Current State of OUR Club

I am not asking if he accepts responsibility. I am asking if you accept that he was responsible.

Even in your response you are hedging "Recruitment? Not sure how much input McCall had regarding that, I don't think we will ever know"

You don't outright deny it but you can't quite bring yourself to say it. Yes McCall had input to recruitment, along with Abbott and Rahic and they turned out to be poor selections.

See it's not hard.

Norman

 

You had me until "...McCall was seen as to big a personality...". Really you did and then you just went off track completely.

Up to that point I thought you had a balanced argument.

Not all McCall, not all Rahic. Collective responsibility.

We were so close, so close.

Norman

 

Really?

What's your counter argument to Stuart being a big personality with a potentially dissenting view?

Is it the appointment of a strong personality that might have a dissenting view in Stuart's stead? I mean, I guess they did that in Grayson, but... four months is all Grayson could stand.

Given the inability of the club to attract ANYONE of experience to the coaching staff (let alone as head coach), I'm interested to hear how you can so easily dismiss the claim McCall was too strong a character, too big a name, and simply too opinionated to last at City.

 

Er. ... counter argument?

That his personality wasn't too big. That his dissenting view wasn't so dissenting and deeply held that he felt he couldn't work under the management regime.

The evidence, for me, is in the fact he stayed. Even given that (according to some on here) the board didn't want him, he stayed.

I know, I know it was because he loves us and the club so dearly.

And because of this love he was willing to sacrifice himself on the Rahic alter when if it was really so bad he could have left, head held high, after an extremely successful season and had his pick of many jobs in the Championship and Scotland. His management stock must surely have been at an all time high.

But he didn't.

So can this lead us to believe that the relationship wasn't that bad. He accepted the working conditions and was happy to work in that mode? He believed it was a model that he could make a success of?

I believe we can. We should dismiss the whispers and rumours we read on here. Dismiss McCalls whispers and hints as nothing but the rhetoric of a failure looking for someone to blame.

Goodnight and good luck.

Norman

 

@Norman Corner , if you're going to try to be a clever 2 chapeaux, the word is ALTAR not alter. Alter is what you try to do to history. Ta.

 

And by the way, I can only really count a few posters who seem unable to accept criticism of McCall. Still, that doesn't suit your position so you just carry on pretending that absolutely nobody can accept he had limitations.

 

Just two really quick points on Stuart if I may.

Because if you can't work with the people running the club and it's having a negative effect then you shouldn't put your name to it. People like Parkinson and Mason got out.

Having people pulling in different directions is never s good thing. If two people decide to stick in a toxic marriage and mess up their kids with the bickering then BOTH of the people are responsible. I'm not buying that he only came back for emotional reasons either. If rather believe the statement he freely made when he was appointed rather than the one given after he left which to me came across as hindsight, revisionism and just general arse covering.

Exactly. However this excuse only works if you believe that McCall had no say in them being brought to the club and I have no reason to believe that was the case. All three of the people involved have to take responsibility in my eyes for the terrible recruitment during that summer with no free rides.

 

McCall will have been involved in the selection - but who set the parameters of what was allowed to be spent and who we can afford within a set budget.. The players presented as possible and acceptable targets to the set parameters could have been inferior or the primary targets Rahic failed to secure.

 

If you want to make that baseless leap of faith you're more than entitled to form an excuse on that i suppose.

Quite what parameter led to us spunking £500k plus on those three I'm not quite so sure.

 

Did McCall himself not say he didn’t resign because he’d resigned previously at City and Motherwell and he didn’t want to labelled a quitter, or words to that effect. They wouldn’t sack him or mutual consent, it was stalemate, he stayed and you may or may not admire him for sticking to his guns.

Recruitment, McCall didn’t know Clarke had gone, although he says it was good business, the issue over Greer and getting Barr. I refuse to believe Stuart thought Kai is good enough. Or the other German recruits. In my opinion there is no doubt McCall was not backed and that whatever went on around the time of the Yeovil game and with McMahon last January fatally undermined his position and Edin got the result he wanted. But that’s my opinion.

MvCall was not blameless but he isn’t the root cause in my opinion. That Grayson couldn’t haul the team out of the mess and that it’s continued into this season with only kids, Abbot and Rahic a continuous part suggests where I think responsibility should lie.

 

so mccall lied to us all then and it was emotion from the start that led him to taking the role for the second time?

https://www.bradfordcityfc.co.uk/news/2016/june/mccall-won-over-by-city-ambitions/

saliant point from his interview being, "This decision to come back has not been led by emotion.”

 

Yeah 500k spent on the parameters that we had to sign players with 'potential' who had very little positive contribution to last season and impacted the recruitment of us being able to bring in more experienced proven players. I have no objection of signing players with potential but not to the detriment of the main squads budget.

 

Being given £500k to spend on players who are 21-23 with the possibility to get better is hardly a problematic parameter though? All teams will have a couple of players of that age and the majority of them won't have that much money to spend. It's not like he was forced to recruit and play 17 year olds.

It's not like that's all he was allowed to recruit either. We also recruited plenty of older and experienced players as well.

 

He can't admit he has come because of the emotional pull at the beginning, he's saying all the right things at the beginning of his tenure. Imagine if he had come out with 'it's the emotional of Valley Parade thats brought me back to this place', he would have been hung out to dry straight away before he has even started his second spell. Even Rahic and Rupp admit the reasons they went for McCall was because he was a local 'legend' who knew the club inside out. Thats why they rang him on his holiday which he cut short to fly back for an interview.
You really need to understand what this club means to him, he was right to come back for a second spell in which he very nearly achieved his aim of promotion. But after what we know and knew at the time through the grapevine it was never destined to work because neither him or Rahic ever saw eye to eye.
Should he have gone after Wembley? Hindsight says yes, a sensible business decision could have been to walk away and gain employment where your methods and beliefs are warranted. But football isn't no ordinary business and Bradford City isn't no ordinary football club to Stuart McCall. Any other football club I believe Stuart doesn't walk away. The reason? Because if it wasn't Bradford City he would never have taken the job in the first place to be able to walk away. Just like no manager seemed to want the job this pre season. Coincidence? There's a reason Michael Collins has the job now and it ain't because of his football managers ability. Its the reason why Stuart shouldn't have taken the job in the first place, why no experienced manager seemed to want the job and why we have an ex part time under 18s coach now steering the good ship Bradford City.

 

He could say nothing about it rather than saying something that isn't actually true?

 

I take it you didn't go to Walsall away last season? 3-0 up and we are forced to bring on the likes of Lachlan Barr and Daniel Pybus off the bench because the squad was pitifully weak. This happened at various points of the season, its why Robinson was given his chance. I'm not against giving young lads a chance but it was a decision forced upon because of poor squad strength.

 

No I didn't go to Walsall and I'm certainly not saying the squad was good. However I'm saying that all three of them were responsible for that weakness. It wasn't necessarily because they recruited young players....It's because they recruited shit players who were both old and young.

 

so you could argue that he put himself before the best for the club? endeering but the writing was on the wall from the start if he was letting emotion take over. in other words, he believed he is bigger than the club?

taking a job for the wrong reasons, not being 100% sure it’s the right job and with an inkling of an idea that things are going to go tits up - but taking it anyway knowing that if things do go bad, because of his legendary status and love for the club he’s going to get minimal blame from the fans is not the right way to go about things. i think we can agree on that?

again, it just seems like excuses are being made for him.

 

...and here it is. We can discuss McCall's role in our current situation till we are blue in the face. I find it remarkable that the current debate has been dragged around by this red herring debate about the merits and shortcomings of McCall. The dissenters are rightly concerned by the above. Instead of bitching about McCall and whether he should have left sooner / should have performed better / should have been more distant from the players / should have been more tactically astute etc etc why not very carefully dwell on who we now have as manager and why he was appointed. If that doesn't scare the sh*t out of you then lets talk again in October and see how you're feeling about our owners then?