One year on and former Bradford chief Taylor plans route to Brazil

IN the final week of February last year, Peter Taylor quit as Bradford City manager but then in a highly unusual move agreed to take charge of one last game.

The opponents were fellow strugglers Stockport County and it turned into one of the most bizarre matches of Taylor’s long career as the Bantams scored a dramatic stoppage-time winner against a visiting team that by then had been reduced to nine men.

It proved to be a vital win as City, under Taylor’s successor Peter Jackson, went on to stay up by five points and Stockport slid out of the Football League.

A year on from the pulsating events that left 15,332 fans at Valley Parade on February 26 breathless with excitement, Taylor will be hoping for a similarly happy ending.

This time, however, it will not be in League Two or the cold of a Bradford winter but a World Cup qualifier and the 40 degree-plus heat of Bahrain, the country whose football team the 59-year-old former Bantams and Hull City manager has been in charge of for the past six months.

“I am really enjoying international management,” says Taylor when talking exclusively to the Yorkshire Post about life in the Arab world.

“There have been a few problems and I could probably write a book about some of the things that have happened. Either that, or I’ll have a few tales for the after dinner circuit when I finish management.

“The language has been one problem. I’ll be wanting to tell someone off but have to say to the translator, ‘F****** tell him....” And he translates literally, which causes a few startled looks.

“I have also had to amend certain things, such as training. Because of the heat – it can be 40 degrees plus some days – training has to take place at 10pm or sometimes even later.

“But I am really enjoying it. I made a few changes when I came in last summer. The team was an old one so I got rid of quite a few and brought in some of the lads from the Olympics team.

“The standard is probably about Conference level, though there are some professional players. They need a bit of guidance and at the start I really went back to basics with them.

“But they work hard and the results have started to turn in our favour.”

Along with challenges on the field, life in Bahrain represents a considerable change of culture for Taylor. He arrived in mid-July, just five months after the start of the Bahraini uprising that saw the Shia Muslims, who make up the majority of the 1m population, demand democratic reforms and concessions.

Taylor added: “It was something I was concerned about before going but, personally, I have found the way of life to be okay. They still have problems out in the villages and so on but I haven’t seen anything personally. Hopefully, one day those problems will go away.

“Mind, since I got here, England has had far more problems with the riots and so on than we have had in Bahrain.”

On the field, Taylor has achieved a couple of notable firsts for his adopted country. Firstly, he led Bahrain to success in the GCC Games with a 3-1 victory over Saudi Arabia in the final – ending the national team’s wait for success in a regional competition.

Then, just before Christmas, Taylor’s side won the gold medal in the 12th Arab Games by beating Jordan 1-0 in the final. It is a success that has gone down well in Bahrain, so much so that Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal’s response was to award each member of the team $10,000.

“The celebrations for the two tournament wins have been something else,” says Taylor, who is back home in Essex for the holiday season but will return to Bahrain on January 15. “Or so I was told anyway. I came back before Christmas and my technical director keeps texting me to say they have been to see the King and so on.

“He keeps telling me how there are massive parties in the street. It sounds like I am missing all the fun, but it shows just what football means to the country.”

Repeating the success of his time at Hull, where he led the Tigers to back-to-back promotions, proved beyond Taylor at Valley Parade.

It is something he regrets immensely, even if the odd Bantams fan has managed to annoy him over the festive break.

Taylor said: “I got back before Christmas and put the computer on to see how things were going back in Bahrain. I wanted to see the celebrations for myself.

“I thought they might be quite good because Bahrain had never won anything in their lives before our two recent gold medals.

“The reports I read on the computer showed me the place had gone ballistic. I could see that from watching the coverage and reading some of the messages that go with the articles.

“Halfway down, though, I saw one message from some young idiot from Bradford who had put on that I was the worst manager in Bradford’s history. I thought....you cheeky little blighter.”

On his 12 months in charge at Valley Parade, Taylor added: “I actually look back on my time at Bradford fondly. It was frustrating, possibly as frustrating as any other time in my career. But I still see them as a smashing club.

“Phil Parkinson actually rang me about the job when it came up. I said, ‘Go and take it, it is a good club’.

“I know (joint chairman) Mark Lawn can be a bit different and the set-up with two chairmen is the same. But I really hope they do well. I just hope Phil can turn it around. The signs are good.

“My brother-in-law knows his football and saw Bradford at Southend just before Christmas. Bradford won 1-0 with a late goal, but he said they could have scored four or five goals.”

It is Bahrain, however, and not Bradford that is currently occupying Taylor’s thoughts. February 29 – almost a year to the day since he signed off at City with that vital win against Stockport – is D-Day for keeping hopes alive of qualifying for the 2014 World Cup in Brazil.

Drawn in Group E of the initial qualifying stage in Asia, Bahrain seemed on course to qualify comfortably only for a 6-0 hammering in Tehran by group leaders Iran in October to leave them now sweating on the final round of matches.

Bahrain, who only missed out on a place at both the 2006 and 2010 finals due to losing in the play-offs, host group whipping boys Indonesia, while second-placed Qatar travel to Iran. Three points separate Taylor’s men from Qatar plus a sizeable goal difference but the former Hull and Bradford chief insists all hope is not yet lost.

He said: “Losing like we did to Iran was a big blow. We had a man sent off after 34 seconds and then lost heavily. He two-footed the other player, but didn’t realise he had done anything wrong.

“Losing as heavily as we did has done us a lot of damage and now it looks like we might miss out on goal difference. But, as we have seen countless times in the past, with football you just never know what will happen next.”