Bradford (Park Avenue) owner opens up on first-team failings

After going down from National League North at the end of the 2022/23 season, Avenue knew they were unlikely to stroll to promotion back to the sixth tier at the first attempt.

But 2023/24 has gone worse than anyone could have imagined on the pitch, with the club currently eight points from safety in the Northern Premier League Premier Division, with virtually no experienced, fit players in the squad and with a new manager who has lost all of his first seven games in charge.

With a second successive relegation looking likely the T&A took Roberts to task on just what is going wrong at Horsfall…

Q: COULD YOU HAVE ENVISAGED THE TEAM DOING AS BADLY AS THIS ON THE FIELD?

A: We thought at the beginning of the season, with a lot of the players coming back from our National League North campaign, and the fact we’d kept basically the same budget as we had in the sixth tier, I was reasonably led to believe we’d be competitive and chasing the play-offs with the squad we had.

A grim 2-0 defeat to fellow strugglers Atherton in Avenue's first away game of the season set the tone from the off. (Image: John Rhodes.)

That wasn’t the case, and we didn’t really understand why that was. We’ve had some injuries and have a fairly thin squad, but we’d had such bad results (under Mark Bower) that we had to change the coach and the culture.

When Danny (Whitaker) came in, he immediately noticed the team didn’t have the physical fitness we need, the attitude of some of the players towards their daily tasks was not at the level required, so we’ve basically had to change our strategy in the middle of the season, because we wanted a full-time head coach, who can also help us keep building our academy.

Q: IS THERE BEING TOO MUCH ASKED OF A YOUNG SQUAD AND ARE THEY STRUGGLING TO COPE WITH THOSE EXPECTATIONS?

A: We’ve ended up with a very young first-team squad, and it’s very hard to replace that experience we’ve lost (like Simon Richman in November and Luca Havern in December) at this stage of the season, as most of those types of players are already committed to the clubs they’re at.

But we’ve told Danny he’s got to start building the squad up and he’s actively looking around for new players.

We’re looking for the longer term, it’s not just about this season, because wherever we end up next year, we want to come into it strongly.

The reason we’ve not had a cup run for so long, I think, is because we weren’t properly prepared at the start of the season and we’d lose 10 games in a row to kick things off, which is not acceptable.

We all hate to lose, but there’s no excuse for not being fully prepared, so what you’ll see from us next season is more pre-season games, more intense training and being ready to hit the ground running, and that could all lead to good things in the cup.

Q: IS THERE A BELIEF AT AVENUE THAT YOU CAN ESCAPE THE DROP THIS SEASON?

A: It’s football, it is possible and we’re trying as hard as we can.

But we’ve got to be realistic, it’s going to be a tough ask, so the important thing is not to put pressure on Danny.

Danny Whitaker is under scrutiny from fans already after seven defeats from his first seven games, but not from owner Gareth Roberts. (Image: Freelance)

Him leading us to safety is not going to be the sole measure of his job.

It’s not just about him keeping us up, it’s about having someone like him who can help us build the club in the long term.

Q: DOES IT REALLY MATTER HOW WELL DANNY DOES IN GROWING THE ACADEMY IF HE CANNOT GET RESULTS AS FIRST-TEAM BOSS?

A: At the moment we’re committed to Danny long-term and we have to do that, there’s question about it, he’s got to be given our support.

We don’t have a small budget at this level, we did in National League North over the previous few seasons, and credit to Mark Bower for keeping us up in that situation.

But eventually we ran out of options, because you can’t keep having a small budget and attracting the kind of quality players we used to have.

Those players of that ilk that did stay were getting long in the tooth and in football, you do have to start again in some cases.

What we’ve got too is the fact that about a quarter of our budget is tied up with injured players at the moment.

Q: WAS DANNY BEING FAIR IN CRITICISING THE INJURY AND FITNESS PROBLEMS THAT HAVE HAMPERED MEMBERS OF HIS FIRST TEAM ON A LONG-TERM BASIS?

A: I’m not sure I can comment on the injuries but certainly fitness is something we can control at the club.

Better fitness leads to less injuries too, and when you overplay lads and they’re not quite fit, then they’ll get injuries.

Our focus is on getting these players very fit, so they can go out and play, but also making sure they recover properly.

It’s been a confluence of factors this season, with injuries on top of trying to keep our established players from last year fit and in the team every week.

Unfortunately, older lads do get more injuries, which take longer to recover from, while we’ve also basically got the core of our team out at the moment, in our best attacker (Will Longbottom), best midfielder (Jamie Spencer) and best defender (Mitch Lund).

Jamie Spencer (left) is the only player at the club now who was part of their National League North promotion challenges in 2017-18 and 2018-19, but he damaged his ACL in September, with that horror knee injury ruling him out for the rest of the campaign. (Image: John Rhodes.)

What I also hadn’t quite realised, was that we’d put a lot of the lads on contract, which means when they are injured, we don’t have the ability to just replace them in the budget, so what you’ll see in future is less players on those deals.

Q: WITH THE AFOREMENTIONED POINT, SHOULD YOU NOT HAVE BEEN ACROSS THAT AS CLUB OWNER?

A: I didn’t realise that having so many players on contract would hurt us in this way.

I am not a football expert, so I rely on others at the club to lead me on matters like that.

But I am learning the hard way that this is the case, especially at this level.

Most of the clubs in this league that we’re in right now only have around half-a-dozen players on contract or something like that, whereas we have as many as (ambitious phoenix club) Macclesfield.

We’re an outlier in that sense, so what we want going forward are players that don’t necessarily want to be on contract but want to be here and enjoy playing here.

That’s who we’re going to try and recruit, and we’re casting our net wide right now looking for players wanting to join us next year, and we’ll have our academy contributing to the squad too.

Q: DANNY FEELS AVENUE’S MIDWEEK HOME GAMES BEING ON A MONDAY IS ‘ILLOGICAL’, SO IS THAT SOMETHING YOU CAN EASILY CHANGE, WITHOUT UPSETTING YOUR OTHER TENANTS, AS OWNER?

A: I think we can change that, though obviously we need cooperation from the other tenants to make that work.

Avenue lost this home game to FC United of Manchester two weeks ago, then were beaten at Horsfall just over 48 hours later by Marine. (Image: Martin Taylor.)

But it’s certainly something we’re going to try and do.

We don’t have any more scheduled home games on Monday nights this season, but if we do get a cancellation between now and the end of April, I think we can sort it out for a Tuesday.

It’s certainly something we’re working on changing for next season and while I think we’ll be able to do it, as I said, we will need the cooperation of others on that.