A decade of decline through the eyes of those who battled to revive the Bantams

Bradford City have fallen further and faster than any other club in the modern era. As City prepare for their first appearance in the FA Cup third round in eight years tomorrow at Watford, Richard Sutcliffe looks back at the club’s decline through the eyes of those involved at Valley Parade.

Locked in a fight for their Football League survival for a second consecutive season, the Bantams’ current struggles come a little over a decade after the club was rubbing shoulders with the cream of English football in the Premier League.

2000-2001

A season that began jetting round Europe as City faced opposition from Lithuania, Russia and Holland in the Inter-Toto Cup ended in a crash-landing and relegation from the Premier League amid ruinous debts.

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Paul Jewell’s resignation to take charge of Sheffield Wednesday just a few weeks after steering Bradford to safety in May, 2000, meant Chris Hutchings was at the helm as the club embarked on a spending spree which brought in the likes of Benito Carbone, David Hopkin, Peter Atherton, Dan Petrescu and Ashley Ward.

Hutchings lasted until November when chairman Geoffrey Richmond’s response to just one win in 12 games was to sack him – a decision he later admitted to regretting. Jim Jeffries came in but could do nothing to keep City up.

CHRIS HUTCHINGS: “Paul decided to leave and I got the job, which was a wonderful opportunity for me.

“We signed some great players. They were big names but all great professionals and it is just a shame things didn’t work out.

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“It was nice to hear later that the chairman regretted sacking me because I didn’t think I was given long enough. That is football. It saddens me to see what has happened there, as I had some wonderful times with Bradford.”

2001-2002

Jeffries lasts until December before being axed and replaced by Nicky Law, who subsequently leads City to a 15th-place finish.

Less than a month after the season ends, Bantams fans are hit with the bombshell that their club has slipped into administration amid debts of £36m. It is touch-and-go whether the club can survive, the problems caused by such a huge wage bill seeing the administrator try to sack 19 senior players – a move that is prevented by the PFA.

Geoffrey Richmond, in charge since 1994, then leaves as his shareholding is bought by Gordon Gibb, the owner of Flamingo Land, for a nominal £1.

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Gibb, together with the Rhodes family – who had effectively been silent partners on the board since 1997 – leads the club out of administration in August.

GARY WALSH: “It was an awful time. I only found out about all the players being sacked while I was on holiday in Florida.

“I had to have a knee operation that summer and things got so bad that I couldn’t go to the club to do my rehab because there was no-one there.

“The thing I remember most, though, was seeing Claus Jorgensen in tears in the dressing room. He had no money because we weren’t being paid.

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“In the end, the senior lads had a whipround for the younger ones to help get them through.”

2002-2003

City are out of administration and operating with a wage bill of £2.4m, a fraction of the £14m from just a couple of seasons ago.

But, even so, financial problems still continue to dog them.

Even the £2.5m sale of Valley Parade to the family pension fund of chairman Gordon Gibb (now known as the Trustees of Flamingo Land Limited Self Administered Pension Scheme) and a similar deal that sees property company Development Securities buy the adjoining office and shop building, cannot keep Bradford out of trouble.

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A strange season follows on the pitch as heavy home defeats to Wimbledon, Sheffield United and Portsmouth are interspersed with notable away wins at Ipswich and Wolves as City finish fifth-bottom.

JULIAN RHODES: “The summer of 2002 was, without doubt, the darkest hour of my time at Bradford. I couldn’t see a way that Bradford could survive. And I’ll tell you now, Geoffrey Richmond felt the same – he said that to me.

“Even though we managed to come out of administration, we were still in trouble financially. That is why the next season was so difficult and why we ended up in administration again a couple of years later.

“Nicky Law did a great job in difficult circumstances. His wage budget in 2002-03 was £2.5m, of which 40 per cent went on Ashley Ward. It was a League Two budget in the Championship and he kept us up. It was a mistake sacking him the following year.”

2003-2004

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With City sitting second-bottom after collecting just 14 points from 19 games, Nicky Law is sacked and replaced by Bryan Robson.

The former England captain is joined by assistant Colin Todd in the dugout as Bradford come from 2-0 down at home against Millwall to win 3-2.

It proves, however, to be a false dawn as Bradford win just six of their next 27 games and are relegated – ensuring the club’s centenary season is memorable for all the wrong reasons.

Matters off the pitch are little better as Julian Rhodes and Gibb fall out, the latter, choosing a home game versus Crewe to go public with the feud by commandeering the PA system microphone ahead of kick-off. Administration soon follows.

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DAVID WETHERALL: “Relegation was a blow but the finances made it difficult. No-one ever goes into a season believing going down is inevitable but we were always going to be up against it.

“After we’d been relegated and gone into administration, everyone hoped the club had bottomed out but, as we know now, it was one of many false dawns. The so-called ‘six weeks of madness’ affected the club for a long time and it is only recently that Bradford have become solid financially.”

2004-2005

Colin Todd, promoted from assistant to manager following Robson’s departure, takes the first day of pre-season training with only nine senior players after 14 of the previous season’s squad take the advice of the administrator and leave.

Within a week, City look to be heading out of business when a deadline set by the administrator for a rescue package to be finalised comes and goes.

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Julian Rhodes, though, continues to work frantically behind the scenes and in August the club come out of administration.

On the field, Todd moves quickly to plug the gaps in his squad, bringing in a collection of free agents and free transfers as the likes of Paul Henderson, Donovan Ricketts, Steven Schumacher and Lee Crooks arrive. City go on to finish 11th, six points adrift of the play-offs. A run of nine games without a win at home proves to be their undoing as Dean Windass finishes as joint-top scorer in League One with 28 goals – winning the striker a tidy sum after he staked £100 on himself at 28-1 the previous summer.

COLIN TODD: “I took over when we didn’t even know there was going to be a club. The first day of pre-season was an eye-opener with so few players there, but I did say to them, ‘We are professional people who have one thing to do and that is our jobs – leave everything else to others’.

“Fair play to the players as that is what they did and we went on to only just miss out on the play-offs – even though everyone had expected us to struggle.

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“Our home form cost us. We didn’t win for about four months and I could never put my finger on why. Maybe it was nerves on the part of some players in front of a crowd who, it has to be said, could be demanding at times.”

2005-2006

City again start the season well on the field, Todd’s side being in the play-off places after beating Gillingham in their 15th game.

Soon, though, results dip and by Christmas a section of the Valley Parade crowd start to get on the manager’s back.

A bizarre red card for Dean Windass on January 2 – the striker sent off in the car park by referee Darren Drysdale for foul and abusive language – further hampers City, who have to do without their top scorer for 43 days due to a five-game ban.

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Typically, Windass returns in style on his birthday with a hat-trick against Scunthorpe.

City finish 11th again. One notable achievement sees the club win an FA Cup tie for the first time since 1999 as Tranmere lose at Valley Parade in the first round.

DEAN WINDASS: “I came back in 2003 and the club had changed a lot from when we’d been in the Premier League. It was a real culture shock and we went on to be relegated.

“One thing Bradford had going for them was Colin Todd. He was a great manager and someone who did a job that I think the fans probably only saw the value of a few years later. Don’t get me wrong, he could have a go – he certainly did at me after that red card I got in the car park for swearing at the referee. I maintain to this day that all I had was a bit of banter with him. But he thought different and reported me.

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“Colin rang me on the Saturday night and said, ‘What have you done this time?’ But his man-management was second-to-none. He never told anyone a lie. If you weren’t playing, he told you why. I appreciated that.”

2006-2007

Another encouraging start sees Bradford go into October in the play-offs only for a run of just three wins from the next 20 games to leave Todd’s side three points clear of the relegation zone, albeit in 16th place.

Todd, who had lost Dean Windass and Jermaine Johnson a few weeks earlier due to the club needing to raise funds, pays with his job and David Wetherall takes over on a temporary basis.

A 1-0 defeat in the defender’s first game sees the Bantams slip to fifth-bottom. Two weeks later, they slide into the drop zone for the first time and are eventually relegated with a game to spare.

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City’s woes are underlined by Nathan Doyle being named Player of the Year despite being a loanee and having left in January.

COLIN TODD: “A mistake was made in sacking me. I have a lot of time for Julian (Rhodes) as without him there would be no Bradford City, but I think he took note of how some of the fans were reacting to me and thought it better for all concerned that we parted ways. I didn’t agree, obviously, but that was his decision. Bradford going down didn’t give me any satisfaction, far from it in fact. It is a smashing club, I even went to a game recently.

“I just wish they could have stayed up as Stuart McCall would then have taken over a League One club as I was going to leave in the summer regardless of where we finished.”

2007-2008

The return of the prodigal son, Stuart McCall, together with an innovative cut-price season ticket scheme that sees 12,000 fans sign up, raises optimism in Bradford that the club’s stay in League Two will be a short one. However, despite an average attendance of 13,756, City are never in the promotion hunt and finish tenth.

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David Wetherall calls time on his playing career at the end of the season, his 330th and final appearance for Bradford coming in a 2-1 defeat at Wycombe on May 3. One bright spot is City making a profit of £11,383, their first in almost a decade.

MARK LAWN: “It was a very exciting time for me personally but, looking back, also a time when I was incredibly naïve.

“I thought throwing money at the team would be the solution – hence why, after 2007-08 proved to be such a disappointment, I agreed to spend an extra £1m on the wage bill thinking it would guarantee promotion. It didn’t.

“That first season was a real let down. Stuart was back, we were getting 13,000 crowds and I thought we’d push on. But it didn’t happen, which came as a massive disappointment because I’d joined the board expecting the club to start bouncing back.”

2008-2009

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Five wins from the opening six games put City on top of League Two – the first time the club had led a division since the opening weeks of 2001-02 – and they remain in and around the promotion places until the Spring.

However, after a 5-0 win over Aldershot on March 7 puts the Bantams fourth, McCall’s side collapse and fail to win any of their next nine games.

The former Scottish international considers quitting but opts to stay after being swayed by support from the club’s fans.

STUART MCCALL: “Finishing ninth after being in the play-offs for six months was a real blow. We suffered bad luck with Omar Daley getting injured and also had other things that went against us. We went to Notts County and were poor in losing 3-0, but I remember some fans turning on the players, chanting things like ‘you’re not fit to wear the shirt’. It affected a few of them after that.

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“Missing out on the play-offs was a huge blow, as even if we’d lost, then the club would have banked around £250,000. That would have meant the budget for 2009-10 wouldn’t have to be as low as it was.

“I couldn’t leave at the end of the season as that would have been the coward’s way out. Obviously, it didn’t work out the following year, though.

“People have since asked me why it didn’t happen at Bradford but it has at Motherwell and all I can say is, ‘We never got the breaks when we really needed them’.”

2009-2010

A drastically reduced playing budget means McCall has to wheel and deal to freshen up his squad during the summer.

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An opening day visit to Sven Goran Eriksson’s Notts County ends in a 5-0 defeat and City struggle through to Christmas in mid-table.

A 1-0 defeat at home to Bury tips McCall over the edge and he resigns on February 8, paving the way for new boss Peter Taylor.

Bradford’s form picks up in the final few weeks as a six-game unbeaten run brings a 14th-place finish and the promise of better things to come.

WAYNE JACOBS: “The cutting of the wage bill meant we had to get players out and that disrupted our planning in pre-season.

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“Stuart had considered leaving the previous year but, typically, didn’t want to let anyone down.

“I was close to Stuart so it was sad to see him leave midway through the season but the consolation was he left with his head held high.

“Fortunately, Peter Taylor asked me to stay and I really enjoyed working with him. We actually finished the season well playing 4-3-3, meaning we went into the summer believing we could really push on the following year.”

2010-2011

The jailing of new signing Jake Speight just a few days after joining from Mansfield sets the tone for a miserable season, not least when it emerges the player had not told his new employer of the court case hanging over him.

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By the start of October, City are in the relegation zone with just eight points from ten games. A mid-season upturn in form brings a move up the table only for a shocking run that brings just four points from a possible 24.

Peter Jackson replaces Taylor and the Bantams stay up but the season ends on a low as supporters contemplate a possible switch to Odsal after the club reveal the overheads at Valley Parade are too high.

PETER TAYLOR: “My time at Bradford was one of the most frustrating of my career, from the results through to the injuries.

“There were times when we had a better team in the stand than we did on the pitch. It didn’t work for me at Bradford but I hope Phil Parkinson can get them going. With the fan base and everything else, Bradford has the potential to be another Hull City.”

2011-2012

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Jackson, appointed after the club’s future at Valley Parade is secured, lasts just four games before quitting.

Colin Cooper leads City to a 4-2 win over Barnet in his only game in charge before Phil Parkinson becomes the club’s third manager of 2011 and their 10th since 2000.

Results continue to be poor and City start December third-bottom of the Football League.

Respite comes, however, via an unbeaten December, meaning the club sit 18th ahead of tomorrow’s first appearance in the FA Cup third round since 2004.

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JULIAN RHODES: “We knew there were problems after the first game when we lost to Aldershot.

“Mark Lawn and I were talking afterwards and we said, ‘Hell, what are we going to do?’ We really were worried. We were honest with Peter and said, ‘We have to strengthen’. Peter decided he wanted to resign. That was his prerogative. It was our intention to help him but maybe after a few more games we would have had to act anyway. When Phil came in he was more optimistic than we were. We said to him, ‘You have to keep us up this year as it is going to be a struggle’. I think he will agree now that we weren’t being unduly gloomy but we have been impressed with Phil and believe he can help us turn the corner.”