BREWSTER’S Millions was a 1980s comedy film about a failed baseball player whose challenge was to splurge his fortune on failed assets.

The cast list was promising but the script clunky and the laughs few. After all the hype, it was panned by the critics and bombed at the box office.

City under Edin Rahic could have been the remake.

Money thrown around like confetti on wages, same success rate and nobody is smiling.

“What am I risking if it all goes down the pan?” pondered the former chairman on the infamous Matter of Heart DVD.

“I’ll still be healthy, thank God, my family will still be fine. We’ll just have to start from scratch again.

“I’ll have to move out of my house and into a flat.

“I’ve lived my dream. Irrespective of whether it works out, I’ve done it.

“You only live once. My motto is always ‘as long as the fridge is full, all is well’.”

One overflowing with cans of Special Brew is probably the only way to deal with the car crash of City’s season 2018-2019. Even then, the nightmare cannot be blotted out.

Just to recap, this was a squad assembled with the fourth biggest budget in League One. The wage bill was higher than any at Valley Parade since the club left the Championship in 2004.

And relegated with three games to go.

It appears you don’t get much for your £4 million these days. The phrase “good on paper” should be expunged from the Bradford vocabulary.

Acquisitions that might have had a decent CV in the past do not bring guaranteed success. As former City battler Lee Duxbury succinctly put it, this is real football not Championship Manager.

Phil Parkinson would have staff chasing four or five previous bosses of any prospective signing before taking the deal any further. He wanted to know the ins and outs of their life and character off the field as well as on it.

It is reassuring to hear Gary Bowyer talking about the importance of due diligence in the same manner. But you wonder if it ever entered Rahic’s recruitment philosophy.

Watching that PR video again this week, the clues were all there for what would follow.

Stefan Rupp light-heartedly called me out at last season’s player-of-the-year awards for suggesting that most foreign ownerships end in ruin.

The fact that there has been no such event this month underlines the mess that Rahic has left in his wake.

Five months on from his exit, the rubble remains. The unpleasant financial surprises unearthed since he’s gone just adding to the millstone around Rupp’s neck.

City’s owner cannot claim to be entirely blameless. Nobody who has accrued millions in business can surely have been that naïve to what was going on.

But Rupp was clearly hoodwinked like many of us into the fully extent of the problems that Rahic’s “I know football” approach was causing.

Restoring a transparency to the club and trusting people to get on with their own jobs are the first steps in the long way back to restoring City’s credibility.

At least they will head into this summer with a plan. The incredible 13,500 season-ticket take-up suggests the Valley Parade public are still willing to back it.

The fans deserve some pay-back after being so short-changed by the Rahic reign.

It was this time last year that Simon Grayson decided he would rather be unemployed than commit to two more years at City. He just couldn’t work in such oppressive conditions.

But imagine how he might have done if left to his own devices with one of the largest war-chests in the division? Or Parkinson? Or McCall?

Instead, it was Rahic calling all the shots and burying Greg Abbott’s reputation in the process. Abbott’s suggestions were too often batted away by a chairman who felt he knew everything.

If there was a book on “how not to do pre-season”, City’s was the blueprint.

It took six weeks to find a manager, sorry head coach, and then it was someone who hadn’t even applied.

The fast-tracking of Michael Collins from the youth ranks stretched credibility to breaking point.

I remember one of the earliest player press conferences when Joe Riley, one of the expensive summer flops, frequently referred to his boss as “Micky”.

It felt like City were taking it as the ridicule piled on the club.

The friendlies, as such, set the tone. Two weeks before the season kicked off, City were walloped 7-2 at Harrogate.

None of the first team were involved because they didn’t want to risk injuries on the artificial pitch – but that was hardly a secret when the game was sorted in the first place.

No wonder fitness would be such an issue – something not rectified until David Hopkin tried to “beast” them in training.

Collins denied he was a puppet for his master and flexed his authority by moving on Matt Kilgallon; but losing another key dressing-room character bore all the Rahic hallmarks.

Collins did become the first City boss since Bryan Robson to win his opening game, something Bowyer would repeat in March, but the knives were out after Carabao Cup defeat in Macclesfield.

His admission that he had let the players choose themselves who would take the penalties killed his reputation.

Rahic acted quickly and threw Collins “under the bus” after a loss at 10-man Fleetwood; ironically another defeat to a short-handed opponent nearly six months later who spell the end for Hopkin.

The Scot had steered clear of the Valley Parade vacancy previously, fearing the interference from above.

But Rahic, chastened by the growing public criticism, deliberately took a back seat to let Hopkin lead in his own way.

The German was nowhere to be seen on match day once the stick went public on a wretched afternoon at Accrington. He would not attend another game.

Hopkin questioned his own situation after another roll-over against Gillingham before his methods started to see results.

A run of four wins in five over Christmas – punctuated by that dreadful decision not to award Jack Payne’s “equaliser” in front of 46,039 witnesses at Sunderland – suggested City had weathered the storm.

But the warning signs were still there. Even in those winning games, they had been on the backfoot early on and would have been behind against better opponents.

And we know how weak City have been at recovering from any kind of deficit.

A dramatic David Ball-inspired win over Shrewsbury proved Hopkin’s last hurrah. The fans began to lose patience as the goals dried up.

The final straw for the manager – and with everyone else who witnessed it – came at Walsall. One up after 10 minutes against a team with 10 men who had lost their previous five – and City still managed to cock it up.

Hopkin wore a haunted expression in the post-match inquests; by the following afternoon he had decided to call it quits.

Those players who had let down a good man have continued to fall short under Bowyer.

An impressive start against Peterborough proved the latest of the season’s false dawns. His mind was swiftly made up on the under-achievers he inherited, something confirmed by a typically weak-willed performance at Bristol Rovers a month later.

It has felt like the longest season on record; there are few that can come close to the prolonged misery.

Bowyer is “excited” to get going again and his track record suggests a manager who is comfortable with the massive rebuild in store.

The sell-on clause for Swansea hot-shot Olly McBurnie, believed to be 15 per cent, will ease the £2m overspend that Rupp has had to cover should the Scottish international make his expected move.

Another fee, thought to be £150,000, will also come there way if Sunderland go up as part of the Charlie Wyke deal.

But the Bantams boss will have to shop to a careful budget unless he can shed the big-hitters.

Next season will hopefully shape up to be one to revive the sagging spirits, even back in League Two. But for now, let’s just be thankful that the past nine months are over – and its architect is long gone.