Bradford City to dominate local football

Bradford City's joint-chairman, Mark Lawn, today unveiled a masterplan to ensure the Bantams are first to discovering local talent saying 'I believe in radical ideas to change this club and I think this will underpin that. I want to trial it as soon as we can.'

His plan is to create Bradford City Juniors, and run 10 teams in the area's youth leagues in order not only to increase the players at the club but spot the young prospects they play against.

He explained to the Telegraph and Argus 'Bradford City Juniors would run from under-sevens to under-16s, with two coaches for each team. That would give us another 20 pairs of eyes looking around and seeing where the best youngsters are. We're going to play against every single kid in the area and be able to look at them and see if they want to join us.'

Running alongside the school of excellence this will provide the opportunity for juniors to move up into the academy, and in reverse, for those struggling at the higher level to drop down for a few weeks to recapture their confidence. The thinking behind the scheme 'means that when we get through to under-15s we'll have double the amount of players. Rather than having a squad of 15, we'll have 30 available from two teams.'

In order to get the idea off the ground as quickly as possible Mark Lawn wants current youth sides to contact the club and be rebranded as Bradford City Juniors 'because they've already got the coaches, a set-up that's running and somewhere to play. I think someone will go for that but if not, then we will start one up from scratch for next year.'

Because of the potential monopoly this will create in the youth leagues, Lawn is suggesting that Bradford City Juniors play for no points (as surely if we have the best players then we could and should win everything) and is talking to the leagues in question 'they can decide whether teams should be rewarded for beating us but we'll just play the games, if it doesn't work, sure we can do this with friendlies but I'd like to get it more structured. It's about developing kids for us, not winning leagues, and if the teams get too strong then maybe our under-11s can play in the under-12s league or even the year above that.'

City would sign a contract with clubs for any players they take, with the promise of compensation should the youngster go on to turn professional with them, and there would be a guaranteed one per cent reward from any transfer fee.

If it is carried through successfully it sounds like a pretty good idea, after all the lads would only end up going to Huddersfield or Leeds otherwise...and we're not so different from them, really.