Bradford ready for greatest comeback in club's history

Union agrees to pay wages and advises players to return to Valley Parade two months after contracts were torn up

It was a week like no other in the 99-year history of Bradford City. Thirteen players who turned up at the Northcliff Playing Fields in Shipley to begin preparations for season 2002-03 last Monday had been sacked by the club two months previously.

In May 1997, Bradford had ended their season having used 42 players; five years later there were only five members of Nicky Law's squad who were actually employed by the club, and two of those had never played for the first team.

Bradford City was born out of a financial crisis. In 1903 Manningham Rugby Club were reduced to staging an archery contest to keep itself solvent but, when this failed to raise sufficient funds, they were persuaded to re-form as a football club while keeping their home at Valley Parade.

This was nothing compared to the events of two months ago when, having gone into administration owing £13m, the club's administrators, Kroll Buchler Phillips, cancelled the contracts of 16 of the club's senior players as well as firing Bradford's youth-team coach, Steve Smith, and the kit man, Alan Jackson, plus 32 other staff. This would, they said, save Bradford £20,000 a day.

On the advice of their union, the PFA, the players returned on Monday. "Like us, the manager Nicky Law [whose previous club, Chesterfield, had been run under administration] did not have a clue what was going on," said the veteran defender, Robert Molenaar.

"It has been a very difficult summer for everybody connected with the club. The supporters must be going round with their eyebrows permanently raised about what has happened. We hear all the rumours but, hopefully, things will sort themselves out."

Things sorted themselves out more swiftly than Molenaar could have realised. In August 2000, the Bradford chairman, Geoffrey Richmond, had called press and supporters to Valley Parade to present Benito Carbone, "the greatest signing in the history of the club". The Italian's contract was worth £2m a year and formed part of the "few weeks of madness" Richmond admitted had accelerated Bradford's collapse. Carbone was the only one of the sacked 16 who did not return to training, remaining in Italy to negotiate his transfer, probably to Como.

On Tuesday, Richmond again convened a meeting of press and 2,000 supporters at Valley Parade, this time to announce a rescue package underwritten by the PFA. The players' union and its general secretary, Gordon Taylor, who sat alongside him, seemed unlikely partners.

In May, the union had condemned the club for flagrant breach of contract which might cause their expulsion from the Football League. Now Taylor confirmed the union would provide "several million pounds" to pay the players' wages and urged that the fans gathered at Valley Parade back Richmond and his fellow directors.

"If I am prepared to bury the hatchet for the future of Bradford City, then I hope you as supporters would do the same," Taylor told the meeting. "We have never put as much money as this into one football club before in our hundred-year history. This is a case of the players' union keeping your club alive."

The deal promised non-preferred creditors 10p for every pound they were owed, which would rise to 20p if the Football League's action against Carlton and Granada, the owners of the defunct ITV Digital station, whose demise triggered Bradford's disintegration, was successful. In the event of Bradford winning promotion to the Premiership and remaining in the top flight for two successive seasons, something the club has not managed since JB Priestley, the city's most famous son, published his first work in 1922, they will receive 70p.

By sacking the 16, Kroll Buchler Phillips had planned to make Bradford more attractive to investors but Richmond, who strenuously denied accusations that he had taken the club into administration merely to wipe out its debts, announced: "Between them, the other inquiries have not been worth a bag of salt," adding. "It looked a mission impossible until our last meeting with the PFA and without their help the club would have been mothballed on Friday. There would have been no Bradford City. I can tell you that categorically."

What has surprised casual observers is that, aside from Carbone, whom any manager would want off his books if his reported £40,000 a week salary is accurate, the sacked players did not move to other clubs. Jamie Lawrence had been expected to go to Sheffield United but became the 14th of the 16 to return to training two days after the rest. The goalkeeper Aidan Davison is expected tomorrow. The club shops, however, would not reopen; their fixtures and fittings had already been removed and their staff would not be re-employed.

"As long as I'm getting paid, I'm happy to go back," Lawrence told readers of the Bradford Telegraph & Argus. "This could work in our favour because it's been us against the world. We've all been in it together and that might make for a stronger team spirit."

* Bradford City are in talks with the Boca Juniors striker Esteban Herrera. The 20-year-old, who helped his country win the World Under-20 Championship last summer, is available on a year-long loan.