Valley of Despair

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The latest drama to befall Bradford City in this season from hell was an announcement this week in the Yorkshire Post that the club cannot afford to carry on at Valley Parade. To recap the tale of woe: in 2003, the club sold the stadium to the Pension Fund of the Flamingo Land theme park, owned by then City co-owner Gordon Gibb in a bid to make post-2002-administration ends meet. Fine in theory, until the co-owners clashed in 2004, resulting in Gibb's resignation, and a second adminstration in 18 months. The club has to pay a rent of some £300,000 per year. Manageable in the higher divisions, but as the club has slid, so the rent became more onerous. A similar situation arose with the office block containing the club offices and shop. Add the bills, rates and so on, and it costs the club more than a million pounds before a ball is kicked. 

The club has tried the 'we might leave Valley Parade, we can't afford it' line before in the Telegraph and Argus. This time, the club went to the Yorkshire Post, presumably so that the employees of Flamingo Land in the York area could read the news for themselves, and presumably be worried at the news and press the trustees of the pension fund into action. Personally speaking, it's an entirely transparent tactic, and, frankly, disappointing that we should have to resort to moves such as this. We've had numerous reports in the past three years that the club is in the black, financially, and the stadium overheads are paid via off-field activities, and the future won't be gambled with. All of a sudden we can't afford to play there, and won't play Lewis Hunt any more because it will trigger another year's contract. The complete disappearance of Tommy Doherty has lead a few people to suspect he is in the same situation.

Further, it entirely undermines the 'we can't afford to play at Valley Parade' argument when in the very same week, it's announced that general admission for Tuesday night's game with Burton Albion will be £1. Either we can afford to lose roughly 1,000 people's £20 for two or three thousand paying £1 (because, from experience, they won't spend the other £19 on beer, bovril or pies), or we can't. Which is it?

The club have floated playing at Odsal as an alternative; but to break the lease with Gibb would probably result in administration for the third time in nine years (and fourth since 1983). The Football League will undoubtedly impose a punitively harsh points penalty (think Luton's -30 as a ballpark figure) which would pretty much result in relegation to the Blue Square Premier. Who, of course, don't accept members in administration and so it's not a completely wild doomsday scenario that we'd find ourselves in the Northern Premier League. It happened to Boston United, after all.

In and among all of the doom and gloom of the last few days, the team got absolutely shellacked at Southend tonight, with a whole raft of players out of position: a left back at right back, a midfielder at centre back, a midfielder up front, and a centre forward on the left wing, as an example of the utter shambles of a squad that Taylor assembled. Despite what players say, off-field business like this does affect the team. Hopefully, as many players as possible are on the way out in the summer, as they have shown themselves, time and again, to be just not good enough. The budget will be cut as it is for next season, and it needs some sort of miracle worker to not have the team in the same position this time next year. 

It's been said so many times by so many people over the last ten years, but 'it can't possibly get any worse' has been shown to be so very frequently wrong. At what point does it start moving in the other direction?