Whatever you thought of Derek Adams, the one drawback to sacking him was that unless Mark Hughes has been promised an increased playing budget to entice him to Bradford City, he will be working within the same constraints as his predecessor.
It doesn’t take a mathematical genius to figure out that our budget is currently pretty much maxed out. When Adams signed Theo Robinson he announced “We have used the budget we have and with the four strikers going into January, we have got to be very happy”. Something that should be at least a hint that whatever he had available was his lot, and Theo Robinson, signalled a disappointing end to the summer transfer window, but when you’ve got less than a grand a week left on your playing budget, the choices are limited.
When Ollie Crankshaw left for Stockport County it should have provided him with a bit more in the budget for the January transfer window, but the fact remained that this window was never going to solve our problems unless we were able to part company with some of our highest earners to make room for any real quality to come in. The problem with this is that when you’re a club that is struggling in League Two, there aren’t many clubs coming in for the players you want to get rid of. And as Adams had hinted, he already had a pretty good idea who the players were that would have to leave, before he could begin to really put his stamp on the squad. This was never going to be solved in the January window, most realistically, it would be a case of trimming the budget naturally by not renewing the contracts of the players that he felt didn’t have the right mentality to be in the Bradford City squad. His approach seemed to be to only bring in loans and short term signings as his budget dwindled, which again pointed to him having one eye on the 2022 summer transfer window, having sized up the task ahead of him.
For some fans among the many who didn’t like Derek Adams for his tactics and numerous gaffes in post match interviews, it will be impossible to convince them that for all of his faults, Derek Adams wasn’t suddenly completely clueless about everything football related. Just because his time at Bradford City could easily be described as a failure, doesn’t mean that everything he said and did have to be wrong. After all, most Bradford City fans will agree that the squad is simply not mentally strong enough for the task of bringing promotion to Valley Parade, and many would struggle to hold down a regular first team place at most other clubs in League Two. The problem for Mark Hughes is that he has had much less time than the fans to figure out which players he can rely on when things get tough, and which players are just having a very good two months.
Whether you agree with his sacking or not, Adams had probably worked this out. Something that has been as important as who comes into the club, is who goes out. The latter is a reoccurring issue we have been unable to deal with ever since Edin Rahic pretty much took over complete control of team affairs from Stuart McCall and promptly got us relegated from League One.
And history is repeating it’s self yet again. In steps Mark Hughes as manager and he has already stated that he wants to get the ball rolling on negotiating contracts as soon as possible rather than leave it until last minute. On the face of it, it is a sensible approach. But he hasn’t had the seven months of working closely with the team to fully appraise which players need to be kept and which need to be got rid of. This comes down to the personality of a player, which takes a bit of time to assess, because there are countless examples over the years of footballers who have bags of skill, but they don’t have the maturity or strength of character to be part of a successful team. Often players like this are difficult to manage and they bring other players down with them, and if you have a few of them at the club, it is a big problem.
It’s not unusual for these types of players to be able to be on best behaviour when they know there’s a new contract on the line, they’ll also often be good, short term, at proving their former managers wrong by showing how good they really can be. But the problem is, this never lasts, and once a new deal is done, they revert to type. So take a look through our squad and ask yourself how many of the players in our squad have been consistently decent. Having a manager with a big name like Mark Hughes might sound like just the shot in the arm Bradford City needed, but if anything, because he is Mark Hughes, it only further masks the personality issues the squad has, because many players will tell you that there’s nothing quite like getting compliments from a footballing legend. Just look at how quickly Dion Pereira recovered from his injury when Mark Hughes arrived. It could be just coincidence of course, but it isn’t the first time he has been unavailable due to injury on loan, ask Yeovil. And it is too easy to just blame Derek Adams and say that nobody wanted to play for him. Maybe some players don’t like being told when they’re not doing what they’re supposed to be doing.
So as we look towards the summer transfer window, we risk giving new contracts to players that we definitely need to get rid of and allowed players with a winning mentality and quality to take their places. The fear is that by January Mark Hughes will be another Bradford City manager who by will have worked out that he needs to wait until the 2nd summer of is contract before he can offload players in order to bring some in. And so far, the one thing we do know is that the 2nd summer never comes. Naturally we as fans probably have a good idea about the players that we know should get a deal in the summer, but the fact is that some of them will need to be sacrificed to bring new blood in, the question is who do we sacrifice out of the easiest to get rid of, namely those who will be out of contract in the summer, and who do we keep? With Mark Hughes having only had a few months to get to know a team whilst on their best behaviour, the job of sorting the wheat from the chaff is much harder for Sparky than it is for us.