By Jason McKeown

Well, I guess no one will be able to accuse Bradford City of making a hasty decision. 28 days later from the sacking of Mark Hughes, on Wednesday a second caretaker manager – Mark Trueman – takes charge at Valley Parade. Kevin McDonald’s reign as caretaker-player manager ends with a Football League Trophy victory against Manchester City Under 21s. The 34-year-old now reverts back to player only. One of the few certainties at Valley Parade right now.

A Tuesday teatime statement from Bradford City included long overdue words from CEO Ryan Sparks, who said, “Our search for a new manager is ongoing, and we are currently staging final interviews with candidates.

“This is a very important appointment and, as with any decision of this magnitude, a great deal of due diligence has been undertaken.”

The news Trueman will take over from McDonald came after 48 hours of great expectation that a managerial appointment was about to be announced. I’m sure I’m not the only City fan who spent a huge amount of time on Monday and Tuesday checking, checking and checking again for news. I feel like I’ve refreshed the BCAFC hashtag on Twitter more often than I’ve spoken to my family this week. Any minute now…okay a bit longer…hmmm, I haven’t checked the betting odds for at least 20 minutes.

Perhaps it was all misleading expectation. Maybe the club was never about to make an announcement. Maybe. But it’s not exactly creeping into conspiracy theory territory to wonder if someone was lined up, and has pulled out. Rumours have reached WOAP ears that suggest exactly that. With a candidate who had accepted the role apparently giving backword at the last minute.

A lot of eyes will be fixed on any news coming out of Gillingham, Lincoln, Grimsby and others over the coming days. Any manager announced by these – or other clubs with a current managerial vacancy – will inevitably attract some raised eyebrows in these parts, as we wonder if City have been gazumped in appointing their choice of manager. Two plus two may indeed equal five. But right now, Bradford City’s credibility is falling so quickly that it’s hard to fully believe “final interviews with candidates” was this week’s plan all along.

Where this all leaves City is stuck in an increasing sticky situation. The former US president, Theodore Roosevelt, once said, “In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.” Right now, City are entering into “worst thing” territory. Finding the next manager surely did not need to be as slow as it looks to be from the outside. And yet here we are.

Before we go any further, let’s have a quick word on McDonald. It has proved a memorable period for the Scot, who made an instant impact in standing in for Hughes, with three wins followed by a credible draw against the heavily fancied Wrexham. That was before it all fell away last week, with back-to-back defeats on the road to out of form sides.

McDonald can be proud of the way he was able to galvanise the dressing room and get them going after such a stuttering start to the season. McDonald did not go a million miles away from the set-up of Hughes, but simplified the approach enough to restore confidence in players who had been struggling. With all he has been through with his health in recent years, McDonald deserves the chance to play for as long as possible and he could yet have an important part to play this season.

Ultimately, McDonald never came across as really wanting the job at this moment. And the fact he has asked to step away now, before the next City manager is found, says a lot.  The chance to manage City probably came too soon for McDonald, but you could do worse than put a couple of quid on the 34-year-old proving to be a Bradford City manager one day.

Thanks Kev. That was pretty fun for a bit.

Okay, back to the manager search. And more pressingly the seemingly desperate situation that the club have got themselves in.

Running WOAP for the last 12 years, I’ve always tried to be balanced and supportive of the club where I can be. So I don’t say what I’m about to say lightly.

It’s hard to look at events over the last four weeks and be in any way impressed with those people who are running Bradford City. Chairman Stefan Rupp and CEO Ryan Sparks seemingly sacked Mark Hughes without having any plan in place. This is despite the fact it was obvious they were about to pull the plug on Hughes’ tenure, and so had some time to prepare. (You could argue the subject of Hughes’ future was on the horizon from the Morecambe game onwards.)

The club has seemingly sat back and waited for applicants. To us supporters, it doesn’t look like they’ve proactively gone looking for the best available candidates for the job. And with a flurry of League One and Two clubs following City in sacking their manager over October, the marketplace for good out of work managers suddenly became very competitive. Other clubs have acted fast and decisively, and are already reaping the rewards. City have waited and waited, for no obvious reason. And that might have played a part in this week’s events.

Of course, the caretaker manager bounce of McDonald muddied the waters slightly. As the Scot quickly got a tune out of players who had been struggling at the end under Hughes, the strategy of slowing down the search made sense. But have City really maximised the time they had, and the easing of pressure on their shoulders to make a quick decision, by doing anything truly impressive? With Sparks now talking about doing final interviews, four weeks on, it’s hard to make that case.

Instead you can’t help but feel Sparks fell into the trap again of reading too much into a caretaker bounce. McDonald did well initially – no question – but objectively the three wins from three he oversaw were all narrow, close-fought games that could easily have resulted in City defeats (and if you want to be even more unkind, Swindon, Wimbledon and Grimsby have been in dreadful form since, making these victories a little less impressive). McDonald continued to make only lukewarm noises about wanting the job permanently. And yet still we sat back and waited – possibly hoping for results to continue to be so impressive that McDonald HAD to take the job.

It is the great illusion in football that when a new man comes in and starts well, you believe it will somehow last forever. McDonald has no track record as manager, so when he starts with a bang it can give off the air of invincibility. Don’t worry about how he might handle set backs, or if he has the right acumen to identify and sign players. Just marvel at the form guide!

We did this with Trueman and Conor Sellars three years ago. The pair were winning games of football when Stuart McCall could not. They were getting the team set up effectively when they had been struggling. The club ignored the underlying data that screamed of a short-term bounce that wouldn’t prove sustainable. And stopped considering other candidates who might be better suited to the job. Trueman and Sellars were given proper contracts and within a matter of weeks it all started to go wrong – just as the underlying data had forecasted.

At least City didn’t go as far as offering a permanent deal with McDonald, but they gave the impression they were clearly seriously contemplating it. And so the search elsewhere for the right person appeared to slow. “The club are in no rush” the Telegraph & Argus kept telling us. You get the feeling that the list of applicants was far from stellar. But that’s when the club should have been using the time McDonald had bought them to look harder for the right person.

If the job isn’t attracting a flurry of top notch candidates, maybe go out and find the right person instead? Develop a clear vision of what you want to be as a football club, the style of play you want to commit to, and the profile of the players on the books – and find suitable people who match that – in jobs elsewhere, or out of work. If such suitable people don’t fancy the City role, ask them why. Find out what might make the position unattractive to top notch managerial candidates, and work out if you could change it.

Casting a wider net might have meant looking at potential candidates like Mike Williamson – championed from day one by WOAP’s own Tim Penfold – who was quickly snapped up by MK Dons. It is true to say that many fans have jumped on the Williamson bandwagon after the event, but there’s really no excuse for why City didn’t at least consider him. 

The T&A told us of Williamson that, “the patient, passing style he likes to play is unlikely to sit well with a Valley Parade public who got on Hughes’ back at times for doing the same thing.” If Williamson and MK Dons get promoted before City, those words could come back to haunt the club. Other rumours have reached WOAP of candidates taking themselves out of the running after initial meetings with the club.

City kept ploughing along with McDonald, until a rude awakening at MK Dons, where the Bantams were thrashed. And suddenly that slow process began to look a little misguided. Especially after a loss to bottom club Sutton a few days later. It all left City with a sudden urgency to appoint the next manager. Which fairly or unfairly will leave us supporters with deep suspicions over whether whoever is eventually appointed is truly the right person.

When City finally do finally make an appointment, each and every single one of us supporters will naturally hope they succeed. But right now, you can’t help but feel that Sparks has made a rod for his own back. Because if this appointment doesn’t work out, the City CEO will have used up a lot of goodwill and credibility. There has been plenty to like about the way Sparks has run the club off the field, but after almost three years in the role there just hasn’t been any great progress on the field.

If any of this seems harsh, it’s the perception that as supporters we have been left with by the club. We’ve been fed only tiny morsels of information about the managerial search. Left to fill in the blanks ourselves. And that brings us onto another major criticism to make of Rupp and especially Sparks. Communication.

In the minutes, days and weeks that followed Hughes’ sacking, the silence from the club has been deafening. No media interviews from Sparks on the subject. No statement updates to supporters on what was happening. At least until Tuesday night.

Before then, nothing. Not one word. Silence.

Is it in any way good enough to completely fail to communicate with your supporters?

At the same time as the managerial situation has played out, Sparks was interviewed in the Guardian about the Football League Trophy and in the Athletic about the strength of League Two this season. Fine to talk to national media publications, but not to your own supporters. All we’ve had instead is the T&A pushing a narrative that City’s failings were largely the fault of Hughes. But the MK Dons and Sutton back-to-back defeats have unearthed what could not be hidden – that while Hughes had lost his way, the problems at the club run deeper. 

After the mess that was Edin Rahic, we were told that things would be different. Promised that we would be treated better. That the club would work hard to rebuild our trust. Communication is a massive part of this. And during a period of huge uncertainty and so many questions, we supporters have not been treated brilliantly.

I really can’t see any good reason for this.

In the past, Sparks/the club have said things in interviews that haven’t aged well. It’s almost felt like a populist tone at times – for example the infamous words that the club wouldn’t accept mediocrity when standing down Trueman and Sellars. Such comments appear to aimed at trying to appease the type of supporters who are most likely to be disgruntled by the progress of the club. And when that’s been thrown back in the club’s faces, the temptation to resort to saying nothing can seem understandable. But most City supporters are decent, fair-minded people – ignoring this bulk of your supporters, because you’re worried how some more extreme fans on Twitter will twist your words, is not the way to communicate.

It doesn’t feel like those at the top of Bradford City fully get how much this club means to us fans. It dominates our lives. It can be the first thing we think of when we wake up. The last thought when we go to sleep. The subject of so many day-to-day conversations.

We cheer, we commiserate, we worry and we fret. And when the club is going through uncertainty like a change of manager, the thirst to know what’s going on is even stronger. This is not the time to shy away from speaking to fans. It’s the time to portray a confident front about the future. To be reassuring, even if you don’t have all the answers right now.

This whole episode has really shaken my faith in the leadership of this football club. There is just very little that inspires any confidence they know what they’re doing. That they have a plan. A lot of damage has been caused and it will not be easy to fix. I’m certainly not joining any protests myself and I still don’t believe Rupp or Sparks are bad people. But on this episode, I’ve got nothing within me to defend the display of leadership we’ve all just witnessed. 

The big worry is that the season may already be over, because the club have made such a mess of the opening third of it. Getting over play off heartache is never easy, but my goodness the hangover at Valley Parade has been especially painful. From looking so close to being back on our way last May, it feels like the club has lost its way again. And much of it feels incredibly self-inflicted.

All that will of course change if City do ultimately make a good appointment. One that brings long overdue success to Valley Parade. But right now, it’s hard to have much confidence that’s going to happen.

The club has an awful lot to prove. The final interviews this week had better be good. Because the situation could easily get worse.

Categories: Opinion

Tags: BCAFC