Second row (l-r); Dennis Churms, Charlie Timmins, Reg Matthews, Ken McPherson, Alf Bentley, Ray Sambrook, Roy Kirk
Third row (l-r); George Raynor (Manager – Coach), Dennis Uphill, Frank Austin, Noel Simpson, Peter Hill, Eric Johnson, Jim Regan, Alf Wood (Trainer)
Front row (l-r); John Wassall, Bill Patrick, Alan Moore, George Curtis, Ron Newman
By Jim Brown
The season of 1956-57 was another traumatic one with the club seemingly staggering from one crisis to another. Chairman Erle Shanks set the ball rolling in June when he appointed Harry Warren as team manager. Warren had managed Southend United for sixteen years and was comfortable in that position. Shanks’ powers of persuasion worked like a charm and Warren gave up the comfort zone for what was becoming one of the most precarious jobs in football. George Raynor was demoted to trainer-coach but his continental methods were jettisoned by Warren who insisted on traditional ‘kick and rush’ tactics and Raynor was told that the club would not stand in his way if another offer came his way.
Warren’s team started the season well and were unbeaten in their first five games. Gates were high – 20,000 plus gates were recorded for four home games in the first two months of the season – but all was not well in the camp. Heavy defeats at Norwich, Northampton and Ipswich prompted rumours, denied by Shanks, that he was on the verge of resigning.
Raynor finally threw in the towel in early November complaining that he ‘no longer had any say in coaching and merely carried out orders’. After a few months he accepted the job as coach to the Swedish national team, for the second time and started preparing them for the 1958 World Cup which would be held in their country. He performed a minor miracle by leading the Swedes to the final where they lost to Brazil.
In early October Reg Matthews won his fifth England cap in Belfast but a few weeks later was dropped for the next international. Matthews who despite all the rumours of big clubs seeking his signature, had not previously asked for a move but his England axing prompted many newspaper pundits to advise him to leave City. He believed that playing for a First Division club would enable him to regain the international jersey and put in a transfer request. In a matter of days in November his transfer to Chelsea for £22,000, a world record fee for a goalkeeper was confirmed. In retrospect his move was not a good one; he was never selected for England again and because of the maximum wage structure he could not earn any more at Stamford Bridge than at Highfield Road.
It was a miserable autumn for the Bantams. The early promise had dissipated and the team won only one game in 15 between mid September and Christmas. Matthews, so often the saviour, was badly missed and as the goals poured in the gates plummeted. On the Saturday before Christmas just over 8,000 were at the ground watching City play Crystal Palace when six minutes into the second half there was a partial floodlight failure with the game goalless and the referee had to abandon the game. Three days later there were even fewer fans present for the Christmas Day clash with Newport County when that game was also abandoned goalless because a blizzard made conditions unplayable.
The Palace abandonment sparked angry crowd scenes outside the director’s entrance with fans, unfairly, blaming Shanks for the floodlight problem and demanding his resignation.
By the time Palace returned for the re-arranged game in April City were third from bottom of the table and with the bottom two teams having to seek re-election, were in a dire situation, and just over 5,500 turned up. An end of season rally with five wins out of six pushed the team into a final position of 16th, their lowest league placing since 1928 but it did not hide the dire situation at the club.
Centre-forward Ken McPherson topped the scoring lists with 22 goals in League and Cup and Ray Sambrook, the subject of much transfer speculation, scored 14 from the left-wing. Attendances, generally a bell-weather to the club’s state, averaged 13,686, down four thousand from a year earlier but still the third best in the division.
