James Vaughan

I think we all blame Vaughan.

He's clearly a ding-dong.

But the club had him under contract for two of the last years of his playing career, if the guy wants to play silly games shove him on gardening leave until an offer comes in, or see how his attitude changes when he realises he'll get his release at the age of 34 having not played a game for 24 months.

James Vaughan was in a lose-lose situation, he had absolutely zero bargaining power, and he's STILL played us like the mugs we are.

 

It was but we also knew given service he would score us goals, and we fans always liked a rebel, wind up merchant call them what you like, early season it looked like he would be a very good signing even up to him leaving for Tranmere he looked like our only forward that could nick a goal.
This has all transpired since he went on loan to Tranmere it was a club on his doorstep, he's from Merseyside Tranmere openly admit they were tapping him up for a while, it happens all the time in football our neighbours did it with Nahki.
During his time there he's obviously given it some thought and possibly believed if he told our club his heart was not in coming back to Valley Parade he would get his cake and eat it, we'll never know the terms of the "mutual agreement" but your correct he had baggage and a poor injury recorded I'm sure the Tranmere fans will take to him because given an injury free run he will score goals, we move on.

 

Baldwin has not made a great start at the EFL.

 

Lower League football clubs will do well to get through this present Vovid situation but it's going to be difficult for some to survive, now normally I would have agreed with your sentiments but not at the present moment, £3/4/5 k a week for a bench warmer is IMO not the way to go in the present climate.
When I read the link someone put up yesterday afternoon I copied and text it to several fellow fans and every one text back, if he wants out we're better rid of him, and I believe their correct.
A shame as I think the way a Stuart McCallteam play he would have been well onto the high teens maybe more ?.

 

He had us over a barrel in what sense?

The sense that we could have told him to stay home and waste his final years?

How does he win? How can he possibly achieve anything in that position?

By the logic you're employing, all anyone has to do is sulk and not really try and you can have absolutely anything you like. Absolutely not.

Sit home, cry to Tranmere until they offer us a fee, or buck up your ideas once the transfer window closes - that should have been Vaughan's decision, instead it was 'Okay, James, please let us know what you fancy doing, poppet, the contract you signed can be torn up no issues!'

 

If he wants out, we're better rid - agreed.
We don't want a bench warmer on 3/4/5k a week - agreed.

What we want is a transfer fee for a contracted player that is wanted by a specific club.

That's how the transfer system works, that's what it's their for.

If the player has absolutely zero value, by all means come to terms on a release, but I hadn't heard about the crippling injury Vaughan suffered that rendered him unable to play, had you?

 

The club were weak in sending him to Tranmere on loan in the first place
It's widely reported he had issues with Bowyer and at the time we took the wrong option (again) anyone with an ounce of football knowledge knew Bowyer was always going to take us backwards **cue park telling us we were in a play off spot** and he should have gone instead of Vaughan It's been said many times on here that Stuart as with Mark Marshall should have been given the chance to put an "arm around" him and get the best out of an obviously talented for L2 player
Instead we kept Bowyer till after the transfer window closed (coincidence??) and the rest is history
Weak management in January has cost the club dearly and we are now reaping what we sowed

 

Vaughan didn't give himself away on a free though, the fact we received nothing for him lies squarely with the men running the club. That's the main reason people are annoyed imo.

 

Don't be giving them ideas for an excuse

 

g

This and the fact McCall & Ryan were just lying to the fans..That's not good because how can you trust the club.

Vaughan has stated talks have been ongoing for months.

McCall just needed to say yes Vaughan head has been turned but he has to get his mind on the club. That is it! Not we won't be selling blah blah blah and then we just let him go on a free!! Seriously, that's just poor.

 

Looking at our squad as it stands, it looks pretty poor.

Another terrible signing from the hapless Bowyer.

you compare this squad to our L2 promotion squad and to other teams in the league and realise we are stuck here for a while yet without some quality adding which seems really unlikely right now.

 

I do have a vague idea of how the transfer system works, and yes under normal circumstances I would agree Tranmere want him then its £x and you can have him, but this is quite a different scenario as was the Nahki Wells situation, players have most of the power with regards their career.
He did not want to give the new manager a chance so that suggests to me his mind was already made up and although I can understand the logic of bringing him back and into the routine of day to day involvement with his team mates might change his mind Vaughan had his mind set on Tranmere.
If when Stuart had had a word a few weeks ago the club had come out and made it known to the fans "James Vaughan has made it very clear to the manager he is not prepared to return to the club" and then agree a mutual release there are fans on here that would have ripped the club to pieces, no win situation for me unless the club took your route which logically was never going to happen with possibly our highest earner, hes gone we move on.

 

Agree
However I think they were both told to say that
The bigger problem is within the higher echelons of the club

 

We should never have signed Vaughan in the first place and I'm happy he's gone. Is he a great loss to the team , not at all he would probably have had a fall out with McCall if things weren't going his way and disrupted the dressing room. He's been a bad egg at most clubs he's been at and his discipline on and off the field was there to see in the 6 months he was here.

 

also McCall, "we've got impressionable young kids in the squad." so we'll let Vaughan hang around for three weeks tossing it off and not putting the effort in, being a negative influence on pre-season from the very start? people can moan about Vaughan, Rhodes, Sparks but McCall is as much to do with this farce as the rest of them.

 

they're all as bad as each other, McCall and Sparks included.. they at least all need to sit in a room and get their stories straight because each one is coming up with a different story.

 

Nahki was an example of poor transfer value management, allowing him to tell us we had to accept an offer from Huddersfield. However, the reason we babbed ourselves was because the length of his contract suggested we weren't going to get a higher offer even if we gambled on rejecting Town's advances.

This, however, is entirely different. Vaughan's contract length would not have affected his valuation, there was zero benefit to either Tranmere or Vaughan to play a long game given his age, AND the fact there was a willing suitor was clear as day.

Releasing Vaughan simply because he wanted to be released can only be regarded as an abject failure.

But you're absolutely right in that, at Bradford City specifically, players have ALL the power, and the precedent has been set so that in future, any centre forward wanting a move will simply point to Wells (if he's doing very well and wants to go somewhere else), Doyle (if he's not doing well and wants a loan elsewhere) or Vaughan (if he's a bit bored) as an example of why he doesn't have to honour his contract or stick around.

Your options are:

1) Don't really put a lot of effort in
2) Complain
3) Tell the club who you'd rather play for, and that you'd rather they let you go either on loan, on a free, or for a pittance

I mean, what can the club POSSIBLY do?

 

For me it’s less the fact we released him on a free, I understand that, don’t necessarily agree but I understand it, it’s more that two weeks ago they’re saying he’s not going without compensation when presumably they knew he wanted to leave. The old adage of saying nothing and being thought a fool being better than opening your mouth and being known as a fool springs to mind.

 

Yes I accept that, but that does not change the situation if we had asked for a fee which we should have done they say (knowing Vaughan has made his position very clear to Stuart) they are not prepared to pay one, apart from a gesture of offering us a guy called Payne whoever he is then were back to square one we have our highest paid player sulking and generally being a bad influence around the squad.
We either tell him to go home on gardening leave, make him train on his own as Hopkin did with a few bad eggs which made little difference to performances or results.
I dont like it that a striker most accept would be our main goal scorer looks like he's done the club over but unfortunatly that's the way it looks to the majority of fans, I hope the club and Stuart have a replacement lined up but we are where we are.
I'm sure if we do have someone lined up and he is successful there will still be some who will compare his strike rate with Vaughans at Tranmere that is of course if Vaughan is doing well otherwise he will be just another part of Bradford City's history.