David Conn: Bradford edifice to high life was built on sand

Bradford City's players agreed this week to wait until July for a chunk of their salaries to be paid as part of a revised rescue plan to enable the stricken club to fight on, limping and battered, at least to the end of the season.

Julian Rhodes, the club's chief executive, said the players had been "very co-operative" and, backed by their union, the Professional Footballers' Association, accepted a deferment of a "substantial proportion" of their basic salaries, while the club wrestles with the financial nightmare which nearly sunk them last summer.

Having sunk into administration last May with debts amounting to £36m, Bradford were saved from liquidation after Rhodes and his father, David, paid in £5m; Gordon Gibb, the owner of the Flamingoland theme park, £2m. The club patched together a proposal to pay the Inland Revenue nearly £1m in back tax and 17p in the pound to massed ranks of unsecured creditors. There are, however, major creditors still to be paid, including Lombard, the finance group which has a £6.7m mortgage on Valley Parade due for repayment in full in six years' time, and the ongoing wages of the likes of Ashley Ward, David Wetherall and Peter Atherton which Bradford simply cannot afford.

Gates are well down this season as the team have struggled – they lost 5-0 at home to Sheffield United last week. Commercial income is expected to be £750,000 down on the season; local businesses have been understandably reluctant to further fund a club who have left so many fingers burned. Last Friday the players were not paid their wages, which led to the discussions and Thursday's agreement to defer payment until July.

Rhodes, who, with his father, could have been bankrupted in the summer had Bradford gone into liquidation because of personal guarantees given to Lombard and the HSBC bank, said more money will soon come in to shore up the club – from his mother. "Yes, it's come to that," he shrugged, his mood resolutely positive. "We have put in a great deal of money, and are committed to Bradford City surviving. We're appealing to people and to local businesses: come and watch us, come and support us, and we can build the club into a shining light again."

It has taken some time to understand the depth of the crisis Bradford were in under the outgoing chairman, Geoffrey Richmond, who owned the club almost 50-50 with the Rhodes. Richmond admitted "six weeks of madness" in summer 2000 when players were signed, including Benito Carbone on a £2m annual pay package, in a push to consolidate Premier League status. They planned to sell players if necessary but when Bradford were relegated in 2001 the transfer market collapsed, as did Carbone's move to Middlesbrough and Carlton and Granada's digital television joint venture.

When the administrators were called in on 16 May, they immediately closed Bradford's club shops in Dewsbury and Wakefield and sacked all 32 staff. A further seven administrative staff were laid off. But the administrators' attempt to make 19 players redundant foundered on the Football League's insolvency policy, which protects "football creditors", including players, requiring them to be paid in full if a club are to continue in the League.

The picture that emerged from the entrails of the bust club is one in which almost everything was leased, hired or borrowed, from the floodlights to the footballers themselves. Of the major creditors, Lombard had loaned £6.5m, guaranteed personally by Richmond and Julian Rhodes, to pay for the new 9,000-capacity Sunwin Stand. Registered European Football Finance had advanced £7.36m in a scheme which effectively meant Bradford sold and leased back their players.

Another finance company, GE Capital, had lent £4.25m for running costs, secured on the 2002-03 "parachute payments" from the Premier League. The club had a further £4.6m overdraft with HSBC, backed by personal guarantees from Richmond and David Rhodes. The list of unsecured creditors included the usual depressing ranks of local authorities, businesses and St John Ambulance, which is owed £5,475, but it also included fans who had taken up an offer to buy 25-year season tickets at a major discount, so needy for cash had the club become.

The commitment to existing players' contracts was £8m, of which Carbone's contract amounted to £3.5m. His deal also included a £750,000 luxury house in Leeds, replete with seven bedrooms, five with bathrooms en-suite. With Carbone gone, the house is up for sale.

"The vast majority of the plant, fixtures and equipment is leased," the administrators said in their report; this turns out to be agreements with some 26 different leasing companies to provide the basic stuff: floodlights, CCTV, kitchen equipment, tills.

The romance of Bradford's two years in the Premiership, the 1999-2000 survival in the last game of the season via a Wetherall goal against Liverpool, is over. The details, of debt, Carbone's vast package, coupled with the administrators' account of £8m paid in dividends to Richmond and the Rhodes in 1999 and 2000, and a £250,000 consultancy fee paid to Richmond in October 2001, have left the city and fans shocked and bewildered.

Julian Rhodes and his father, long-term fans and local millionaires through David Rhodes' Filtronic business, bought 49 per cent of Bradford from Richmond for a reported £3m in 1997. A couple of years later, they provided the security for a £5m loan from the bank Singer & Friedlander, to finance a push, ultimately successful, to the Premier League. Julian Rhodes said they did not expect to make money but were happy to be paid the dividends after the club's good years: "We did think we might have to put it back in if the club needed it again."

After the 2000 madness, the club needed it in shovels. The personal guarantees, coupled with a collapse in Filtronic's share price, left the Rhodes family staring into the abyss when the club went into administration. But Rhodes said there was more than self-protection to their decision to continue: "Actually, we could have cut our losses then. But we got together as a family and said that the city of Bradford needs a professional football club and we would fight for it until we were down to our last penny."

They provided £400,000 to fund the administration, and paid off HSBC in full. The PFA fought doggedly against the administrators, Kroll Buchler Phillips, to protect players' security of contracts but made a substantial loan to the club. That is secured on the Rhodes' family home.

Without the loan, Rhodes said the club would not have survived. Eventually Gibb came in with £2m and took over 49 per cent of the shares from Richmond, who has left with his personal guarantees indemnified by David and Julian Rhodes.

Rhodes said that the players' agreement to defer wages gave the club time to refinance, which he hoped would come from wealthy individuals or more loans secured on Valley Parade. In Bradford's case, above others, there is more at stake than the froth of gambling on football success or balancing a set of frightening numbers: the club's brief stint in the Premier League was one of the few cheery things to have happened in Bradford in recent years. The local economy, always low-wage, is depressed, and last year's riots brought the city's simmering social problems to the surface.

"It's been a traumatic time," said David Pendleton, a former editor and writer for the City Gent fanzine. "If the club had gone down, many people would have felt there was very little left in Bradford to be proud of. The club is of major importance, and the story of greed and debt behind our time in the Premiership has been very depressing indeed."

Rhodes said that, when he is able to consider the long term future, rather than battle for basic survival, he is committed to making Valley Parade a place where the community, in a fractured city, can come together.

"We need to forget the extravagances of the past, get back to basics: a youth policy, involvement in the community, to rebuild this club for a city which desperately needs it, and make it a shining light again." That is an admirable vision for a football club's future. For now, Bradford have only breathing space.

davidconn@independent.co.uk