PHIL Parkinson is proud of the legacy he left behind at Bradford City and won’t hear a word from those looking to tarnish it!

The pantomime nature of football dictates that the Bantams fans who once sang his name from the terraces at Valley Parade will take a very different approach when they arrive at the Macron Stadium tomorrow.

Suggestion he will be booed brings a wry smirk from his face and a shrug from his shoulders – but a much more serious look spread across the Bolton manager’s face when a question is asked about the state of the Bradford City squad on his departure in the summer.

Accusations have since been made in West Yorkshire that Parkinson left just eight or nine professional players for his successor Stuart McCall to work with, an allegation which has now been repeated enough among Bantams fans to pass off as fact.

Parkinson denies leaving the club in the lurch and though contracts were yet to be agreed with some players, it is understood 15 were inherited by McCall when he eventually took charge. Some – including the division’s top-scorer Josh Morris – were released for nothing.

“There will always be certain elements who try and put their own things out there, which are not necessarily true,” he told The Bolton News.

“Stuart (McCall) has gone on record to say we left a very good group of professionals there and there were quite a few players’ contracts which had options that had not been exercised by the time I left but were ready to do so.

“The squad was a good one at Bradford. In any summer it’s an exciting time for fans to see players come and go – there were 20 players who left here and we’ve brought in 12 so far. Oldham had four and brought in 20.

“That is what the summer is all about. Sometimes the worst thing for a manager is to get a job and all the places are filled. You need a job where there is an opportunity to put your own mark on it and Stuart has done that very well, so credit to him. But it was a good base to build from.”

Parkinson acknowledges Bradford is no longer the ‘house that Phil built’ and that McCall has signed players over the summer who have made the Yorkshiremen real promotion candidates.

But whether his five years of service, during which time he led the club to promotion from League Two, a League Cup final and the League One play-offs, are taken into consideration by the travelling fans tomorrow afternoon remains to be seen.

“You never know what kind of reception you’ll get but I have to focus on Bolton Wanderers, tactics and selection,” he said.

“Basically, my record as a manager at Bradford stands up. Not only that, so does the work that myself, the staff and the players put in to turn that club around still stands up.

“The effort, the honesty and the commitment that people showed was incredible because it was a really hard job.

“I left Bradford City in their strongest financial position since they came out of the Premier League.

“We built the club up to the point that when two German investors were looking for a club to buy and had many options, some couldn’t be given away, they decided to part with a large chunk of money to a club which didn’t own its own ground or training ground.

“What they bought was what had been built in the last five years.”