. He was such a great pro too. You saw him behind the scenes; he was brilliant with the young players, doing a lot of coaching, and very popular with everyone.”

Derm opted for Robbie Blake. “I really loved watching him play. He was so clever in the box.”

Tags: Andrew Davies, Andy Gray, Archie Christie, David Syers, Derm Tanner, Guy Branston, Lennie Lawrence, Luke Oliver, Michael Branch, Peter Taylor, Peter Thorne, Robbie Blake, Rory McArdle, Simon Parker, Skipton and Craven Bantams Supporters Club, Tommy Doherty

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Categories Opinion

2011/12 review: what the club got wrong

14 May

The second of Width of a Post’s end of season ‘essays’ sees Jason McKeown share his personal views on where things might have gone wrong for City.

“We develop players. We don’t have them growing in greenhouses out the back because we don’t have time for greenhouses. We’re more of a microwave sort of club.” Aidy Boothroyd, January 2007

The current Northampton Town manager, Aidy Boothroyd, has so far had nothing to do with the professional football club from his place of birth. But the above quote – made when he was managing Watford in the Premier League five years ago – suggests he would one day fit in very well at Bradford City.

Especially after the season just gone. It started with one set of plans, ended with another, and each one of them was given 100% long term backing at the time. It seems that in the space of twelve months Bradford City were able to illustrate the problems that have bedevilled the club for the last ten years. A season where any greenhouses installed at Valley Parade were hastily covered up in favour of a microwavable ready meal…

“The finances are still tight however, so we are taking a different approach this season rather than trying to ‘buy success’ as we have over the last four seasons in League Two. The playing budget has been reduced but we have increased our investment in developing young players for the future.” Julian Rhodes’ programme notes, Aldershot (home) Saturday 6 August 2011

This above quote, from the Bradford City joint chairman, was typical of the understated approach adopted by the club during last summer, on the back of a dreadfully disappointing 2010/11 campaign which had involved recruiting a top quality manager on a hefty wage and giving him a large playing budget. That manager – Peter Taylor – failed to come close to the target of promotion, and eventually quit. Peter Jackson guided City to safety, but only just. The club ended the season claiming it could no longer afford to keep playing at Valley Parade and even paid the players’ wages late at one point. Something had to change.

Dagenham & Redbridge’s John Still was interviewed for the job of long-term replacement to Taylor. At the meeting with the two Chairmen, he brought along his chief scout and a man who had worked for him for almost 20 years, dating back to Still’s Barnet days. Archie Christie had helped Still deliver success as manager by finding him find untapped talent which were eventually sold on for a large profit – Craig Mackail-Smith and Paul Benson, for example – and would also come to Valley Parade with Still.

However, the financial problems at City – eventually partly solved by the chairmen agreeing a deal to buy the Valley Parade office blocks which the club was previously renting at a considerable cost – saw Still rule himself out of the running. Jackson got the City job he probably deserved, but Rhodes and Mark Lawn asked Christie to write a plan of how the Bantams could reverse their continuous decline.

The results of that report were striking if not exactly earth shattering: the continuous approach of throwing all the club’s resources on ageing footballers – which for four years in a row had not worked for City – was not going to deliver sustainable success. It was time to stop ignoring those off-the-field problems and build a more solidly structured football club. So impressed were Rhodes and Lawn with the plan, they offered Archie the job of Chief Scout and Head of Football Development.

Christie turned down the salary that was offered to him, requesting this money instead be used to fund a Development Squad – a new tier to the youth set up, to give players aged 18-21 the extra support that football clubs often fail to provide. Christie dusted off Tom Cleverley’s contract from when City sold him to Manchester United, and found the then-Premier League Champions technically owed the club a lot of money. Having secured this cash from United for the club, the costs of operating a Development Squad for the season – which worked out slightly lower than the 12-month contract City had been forced to honour for Lewis Hunt last April – were covered.

Meanwhile Lawn and Rhodes partially addressed the training ground issues, and Christie set up a new scouting structure. The club spent pre-season talking of a building campaign centred upon ensuring we could challenge for promotion in 2012-13. As David Pendleton summed it up last week on this very site: “Here is the crux: if a football club cannot offer genuine hope, it must offer a vision and one that can be bought into.”

“We knew there were problems after the first game when we lost to Aldershot. Mark Lawn and I were talking afterwards and we said, ‘Hell, what are we going to do?’ We really were worried. We were honest with Peter and said, ‘We have to strengthen’. Peter decided he wanted to resign. That was his prerogative. It was our intention to help him but maybe after a few more games we would have had to act anyway.” Julian Rhodes, speaking to the Yorkshire Post in January 2012

So on the very same day that Rhodes’ matchday programme notes were published, he and Lawn began to panic and doubt the approach which they had chosen. Jackson would manage for only three more league matches (the last of which, Dagenham, saw home fans give the players a standing ovation for the performance), before resigning for reasons he has yet to make public. Width of a Post has heard very credible stories on why he left, from different sources, which all match up and suggest that – while Jackson had his own personal problems – the pressure from the Boardroom was greater than he considered to be fair or reasonable. I was also able to ask Christie straight if he had helped move Jackson out, and he made it clear that he had not always agreed with Jackson but had always supported him.

The Board acted quickly, with Rhodes, Lawn and Christie appointing Phil Parkinson barely three days after Jackson had walked out of Valley Parade. His brief was to keep City in the Football League – six weeks later, Lawn would go on record describing the squad Jackson had built over the summer as the worst in the division. Another wind of change was in the air.

It is remarkable to note that the only previous examples of genuine success at City over the last 20 years – promotion from Division Two via Wembley in 1996, avoiding relegation the year after, promotion to the Premier League in 1999 and top flight survival in 2000 – all featured slow starts to the first quarter of the season, where panic ensued in some quarters. Only this weekend, Rhodes has criticised a number of summer signings on the basis of their performances in just four games (the Leeds, Barnet and Sheffield Wednesday games, featuring these same players, conveniently ignored). All I can say is that it’s a good job Geoffrey Richmond had a calm head and strong leadership skills when sticking by Paul Jewell in September 1998, as the club languished second bottom.

“The point is that football clubs, prompted by media and fans, are always making financially irrational decisions in an instant. They would like to think long term, but because they are in the news every day they end up fixating on the short term.” Why England Lose, by Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski

It is a surprisingly tropical Bradford morning in September, and I am sharing a breakfast table with Christie, Peter Horne, Andrew Burns, Scott Brown and Terry Dixon. In the privileged position to be interviewing the three young City players for an article, listening to their confidence about forging a successful career at the club is uplifting. I’d seen and been very impressed by Burns and Brown in pre-season, and all three were expected to be in the first team this season.

Indeed Brown was 45 minutes away from making his debut for City against AFC Wimbledon a week before (Michael Flynn passed a late fitness test in the end) – he would end the season frozen out of things, playing a practice match at Leeds United, where the Elland Road coaching staff would apparently state their surprise that he is not in the City first team and that “he could do a job for Leeds”.

Burns was supposed to be breaking into the first team in January as cover for Simon Ramsden, when Liam Moore’s loan spell from Leicester expired. Yet Parkinson opted for the short-term fix of signing Rob Kozluk for the rest of the campaign – having released Hunt in October at a sizable cost to the club. Burns has ended the season on loan at Harrogate Town, then told he can find a new club (Kozluk has been released).

City seemed to believe themselves to be embroiled in a relegation battle long before they ever really looked to be. Those of us who witnessed the outstanding, attacking football displayed in Parkinson’s first home game against Bristol Rovers in mid-September would have concluded that – with the help of a couple more signings – it was simply a matter of the team getting going results-wise. Three days later City lost 3-2 to Vale in heart-breaking style, with home manager Micky Adams saying he believed we would challenge for promotion that season (“I’d like to bet they will be there or thereabouts”). There seemed to be no need to panic, but we were doing so anyway.

Rhodes stated at the weekend that the whole season was hindered by Jackson’s summer signings – an attack presumably levelled at Martin Hansen, Moore, Guy Branston, Chris Mitchell, Jack Compton, Mark Stewart, Ross Hannah and Nialle Rodney. Under Parkinson, “The worst squad in the league” was been quickly replaced by new signings. The reduced budget Jackson had to work under significantly increased. Who can really blame Parkinson for spending money rather than trusting in what he had in-house, and the potential of the Development Squad? Hand me your money and a budget to buy a new sofa for my house, and I will happily spend it all to get the nicest one.

There is no disputing that Rhodes and Lawn were right when they spoke to Jackson just before he quit – the squad that started the season did need strengthening. However, there is a difference between fixing a few problem positions and overhauling everything. The long-term benefits appear to be slim – just three of 16 signings Parkinson has made since joining as manager are still contracted to the club.

“If the manager has not got the commitment to do it, it means nothing. A scout can scout them, bring them to the club. The youth coach can develop them and put them in the reserve team, and the reserve coach can help him on his way and recommend them to the first team. But if the manager won’t play them in the first team, it’s a waste of blinking time!” Sir Alex Ferguson on Manchester United’s youth system

Christie left City abruptly in November – the day before he officially became the new Chief Executive – for reasons yet to be shared in public. And with it the Development Squad idea was allowed to diminish quietly without anyone left in the building taking responsibility for the idea of bringing it in. This apparently included the Chairmen, yet the same September day that I chatted to Burns, Brown and Dixon was also the last time I spoke to Lawn; and he made it very clear how much he supported the Development Squad concept and how highly he valued Christie (two weeks before his “worst squad” comment). Rhodes was also known to be a big fan of the idea.

The Development Squad was criticised publically in October by none other than Michael Flynn; and in November its coach Wayne Allison departed for a new job – with Parkinson opting to spend the money this freed up on strengthening the first team, rather than recruiting a replacement to coach these players. Everything about the club became here and now, ‘building’ was suddenly an ugly word. The same month that Christie left ended with City lining up a six-figure transfer deal to sign Benson. It fell through on medical grounds, but a statement of intent was made. One wonders what Jackson made of the switching of the goal posts.

As Sir Alex Ferguson’s quote says, the Development Squad was only going to work if it was backed by the manager. Not by him throwing loads of these players into the first team – no one should have been expecting a 100% success ratio from these kids, the departure of Dixon was an inevitable side effect and others would/will follow – but through trusting and handing those who were progressing with opportunities when they came up because of injuries and suspensions. And in time this approach could really pay off: back in March, I watched City lose 1-0 to a Crewe side where 9 of its 11 had come through its ranks. They made the play offs.

Instead Parkinson has apparently spent a huge sum of money – multiple times the cost of the Development Squad – stock piling loan players. What was the benefit in signing Charlie Taylor, Andy Haworth and Will Atkinson, rather than giving Dominic Rowe – a home-grown winger who featured in all but one of the club’s pre-season friendlies, awarded a two-year contract last October and part of the Development Squad – an opportunity? Beyond the Development Squad, in March Hannah was shunted out to Halifax so City could sign Chris Dagnall on loan to the end of the season. Good player Dangall is, but the benefits were purely short-term. Then you consider that the likes of Luke O’Brien and Robbie Threlfall – players City have spent years developing – have also been let go.

And that’s the problem when you look back at this season. We stayed up, and so you could argue that Rhodes and Lawn’s decision to ditch long-term planning because our position looked desperate was the right one; but all we have done is repeated the strategy of the past four seasons in throwing a lot of money at players, again with only marginal success. This year’s League Two is unique in that the clubs with the highest budgets – Swindon, Shrewsbury and Crawley– have gone up. Rhodes says City’s budget ended up around the 5th highest: is 18^th place therefore a fitting return for the level of money parted on short-term signings like Craig Fagan, Kozluk and Atkinson, with little gained for the future because it has been ignored? Again we come back to this stat – just three of Parkinson’s 16 signings as City manager are still at the club.

Because from my viewpoint – which has included the performances from quickly discarded players against Leeds, Huddersfield and Sheffield United – I’m not convinced we were doing much wrong at the start of the season. It was obvious we needed to give it time, not judge things on a couple of games – just as City’s promotion winning squad of 1998/99 was not judged on its poor start. As well as Parkinson has done (and he has), significant improvement on the pitch is not obvious. For Rhodes to attempt to blame all of this season’s problems solely on Jackson is extremely unfair.

In Why England Lose, Kuper and Szymanski wrote: “At most clubs the manager is treated as a sort of divinely inspired monarch who gets to decide everything until he is sacked. Then the next manager clears out his predecessor’s signings at a discount.” It is such an accurate reflection of the last few seasons at Valley Parade that it is painful. Can Parkinson break this cycle?

“Archie’s ideas and plans were excellent but they were what should have happened years ago and I remember me and Dave Wetherall highlighting this in a presentation to Julian and Peter Taylor a few years earlier. Development squads 18-21 are massive to any club and so many good footballers get neglected at these ages because their club (s) can’t afford to employ the necessary staff but if you do invest in one it must provide results. Between the ages 18-21 is a massive time for any player to develop in more ways than one and I firmly believe that we’ve let a lot of good players go that would have been good enough for us. Let’s just use Jake Wright who is captain of Oxford as a sample example although I could probably name 10.” Peter Horne’s programme notes, Swindon (home) Saturday 5 May 2012

With relegation successfully avoided in the end, over the last couple of weeks we have seen a return of the long-term thinking rhetoric. Nahki Wells – the first and so far only successful graduate of the Development Squad – has proven the value of the RIASA link up, after a series of outstanding performances and stunning goals. As a result, Mark Ellis has been appointed new youth coach for the 18-21 age group. The Development Squad is, apparently, back up and running.

Meanwhile the club has announced plans to further improve the training facilities at the request of Parkinson – an eerie familiar situation to what Taylor demanded but did not get two years ago – and a couple of City youngsters made the bench for the final game of the season.

This all sounds great, and one would like to believe that the club is finally getting to grips with issues that appear to have held it back for the past few years. But the actions witnessed over the course of season give little confidence that this will actually happen. A bad start to next season, and Parkinson will go – with him another ripping up of the strategy. Failure for the RAISA tie up to reap Nahki-level benefits next year and it will probably be dropped (remember the Belgium link-up?). When the chips are down and strong leadership is required to think not just of the here and now, but of long-term building plans, we revert to type and sign an ageing right back.

That, speaking personally, is the biggest damage of this season – I no longer have confidence that the two Chairmen know how to take this club forwards. Promotion to League One has never looked so far away than it seems right now. That Parkinson is still manager and obviously has a plan of action is the only comfort I can take from this season, but Jackson will happily be able to tell his predecessor how quickly Parkinson might lose the support he needs from Rhodes and Lawn.

“For a club’s whose only priority should be climbing out of the basement division, it looked a case of trying to run before they could walk. That’s how Parkinson saw it when he came in, and he wasn’t the only one. Michael Flynn, the skipper, soon publicly questioned the wisdom of putting money into something that might never bear fruit when it could have been diverted towards strengthening where it matters.” Simon Parker writing about the Development Squad, February 2012

The questions remain: was the club wrong to appoint Jackson in the first place? Was it wrong to ask Christie to write a blueprint for the future? Is the Development Squad a bad idea? If not, was it wrong to abandon it mid-season? Whatever your view, Rhodes and Lawn were behind these decisions and have to either accept they have made mistakes or back up past words with actions.

Just like previous years, the local media is now helping to fuel this constant message from the club that things are better than they were and we are moving forwards. Yet as supporters, no one has ever bothered to tell us why Jackson left the club. No one has either admitted the Development Squad was a mistake, or come out to back it, post-Christie. We deserve better than to be kept in the dark.

What we need is not a new vision – the Parkinson path is the one we are on now, and we need to continue it – but belief that any vision adopted will be backed by the club. That a month ago Lawn backed Parkinson in public is commendable only if he truly means it, but over the past three years the club has repeatedly lost sight of what it wants and – when it has changed direction – has often destroyed much of the good work that had gone on before it.

Parkinson’s plan of action has seen short-term pain for this club, and if that’s justified by rewards in long run then it’s well worth going through the season we have just had. But if we go into next season ready to chuck all of his good work away at the first sign of trouble, then we will probably repeat the same mistakes all over again.

And even less people will be willing to believe in the next vision the Board places in front of us.

Tags: 2011/12, Andrew Burns, Archie Christie, Development Squad, League Two, Scott Brown, Terry Dixon

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Categories 2011/12 season review

Re-discovering and quickly losing Bradford City’s mojo

30 Apr

By David Pendleton

Hope is probably the most powerful weapon available to a football club. At the start of this season we were being offered a vision. After finishing in the lowest league position since the 1960s, and had endured one of the most dire footballing spectacles since the ‘dark days of Docherty’, talk was of new beginnings and a focus on a progressive policy of hunger and youth.

With Jacko at the helm, and Archie Christie churning out seemingly daily visions of a bright future, the football club appeared to have gained some much needed focus and momentum. The signing of Ross Hannah, the Development Squad ethos and a bright pink kit; this was different, after a decade of decline and the accompanying management merry-go-round, many City fans, myself included, gratefully embraced this change of tack. Bradford City had rediscovered its mojo.

Fast forward ten months. We are back in the lowest league position since the 1960s, the club has once again scrambled over the safety line and used loan players galore to achieve that grubby landmark. The manager changed, Ross Hannah is out on loan, the Development Squad has been scrapped and the pink kit is on the reductions rail. As season tickets sales struggle what are we being offered apart from a cheap deal? Here is the crux: if a football club cannot offer genuine hope, it must offer a vision and one that can be bought into. Last season it managed the latter, this season, as yet, it is offering neither.

Of course, even a club as cursed/unlucky/badly run (delete as appropriate) as Bradford City manages to get some things right in the space of twelve months. The policy of affordable season tickets, and the parallel 50/50 deal, continues and this should be welcomed and not taken for granted. Football as an industry is unsustainable in its current guise. Although many recognise this salient fact, the vast majority of clubs continue to charge ludicrous admission prices instead of reducing their overheads. It reinforces a cycle of financial fragility, yet football clubs continue to hope that by some miracle they will either hit on a winning streak or attract a billionaire oil sheik.

Of course, this cycle is driven by the financial inequalities in our supposedly national game. The actions of the Premier League, the self-styled ‘best league in the world’, in arrogantly cutting adrift the rest of the ‘football family’ results in clubs taking huge financial risks to gain access to the gilded cage: yet when another Portsmouth occurs it is the individual clubs who are ridiculed for their financial mismanagement; the system that positively encourages unsustainable gambles is left unchallenged.

Those who do speak out are dismissed as politically driven or are ridiculed as traitors to their club: I speak from personal experience after being abused for questioning the sanity of paying Beni Carbone £40,000 a week and for the scale of the dividend payments made to the directors of Bradford City when we were a Premier League club.

Times do change though; today supporters are lambasted for suggesting that the club might finish the season in eighth place in the bottom tier of English football – although to be fair such outrageous statements do need to be challenged. After all if Luke Oliver stood on his tippy-toes he would not be able to see the Shangri-la that is eighth place.

Of course, I will be trundling up Manningham Lane with £199 in my pocket to renew my season ticket before the 31 May deadline. There are positives: the exciting wing play of Kyel Reid; the potential of Nahki Wells; the astonishing transformation of Luke Oliver from lumbering epitome of Peter Taylor’s dreary regime to player of the season; the reduction in overheads with the purchase of the club offices and rapid resale at a potentially tidy profit for the investors (but who can begrudge them that); the promotion and relegation of northern clubs into League Two; and the continued pantomime nine miles to our east.

If all else fails we still have some of the best pubs in Britain within a short walk of Valley Parade and, who knows, perhaps George Galloway will talk the sheik of somewhere or other to blow a few million on our mouldering club.

Tags: Archie Christie, City Gent, Development Squad, Peter Jackson, Ross Hannah, Season tickets, Supporting

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Categories Opinion

Do you have a question for Archie Christie?

16 Apr

Last September, I – Jason McKeown – and former writing partner Michael Wood had the pleasure of getting to meet and spend the day shadowing then-Bradford City Chief Scout and Head of Football Development, Archie Christie. From which we wrote an acclaimed series of articles you can read here, here and here.

Archie left the club last November, though we have remained friends with him (indeed on Saturday night I received a proud email from him after his Development Squad product Nahki Wells scored that hat trick). Now working for a Premier League club (Archie asked us not to make public which one for now), Christie has offered to answer questions from supporters on his time at Bradford City, via Width of a Post.

Christie told Width of a Post: “At Bradford I built up a strong affection for City supporters, through meeting and conversing with many and witnessing how well they backed the team during matches. I’ve not spoken in public about my time at Bradford yet because I didn’t want to cause any disruption to the team, so I thought doing so at the end of the season would be the ideal opportunity.”

So, if you have a question for Archie – please email it to Widthofapost@gmail.com so we can put it to him. At the end of the season, we will email all of the submitted questions to Archie, and he will answer by email. Width of a Post will then put his answers live, unedited. We firmly believe that this should be an interview between supporters and Archie, and so we are simply acting as the medium for it only.

We are inviting questions now, to give you time to consider and submit them before the end of the season.

Tags: Archie Christie

Categories News

A job Well(s) done

14 Apr

Northampton Town 1

Carlisle 52

Bradford City 3

Wells 11, 39, 52

Saturday 14 April, 2012

By Jason McKeown

In the end it has become so easy that you wondered why we’d been making such hard work of it in the first place. Bradford City’s comfortable victory at Northampton leaves the club nine points clear of the bottom two – while holding a vastly superior goal difference over both – with three games to go. Only the most freakish and unlikely set of results will see the Bantams relegated now. One more point will guarantee survival.

Job done. Just about anyway. The win at Sixfields propelled the Bantams above their hosts, to match the season-best high of 18^th position. And, as the City players strolled around during the closing stages, threatening a fourth goal to cap off a memorable afternoon, your mind drifts back to the despair of that night at Crawley, and you smile because it’s all working out in the end.

Far from self-imploding, we’ve dug in deep to complete the job – and maybe, just maybe, we can start looking forward to the future with greater optimism.

City’s success in winning this afternoon was a reflection – and in some cases a verification – of what the club has got right over the past 12 months. Phil Parkinson can certainly take a great chunk of the credit, because the values, style of play and signings that he has introduced were evident throughout this win (only his 10^th league success as Bantams manager). But even Peter Jackson and Archie Christie – assuming they are monitoring events – can allow themselves a wry smile, because players they brought in have delivered when the chips were down.

A stronger defence has been the most notable improvement Parkinson has instilled. Luke Oliver returned from suspension to slot alongside Jackson signing Guy Branston, with the pair acting as a brick wall to ensure there was no repeat of the familiar pattern of the hosts scoring first, which has re-occurred so often in away games over recent weeks. Parkinson buy Matt Duke kept his place despite Jon McLaughlin’s availability – a big call for the manager, given Duke’s notable nerves at Shrewsbury on Monday, but one that was proven to be well justified – and the Bantams started on the back foot, but with a resilience to withstand home pressure.

Northampton’s Aidy Boothroyd employed the sort of direct pressing football he has always been known for, but City seemed to excel at dealing with a style of play they too have produced in home games for much of this season – and once it was obvious the home team’s workrate and desire was going to be matched toe-to-toe, it was simply a matter of good players making the difference.

And City, for all the misery and underachievement, do have some very good players for this level. Craig Fagan had one of his better days – clearing an early Cobbers’ corner off his own line and linking up well with his midfield – and Kyel Reid was back on song after the understandable recent distractions in his personal life. He just ran and ran at players, beating them for skill and whipping in testing crosses. The Christie-recommended Ritchie Jones and Parkinson signing Ricky Ravenhill were the glue that held everything together in the centre, enabling the front four players to terrorise the Town defence.

Which brings us on to Nahki Wells. The find of the season, this year’s David Syers in terms of his impact from nowhere and in supporter adulation. The story goes that Jackson looked at trialists Nialle Rodney and Wells in pre-season (Wells having been recommended by Mark Ellis and David Baldwin) and ruled Rodney was the player to take on and Wells should not get a contract. Christie argued strongly to Jackson that he was making the wrong decision, and ended up signing the Bermudian for his Development Squad. That this development initiative has been quietly left to rot and be dubbed as a failure – while the first graduate Wells scores an outstanding hat trick to virtually guarantee survival – suggests a misjudgement by the club.

Wells opened the scoring for City after latching onto a terrific Fagan pass, beating a defender with clever footwork and calmly firing the ball past Neal Kitson. Six minutes before the interval, a scramble in the box led to Oliver nodding the ball into Wells’ direction – and the 21-year-old produced a stunning bicycle kick to smash the ball into the net. This guy is going to play at a higher level, and increasingly it is a question of how long City can keep hold of him.

In-between the two first half goals, it was full-blooded combat between two sides desperate to take that giant step to safety. Northampton attacked with pace to cause plenty of problems, with Michael Jacobs in particular impressing on the right. Yet Branston was once again absolutely sensational and Oliver showed no signs of rustiness, clearing anything that came his way. There has already been plenty of talk about the full circle season Branston is enjoying – a penny for Parkinson’s thoughts on whether to keep him next season would be fascinating – but Jackson’s wisdom in signing Guy last summer is belatedly being vindicated.

Northampton should have equalised at 1-0, and will be wondering how so many chances were spurned. Ben Tozer hit the underside of the bar from a few yards out; Adebayo Akinfenwa saw a half volley headed off the line by Oliver; and then at 2-0 Simon Ramsden – he and Rob Kozluk were excellent at full backs – kicked another effort off the line. City had chances beyond their two goals as well, but the Cobblers’ spirit to keep going was as commendable as it was worrying.

Sure enough they pulled a goal back early in the second half. Another scramble in the box should have seen Ravenhill head the ball away, but a misjudgement in direction caused the ball to drop straight back down into heavy traffic, with Clarke Carlisle getting free of Oliver to head home. With 38 minutes to play it was time to feel apprehensive, but within a minute the game was settled.

It was that man again, Wells, with another beautiful finish. The home defence got in a muddle clearing a long ball straight from kick off, and Nahki was able to complete his hat trick with a delicate lob over the advancing Kitson which dipped agonisingly slowly under the bar and then bounced over the line. Wells raced to embrace City supporters – earning a booking for his troubles – and an 11^th goal from 34 appearances emphatically confirmed that City, for now, have that one in three goal striker they have been badly lacking since Peter Thorne left.

Today Wells’ standing moved up another notch from promising forward to important first teamer. Developed, you might say.

And although Northampton continued to attack, they suddenly lacked the conviction or energy to make life as difficult for City’s backline compared to the first half. They hit the bar again and can look back on the day knowing that – with 20 attempts at goal, hitting the woodwork twice and having three cleared off the line – they would more often than not win playing like this. But today was City’s day.

Indeed the spectre of a fourth always seemed more likely during the final 20 minutes. Wells went off to a standing ovation, with Deane Smalley making the most of his first chance in weeks to link up well with James Hanson, and Reid continuing to cause havoc every time he received possession – what a fantastic signing Kyel has proved to be. We relaxed, soaked up the limited amount of April sunshine that was still available and laughed as Northampton fans took their turn to be exasperated by a referee. And at full time the players and Parkinson came across to us to receive a brilliant reception.

We will back here next season. Probably not with quite the same personnel, though in achieving the first objective he was brought in to complete – avoiding relegation – Parkinson, who received the dreaded vote of confidence from Mark Lawn two weeks ago, will surely continue to oversee where we go next. And when the manager does come to draw up next season’s strategy during the summer, a re-run of the video from this game will serve as a worthwhile reminder of the good things in place at Valley Parade, which now must be built upon.

City: Duke, Ramsden, Branston, Oliver, Kozluk, Fagan, Ravenhill, Jones (Bullock 88), Reid (Flynn 90), Hanson, Wells (Smalley 78)

Unused Subs: McLaughlin, Syers

Tags: 2011/12, Archie Christie, Craig Fagan, Guy Branston, Kyel Reid, League Two, Matt Duke, Nahki Wells, Northampton Town, Peter Jackson, Phil Parkinson, Ritchie Jones

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Categories Match Reports

The Midweek Player Focus #10: Chris Mitchell

22 Mar

There is a great video of Chris Mitchell on Youtube (see below) scoring a 40-yard training ground screamer against the current Torquay goalkeeper Robert Olejnik, back when the pair were playing for Falkirk. It is a superb example of the 23-year-old’s technical ability – which for numerous reasons has only been seen sporadically at Valley Parade since he joined last summer.

Like so many of the signings recruited during the close season, this campaign and move to West Yorkshire has clearly not worked out in the way Mitchell would have wanted. Aside from being unused sub occasionally, the Stirling-born defender/midfielder has not had a sniff of first team action since the Bantams exited the Johnstone’s Paint Trophy at Oldham in December. A huge amount of competition for a starting position perhaps, but the writing would appear to be on the wall. It is difficult to envisage Mitchell still being at Valley Parade next season.

Which is a real shame, because the early season performances he delivered showed huge potential – and many of his finest qualities are currently absent from City’s play. We badly lack an effective set piece taker, which Mitchell has proved he is. There is a lack of decent crosses into the box, especially compared to the high standard that Mitchell was providing when in the team. Only Kyel Reid and Jack Compton have contributed more goal assists.

Admittedly all three of Mitchell’s assists came in the same game – the 4-2 win over Barnet in August that was undoubtedly his finest moment in a Bantams shirt. He demonstrated superb quality in playing a key part in all four City goals that afternoon, as he appeared set to blossom in a right-sided midfield role which, at the start of the season, he had looked shaky performing.

Significant that afternoon too was that there was no Peter Jackson – the man who acted upon then-chief scout Archie Christie’s recommendation to sign Mitchell and team-mate Mark Stewart during the summer – after he quit two days before.

Phil Parkinson initially continued to play Mitchell, though in most of his early games the substitute board would be out early in the second half displaying Chris’ number 16 to be taken off. And then Craig Fagan entered the building, eventually taking Mitchell’s right midfield slot in terms of the way he was instructed to perform. On the sidelines Mitchell would have found familiar company in the shape of numerous summer signings been pushed out.

Mitchell still played in the cup games – and at the time the high work rate and fearless attacking approach the ‘cup side’ players produced at the likes of Huddersfield and Sheffield United captured the imagination of us supporters. Turgid league performances on Saturday from the reshaped first team struggled to inspire us; Tuesday nights at the Galpharm, Bramall Lane and Boundary Park with Mitchell and co. were a whole lot more fun.

Impressive back-to-back displays from Mitchell against Sheffield United – where he netted the winning penalty in the shootout – and Rochdale in the FA Cup earned him back a starting League Two place. But that strange 3-2 loss to Rotherham in November – which effectively brought an end to the City careers of Luke O’Brien and Steve Williams – saw Mitchell’s stock fall again with his manager, despite the fact he scored and played reasonably well that day. Just one first team appearance since – at Oldham where he played the 90 minutes and was industrious and creative in possession – and Mitchell is on the outside looking in. Yet to kick a first team ball in anger during 2012.

Back in the summer, Christie likened Mitchell to Phil Neville in terms of his versatility and the fact players of his type often go under the radar, but are key to a lot of very successful teams. A string of impressive pre-season performances taught us that Mitchell wasn’t the strongest physically or the quickest running-wise, but his ability on the ball suggested it was worth sticking with him and ensuring a place could be found in the team for his talents.

Chris Mitchell talks to Archie Christie at the training ground, September 2011

Mitchell had his rough edges – for example needing to get a more involved in setting the tempo of a game – and he was not the more polished level of player that many of Parkinson’s signings who now stand in his way are proving to be. But he was a clear symbol of the team-building, development season we were supposed to be undertaking this time out. His stalled career is a missed opportunity for the club.

Perhaps that 3-2 loss to Rotherham was the final straw that left Parkinson feeling there was no choice other than to prioritise ensuring survival at all costs, rather than allowing embryonic players the time to learn from mistakes. Whatever the thinking, the team has evolved in a different direction without Chris.

Curiously Mitchell is yet to depart City on loan, meaning there remains a slim ray of hope that he might get a couple of games at the end of the season – should relegation worries be put to bed – to demonstrate to Parkinson he can be part of next season’s plans.

If his future does, as seems more likely, lie away from Valley Parade, however, then it is sad that we have not given a raw-but-clearly-talented-player the opportunity to develop and become a more effective performer. His finest qualities remain something Parkinson is unable to find in his other players.

Let’s hope at least that – set piece and passing-wise – Mitchell’s team-mates are learning a thing or two from him while he is still sharing the same training ground.

Tags: Archie Christie, Chris Mitchell, Craig Fagan, Peter Jackson, Phil Parkinson

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