Only a day after Ollie Crankshaw was quoted in the Telegraph & Argus saying “I’ve got to change his decision”, referring to the reluctance of Derek Adams to give him a start in the Bradford City first team, Crankshaw became the latest player to depart Valley Parade after less than a year at the club.
The somewhat surprising news that he had joined National League outfit Stockport County has lead to many Bradford City supporters understandably asking “what is going on?”. Indeed what has happened to a club that only a few short seasons ago, like some other lower league clubs, were turning around players to sell to clubs in leagues above? Charlie Wyke was purchased as a replacement for James Hanson and sold less than a year later for a sizeable profit to Sunderland. But now, for the second time in a year, a player has joined us and we have had an offer “too good to refuse” from a National League side.
It is probably no coincidence that the last player to leave was signed under the watch of now departed Chief Scout Lee Turnbull. In the same January transfer window that saw Crankshaw arrive, another player, Danny Rowe burst onto the Bantams scene as supposedly the answer to all of our attacking prayers. Less than three months later, having struggled to hold down a place in the Bradford City starting line-up, he was on his way to Chesterfield. It is interesting to note that since joining the Spireites, Rowe has barely made an impact and finds himself once again a regular face on the bench. But you only have to take a look at his goalscoring record to see that he had failed to repeat his goalscoring exploits at AFC Fylde beyond the National League North. But surely we knew this in advance?
The transfer of Ollie Crankshaw has another bit of interesting timing to it. It happened a day after Bradford City manager Derek Adams announced that there was no more budget available, even for free transfers. Maybe moving on Crankshaw is a decision that makes sense, freeing up wages for another badly needed striker.
The current problem with injuries has left us with only one striker, namely Andy Cook, and a lot of the excuses for a lack of goals have been resting on the loss of Lee Angol to injury. But let’s not forget, the signing of Angol left City fans underwhelmed, and with good reason, he has hardly a track record of regularly scoring goals, and his replacement Theo Robinson is even more of an injury prone under-achiever. The problem isn’t that we are missing Lee Angol, the problem seems more that we are comparing new arrivals to a squad that already seriously lacks any real quality. Whereas Lee Angol might ordinarily have looked like a below average League Two attacker, with our focus being on how many chances he misses in each match, he instead looks like a quality player that we are badly missing. But that’s because as fans we are now judging him against Caolan Lavery and Theo Robinson, instead of players like Nahki Wells and Charlie Wyke.
If Bradford City are serious about promotion to League One, players of that pedigree is exactly what is needed. Both those examples came from League Two, and were young at the time. Do any of our current crop of strikers compare to Nahki Wells when he played for us, or even James Hanson?
The expectations on Derek Adams might be too high among supporters and those who run the club. Maybe the issue isn’t so much that Adams is going about things the wrong way, but maybe he is being expected to perform a task that the club isn’t properly giving him the tools to do. If we are the big club that is often talked about by those at the very top at Bradford City, aside from Salford City, we should have the highest wage budget in League Two. If we are wanting a team that is seriously expecting to finish in the automatic promotion spots, it will take an increase in the playing budget, allowing Adams a bit of freedom to sign players he wants, rather than what he needs. Either Derek Adams has over-spent on wages, or our wage budget isn’t matching our supposed ambition. The most plausible explanation is the latter.
Is this squad really as good as we think it is? Ask yourself how many players in this squad have consistently put in quality performances. Of course any player will have brief dips in form, the odd match here and there where they don’t perform to the standard we know they’re capable of. But hand on heart, how many players in this squad who we know can perform to a standard that is good enough to get us out of League Two, consistently play to that level? The rest of the squad is littered with players who don’t even have that level in them, in short, they’re not even good League Two players, and will find themselves in the National League sooner rather than later, not League One.
A good player at any level will play to a level we know they can, more often than not. They will either play at the very top, or will drop down the football league pyramid until they find a level where they can consistently perform. And the warning signs at Bradford City are that there are way too many players in our squad who have not yet found that level and are in the meantime still picking up a wage at a club that fools it’s self into thinking that promotion is a god given right, yet blissfully ignorant of the fact that we have a squad that cannot deliver that. Ollie Crankshaw was good on his day, but there simply wasn’t the consistency to justify his place in a supposedly promotion chasing starting XI. He is just one example of the problem with our squad and understandably Derek Adams wanted rid. How many others would he prefer to see off of that wage bill?
It is worth noting that many of the signings that we have been underwhelmed by have only signed one year contracts, again it points to Adams having to find players to temporarily fill gaps, whilst he waits until he can get more players off of a wage bill that Stefan Rupp doesn’t seem interested in increasing to allow that. Admittedly there are some signings that Derek Adams has signed on longer term contracts that aren’t cutting the mustard either, and that is a concern. The last thing we need is more dead wood to add to the old. Yann Songo’o I still believe will be a vital member of any promotion chasing team, but that’s about it so far.
So yet again we start another season already pinning our hopes on the notoriously difficult January transfer window to fix our problems. So far this all too regular approach has failed miserably to provide us with the right types of players, and part of the problem is the issue of supply and demand. To get anyone decent to join the club, we are going to be paying much more than we would have done had we got it right first time in the summer. That is why getting it right in the summer is so important. But to get it right requires having a manger that has had the time to assess the squad and know who he needs to keep and who he needs to get rid of, especially if the owner isn’t prepared to risk his own money on increasing the playing budget, or, if the manager is sacked at the first sign of trouble.