BfB

They say that he approached the ball with something like the eye of a Hawk and ran to it with an unusually bandy stride of a baby gazelle trotting to Mother and they say that he stumbled slightly after meeting the ball which rose and fell over wall and into the goal. LA Galaxy pay £450,000 a for this skill – Bradford City pay Paul Evans for it and McCall’s McCall scored his first free kick since his return on the day he writes his name on the second contract he has signed for Bradford City.

Evans – scoring the one in a closed doors 2-1 defeat with good run out against Blackpool – is back and he is not alone. Paul Heckingbottom’s impressiveness years ago came after a slow build up and the left back showed the same steady improvement. Darren Williams supports the right hand side of midfield in a way that McCall will recall Brian Mitchell doing. The new gaffer’s Bradford City forms into a wonderful amalgam of previous incarnations.

Lazy comparisons put Omar Daley and Jamie Lawrence together but industrious Alex Rhodes – former Brentford boy looking at earning a contract – is more like the number seven of ’99. Rhodes worked both wings – or so they say – and chased everything. Also chasing is Eddie Johnson who seems to have nailed down a place in McCall’s starting midfield alongside Evans. Johnson is a triumph of breeding and attitude over expectations and is welcome in my midfield any time.

Those who saw the game were impressed with City’s gusto and thought the late Blackpool winner was unjust. They said that Nathan Joynes alongside Barry Conlon in McCall’s 442 showed flashes but was worryingly Isaiah Rankin in front of goal. They noted that McCall’s 442 omitted a Peter Beagrie figure but they are few and far between.

Eyes were rubbed when Xavier Barrau – scorer of the last two goals at Valley Parade in May – returned for another go and McCall seemed ready to let the exuberant Frenchman train. Barrau has become a footnote in Bradford City history – a quiz question about who scored the goal before… – but McCall’s referential Bantams are a broad church to play for a massed congregation of up to 12,000.

Room for the Frnechman, the Welshman and anyone else ready to take up the cause.