It’s not every day we cover League One at Sport Witness, but when Sport/Foot recounted the story of someone as interesting as Bradford City’s Paul Taylor, it’s hard for us not to cover it.
Arriving on a free transfer from Peterborough in the summer, the 30-year-old forward has started featuring more and more recently, scoring a goal against Scunthorpe United last week, as the Bantams carry on their push for a playoff spot this season.
However, his form isn’t what’s interesting to us, but his career, which includes a very brief one and a half year stay at Anderlecht in Belgium.
Transferred to the Jupiler Pro League club in 2009 from tiny Belgian club RRFC Montegnée, the now Bradford City striker’s arrival caused a lot of confusion, considering no one had heard of him.
Enjoying the Belgian nightlife during his time at Montegnée, his former teammate Philippe Crespin was amazed to see him on his TV screen last year when he played against Chelsea in the FA Cup for Peterborough: “Honestly, he seemed physically and technically comfortable.”
A far cry from the description of the player he knew back in the day.
He explained: “I never went out with him, but I remember many of my teammates that recounted me their nights out. Taylor really was the Paul Gascoigne prototype, but a more hooligan version: all he did was drink and fight.”
Not done there, Crespin took his comments up a notch with an outrageous, and obviously unverified, claim: “Sometimes, he came to training the next day in such a state that he didn’t leave a shred of doubt he’d taken cocaine.”
However, that doesn’t mean there were doubts about the player’s talent, with Crespin saying he probably would have been able to make a name for himself in Belgium had he stayed longer, which Taylor’s former Anderlecht manager, Ariël Jacobs, agrees with to an extent.
He said: “At certain times, he had something I’d qualify as intuitive. He could be completely invisible before having a ‘genius’ moment. But just one… From the off, he had a 5% chance of making it at Anderlecht, and a 95% chance of failing.
“Despite that, we should have loaned him one or two divisions lower before jumping to conclusions.”
Barely featuring for a year at Anderlecht, and struggling to adapt to the change of pace at professional level, Taylor was swiftly sent on loan to Charleroi in the same division for half a year, but didn’t fare any better there.
On his return in June 2010, he refused to train with the U21s, and his contract was never renewed.
He returned to football in 2011 after a year in the wilderness when Peterborough gave him a chance, which led to a £2m transfer to Ipswich.
From there, loans to Rotherham, Blackburn and once again to Peterborough led to very little, and he was released once again in 2015.
Spending another year without a club, Taylor was picked up by the Posh for the third time in 2016, which led to his free transfer to Bradford City over the summer, where he signed a one-year deal.
A rollercoaster of a career, but it seems the 30-year-old has now landed on both his feet, starting the Bantams’ last five league games.
It remains to be seen if he’ll be kept beyond the current campaign, but if he plays a big part in a potential Championship push, why not?
