BfB

Walking away from a comfortable victory for Bradford City against Grimsby Town in January 2025 there was a happy buzz of home fans having won, and away fans having seen a team perform well, and the feeling of a game well played.

A powerful run by Alex Pattison which led to an accurate finish had settled the contest, and deservedly so. Grimsby Town played well, Bradford City played better, but both teams would put off defining their seasons to a later date.

And my question is: whachcta?

Third

Two hours before City had lined up with a team without Andy Cook – a former Town player – but with Callum Kavanagh in his place and this seemed to be something which was taken in the stride.

Pausing for a moment, Cook is the third-best goalscorer in City’s history, his ten or so this season represents a very good return, and he is in good form, and the question that asks itself is why did this not matter?

One is tempted to say that it does not matter, because of the victory, but before kick off the talk of more movement and a more fluid front three was, if anything, more heard than after the final whistle.

Why is it that an objectively huge loss is seen as creating options rather than problems?

Three

To his credit, Graham Alexander has worked out something which most managers at Valley Parade have not. The narrowness of City’s pitch has always meant that away teams can take a kind of Motte and Bailey approach of defending strongly, and countering as the home team commit.

A solid defensive structure has always been easier with four players to cover 64 meters than the average of 68 with the occasional foray into the home side’s half leading to a familiar pattern of reversal. They sit deep, we go onto the attack, they counter and score. The reason City conversely seem to do well against better teams, is that better teams do this less.

Alexander has noted that the increased in player fitness and mobility over the course of his managerial career. What used to take a four-man line can be done with three only slightly less effectively. The extra man this frees can be used in more interesting positions elsewhere on the field.

Tres

Three along the back with two wingbacks in line with the back of a box midfield with a forward ahead of them is interesting, moving that box midfield to be a deep sitting pivot and two up front is an option too, and Alexander seemed able to run through those options.

David Artell – Grimsby’s equally minded manager – deployed counters around the midfield, but nothing that could come to grips with the fluidity City were showing. Both teams were obvious in their approaches. In some senses, this might have been the most technically excellent game of football ever played at Valley Parade.

But in some senses, it might have been a sham.

Hyperreal

This is a poor time to introduce Jean Baudrillard to any article, but Baudrillard – in his work – talked about how signs and signifiers are only really readable in context of each other, and this had led to a sense of hyperreality in which the representation of a thing stands in for the thing itself.

In a Baudrillardian sense, Bradford City and Grimsby Town might have simulated a football match. They cosplayed as Barcelona on a cold Winter day at Valley Parade and, because both teams, and the staff, and the fans were doing it, the simulation became real.

Which seems like an unfair comment to make after watching what was a highly enjoyable game of football, but one was left with a nagging sense that had Andy Cook been available, and his robust charms deployed, then the responses that Grimsby had would have been less prosaic and more practical, as would City’s approach, and so one wonders why those approaches were not used in the first place.

How much do wonderful, free flowing games of football in League Two depend on both managers tacitly agreeing to leave some approaches to one side? And if they do, if a game of football is played between people who agree to not use everything at their disposal, is it really a game of football or a simulation of it, and has that simulation taken on reality?

Fin

Given the game, and the win, it is hard to care.