Radio Leeds fans forum

I assume you are joking,we got this sort of crowd under Parkinson in the early rounds of the cup. You’ve lost all credibility mentioning bringing McCall back. In fact anyone even dreaming of bringing McCall back should wake up and apologise.

 

Sacked every manager he has appointed in the last 12 months. Pointing to the wrong decisions in the first place.
Sacking a head of recruitment less than a year into the job who was working with a budget set by him or the owner.
Installing a new fitness/medical team only to see no improvement in players fitness
Promising a focus on youth only to abandon that after 2 months of a new manager who he cherry picked who was totally against his philosophy
Signing players on deadline day the manager didn’t even want and upsetting him less than a month after appointing him.

you can have your sales boost but I’m a fan of Bradford City and want to see us do well on the pitch and move up the leagues. I couldn’t give two shining shites over the fact we have more sponsors than last year or seats without bird shit on in the sunwin ffs. I don’t care if we take more money on a match day. At Bradford city he is CEO of all and makes all footballing decisions and so far every key one he has made he has got wrong. His track record in less than two years is woeful.

if he goes to a bigger club he would need to have no involvement in the footballing side and rightly so.

 

Are we actually averaging 15000 watching?

 

As I’ve stated before sacking McCall was correcting Rhodes mistake in giving him an extended contract. You only have to hear Sparks comments about McCall to realise it wasn’t him that wanted McCall to stay. He gave Trueman and Sellars a chance and they exceeded expectations but after the slump the message board here was in meltdown wanting them out. Maybe you would have stuck with them if so your entitled to your opinion. You’ve contradicted yourself in the sacking of Turnbull, criticising the sacking and also moaning about signing players the manager didn’t want,as that would have been Turnbull not Sparks who signed them. As for not being bothered about taking more money on match day, that is the job of a CEO, it’s his job to raise money for the club. Also seeing to the bird shit is also one of the minor things he has to get done as people complain of such matters,trivial though they may be. Just for the record he’s been in charge less than a year not two years as you stated.

 

To be fair he’s doing alright as an assistant manager of a team overachieving in the championship. He’ll be learning a lot.

 

Under the tutelage of Warnock the sky would be the limit.

 

He's too old and too set in his ways to develop as a football manager, and I doubt he has much input into tactics, but has definitely found his level as a "coach" carrying out someone else's methods.

 

I'll have a pint of what your drinking .

 

With Stuart as his assistant.

 

Rupp isn't totally shite, but I do think he's been badly advised.

As a non-football man (and by non-football, we can say 'not legitimately interested'), you would have thought he'd go out any hire some real serious advisors.

I wouldn't go into the helicopter seat business, which I know nothing about, without hiring an expert in the field. If that initial expert turned out to be a wannabe like Rahic, I'd then make double sure the next guy I hired was, in fact, a real expert.

But Rupp hasn't done that, possibly because he hired a bean counter in Rhodes (which is disrespectful, but it is what it is), and his next move therefore was entirely budget-oriented with the appointment of Sparks as CEO.

Unfortunately, after Rahic he's made all the wrong moves based on (no doubt) bad advice from people within the club at the time who thought it would all be hunky dory and worth a go. But we're not really in a position to 'see if things work out', we need to be more aggressive and get this club up the leagues and into the hands of someone who gives a toss.

However, all of this is easily counterbalanced by the fact Rupp is capable and willing to finance the club sensibly. We're not getting any of the 'overspend' guff we got from Lawn when he continually backtracked on spending hard earned cup money and that generated from player sales, so while we're not bullying everyone with our financial might, we DO seem to be running a bit smoother.

All the nonsense comes directly from Sparks, not Rupp.

 

Ryan isn't doing particularly well, nor is he doing particularly badly.

His skills as a salesman are obvious, and the season ticket campaign was a success. The commercial aspect of the club has been much more energetic and bullish, suggesting Sparks is very good in this area. New seats, a new dug out, stadium improvements, new food and drink offers have all been touted by the club - but can you say you've HONESTLY noticed an improvement in the food/drink aspect? Certainly not in the Midland Road stand, where it's exactly the same. Absolutely no differences noted. I believe the Sunwin stand has a fresh look for it's kiosk, but I wouldn't know from personal experience.

Sparks also bagged the manager he wanted, which was impressive all things considered, so he can obviously sell the club to potential incoming staff.

However, it's not all good, is it?

Unusual murmurings from the manager implying that things aren't all they're cracked up to be, performance on the pitch has been mediocre at times, even though Sparks pinned all of our hopes on Adams' ability to achieve promotion without needing to spend a ton of money, the season ticket campaign was run rather like an American election campaign filled with grandiose assertions that just don't ring true, and the back room staff clearly is just selected from a pool of Ryan's mates.

We don't need more amateurs at the club, we've got enough people who aren't ex pros or legitimate football experts.

In many, many ways, nothing has TRULY changed. It still feels all our appointments are made down the local boozer and rely entirely on being matey with the people in charge, and while the trio of scouts could be promising, it's hard to believe anything will last long under Sparks.

Which is where he has TRULY failed. The wrong appointments, the wrong moves at the wrong times, the wrong characters coming in as players, etc. You can say 'He can make tough decision', but isn't that saying 'He just can't get things right?'

Based on his current performance, I would say Sparks is under-performing. And I can't say that is in any way a surprise, because since day 1 it was pretty obviously a lazy appointment.

 

Agree with most of what you’ve said but can’t agree with this statement. In my opinion we’ve been the better side in most of the games we’ve played. But for better finishing, we’d probably have another 10 points. All ifs and buts I know, but we’re not that far away.

 

Yeah, I do tend to agree with you. However in some ways the inability to bring in match ready, L2 quality forwards is a result of the decisions Sparks made.

It looks like Adams is a good appointment, overall.

 

That’s the positive. The league is shite and we still have hope.

However, under Adams we just can’t seem to put a winning run together but hopefully it will happen soon

 

Although Exeter had a lot of possesion , they were lucky their late goal was an equalizer not a consilation. We hit the woodwork twice ,the keeper made the worldy save and Threkald should have scored from the rebound when a yard out, but somehow hit the side netting.
We have the making's of a good team, but as we all seem to have said, the inability to take our chances will ultimately cost us.

 

I just think this negativity over Sparks is simply down to some average results. If we’d have taken the points we should have from games like Walsall, Bristol Rovers, Forest Green, most would be happy and not bothered about club politics. A bit harsh describing his appointments as mates from the pub, apparently Davide Longo is a fantastic sales guy. I note you didn’t want Sparks from the beginning so probably explains your negativity towards him now. Anyway time will tell, we can argue the pros and cons of Sparks all day but in the end it will come down to results on the pitch.

 

Surely he has a mate to fill the current vacancy

https://www.bradfordcityafc.com/news/2021/november/job-vacancy-digital-media-and-marketing-executive/?src=mediabeans

 

Andy, couldn’t agree more with your assessment (albeit I think the keeper made a number of good saves, not just the one you quote).
That said, that’s also what concerns me. Inability to take chances.
It’s a team wide problem, forwards, wide men, midfield, they’re all consistently not quite able to convert possession and chances.
Bring one forward in, unless he’s prolific then it’s not going to make much difference.
Potentially we need to make a number of changes, personnel wise, to fix the problem. So does that mean wholesale changes again?
Can we improve the players we have now and get more out of them?
It’s not a straight forward answer for me (not that I’m suggesting you said that).
Just feels different to previous times when we’ve said ‘just need a goal scorer and we’ll be ok).

 

I do think sparks is low key trying to do a United with Adams, where they gave Fergie what he wanted to build the club in his style. really the sign of a good CEO is one that listens and most importantly knows when hes made a mistake. Give a year or two and the seas will be a lot smoother.

also we were 23rd at this point last season with 13 points. A marked improvement to say we are 2 points of the play offs and 6 points off autos.