This ‘new era’ (remember #newerasamevalues everyone?) has brought nothing but misery for supporters of Bradford City Football Club, but Saturday – a comprehensive tonking at home in a must-win fixture - represented a new low in an era of lows.
Watching this wretched side take punches to their glass jaw, like a hapless boxer, offering absolutely nothing in return, was galling. It was even worse when you consider the importance of the game. Add that context, and it was an insult. It felt like two fingers from those on the turf to those on the terraces.
Sitting in a morose VP, it’s once tub-thumping atmosphere reduced to mockery, disbelief, and anger, before everyone decided to pack up and leave for better things, it was spectacularly grim.
Trudging out of the ground; part-shocked, part past-caring, part-furious, I couldn’t help thinking “that’s that for me this season”. Of course I’ll be back for the next home game, mug that I am, but every inch of me wants to turn my back on these players right now, just like many of them evidently have on us.
35 years I’ve been going - bad days are fairly common at a club like ours - but this is beyond the pale.
It’s hard continuing to back players when they don’t bother performing simple basics such as tracking runners, making tackles or even running. When they don’t attempt to take any kind of responsibility. Why should we offer this team of invertebrates our support when so many of them so blatantly do not give a flying toss?
Courtesy of Bradford City AFC Official
Until yesterday evening, my misgivings were starting to very much extend from the pitch to the board room. Even as we career off the edge of a cliff, the silence from Stefan Rupp was deafening. That’s why Monday night’s statement is so important. It at last provides some sense of what the vision is, and what the way forward might look like. Stefan Rupp has vowed to continue backing the club and that should be commended. Stefan Rupp removed the contemptible Edin Rahic and that too should be commended. However I cannot overlook the fact that Edin Rahic conducted his ego trip and ongoing buffoonery under Rupp’s nose. “I will never turn my back on the club”, were Rupp’s words the other night, but they should perhaps read “I will never turn my back again on the club” because the fact that Rahic got away with what he did is surely down to either carelessness or incompetence on Rupp’s part. For this, Stefan Rupp has a way to go to earn my trust. His public utterings have always made sense, now we need his actions to make sense too. Yes, he has invested money, but at the same time, he has been the man at the top during a period when Bradford City has been one cataclysmic balls-up of a football club on and off the pitch. That’s on him, as well as Edin.
History Makers
I find it difficult to enjoy Bradford City right now, because it doesn’t feel like our club right now. Everything about the place feels wrong. The infrastructure is a mess. The heart and soul has gone. The spirit and fight of Bobby Campbell, Stuart McCall, Gary Jones, Stephen Darby, Jamie Lawrence has been replaced by pushovers, quitters, wet blankets. These are a new set of history makers, but for all the wrong reasons. I would name names, but what’s the point? We all know who they are. I suspect they do too. There are some exceptions to this, players who don’t deserve to be lumped in with this shower, we know who they are too.
The last 18 months have been painful. Watching Bradford City’s remarkable plummet from the top six to the bottom of the league in just over a year has been as remarkable as it has excruciating. Every time you think it cannot get worse, it does, and usually in some style.
I hope that Saturday was the nadir of all that decline and misery, wrapped up in one gutless debacle of a display, watched by a crowd who have had enough. Can it get worse than that? Sadly, with these players, it probably can and it probably will.
It’s the hope that kills you they say. Well, I have pretty much given up hoping, for this season anyway. The 18/19 season can do one. Sure, we’re not mathematically down yet, but I cannot muster much optimism anymore. My glass was half full, then it was half empty, then I saw us lose to ten-man Walsall and I wanted to down the contents, smash the glass over my own head, and weep. The glass and its contents are a goner. If they turn this season around, I’ll quite happily apologise and buy the lot of them a beer. I think my money is safe.
I’m looking ahead now, and as I do, I will be holding Mr Rupp to account as he goes through his bulging in-tray to try and sort out this mess. The infrastructure. The books. Commercial acumen. Leadership. A full-time manager. Supporting that manager, properly. Overhauling the playing squad. Restoring stability. Winning back trust. Rediscovering pride. Making Bradford City a happy place to be. Giving us hope. A whole host of things that, since he took over with Edin Rahic, have gone badly awry. It’s not all his fault, but there is blame.
It’s a long list to work through, and it won’t be easy. We have been pitifully hopeless for too long, and we need some hope back. It doesn’t look like it will come from the pitch, so we need something from the boardroom. I mean this from the bottom of my heart; good luck Mr Chairman, and give us something to believe in. Please.
