Rupp / Sparks and the Luton blueprint.

The reason we concede so many corners is we play our football round our own penalty box which makes it easy for teams to pressurise us into making mistakes

 

Are you speculating again. Deal in facts man

 

Yes pure speculation Park, but to you we are the highest spenders right?

 

My take after reflection, is Hughes inherited an awful squad and over performed in the last four matches of his first season. Last season he improved the squad and massively improved our league position and points but just fell short.

Next season he has less that needs improving on. This is the crux. Either we go up, automatically, or at least by the playoffs, anything else and he is done.

After reflection, I think we will nw top three.

 

Well I’m speculating whilst we didn’t have the best budget but big enough to have a very competitive Squad

 

Going by the interview it looks like we will be bringing in two or three then hopefully some good loans

 

Subject
“The bleedin obvious” as Basil would say.

 

The squad wasn't too far away from the automatic promotion places last season - seven points - which I think equates to not having Elliot Watt in midfield and losing Tyreik Wright from January.

If, as Ryan Sparkes intimates, we are only looking at bringing in half a dozen new faces, and we need to replace Crichlow, Banks, Clayton and Tyreik Wright just to bring the squad back up to last season's standard, it doesn't leave much wriggle room for improving the squad.

We need more pace in defence, more bite in midfield and attacking forwards/wingers who can score goals. It pretty much means that, to improve the team, every signing has to be bang on the money. Not every signing we made last season has been a hit (like Nevers and Costelloe) and it must be expected that not every signing this season will be a Harry Lewis.

If we are going to improve the team enough to be of automatic promotion quality I think we need to move on one or two of our contracted players (like Odusina and Young) who are unlikely to play a major role in any promotion push.

 

I'm in this exact spot, too.

I really do think we can grab a top two spot next season.

I can't overstate how badly it affects clubs that just keep chopping and changing everything about the club every time something doesn't work out exactly right. Yes, some clubs will randomly 'get lucky' with an appointment and make dramatic improvements over night, but let's see what happens to those clubs going forward.

Having a blueprint - a plan - a style - that's the future for this club, and I hope we're playing a modern style of football ad infinitum. People will get used to not clogging the ball aimlessly forward all the time.

 

What's pleasing about the situation is we aren't having to guess which random, cheap League Two players might or might not make squad players. We have the squad already.

Now the focus is on pure quality.

It's way more important than last season that this year's crop of signings are top notch. It doesn't matter that we wasted time on Odusina or Young, for example. It will matter more this year.

 

I REALLY hope you are correct with your assumption because anything less, I feel, will not strengthen us enough for auto's next season.

 

If we didn't improve the quality, we'd pretty much be relying on incremental improvements, which to be fair, is something we're not used to seeing except under Parky.

We're in a very unusual position for Bradford City where we aren't trying to train an entire squad to play a specific brand of football. Any new players will be walking into a dressing room that has a good idea of what will be expected, and that will help.

However, yes, I'm not sure that alone will be enough considering we've lost a few good loan players.

We must improve in key areas, no question, with quality signings.

 

West Yorkshire Sport Daily - Ryan Sparks: Bradford City 2022/23 season review - BBC Sounds

 

Where is this pure quality to be found in league 2, and for pennys, don't want more sub standard loans, who are not good enough for the first team.