Next Game – BRBC (away)

Michael Branch

They sacked Uncle Fester Nicky Law as manager and brought in one of the most miserable and boring people in football in Bryan Robson. This immediately brought about the change of name for the club to Bryan Robson’s Bradford City (BRBC).

Things have hardly improved and after coming to their rescue in the summer of 2002 Pretty Flamingo Gordon Gibb had a falling out with the Rhodes family and cleared off with one of his mates.

The Rhodes family said they could no longer keep funding the club as they had been doing and for the second time in under two years they went into administration and that is the case still.

They arrived at the Turf back in September above the Clarets in 13^th place in the league but they looked a poor side that day as their former player Robbie Blake ripped them apart in what was probably his best performance of the season.

By mid-October they were in the bottom three and three days later they found themselves sat in 23^rd spot right above Franchise. They have been there ever since apart from a four day spell in November when the climbed one place.

This poor form brought about Law’s departure in November and despite the obvious lack of finance in came Robson along with Colin Todd.

They made an immediate impact too, turning a two goal half time deficit into a 3-2 win against Millwall in their first match in charge with goals from Danny Cadamarteri, Andy Gray (now with Sheffield United) and Michael Branch.

It was some time before the next win though and with only eight fixtures remaining are nine points from safety and look almost certain to join Franchise in going to Division Two. It will be their second relegation in three years.

They had Marlon in goal when they played at Burnley but he moved on to Luton shortly after that on his UK tour but the rest of the squad remained when Robson arrived.

He promised some big Premiership signings, presumably on loan, but it hasn’t quite worked out and the squad is now further depleted with the departures of Frazer McHugh to Notts County, both Andy Gray and Simon Francis to Yorkshire rivals Sheffield United.

Just yesterday Australian Paul Reid signed for Brighton whilst Paul Evans, remember him scoring from almost the half way line for Brentford against us four seasons ago, has joined Nottingham Forest. The Evans deal went through so late there was only time to register it as a loan but it will be converted into a permanent deal today.

He did keep his word regarding loan players and there have been four in total although all of them have now returned. The first of them was a player who played in the Turf Moor fixture for the Clarets, Bolton midfielder Gareth Farrelly who has since moved on to Wigan on a permanent basis.

He was followed by Ipswich striker Alun Armstrong, goalkeeper Nico Vaesen from Birmingham and West Brom’s Ronnie Wallwork.

They were beaten by Sheffield United at Bramall Lane last Saturday but this was their first defeat in four games. It was a close game for an hour with BRBC looking capable of picking up at least a point but then the home side hit them with two goals in two minutes through Chris Morgan and Jack Lester.

Robson was not happy with the game going ahead in the high winds and this was after the BRBC team coach had its sun roof ripped off as they travelled to Sheffield on the M1. I wonder whether Robson would have been happy with playing it had they won – perhaps not, I don’t think he’s ever been happy.

BRBC lined up: Clint Davies, Peter Atherton, Wayne Jacobs, Mark Bower, Lewis Emanuel, Paul Heckingbottom, Nicky Summerbee, Tom Kearney, Paul Evans, Dean Windass, Michael Branch (Rob Wolleaston 70). Subs not used: Andy Rhodes, Ben Muirhead, Gareth Edds, Danny Forrest.

There’s no Tony Ellis around but we will be looking for the same sort of result we got there two seasons ago when Ellis came on and scored the winner in a 3-2 victory.

Click HERE to see Bradford City’s results this season.

Past Results in the last 20 years

Click HERE to see more results against Bradford City.