Promotion seeking Bradford City are reaping the rewards for chairman Geoffrey Richmond's faith in appointing Paul Jewell as manager against the advice of many of the club's supporters.

Richmond admitted today that 'there was a lot of opposition' to the appointment and 'my mail bag was horrendous.'

But Jewell has won over the critics with an exciting brand of winning football to give City their best chance since 1988 of gaining promotion to the top flight.

Certainly, providing they can maintain their form of the first half of the season in the New Year, they can look forward to at least a play-off place.

City reached the halfway mark with 40 points following their 2-1 home win over Wolves on Saturday. On the evidence of the last three seasons, a repeat points tally in the second half will guarantee them a place in the play-offs, and could even give them one of the two automatic promotion places.

Richmond admitted that when he appointed Jewell as caretaker manager after sacking Chris Kamara on January 6 he saw him simply as a caretaker.

"But," he admitted, "as the weeks went on I realised there was more to Paul Jewell than meets the superficial eye.

"He is a very deep thinker about the game and, although he didn't break through as a player at Liverpool, the years he spent there at a time when it was the greatest club in England proved to be a wonderful football education for him.

"He learned such an awful lot from the right people and has taken on board the whole Liverpool football philosophy and attitude and commitment to the game.

"Paul is tactically aware and knows what he wants. There is a lot more to Paul Jewell than people believed there was. I thought I saw that which is why I stubbornly stuck to what I believed.

"My only problem was to gain public acceptance, but I didn't succeed in doing that because the results were not good and the reason for that was that we didn't have the players to produce good results.

"Any success I have had in life has been as a result of backing people. Giving Paul money to spend in the summer was part of the process of backing him. Once a decision is made you back the man."

l Liverpool beat Bradford City 2-0, with goals from Steve McManaman and David Thompson, in yesterday's friendly.

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