By Jason McKeown
The ITV presenter Jules Breach wasn’t fully accepting Kevin McDonald’s politician-style answer to the question of whether the Bradford City job was in the bag. As McDonald tried to choose his words carefully in the aftermath of an excellent win at Wimbledon, Breach interrupted the caretaker manager with a follow up question. “You’ve not got the manager’s bug yet though?”
McDonald paused. Smiled. And slightly shook his head.
“I have in a lot of ways, and there’s also a lot of ways that I don’t.”
***
If recent events have proven anything, it’s that the decision to sack Mark Hughes was the right one. The Welshman had lost his way at the end, with the club way off the promotion pace and trending down the league table. The subsequent results, performances and admissions from the players all point to the immediate value in making the change.
In both the build up to dismissing Hughes, and the aftermath, criticism of the club was rife. The continued high turnover of managers at Valley Parade was not a good look, raising fresh questions about the judgement of those tasked with appointing them. Add in a return of some disquiet over the ownership of Stefan Rupp, and a potentially rocky time lay ahead.
Instead, calm has been restored thanks to the steady and understated caretaker leadership of McDonald. For the first time all season, there’s a positive outlook amongst supporters.
McDonald deserves so much credit for arresting City’s decline, and for giving the team a new lease of life. Everywhere you look, players are excelling. Performances are more front footed, making for enjoyable viewing. The disconnect that had grown between Hughes’ ideals and the Valley Parade crowd’s aspirations has narrowed. The club has a feeling of unity once more.
All of which presents some interesting decisions for CEO Ryan Sparks and chairman Rupp. Not least with the growing calls from supporters for McDonald to be given the job on a permanent basis.
It’s easy right now to see that happening. McDonald appears set to remain in caretaker charge of City’s weekend tussle with pre-season favourites Wrexham. A win over the much hyped Welsh club, and excitement levels will be difficult to control. The players – according to Saturday’s match winner Emmanuel Osadebe – all want McDonald to get the job full time. In fact, the biggest dissenting voice against McDonald being appointed seems to be McDonald himself.
And that’s really important.
So far, McDonald has played that politician role remarkably well. “I’m happy to fill in until there’s a new manager appointed,” were his first press conference words, when originally asked to take temporary charge. After a week of three wins, McDonald said post-Wimbledon, “We’re here to do a job on behalf of the club and that’s what we’ll do until told otherwise.”
You get the feeling that, privately, McDonald will be a little bit torn on what to do. Chances like this may not come up often. But at the age of 34, chances to keep playing football are also running out.
***
McDonald’s back story is worth reflecting on here. Up until July 2020, when the 2019/20 Premier League season was wrapped up behind closed doors following the outbreak of Covid, a then-31-year-old McDonald could reflect with satisfaction on a career record of more than 500 senior appearances at Burnley, Sheffield United, Wolves and Fulham.
Then health issues caught up with him. 12 years earlier, McDonald had been diagnosed with IgA nephropathy – something that was discovered when undergoing a medical to join Burnley from Dundee. IgA nephropathy is a chronic kidney disease that slowly progresses to Kidney failure. McDonald was able to brush off concerns for a time and enjoy a commendable career, but it was always there in the background.
Eventually these health concerns began to get more serious for McDonald. He’d started to notice his physical ability was deteriorating slightly, and doctors told him a kidney transplant was needed to save his professional career. The operation eventually took place in May 2021.
It wasn’t an easy path, with McDonald telling the Daily Mirror earlier this year just how difficult it became mentally, “The hardest part for me was, I left Fulham in the summer and May was the transplant, so I had a good four months in isolation and I couldn’t really do anything anyway. I could only do the bare minimum and my wife was getting more and more pregnant. That part was tough for sure.”
Ultimately McDonald was declared healthy enough to resume his career. However, he then endured a difficult 18 months of unsuccessfully trying to find a club who would take a chance on him. McDonald trained with several clubs – including City last January – and had a brief spell playing for Dundee. But there were an awful lot of rejections. Exeter eventually took the plunge and signed him in January, before McDonald moved to West Yorkshire this summer.
It’s a remarkable journey that McDonald has gone through. And every time he does onto the field, it must feel that bit more special and meaningful. Without wanting to second guess him right now, there must be an element of him wanting to make up for lost time. To play for as long as he can, having experienced an uncomfortably early glimpse of life after football. He picked some hugely valuable coaching experience at Fulham during his time not playing, which gave him a taste. Still, it almost feels like this managerial opportunity might be coming a little soon for him.
Just after signing for Exeter last February, McDonald talked about the playing/coaching dilemma with The Herald Scotland, and he said, “First of all, I’m not finished playing, I know I’ve got a couple of years left in me. I’ve already done coaching badges and it’s something I’ve always been keen on, helping younger guys.”
Of course, McDonald can continue to play as well as managing City, but the fact he has left himself out of the last two league games indicates the direction of travel. It’s ultimately very difficult to do both jobs to the full. And potentially quite an awkward conversation for McDonald to have, if he is picking himself ahead of the likes of club captain Richie Smallwood or Alex Gilliead.
***
Beyond whether it’s right for Kevin McDonald to move into management at this moment is the bigger question of whether Kevin McDonald is the right person to be the next Bradford City manager. And here, we definitely seem to experiencing a significant case of déjà vu to three years ago, and the short-lived reign of Mark Trueman and Conor Sellars.
Trueman and Sellars were initially appointed joint caretaker managers in December 2020, after the sacking of Stuart McCall. Like McDonald, they introduced a more back-to-basics approach. Like McDonald, it brought an instant improvement in results. Like McDonald, it led to calls for the pair to be given the job on a permanent basis.
At the same time as McDonald began preparing for his major operation in the winter of 2021, Trueman and Sellars were overseeing some impressive results. They lost just one of their first 15 games in charge, by which point they’d been awarded 15-month contracts to be permanent managers.
Alas, their second defeat in the dugout – a March loss away to Newport – sent City on a huge spiral. They won just three of their last 16 games, including an end of season run of seven defeats in eight. At one point, City had been right on the edge of the play offs, but they ended up 15th and way off the pace.
Sparks stood down Trueman and Sellars two days after the season ended, stating the club wouldn’t accept mediocrity.
***
There are of course good reasons to argue that McDonald is different to Trueman and Sellars. The Scot has a very different background in the game, and has coached at a higher level. All this is true of course, but what is eerily similar is the barometer that might be used as the reason to appoint McDonald on a longer deal.
The form guide.
There’s no question it has been a really good start from McDonald. But it is just that – a start. So often in football, clubs see a bounce from sacking their manager with the team suddenly looking transformed. That can lead to success in the long-term – but more often than not, it doesn’t prove sustainable. For every Roberto Di Matteo lifting the Champions League, there are several Alan Shearers and Steve Keans leading clubs to relegation. And plenty of Ole Gunnar Solskjaers – caretakers who initially enjoy stunning success, before it unravels.
What we’re seeing right now is a reaction to what were testing times – the end of Hughes. McDonald has proven a pick-me-up. Heralding an upturn in fortunes. There’s a freshness about the team, and no doubt in training, after things had gone stale. But it’s also a regression to the mean. Under Hughes at the end, City were significantly underperforming their capabilities (just as they had been in 2020/21, when McCall made way for Trueman and Sellars). We’re currently seeing City redress that balance by performing more to their potential, but that doesn’t mean all the problems are suddenly fixed.
It’s short-termism to believe that world domination now awaits, following a few narrow wins. Especially as there were some heavy doses of luck along the way.
There’s a quote I’ve used before that I love, and so I’ll use it again. The economic expert Stephanie Flanders once said of the UK economy, “In the lead-up to recessions, we always make the mistake of thinking the good times will last forever. And then, when things turn nasty, we usually make the same mistake all over again – thinking the bad times will last forever as well.”
She might as well be talking about football and Bradford City this season. Right now, it’s tempting to believe the good times are back. That we’ve cracked it with McDonald, and need only to cement his position. But equally, just a few games ago we were believing the bad times would last forever.
The truth is always somewhere in the middle.
The big test of any Bradford City manager is always how they handle adversity. We are passionate fanbase. We overreact in both positive and negative ways. We’re emotional and heat of the moment. When things go wrong, we turn and get angry. Every Bradford City manager has faced this – and only the successful ones have ridden through it.
We don’t know yet how McDonald would cope when City are losing and the pressure is on (so far the Bantams haven’t even trailed under McDonald). How he will galvanise players when they make mistakes or have bad performances. There’s a hugely important side to McDonald’s managerial capability that is yet to be tested – not here, or anywhere else – and until you go through such turbulence, it’s difficult for anyone to know how they would handle it.
Equally, we don’t yet know how McDonald would cope tactically in different situations – Swindon and Wimbledon both played attacking football against City, and the Bantams prospered from the open nature of these games. City were generally more successful under Hughes in these types of matches. What would McDonald do when teams turn up with a low block, parking the bus, like Walsall did in Hughes’ last home game in charge?
And beyond tactics, how would McDonald handle unhappy players? With the rotation against Grimsby in the cup, 22 different players have started over these three games – so it’s perhaps not a surprise McDonald is popular in the dressing room. There’s a famous story of when McDonald was at Burnley in 2010, he got subbed early doors in a heavy defeat to Hughes’ Man City, and spent the second half in a nearby pub rather than staying in the ground. How would McDonald the manager handle McDonald the player?
City will lose a game of football again. The sky will once fall in at some point in the near future once more. And in those moments, the coolest head has to be the manager. He has to read the room and project confidence and composure. He has to be resilient when the arrows start coming his way.
There’s nothing to say McDonald can’t successfully manage all of this. But until he goes through some bumps, we just don’t know. And that’s where the comparison with Trueman and Sellars is so important. Because hindsight strongly shows that we rushed through that appointment. We ignored the underlying data that suggested their winning run was likely to come to an end, and we tied them down on longer-term contracts without fully working out if they were the right people for the job.
We allowed the form guide dictate too much.
I think we have to be so careful about repeating that mistake again. That’s not to rush McDonald out of the managerial office and back into the dressing room. I get the logic of keeping him in charge for now and seeing how he does. The way he has performed so far means he has to be a contender for the job. But we should be looking for a lot more evidence yet before committing.
When we’ve had so many managers, and so little success over the last 23 years, the urge to unearth some sort of winning formula by diving into the past is obvious. Some people are arguing that City are proven to be more successful when they appoint up and coming, first time managers – with Paul Jewell, Chris Kamara, Terry Dolan and Trevor Cherry held up as examples. But this argument ignores the unsuccessful managerial spells of Chris Hutchings, Stuart McCall’s first tenure, David Wetherall, Michael Collins and Trueman/Sellars. The last five rookie managerial appointments have not worked out.
Of course McDonald could prove different. He could be more Jewell than Wetherall. And he absolutely deserves to stay in charge right now. But we need to be careful in rushing into a decision beyond that. Even if there’s another uplifting McDonald-led victory against Wrexham this weekend, the data set is currently too incomplete.
***
The inquest that ideally will be taking place within Valley Parade now should include figuring out how much the failings this season can be attributed to Hughes – or if there are other, underlying issues still to solve.
Some of the narrative of the past week or so has felt a little unsettling to me. Led by elements of the local media that have possibly being briefed by the club, all of the blame for City’s lacklustre start to the season has been poured onto Hughes. The Telegraph & Argus, for example, has completely stuck the knife in on Hughes to a level I’ve never seen a departing manager receive from our local paper before.
As the saying goes, history is written by the winners. With Hughes evidently the loser of recent events, skuttling back to Cheshire without so far saying a word, the culpability for everything has been directed at Hughes. Every little piece of positive improvement used as a stick to beat Hughes with. All pile on.
Some of the recent player comments have been striking in seemingly pushing the responsibility for their failings onto the manager. It’s not that they don’t have a point about Hughes’ leadership of course, but it’s mightily convenient that all the club’s ills get to blamed on one man. Do the players themselves not take any responsibility for the August/September underperformances? Somehow this idea is building that they all had no idea what to do under Hughes. But this is the same manager – and largely the same group of players – who reached the play offs last season. I get that things needed to change, but there’s an element of rewriting history taking place too.
If we were to give proper scrutiny, we might want to extend the soul-searching beyond just Hughes and to other parts of the club. It’s not been mentioned, for example, that the back-to-basics approach of the last two league games has resulted from McDonald selecting starting XIs featuring just one summer signing (Adam Wilson).
The Bantams brought in 11 players during the summer, led partly by head of recruitment Stephen Gent. The perception that Hughes and Gent were not on the same page is difficult to shake off, given the mis-mash of recruitment. Is everything okay structurally at the club, or does this need assessing too? Is this squad better than last season, and if it is weaker why is this?
The recruitment issues hint at an unsure philosophy at the club, and that’s something that should be given a lot of thought right now. The noises seem to suggest a style change is likely, with the local media narrative very much painting Bradford City supporters as intolerant of passing football. Mike Williamson, the up-and-coming Gateshead manager, has apparently being ruled out of the running, because according to the T&A, “The patient, passing style he likes to play is unlikely to sit well with a Valley Parade public.”
The idea that passing football is not an approach that can work at this level is undermined by the current League Two table, where four of the top six are also in the top six clubs for most possession. Leyton Orient won the league last season playing a passing style of football. At the weekend, The Times ran an article about the Pep Guardiola influence that is rife in Leagues One and Two, with the likes of Wellens quoted and other success stories held up.
The Times journalist James Gheerbrant wrote, “We all know how the sport we see on Match of the Day has changed over the last decade: more patient possession, more building up from the back; less blood and thunder, kick and rush. There are of course outliners in the second, third and fourth tiers. But if we look at the overall picture in each of those divisions, the data tells the same story. The number of aerial duels in the average match has fallen. Goalkeepers are playing more short passes, and kicking it longer less and less. Direct speed, a measure of how quickly teams move up the pitch, is in decline. Pass completion is at its height, and so too the number of passes in the average spell of possession.
“From the Championship to League Two, teams are playing slower, holding the ball longer, and trusting, when they have the ball in their own box, the intrepid exit over the aerial route.”
City are strongly hinting at moving away from a style of football that is increasingly proving successful at this level. A style of football they have largely recruited for, too. No one could argue that the way Hughes had City playing at the end was enjoyable or successful, but the logical conclusion might be to suggest the Bantams need a manager capable of playing this way more effectively. Tweaking the style of course, but not abandoning it for an approach less suited to the tools available.
In many ways this is actually what McDonald is doing – but rather than his success being looked upon as building on what was already there, it’s portrayed as going against the ideals that we once lauded Hughes for having.
Ultimately we need to find the balance between ripping everything up and avoiding easy solutions. We don’t yet know if removing Hughes has fixed all the club’s problems, history suggests it won’t. All the scorn that’s right now is being poured onto Hughes could just as easily be poured onto McDonald or an alternative next Bradford City manager in a few months’ time, with the wider issues still prevalent and still holding the club back.
***
Ultimately, the job of Sparks and Rupp right now is to find the best person available to be the next permanent Bradford City manager. It’s very possible that McDonald might be that person, but the net needs to be cast wider to check first. Even if the search ultimately leads to McDonald proving to best option, I’d feel a lot better appointing him if it looked like the club had genuinely done its homework.
I get the desire to appoint McDonald, I really do. He has been brilliant so far, and there is every reason to believe he could have a successful career as a manager. It’s so frustrating, in recent years, to watch other clubs appoint dynamic, unproven managers who turn out to be hugely successful. It would be nice to think that we could unearth our own gem for once.
But there are clear risks too. Not necessarily in the here and now, but evident if you take more than a short-term outlook. And after so many changes in the Valley Parade dugout over the last few years, yet more short-term thinking would be misguided.
It goes back to a similar sentiment to what McDonald said on ITV about his appetite for the job. He is the right man in a lot of ways, but – with a limited data sample and doubts over whether he actually wants to be a manager just yet – there’s also a lot of ways that he might not be.
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We need a decision by end November so that whoever is in charge can plan for the January window
The squad desperately needs a prune and add in 2 really good signings and promotion is a great possibility
Personally I’d vote for a new manager and get Mac Donald back in the team
But we don’t get a vote!
I complete agree with your article Jason. It’s been great to see the change in the style and players as well as the atmosphere, but it’s early days. At this stage it’s not a binary choice of make McDonald permanent or sign an outsider; we have the option of carrying in like this till the end of November say. If we feel there isn’t a stronger candidate and that McDonald can handle the bumps in the road that will inevitably come, then we can appoint him. On the other hand if McDonald gets found out and can’t respond or doesn’t want the job then a new manager still has a busy month in December to evaluate the squad and be ready for the transfer window.
As you mentioned the issue that has been evident over the last 12 months is coordination on transfer targets and whoever is the permanent manager in January needs to be signing from the same song sheet as Sparks and Gent or we just enter another costly spiral for 12-18 months.
I agree with your comments about the style of play. It was evident to me that Hughes wanted the team to play ‘total possession’ football. What priced to be the case was the team were unable/unwilling to mix it up by stepping up the pace of the passing and knowing when to go more direct. I so wanted Mark Hughes to be successful and, at times, he was. However, far too often when they were put under pressure by a high press team did they panic and not take advantage of the space that had been made available behind the press. Indeed, the ball inevitably came backwards allowing the pressing team to reset. Was it the players? Was it the manager? It was probably a mixture of both. Playing direct football under MacDonald means the players have less time to think and therefore play more instinctively. This results in misplaced passes when we win the ball back. We witnessed this a number of times on Saturday, one of which, from Richie Smallwood almost resulted in a goal for the opposition. Are the players happier playing more direct? I suspect so because they’re having more involvement in the game and not having to really think about what they’re doing. Arguably, the players are playing at our level because they lack that split second of assessing and knowing the pass/run to make as play develops. Whilst ‘Big Kev’ had been successful to press, I worry that his set up if the team will be quickly worked out by opposition managers and coaches and there being no plan B. As you say the flip side of Mark Hughes’ play. Is like to see a manager come in that can get the team playing to their strengths whilst not totally abandoning Mark Hughes’ work. Sadly, I think many supporters will think Kevin is the answer and their voices will take precedence.
Good assessment Peter. It echoes my thoughts that we need a manager who can take what Hughes was doing and finesse it something that provides a more offensive approach without sacrificing actually playing football.
I disagree with Simon Parkers assessment that City fans don’t want possession based football. That’s rubbish. Anyone with a long enough memory will recall the City Gents ‘We want football’ cover during the Doherty era.
As to the statement that possession based football doesn’t work at this level; well Mike Williamson at Gateshead has a team a league below us playing it and being fairly successful.
Hughes biggest error was setting his team up not to lose rather setting it up to win.
I’m all for sacrificing some possession for more attacks on goal, but I can’t stomach the complete discarding of all which MH was trying.
We’ve done enough ‘rip-it-up’ and start again over the last few years.
I agree with most of what you are saying. A club should not make appointments based on short term results. Also pressure from supporters. They shout for Mcdonald to be appointed and after a few poor result they scream for his sacking. At city that’s the way it happens. A manager does need time. He has a team of not his own choosing. His style of play doesn’t suit. I feel we have a team that cannot be changed so the new manager should be able to work with these types of players in the short term and then look to bring his own players over time. Unfortunately time is not an attribute city management have. Everything is short terminism. They need to invest in the long lerm and not expect immediate results.
Personally, if any future manager starts to talk about short or long termism, they should be thanked and then shown the door as they are not up to the relatively simple job of managing , organising and getting a small group of players to play football. It is the players available that dictate the tactics, it has always been that , but, this continental approach of bending players to play a style and tactic totally alien to their style results in chaos on the pitch. Modern managers have absolutely nothing to do with anything outside the first team, The idea that the Bill Shankley era claim of going out and watching teams every night, something that Shankley never did incidentally, is still valid dosen’t happen, pull up the video’s of matches , even of academy and under 19’s , a much better view, and warmer!!. Short termism is what a football manager is involved with , the average tenure is 18 to 24 months , that’s a fact , sure we can get managers lasting longer, but not successful managers, If Man City dont clean up this year Guardiola will be on his bike pronto, Klopp is already being talked about for the next job and of course we have the usual roundabout of failures , useless one minute then ‘astute’ and quality, as they step into another Premier job. What we need is the almost instant fix, Saturday is likely to see another record crowd at VP, why? because in the short term ‘the boy’s done good’.
Excellent article, no need to rush decisions. Knee jerk appointments have cost us before . An option maybe to do just a season ending contract whether that’s with Mcdonald or someone who may find short contracts appealing . Any takers for the likes of Warnock? (Other experienced people are available)
Another good article Jason, it highlights exactly the problems and pitfalls that Sparks has to juggle with when considering his next appointment. One interesting post that I read recently was that not a single club in the last ten years has got out of league 2 after sacking its manager once the season had started. I found this difficult to believe, and to be fair the author was not 100% certain that his statement was factually correct, but he believed it to be so. However, even allowing for the odd exception, it makes me think that the odds are stacked against us going up this season, no matter who we give the job to. Which leads me to believe that giving K Mac the job, on a short contract, is less of a risk than you might think.
Actually City do not have to immediately make the decision. They can give Kevin another six or seven matches before even thinking of committing themselves one way or another. He has stated a wish to eventually go into management and must be mindful that if this job were offered and he turned it down, he would, after retirement, probably have to begin at the bottom of the ladder, gradually working up. I’m guessing that such considerations would probably persuade him to take it, if offered, even at a risk of curtailing or limiting his playing career. The position so far is that he has done exceptionally well, transformed everyone’s outlook and clearly has management potential. Winning matches is football’s gold standard. No one actually knows precisely how and why the mechanism works but one thing is crystal clear – to pursue Jason’s analogy – when the currency is strong is not the time to make radical changes. Let’s stick with Kevin, whether we win, lose or draw, against Wrexham, and leave it a while until all parties are of the same mind. We mustn’t push Kevin into accepting it but give him every reasonable chance to succeed in it.
I’m resigned to the thought that, within 3 months of whoever we appoint as the new manager, the message boards will be denouncing him as:
a) Tactically naive
b) Has no plan B
c) Makes poor substitutions
d) Is stubborn (i.e. takes no notice of me)
e) Is arrogant (i.e. takes no notice of me )
f) Has no knowledge of good players
g) Has his favourite players
h) The current squad is the worst ever seen (including the recent horrors of Hope Akpan, Josh Wright and Nat Knight-Percival)
And denouncing the owner for appointing him.
We just need to clap harder / pray harder.
It’s way too early to say K-Mac is a manager that plays a back-to-basics direct style. All we know, is that he looked at the players available to him and decided that it’s best suited to this group. So far he seems correct.
Given transfer windows and time, it may be that he is a big believer in possession based football.
Hughes certainly was, but whether through his, Gents or the clubs failure during the last window, a squad was assembled that couldn’t play that way. MH failed or refused to make that assessment, serving up terrible football and was rightfully sent packing.
I think all talk of McDonald being the right man for the job is extremely premature.
I get it honestly, after 18 months of being exposed to drab ‘paint drying’ football, we all want an immediate fix and to have something to cheer about at the weekend and Swindon gave us a taste of what we’ve been missing.
BUT, there are four crucial factors to consider first…
1. ANY one of us could have had the same impact after Hughes’ sacking, because McD has only instructed them to stop faffing around at the back and get the ball forward faster. We’ve all been demanding front-foot football.
And as McD admitted himself, he doesn’t know what he’s doing including with training, which means he’s not ‘coaching’ the team, like we wouldn’t, yet he’s told them to do the same as what we’d have said… basically, to do the opposite of what MH instructed.
2. While each victory has had an element of luck, and could so easily have been 3 defeats, only the Swindon performance was any good.
Against Grimsby’s third team, and then at the weekend, which the London media has labelled ‘a smash and grab victory’, performances have been mediocre.
For me, it’s more of an issue than to simply play on the front foot because our entire backline are part of the problem. They’re too slow and error prone, like at Wimbledon, I don’t think they actually created any chances themselves, yet through Ridehalgh, Halliday, and Platt errors and a lot of dithering, they ended up with really good chances which they should have scored from.
The new man needs to know how to put a good team together to play an attacking style and coach players to get the best out of them.
Don’t get me wrong, I like KM but he needs at least 10 years coaching experience before he’s up for the job. Not only by his own admission, but all the coaches who seem to pop up every now and then at a young age (early 30’s), have either had their career cut short, or they weren’t much of a player, so they’ve dedicated years to learning the ins and outs of coaching.
KM would need to start from scratch and learn ON THE JOB… that’s what you do at a Barrow, or a Sutton… NOT a club with 18,000 supporters demanding TWO promotions ASAP.
3. We’ve been down this road too many times these past 5 years. In fact, our demise started at the hands of an untested, inexperienced young manager in Michael Collins.
Admittedly, there were other factors too, but a raft of unsuccessful appointments, including almost an entire season in the hands of a rookie caretaker-manager pairing, who ultimately got the job, before the gloss wore off and that quickly turned sour.
There are many parallels of this current situation to the Trueman/Sellers reign, which should be causing us concern, rather than excitement. We’ve already been there and done that, so I’m really shocked to see many people getting carried away already instead of being alarmed.
Like then, we had an upturn in fortunes and results dramatically improved… but performances were dire, chances were scant, and we were more defensive than attacking.
Our xg stats told us we were punching above our weight, suggesting the bubble would likely burst… yet results continued, all the way to the Bolton match at home which at the time looked like a battle for automatic promotion. Then it all went flat and the season died out, so did the performances, and results.
I was guilty too of adding my voice to the ‘give it ’em’ campaign solely because of results and the idea that they’d deserved their chance.
However, Swindon aside, the two subsequent matches which seem to be the sole reason McD is being touted as our next manager, have been just as dire as the worst games of Hughes’ tenure.
We should know better than anyone about jumping the gun and appointing an inexperienced caretaker manager based on the initial ‘manager bounce’… I’ve certainly learned my lesson after last time.
4. There are still one or two elite candidates for the job… IF WE ACT FAST.
Every day, another clubs fires their manager so there’s growing competition for the top available talent. You can throw MK Dons into the hat now too since they fired L2’s manager of the month for August – which goes to show, a few good results count for nothing in isolation.
However, for me Leam Richardson is the perfect man for the job. He was given the hotseat at Wigan just as it looked like they were about to be relegated to our division, but he transformed performances and a team of losers into winners and kept them up against all odds.
They had (and still have) big problems with their finances. I’m not 100% sure on whether he had funds during pre-season or not, but they certainly wouldn’t have had a massive budget, yet he identified (and signed) the right type of players… got them playing attractive and attacking football… and at the end of the season, not only did they avoid relegation which everyone predicted… they went up as CHAMPIONS!
At the start of the new season in the Championship, they handed him a new 3-year deal, then 3-weeks later they fired him. This was baffling to everyone.
He’d performed two consecutive miracles to keep them out of the basement division and put them in the Championship which brought considerable wealth – a huge tonic to their financial woes… but they still had no money to invest in the playing squad, so they couldn’t have had big expectations, and given his track record, if anyone was capable of keeping them up when they didn’t stand a chance, then it was Richardson.
Surely he deserved the chance to try after what he’d done for them, but they fired him and they were relegated anyway, and now at the foot of L1, they look destined to end up in our league after all… ultimately undoing all the good work he did in the first place… GRATITUDE!
I wouldn’t even waste time interviewing anyone… I’d have offered Richardson the job immediately after Hughes left.
Now while we’re dithering like our defence, and managerless teams are cropping up left, right, and centre… not only do I fear we’ll give the job to McD and miss out on an absolute managerial gem, but the longer we dawdle, chances are, someone else will snap him up anyway.
We’ve made mistake after mistake hiring managers, which has cost us 5-years in wasted time… I just sincerely hope we’re not about to waste any more making further bad choices and setting us back years in the process.
‘Anyone’ could not have walked in and won the three matches as Kevin has, you’re completely underestimating the importance of having players believe in the manager.
Your comparison between the Michael Colins hire and Kevin is ridiculous.
We should have lost the Swindon game, Charlie Austin missed two sitters… I was falling asleep watching the Grimsby match, then a moment of magic out of nowhere won the game for our second string… and as is the general consensus of the weekend… the Wimbledon manager pointed out, “they had two chances the whole game”… (and their local rag headlined), “Wimbledon Succumb to Smash and Grab Winner”.
Therefore, he’s hardly done anything extraordinary or remarkable… three lucky wins, two mediocre performances, and 6 league points. He’s even said himself that all he’s done is told them to get the ball forward quickly and play on the front foot.
You’re obviously one of these dimwits prematurely heralding him as the next Alex Ferguson.
And yeah, you’re clearly right about comparing two football professionals in their early thirties with ZERO coaching or managerial experience between them as ridiculous.
Good job we have such an impressive mind and authority on what is right/wrong scouring the comments section to correct us on what is ridiculous or not… thanks genius!
Richardson plays very direct football, you only have to speak to Wigan fans to know that..I’m not against him as manager but please do your research before making claims that he plays an attractive style.
Also Grimsby didn’t have their third choice team out, in fact it was almost their first XI because of all the injuries that they had to thru squad players. Another inaccurate claim from you.
How do you think I knew all that about him… I wasn’t pulling it out of thin air but I guess it depends on perspective, one report described them as, “Wigan Athletic are a team feared in League One. They’re a robust side that can, on their day, blow others away with their efficient and engaging style of play.”
Fan sites rave about him as well, “Leam Richardson is among the most-loved in the long line of Wigan Athletic managers since the club’s origins in 1932. When so many others fled a sinking ship, he stayed on and not only kept things afloat but did so with admirable dignity and positivity.”
But you’re right, some say he’s direct. However, to be fair, I didn’t claim he played possession football, and I didn’t say direct wasn’t good… in fact, we’re getting excited right now because we’re playing more direct… so, I’m not too concerned about directness.
Possession football is only good if you play through teams and pull the opposition out of position.
As for the Grimsby game, that’s not how I interpreted the comments from the Grimsby boss prior to the match. He said they had 10 players missing, including their best 4… Clifton, Wilson, Khan, and Malarkey:
Mariners boss Paul Hurst admits injuries have stretched his resources to the limit for tomorrow’s Football League Trophy clash at Blundell Park.
Midfielder Otis Khan is also missing on international duty with Pakistan as Hurst scrambles to put a team together to face the Bantams.
“We’re very light because we’ve got 10 players missing, mainly through injury,” he said.
“We haven’t got too many options.”
You seem to overlook the fact that Swindon had chances but we created more than them and more than we had created in the previous four matches put together. You talk about Grimsby’s “third team” they made two changes from their previous match whilst we made eight.
We rode our luck a bit at Wimbledon but in what was a very difficult match we dug out a win.
I said the Swindon game was a good performance, but I merely noted we could so easily have lost it.
I went on the Grimsby managers’ comments that he had 10 players out, including 4 definite starters when I sarcastically hinted it wasn’t their first team… it wasn’t ours either, but I was only pointing out that it probably wasn’t a worthy inclusion in the overall statistics.
The main point I was trying to make is that I think people are getting carried away when calling for McD to be appointed as manager.
One good performance out of three isn’t enough, despite three wins, which could so easily have gone against us.
McD has admitted he doesn’t know what he’s doing…
We’ve made the mistake of promoting inexperienced caretakers before who’d been on a lucky run of form which ended in disaster…
And there are some good candidates available if we move fast…
Obviously, I like Richardson for the job, but I also like the Cowley brothers… and who knows – if we can convince MH to drop into the basement division, why not ex-player and Yorkshireman Chris Wilder?
Long shot, and improbable I know but this is what we should be trying for. Not experimenting with another ‘trainee’.
Richardson is a very good shout, he might be holding out for a job higher that Lg2 though.
This piece strikes every chord.
There’s no doubting McDonald and co have been a breath of fresh air but it does chime very much with the Trueman/Sellars start, something we shouldn’t forget. Often when a manager who lacks buy in is eventually relived of their duties there is plenty of low hanging fruit for his immediate successor to pick. McDonald has made good decisions but they haven’t been relatively tough decisions yet, and that is where a manager can earn his coin. Sample size required.
Bias, in it’s many forms, seems to play more of a part these days, chiefly down to social media. With the majority of people willing for a change from MH (myself included) there will naturally be a craving for vindication for your thoughts. Three wins on the trot will do just that.
However, football is naturally a low scoring sport where variance and randomness does play a major part and whilst the style is one that’s certainly more entertaining and something we are enjoying, they have all been by the odd goal in games against teams we were expected to finish above. Hopefully we can see even greater dominance in games going forward, something we really struggled with under Hughes.
The benefit that comes positive results is time. I think everyone will be happy to see us carry on as we are for now. At least we can enjoy watching our team again and with a bumper crowd Saturday it’s gone from a match that would hold some fear to an occasion everyone will be buzzing for. That’s all we really want.
So you’re saying to be successful in league two we need a possession-based manager, with knowledge of the more systematic, control-based modern football of the premier league? Someone a bit like Mark Hughes?? Bizarre.
I saw on Twittoh that Jamie Raynor was celebrating WoaP’s anti-possession analysis from the (excellent) podcast. I found this analysis fairly meaningless myself. We could all see that City found it hard to break down park-the-bus teams at Valley Parade, when they had lots of possession. Hughes tried to fix this with 352, and WoaP’s analysis was ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’. He then moved back to 451 and WoaP said this was broke, he couldn’t fix it, and there were no good reasons not to sack him.
It’s good that you’re saying Hughes can’t be blamed for everything, but just a wee bit too late, having been one of the loudest voices blaming Mark Hughes for everything.
Mark Hughes was successful, objectively speaking, by both win ratio and league position. Whether it was enjoyable or not is a different matter (personally I found it fascinating, and frustrating, to watch what he was attempting with these league two players). But I think the general feeling only a few short months ago was that Hughes had brought the enjoyment back to the club.
I only piped up on here because I thought Mark Hughes was getting an unfair hearing on WoaP, and because it seemed an excellent time to stop sacking managers at the first sign of trouble. So I’ll toddle off now. All I can say is please don’t get the next manager sacked for at least two years, Width of a Post! However awful they are. Give em a goddam chance to get it right.
I vote for King Kev.
Up the Bantams!
I find Jamie Raynor quite frustrating to listen to. He’s basically just got out of journalism school, doesn’t know much about football and is learning while reporting on City.
After Cook scored against Walsall, he declared that MH had turned it around. His co-host also claimed that Pointon was undroppable after only two games.
They can’t read the game, and to compensate he must be watching YT non-stop because to sound knowledgeable on football, he keeps making bizarre references, probably of clips he’s seen during the week. The last one was about a shot John Arne Riise once made in a match 20 years ago.
He’s trying, and I can’t fault him for any of it, but he doesn’t know what he’s talking about in a football sense.
However, I don’t agree with your comment on MH. He told us at the start of the season that we would press from start to finish, play attacking football, and create a ton of chances…
Yet, he played 7 defense-minded players, filed the squad with veterans, and didn’t come anywhere near to delivering on his promises… but then, how can you expect old players who don’t have legs to press 90 minutes, or a slow defensive team selection to play attacking football?
He was either incompetent or incapable of playing the football he promised.
We were too predictable and teams DIDN’T DEFEND against us, they just let us build out from the back as they knew it was our weakness, then when the ball went to our fullbacks, it was the trigger to press as we consistently gave the ball away or make mistakes resulting in chances for the opposition.
We were too static, too slow, and short on ideas. The whole backline and midfield was defence first.
That’s why McD has been successful without any experience… he knows what we were doing wrong as a player in the old formation, so he’s tweaked it.
Our team doesn’t need two years to fix, whoever comes in has a lot of positives to play with, not least one of the most expensive and talented squads in the league.
It just depends who Sparks gives the job to, two years to another ‘Bowyer’ type manager would be a waste of time.
I actually agree. He was defensively minded and cautious and controlling. But had visions of something much greater.
I’d argue he managed to achieve a 6th place finish while failing to achieve what he envisioned, and playing fairly incoherent football. Not bad! So there’s no reason he couldn’t do the same again. But if things clicked and he took the team to where he wanted it to be then, well, we’ll never know now will we.
The main thing is to let someone do their thing. Mark Hughes, as any manager, has to manage himself too! They have to play to their own strengths as a coach. There’s more than one way to play football, is there not.
WoaP is a fan blog that has multiple contributors who put forward subjective views. Jason in particular has been across different formats that he was an advocate of giving Hughes more time. He also balanced this and suggested it was becoming more difficult to defend that argument.
His arguments read from the same hymn sheet as yours above that Hughes had been successful in win ratio, league position and also uniting a fan base. All of which I agree with too. However I’m not sure it is ‘objectively’ true as success agreed with Hughes and the comms from the club was that our target was promotion. His win ratio and league position was not enough to achieve that and he was no longer uniting the fan base.
Other contributors have had different views which they are entitled to. If WoaP have – due to their success – achieved more influence than they should then your issue should be with a lack of strength in leadership at the club and I’m sure empty seats and negative atmosphere would be a far greater influence anyway!
You could take the time and effort to contribute yourself with a different voice and I’m sure they would be grateful for the content.
Thanks fair points very nicely put. I should say I very much appreciate and enjoy what Jason and Width of a Post do. It’s only this season and with the discussions of Mark Hughes that I felt moved to write. Can Bradford City get off this managerial merry-go-round? I hope so. I’d certainly agree that it comes down to the club leadership. They are so easily swayed by fans’ opinions, it creates a constant atmosphere of instability and a sense of a power vacuum. Where we end up arguing amongst ourselves about what to do, as though we need to figure it all out between us.
I agree with all the sentiments of the article. I’m still of the opinion that we should go for someone else.
1) McDonald has shown he will be a valuable member of the playing squad
2) I’m not sure we are setting him up for success appointing him now
3) Right now he had the element of surprise – teams will be watching our tapes and working out ways to play against our new style. He of course may be more than able to adapt but hasn’t had to yet.
I still think we should offer him the route to becoming our next manager (or next next manager). He fulfils his playing contract, he has a coaching role at the end until the next time the manager role becomes vacant.
In that time he is tasked with understanding what the club wants and THE PLAN, works alongside the footballing structure (manager, Gent and a Director of) to take the reigns. Of course you could suggest this creates more pressure on existing managers looking over their shoulder at their successor.
However, playing devils advocate the arguments against the reasons for not giving him the job (dealing with difficult players, low morale, defeats) what gives you confidence that anyone available is particularly adept at doing so. After all they are all ending up back in L2 for a reason.
Especially with an impatient fan base of 17K+. If those our arguments for not giving him the job would we ever give him it, or in fact any promising coach who hasn’t yet managed.
It’s one thing complaining that we don’t win but quite another to complain that we don’t win well enough. In the course of a season the luck evens out. In some games we’ll be lucky, in others we won’t. The constant moaning is unhealthy and frankly tedious.
Sadly weve been here before.
No longer a supporter, just a follower.
Nuff said