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Isle of Wight-born striker Lee Bradbury's entrance into professional
football was by anything but the conventional route, the 20 year-old
being bought by Portsmouth in 1995 for just £500 from his local
non-league club Cowes only two years after buying himself out of the
British Army. After a successful 1996/97 season, during which he scored
15 league goals and appeared for the England Under-21 team, Bradbury had
a host of clubs on his trail but eventually decided to move north to
join Division One Manchester City, whose manager Frank Clark decided to
break the club's transfer record when he forked out £3 million to secure
his services.
Ironically he made his debut on the opening day of
the 1997/98 season against his old club Portsmouth in a hard-fought 2-2
draw at Maine Road, but with no wins in the first four league games and
a League Cup exit on penalties at the hands of Blackpool the
early-season optimism was beginning to evaporate. With the burden of a
large fee on his shoulders Bradbury had to wait until mid-September to
get his first goal for the Blues, notching the opening goal of the game
in a 2-1 home defeat to Norwich City which sent the team perilously
close to the relegation zone. Things did improve the following week when
Bradbury was on target once again in a 6-0 home romp against Swindon
Town, but the very next game he suffered a back strain in a 1-0 defeat
at Ipswich Town which was to keep him out for almost four months as he
struggled to return to full fitness. By the time he made his comeback in
a 2-2 draw at home to Charlton Athletic at the end of January the team
sat one place above the relegation zone and had been knocked out of the
FA Cup in a 2-1 loss at home to West Ham.
Three weeks later, after
goalless draws with Tranmere Rovers and Norwich City were followed by a
1-0 loss at home to Bury, manager Frank Clark was sacked and replaced by
ex-Everton and Oldham boss Joe Royle. Three wins from four games
ensued, with Bradbury on the mark in a 3-1 win at Swindon Town, and the
club climbed to seventeenth place in the table. A disastrous March,
however, saw them return into the bottom three and on the last day of
the season they needed to win at Stoke City and have the other results
go their way to avoid the drop. Despite a 5-2 victory, with Bradbury
grabbing one of the goals, it was not enough to save them as the club
were relegated into the third-tier of English football for the first
time in it's history, Lee having scored 7 goals from 27 appearances in
an injury-ravaged season. The fans had become understandably frustrated
and Bradbury was the object of some derision, the general feeling being
that it was not a satisfactory goal return for the amount of money which
had been spent.
The 1998/99 Division Two season got underway
with Lee immediately on the scoresheet on the very first day in a 3-0
home win over Blackpool, but the rest of the month of August remained
winless as the team were struggling to adapt to the more robust football
of the lower divisions. Three straight wins over Walsall (3-1),
Bournemouth (2-1) and Macclesfield Town (1-0) took them into the the top
six, but although Bradbury got City's goals to secure 1-1 draws with
both Chesterfield and Millwall it was in the middle of a five-game run
without a win which left the team outside the play-off places. After
playing in a 2-1 away loss at Lincoln City on October 20th manager Royle
received a bid of £1.5 million for Bradbury from Crystal Palace, which
he decided to accept in order to strengthen his squad, and the player
left Maine Road having made 46 appearances (including 6 as a substitute)
and scoring 11 goals in a disappointing fourteen months with the club.
Less
than a year later Bradbury returned to his former club Portsmouth and
subsequently went on to play for a number of clubs. He had loan spells
with Birmingham City, Sheffield Wednesday and Derby County and also
penned permanent deals at Walsall, Oxford United, Southend United and
Bournemouth. (David Redshaw)
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