Going down, Going down, Going down. (Bradford City A.F.C.)

Member Name: mikeb

Product:	Bradford City A.F.C.
Date:	10/02/01 (44 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Snaller club can get to the Premiership.

Disadvantages: Struggle to stay there.

Surely this time there will be no escape for Bradford City?

After their fantastic effort under the managership of Paul Jewell last season, it looks like the predictions of all the soccer pundits that they would not survive a second season in the Premiership are going to come true. Paul Jewell left at the start of the season to take up the new challenge of Sheffield Wednesday amid many rumours of over interference in team matters by the Bradford Chaiman Geoffrey Richards. To be fair to Mr Richards, his comment about this situation was that under his Chairmanship and guidance Bradford had achieved the success of reaching the Premier League, so if he did have an input in team matters it should be recognised that it had been a successful input.

Jewell was replaced by Chris Hutchings who was really on a hiding to nothing, given that Richards announced that if the results while he was manager were good he would keep his job, if not he would be sacked. Although this is an obvious thing to say and is true of virtually every manager in the league, the fact that it became a public announcement from his chairman cannot have helped Chris Hutchings. Amid much publicity a couple of stars were signed, Benito Carbone and Dan Petrescu as Richards tried to maintain that the club was looking to establish itself in the Premiership. Despite this, results were still not good and Bradford found themselves near the foot of the table. Hutchings tried to inject more firepower into the Bradford forward line by signing the fallen idol Stan Collymore who, not really surprisingly, scored on his debut to offer the false dawn of a new era. Unfortunately, again not really surprisingly, this was not to be and as results faltered Chris Hutchings eventually got the boot, to be replaced by the ex Hearts manager Jim Jeffries.

Jeffries has decided to dispense with the big names, with Collymore heading off to Spain, Petrescu to Southampton and Carbone being left out of the te
am, although he is now injured. Presumably this was intended to build a team that would scrap for their survival but again this new direction has hardly been a success, with Bradford now 5 points adrift at the bottom and 10 points from safety. In addition they have not even scored for 5 games and there is really no light at the end of the tunnel.

I have seen it mentioned that perhaps the casting adrift of the star players was actually a preparation for life in Division 1 next season and it is not hard to see why people would draw this conclusion given the events at Braford City this year.

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