Monday 24 March 2008
Coca-Cola Football League 2
Bradford City vs Chesterfield

Welcome to the Coral Windows Stadium for this afternoon's Easter fixture against Chesterfield. We offer our usual warm welcome to the players, supporters and officials who have travelled from Derbyshire for today's game.

It is now almost a year since that fateful afternoon at Saltergate when our two clubs met and both ended the day being relegated from League One. It would appear that Chesterfield have coped better than ourselves with life in the lowest tier of English football. As I write these notes prior to the weekend's fixtures, they are on the brink of the top seven and will be watching the situation at Rotherham with interest. If the Millers go into administration and are hit with a ten-point penalty, then that will mean that Chesterfield will occupy the final play-off position. They are sure to provide us with another tough test here this afternoon.

Unfortunately, we seem to be in a position where we have little to play for, but with many of our squad looking to secure new contracts for next season, we will expect a much-improved performance from the display here against Mansfield Town last weekend.

Stuart has been more frustrated than anyone with the inconsistency that we have displayed this season and not knowing which side of the players we are going to see from one game to the next. However, if we cast our minds back to October when it was looking very grim indeed, things are not as bad as they were looking back then and at least we have something to build on for the new campaign.We do have a number of targets in mind for the summer, all of which I am sure will improve our performances next season.

Talking of next season, there appears to have been one or two negative comments about our latest season ticket campaign. Please don't lose sight of our objective - that is to make professional football accessible to as many people as possible whilst still providing a competitive budget for Stuart. We are currently working on the budget for the 2008-9 campaign and financially we are in a stronger position than we have been for a number of years. However, all of this is dependent on your continued superb support and us selling the requisite number of season tickets. We all know this season has been a disappointment, but please stick with us and I am sure that we will get things right.

Watching the scenes at Oakwell recently as Barnsley triumphed over Chelsea in the FA Cup reminded me just how long it has been since we saw such expressions of joy on the faces of supporters here at Bradford City. We are striving to bring those kind of scenes of celebration back to the Coral Windows Stadium as soon as we possibly can.

Having said all that, there are still 27 points to play for this season and we will be trying to secure as many of those as possible during these last few weeks of the current campaign.

Enjoy the game

Julian Rhodes
Joint Chairman