‘I leave City with my head held high this time but before I felt I let everyone down’
Bradford City sacked their manager with the team still in the play-off positions. Richard Sutcliffe looks at the factors behind the board’s move.
FRESH from being sacked as Bradford City manager, Stuart McCall last night admitted he would have quit last summer at any other club after a “difficult” season.
The Bantams dismissed the former Scotland international in the wake of Saturday’s defeat at Oldham Athletic, their sixth in a row.
McCall learned his fate at a meeting with joint chairman Edin Rahic yesterday morning. The duo are understood to have had an uneasy relationship for more than a year, even though City spent all but 21 days of McCall’s 20-month reign occupying a place in the play-off zone.
“I feel I can leave with my head held high,” the 53-year-old exclusively told The Yorkshire
Post. “When I left as manager last time (in February, 2010), I went away feeling I had let everyone down. But this time it feels different. I have done as much as I could under the circumstances.”
McCall returned to Valley Parade in the summer of 2016 just a few weeks after Bradford had been bought by Rahic and Stefan Rupp.
His first season back at the club he served twice as a player brought a fifth-place finish in League One and a trip to Wembley in the play-offs, where the Bantams lost 1-0 to Millwall in the final.
Huge uncertainty surrounded McCall’s future in the summer amid growing tensions behind the scenes caused by the change of culture brought in by the new owners.
“I wouldn’t be telling the truth if I said I regret staying last summer,” replied McCall when asked about a close season that saw five of his starting XI at Wembley leave.
“Until the start of January, the season was going well. But, I will admit that if it had been any other club than Bradford City, I would have walked last summer. Things had just got too difficult.”
City revealed, via an official statement, the decision to axe McCall “had not been taken lightly”.
It went on to read: “Unfortunately, we have now suffered six straight defeats and the last two, in particular, have not brought about the positive change in performances or results that we had hoped for.
“We believe our current squad is capable of performing to a much higher standard than we have seen recently.”
McCall took charge of 77 league games in his second spell at the helm, winning 35 and losing just 20.
He added: “When you have been on a run like we have, you can’t claim to be surprised to be sacked. I am hugely disappointed, of course. We had one terrible month after 18 months of progress.
“I would have loved a crack at it on Saturday as a win against Bury and the entire season could change again.
“Someone said the players had let me down, but I don’t go along with that. We haven’t been good enough this past month, but they have given me everything.
“I said that when I spoke to the squad collectively (yesterday morning) and on an individual basis. It is just disappointing that I have had to say goodbye to a group I have enjoyed working with.
“That, though, is part and parcel of football.
“For whatever reason, we have lost form. Injuries haven’t helped. And we probably needed to bring the signings in earlier last month.
“But it is what it is. And I do believe this group can turn things around – starting with Saturday. We had seven players out at Oldham through injury, but four could be available.
“That will make a big difference. I hope so, anyway. It is a time for everyone to unite and kick on. Forget about what has gone, just look to the future.
“The club is still in a good position. It says a lot that, even after this horrible run, we are still in the top six.”
THERE are many times over the past year or so when Stuart McCall must have thought back wryly to his wife’s initial reaction when Bradford City came calling once again in the summer of 2016.
“You’re not going back there,” was the damning verdict when the former Scottish international first broke the news that the Bantams wanted him to take charge for a second time.
She knew what the job had done to McCall the first time, as the pain of being unable to galvanise the club he had loved since first walking through the Valley Parade doors as a teenage apprentice ate into his very being.
He looked ill during those final few months before quitting early in 2010. The smile and upbeat persona, which always belied a will-to-win every bit as strong as that of the much more taciturn Roy Keane, had been replaced by sunken eyes and a stare that, at times, bordered on vacant.
McCall never got that bad this time. He never looked ill. Nor, though, did he ever look truly happy. At least when away from the training pitch and the players he so enjoyed working with.
Tensions behind the scenes with the board became evident a few months into his reign and never went away.
Disagreements over transfers, team selection and even who took penalties abounded, with joint-chairman Edin Rahic shining a light on some of what had gone on when speaking to The
Yorkshire Post in the dugout area at Fleetwood’s Highbury home a few minutes after Bradford had booked their place in the League One play-off final.
“English football culture is different,” said Rahic, who along with Stefan Rupp had bought the club a year earlier. “As an owner, CO and head of football, so to speak, I have another type of attitude to work to the manager.
“It is difficult for Stuart to understand. I am head of football. I will comment if we concede a goal because I know about football. You have to take me seriously.”
Amid the excitement of the impending visit to Wembley and, hopefully, the clinching of promotion, the words were rather lost at the time.
But, as the dust settled on Bradford’s subsequent 1-0 loss to Millwall underneath the Arch, Rahic’s comments revealed to supporters the teething troubles both men had experienced in a management set-up very different to the one that McCall had worked under in previous jobs.
Having seen McCall’s body language increasingly betray that souring of relations as last season reached its climax, I fully expected him to leave in the summer. So did many others, including those high up at the club.
It was, therefore, a pleasant surprise to see him still in situ when the players returned for pre-season. Maybe, with a year’s experience of working together under the pair’s belts, things would be more amiable.
The blocking of veteran defender Gordon Greer’s signing, a move for which McCall had strongly pushed, disproved that notion and from then on it felt inevitable there would be a parting of the ways next summer, when McCall’s contract was due to expire, regardless of how the season panned out. Or, if a bad run came along in the meantime, even sooner.
Sure enough, City slipping to a sixth straight defeat last Saturday was enough to prompt the club to look for a new manager.
Or, as many suspect, a head coach, with Bradford possibly switching to a more continental set-up with recruitment taken totally away from the man picking the team. McCall, it seems, is unlikely to be the last Valley Parade chief to respond to requests for a transfer update with the stock answer: “You’ll have to ask Edin”.
It is a big test for the club’s German owners. McCall was, to all intents and purposes, appointed by Julian Rhodes, the former owner who had agreed to stay on for a couple of months to help ease Rahic and Rupp into what was very much a foreign environment.
Phil Parkinson’s abrupt departure had caught the new owners on the hop, hence the reliance on Rhodes in an advisory role.
Now, Bradford are very much their club and this next appointment will reflect as much. It is a decision they simply have to get right.
As for McCall, he leaves with his head held high. Many managers profess to loving their clu, but few, deep down, genuinely mean it. McCall has always been different. His love for City runs deep and, in return, the city loves him back.
This much was clear in 2010 when the League Two Bantams were toiling in his third season as manager.
Not once did the Valley Parade crowd turn on their man. It was the same this time. Whoever follows the 53-year-old has some very big boots to fill.
I know about football. You have to take me seriously. Bradford City joint-chairman Edin Rahic ahead of the play-off final at Wembley