Edin speaks

I could cry, reading that. Feels like yesterday.

 

It was mental wasn't it? The ride was crazy, Bradford at the time was buzzing with both huge success for both City and the Bulls and the nightlife in town was buzzing. Look at the state of all this 20 years ago, the city is falling to bits with a non existent nightlife and both sporting clubs are a joke. Halcyon days gone by m8.

 

Aye. And the council has a huge amount to answer for. The city has been allowed to die on its arse. I don't think I'll be a native for too much longer.

 

I agree can’t get carried away and still work to do, but you must admit 18 points from 8 games with 5 of them away from home is pretty impressive and compares well to the McCall disaster of 13 points from 16 games and is the reason we are currently in the bottom half

 

Exactly it. We need to remember where we were and what has happened since of course there are going to be set backs but Exeter is the only match we have lost and that was in a weakened team. A few weeks ago we would more than have settled for a mid table finish and that is still the case

 

The six weeks of madness was after Jewell left and Richmond did a Rahic and became a football manager. Not beating Liverpool and getting relegated wouldn’t have prevented the financial meltdown. The building of all the new stands Northwest corner, upper tier crippled the club and we were committed to those projects plus Richmond would have gone crazy buying players to get us back up and we’d have lost out on another year of Premier league tv money. Your right though in saying the Richmond years were fantastic and gave us hope and pride and we should have been in a position to be a club like Norwich, a good championship side and an occasional premier league team.

 

Thanks. Thinking back now I seem to remember something the road having to be redirected and permission needed via Parliament.

 

One major stumbling block, the Flamingo Land Pension Fund, tell me where they could get a better guarenteed income in this day and age, and I believe that is what is needed if the pension fund were to sell their asset.

 

Good start though. And even at Exeter, for all their possession we could have won that game although that would have been cruel on them.

 

If they had been without Boden like we were without Rowe Cook or Novak I doubt Exeter would have won

 

So the new players in this fantastic transfer window are a weakened version of the pre window?

I agree, I would and still would be content with a mid table finish. But that's part of the ethos that is Bradford City, accepting a mid table finish

 

Gordon Gibb was very smart doing what he did. That pension fund has done very well out of the arrangement and I'll bet the rent we have paid over the years won't be taken into account should we ever look into buying back the ground.

 

Its like any commercial transaction. There'll be a value attached to a limited term lease, and a value to the sale of the ground. Much would depend on the value placed on a purchase price. We've no idea what that is. But we do know that the lease expires in 7 years, so the remaining value is ~£2m. We do have some leverage in so much as we could actively explore the cost and implications of moving to a new stadium and we should be having those conversations now. In the midst of economic crash and uncertain road to recovery, the pension trust manager will have a keen interest in the absolute's that come with a sale of the ground rather than second guessing whether we extend the lease. At one point we were over a barrel, but we aren't now. Not to the same extent anyway. We have some real options and some options to bluff. At the very least, we should be trying to play a very astute and grown up game of commercial poker here.

 

I think that losing Clarke was a bigger issue than I for one expected. We have said that in several games "Clarke had a poor game" but that was in his attacking play. One thing he has been very good at is tracking back and helping out defensively, particularly in the unbeaten run helpingout FCD.

 

We have strengthened but we needed to strengthen didn’t you notice where we were before January. Lots of people on here were planning for the national league. The window was fantastic compared to previous windows and has laid the foundation for us to be safe this season and kick on and if we do better than that great.

 

Gibb is as you say an astute businessman, realising Bradford had no other option available to them as the banks wouldnt lend them money. Would have been interesting if Gibb had been the guy to hang around long term at the expense of the Rhodes family.

 

Fair play to him, wish i was that business savvy.

 

Hopkin needs to shoulder a lot of the blame for our relegation, we weren't even in the bottom four at Xmas and Edin had gone by then. If he'd adequately replaced JOB and not put all his eggs in Jack Payne's basket we wouldn't have gone down.

 

As a club, we've had more than enough time to get our shit together. We have to create a compelling alternative to extending the lease, in order to drive a meaningful and realistic discussion around buying the ground back. Won't happen though.