If Steve Claridge ever appears overly-critical of Darlington this season it may be best to bear in mind his opinion of Quakers manager Colin Todd.

Because in the September edition of FourFourTwo magazine the BBC football pundit is less than complimentary about the time he worked under Todd at Bradford where Claridge spent a short spell towards the end of a nomadic career.

But when asked if it was true he did not rate Todd, Claridge said: “John Beck was 80 per cent good manager and 20 per cent bad – Colin was the other way around! Good players don’t necessarily make good managers and he played in straight lines, was so predictable and didn’t know how to change it.

“He didn’t work on his players in training...lots of things, but maybe I’m being a little harsh because I was coming at it from a managerial viewpoint and was picking up on things that maybe ten years ago I would never have noticed.

“Did I tell him? You must be joking. He let me get away with coming up on the Friday for a Saturday match. If I told him what I felt, I’d have been in all week!”

He was just as uncomplimentary about Darlington assistant manager Dean Windass, his former Bradford strike-partner.

Claridge blasted: “The worst dressed from a bunch of northern muppets who were 20 years behind the times. He would wear tight, dyed t-shirts, like the ones you made at school – not good on his fat body!”