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riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, the success of 2025 for Bradford City came on the 8th of November when Burton Albion took a 2-1 win at Valley Parade seemingly by treating a trip to West Yorkshire seriously.

Perhaps it was former Bradford City boss Gary Bowyer in the away dugout, perhaps it was a rigorous analysis of the data around City’s games, or perhaps someone in Burton just looked at the league table and decided City must be pretty good. Whatever, the visitors prepared and executed a way of playing which seemed to acknowledge The Bantams as a League One club looking for promotion.

This contrasted with the likes of Luton, Huddersfield Town and Wycombe who the Bantams played early and beat, or even Barnsley and Lincoln who arrived more recently to play out draws. Burton’s approach was unsophisticated, it was at times annoying, but it was mostly respectful of City’s accession to the upper order of League One.

Well done, we made it.

Finnigan’s

A line of three, with two wing backs who mostly were deployed as full backs and a line of three were only two went forward at most saw Burton Albion challenging Bradford City to play through them, or to get the ball to playmakers, and to find space between those lines and absolutely Bradford City could not do that.

Indeed, Burton, as with Rotherham and Lincoln, have noticed that City play a team without much of a midfield at all. Max Power can play a good pass and presses hard, and Tommy Leigh can play a great pass in behind the full backs, but with full backs kept back and double cover in front of Josh Neufville and Ibou Touray there was no space for those players to run into anyway.

The two lines of Burtonites flattened the front three of Stephen Humphrys, Calum Kavanagh and Bobby Pointon from a triangle to a string and while post match Graham Alexander was right to suggest that City could have been braver in their passing, and take more risks in possession to get better rewards, by the time he got to give that message to the players City were two down at half-time.

Knackers

Alexander made an interesting point following the game saying that a player with 100% successful passing is a player who has not taken enough risks. This is football’s version of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, where the fact that competed passes show up in data models to suggest good players means that players could be liable to put a safe pass above a risky one.

If an algorithm that spits out the best passes in the league regardless of the effectiveness of those passes, then not losing possession has a personal value. The nature of the football ranking algorithm is that it is difficult to know what would score well, but retained possession is assumed to do well.

Which is not so much a criticism of statistics so much as an observation about how they can be used poorly. Alexander’s analysis highlighted the problem on the field. Stephen Humphrys tried a lot which did not come off, while in the first half the returning Bobby Pointon played it safe, with Kavanagh somewhere between the two. The opprobrium afforded Humprys seemed misplaced but found a voice at half time when City were roundly booed off.

Valley Parade is never too far away from a jeering crowd who feel aggrieved. One might want to say that the credit engendered by 90+6 is spent now, and City are established at a new standard, but why intellectualise grown men making guttural noises at young men?

Good

Without the craft to create chances, City would have welcomed more from a Referee who booked Bobby Pointon for diving after Pointon had been – at the very least – tackled as the official Craig Hicks seemed to momentarily lose the efficient way he had been going about his business.

A player tackled in the penalty box is going to fall over sometimes, and it not be a dive, this seems obvious, and most obvious to Hicks who spent the afternoon seeing the forgiveness in every incident. Timewasting? The chap has a right to go down. Subs mobbing a player as he tries a throw in? Where else are they going to stand. Tommy Leigh body slamming a Burton player following the goal? Players are just running in different directions.

Hicks seemed like a man who knew the rules of football, and I’m going to say he is probably a good Referee in the modern context, but I find officials like him infuriating. This desire to keep the game moving, to finish the game without too many yellow cards, to act like he is the director of the event is rewarded in officialdom incorrectly in my opinion.

Hicks, and other Referees, mostly just need to apply the tariffs correctly and if Burton end up with fourteen bookings for wasting time, or if City end up one short because Leigh wanted to get the ball back after a concession, then so be it. His job is administrative, not creative, so if the game is a mess at the end because a goalkeeper is sent off for wasting time, it is not the Referee’s fault.

The people who score him following the game would not agree with that, one assumes, and Hicks will have done well yesterday for his bosses, but watching the seven minutes of stoppage time eaten up by the game killing tactics Hicks had added the time on to punish was another prioritisation of a flowing game over a correct application of rules.

Improve

The second half, which City scored a penalty from the much improved Bobby Pointon deployed in a space behind Andy Cook and Humphrys, saw City change much but probably not enough. There is no playmaker in the midfield, and without Antoni Sarcevic the forward line backs something creative too. Burton have found City’s off button, and pressed it. City did reboot and the second half was a contest, but the problems City are suffering are those of expansion and upwards movement.

The team was constructed to play in League Two and is now in the top runners in League One. Some of the players have been upgraded, but the way of playing has limits, one of which is that if a team is able to sit in a low block with some big men and challenge City to play through then City will struggle to do that.

To date, few teams have been willing to sacrifice so much to defensiveness as Bowyer’s Burton when arriving at Valley Parade, but perhaps more will be in future and Alexander must rethink how the team approach breaking down a low block. If he does, he will not be the first City manager with that problem.

Wake

The ultimate feeling of Burton Albion at home in November 2025 was one of familiarity. Bradford City managers – all managers – have been trying to solve the problem of how to breakdown teams who arrive without expectation and play to steal goals.

Phil Parkinson’s side struggled through their first League One Christmas doing this, Paul Jewell’s promotion team failed to beat Oxford United in their last game at Valley Parade before the Premier League. Trueman and Sellars came unstuck when teams started to come to Valley Parade aware that there was a danger of losing rather than an opportunity to win. When Terry Dolan’s side of Stuart McCall and John Hendrie really started to impress, it when tough games were won with two goals around the hour mark and a sense that the other side probably deseved more, but did not get it.

This is the line which divides. Being a promotion side is about beating teams who are happy to not lose and will take what they scramble for. City have been that team for other people, and will be again, and are looking for ways to breakdown the stubborn opponent.

It is one more challenge for a manager – Graham Alexander – to address having previously addressed others and his ability to surmount that challenge will define the next the few years and keys to. Given! A way a lone a last a loved a long the