Thoughts on This and That

It was at Saltergate watching City play Chesterfield on April 2 2005, when I decided Colin Todd wasn’t the right manager for the club. There were six games left of his first full season in charge, we were safe from relegation and had an outside chance of making the League One play-offs playing a team who seemingly had no intention of trying to win the game. Surely an ideal opportunity to take a chance and push on for a win? Not for Colin, with the score at 0-0 going into the last fifteen minutes he took off a winger (who had been our only creative outlet all game) for a full-back. He showed no ambition, Brian Clough (who knew a thing or two about management) cited that as a reason that Todd would never make a good manager, and it was a trait that shone through in his almost three seasons in charge at Valley Parade, his comments in my previous blog entry being a prime example.

No-one can say that being in charge of Bradford City has been an easy job in recent years however Todd did himself few favours during his reign, the odd dodgy signing and bizarre tactical decision I can live with, but they repeated themselves over and over again – he seemed unable to learn from any mistakes on that front, had a ridiculously arrogant attitude to any criticism and seemed to hold supporters who dared to criticise him in contempt – famously telling the travelling supporters at Gillingham to “fuck off” after they booed him off the pitch following a tame, passionless performance and defeat. when he had yet again done nothing to try and change things round.

Blame was a big thing with the man, and for me it created the wrong attitude around the club. Todd always had an excuse when things didn’t go to plan, and this excuse never, ever, involved looking at himself. The club has no money, it was the ref, it was the players, it was the fans, it was the opponents…. you get the picture, the only sad thing is that he has lasted so long. The reason for that is the ludicrous 4 year contract given to him by Julian Rhodes, after a good start to his first season in charge. The good start was a Todd speciality – we’ve had decent enough players throughout his spell, it’s just that he has a tactic for the season that he sticks to rigidly, and it’s just a matter of waiting for someone to work out how to overcome it.

The previous two seasons this has involved relying on a rapidly deteriorating geriatric striker, this year it was “pass it to Jermaine Johnson” and, embarassingly, it was Peter Jackson and Huddersfield who burst our 2006/7 bubble, letting us have the ball but packing the midfield and starving the winger of possession, while hoping to nick a goal on the break. The tactic has been copied successfully by others since. When Wacko Jacko is your tactical superior things must be bad.

At this level of football, and with the economic reality of the sport nowadays, you have to work with what you have got and try and improve them, damningly I can’t think of one single player who has got better while Todd has been in charge, but I can name many who have gone the other way, in particular the younger players, on one of the BCFC messageboards we call it “Todderisation”. He’s had that effect on me too, up until a couple of seasons ago I would be at every home game and most away, at times now I can barely be bothered to turn on the radio when we are playing. I can’t blame it all on him, there are numerous things that have turned me off the game – but his management and style has certainly been a contributing factor. I’m actually now looking forward to going to Valley Parade on Saturday, and the thought of it hadn’t even entered into my head before todays news came through.

So to the future, although we are currently embroiled in a battle to stay up and are far from the greatest team in the world, there is enough talent at the club to indicate that we should be doing a lot better than we are and should stay safe. Because of the current situation I’d probably prefer us to go for an experienced head with some knowledge of the league and the situation, just to tide us over until the end of this season or, at the most, until the end of next.

In the longer term I think we need a young, driven up and coming manager looking to develop and prove himself which should get a buzz going around the club. This type of manager has done well in the lower leagues in recent years and would make a pleasant change from the “just another job to top up the pension before I retire” brigade that Todd represented. Someone with some sort of link to the club would be ideal and, given that Stuart McCall is probably out of our league, I would like to see Peter Beagrie get a shot.

I’m not going to worry too much about that now because, at the end of the day I’m just glad he’s gone, I really don’t think anyone could do much worse.