BfB

Ten games at home, ten wins, and one worried when Bradford City defeated Cheltenham 3-0 on this crisp Tuesday night that the biggest problem as the season reaches final chapters would be complacency.

The talk around the crowds dismisses such thoughts. Chasing down the once Imperious Walsall side, now only two points ahead in first place, animates the soul as well it might. City have won a division only three times, and not for forty years.

The 3-0 defeat of Walsall on the 25th of January which was a quirk at the time, is now a pivot point. Players like George Lapslie, and Michael Mellon, who scored the three goals against Cheltenham were settling in to Valley Parade having just arrived to a club which was changing in ways subtle, and ways not so much.

Football is stuck in forward momentum, and causes are often spoken of with romance, or not spoken of at all, so it is ill poised as a question to wonder where these good times began, and where they came from?

Miyagi

It is hard to recall the football played before Bradford City’s sequence of victories, but when I do, I think about Mr. Miyagi, the supporting character in a movie about fighting from the 80s. He was played by the guy from Happy Days.

Whatever I was doing in 1984 it was not watching the movie The Karate Kid. I’ve not seen it since either, or the remake, but like everyone I know the meme: Wax on, wax off. I do love the 2011 movie Crazy, Stupid, Love in which Steve Carell’s hapless wingman to Ryan Gosling‘s slick pickup artist discovers that after months of watching Gosling in action, he too has developed the technique of seduction. “You Miyagi-ed me.”

Which is to say that the repetition of a seemingly pointless set of actions created a set of outcomes. The wax goes on, the wax comes off, and when required to block punches the Karate Kid does just that, but remembering that moves.

Chef

Andy Cook has, in his time at Bradford City, scored an impressive tally of goals. Rightly, he will be remembered as one of the club’s best goalscorers. Former Bradford City manager Mark Hughes created a team which got those goals out of the forward, one old warhorse to another.

To be romantic, Cook is an old world Siege Engine rumbled into position, static, but imperative in breaching any defence. Using Cook in this way, Hughes got City to a play off semi-final, and probably should have had more, but football is stuck in forward momentum.

Following Hughes’ departure City were re-embryoed under Graeme Alexander. Players trying to find a robust fluidity in movement which was rendered pointless by the need to fit in a striker in Cook who all recognised as one of the best in League Two, but who restricted how the team could play.

Playing a ball in behind, but beyond Cook, was a waste. Playing the quick passing, but it stops at Cook, and so it is a waste. Crossing everything into the box, but there are two men on Cook, and it is a waste. Play someone else alongside Cook, but even when they must tailor their game to Cook, and so it is a waste.

Wax on, wax off.

Barrow

It is odd to recall the pressure on Alexander after the 3-0 collapse at Notts County just before Christmas and the worried that came from Cook’s season ending injury over the festive period at Barrow.

Alexander had the cut of a man who had lost his chance to make an impact, and the air of a manager waiting to see if he would be given another chance to tilt at success. The whole club was similarly criticised for not spending enough, or too much, or something on the wrong thing. Few wandered away from Valley Parade talking about David Sharpe, Ryan Sparks, or Stefan Rupp on the 4th of March.

Alexander’s methods are unchanged and his approach to play is pragmatic while hitting constant notes. He likes his team to play purposefully in possession with rapid vertical passing not uncommon, but he also enjoys ball retention in attacking areas. If Hughes wanted his players who old the ball at the back and wait for the right target ahead of them, Alexander wants the same thing on the border of the attacking third and the midfield. It is Hughes-ball in their half, get it long in ours.

Three

Likewise, when defending, Alexander has worked out that the narrow Valley Parade pitch provides protection with a three-man backline, but importantly knows when to deploy wing backs who play like full backs and when out of possession and deep, are. The three becomes a protected five and nothing comes through.

The one-man midfield Alexander preferred is now a two, and a dynamic two at that, and while Michael Mellon is a centre forward at times City have played with an attacking midfielder in a withdrawn striker role.

Which seems worth mentioning. It was said to me often, and not a half decade ago, that no manager would ever succeed at Valley Parade not playing a four, four, two. Indeed, managers have been lambasted by a good chunk of supporters for playing a single forward, yet this run has included Tommy Leigh as City’s false nine.

City do not pass the ball around the back as they did under Mark Hughes, but they do so many other things which prompted the ire of many. The defensive possession battle was lost, but the war to witness a more modern way of football has been won. When was the last time the Blow Hard behind you shouted “Yer supposed to be a winger” at whomever had been allocated the number eleven jersey?

Crane

Having never seen The Karate Kid I’m not sure if this is true, but the people who talk about plot holes talk about how The Karate Kid is in a competition where he is not allowed to kick someone in the head, and wins by kicking someone in the head.

There is a lasting question over Bradford City, a path not taken, in which City get a result at Barrow and Cook plays the full ninety. And carries on playing. And is good. City grabbing a draw here and there when Bobby Pointon gets wide left and puts the ball on the forward’s head. Getting a win when Cooky muscles through the backline and slams home. And it is good, but it is not great.

Give Graeme Alexander a fully fit Andy Cook and are Bradford City second in League Two? Or are we flirting with the play-offs with a guy who you can rely on to get goals, but a frustrated Antoni Sarcevic, a flat Alex Pattison, a George Lapslie in the team to find ways to feed Cook’s goal production chain.

Football history is peppered with these What if… moments? Would Alexander have called Andy Cook into the office in January and done to him what the injury did? Sat down our best player? It seems doubtful.

Spice

When arriving at Valley Parade, Alexander found popularity with his assertion that he would have no truck with the sole striker which Mark Hughes, and Derek Adams, had played. “I’ve been a manager for ten years, and I don’t think I’ve ever played just one striker at any of my teams.”

Tyler Smith was fruitlessly employed around Cook but, again, without mobility in the forward line Smith found it hard to run behind a defence and never emerged from the shadow of a man who scored enough goals to be the third in the club’s all time list.

Smith’s star never shone bright, but it had waned entirely by the time City scrambled a draw with Barrow at Valley Parade at the start of the December 2024 month, which would see Cook injured at the end. That night Cook was booked, leading Alexander to sacrifice his two men leading the line principle, leadingto the next game, leading to a single forward with two attacking midfielders in support.

Rain

This change seemed to be the result of a shift in how City were played against, as well as an answer to the problem of replacing Cook. Alexander spent much of the season to date with Richie Smallwood ahead of a back three. This gave Smallwood passing targets at wing back, and in the four players in front of him in two rows of two, but such an obvious artery was always a vulnerability, and so it proved.

One by one teams closed Smallwood down, and his passing lanes were closed off, and so City became a disjointed unit. Attackers here, defenders here, and nothing to string them together. This problem with committing players into attacking positions in early phases has bested better managers than Alexander. The solution was to put a man alongside Smallwood, and it was an obvious solution at that.

The failure to do this was probably most obvious as City’s FA Cup run ran aground in the second round at Morecambe and to Derek Adams who delighted in choking off the Bantams at source. If nothing else history is ironic.

Madre

Necessity is the Mother of invention, and what we are seeing at Valley Parade now is impressive and rare. Rare in a way which happens once every ten years or so. It iss Chris Kamara walking on water, it is Phil Parkinson needing to be back at Wembley.

When Cook returns City may very well be in League One and if they do then Alexander seems to have a plan in place.

In the world which emerged without Cook, City are a team without key players. One would struggle to replace Smallwood and goalkeeper Sam Walker has played every game but other than that it feels like City have at least eighteen players for the nine slots in the team and while Sarcevic might be on the obviously impressive end of a spectrum, players on the other end have come in the side and thrived.

Each position, ostentatiously, has players competing for the shirt not just in who should wear it but in the approach that player should have. The difference in how each player takes on a role, as well as the player to take it on, is being pressed for in training and the players are showing a kind of dynamic problem-solving to understand the drifting requirements around them. Positional depth becomes nuance, and options.

Should City get promoted, Alexander is not shopping for star players, but to augment that group of eighteen with more options. He has done this before at Fleetwood, and at Salford, but it has stalled out just under the play-off level. This seems like a problem which would be addressed if, rather than when, it happens.

Reform

Accidentally Alexander has dispelled the notion that there is a Bradford City way of playing that involves wingers, and two up top. A functioning team with Callum Kavanagh leading a line and Leigh and Pointon supporting is not “Big man/Small man” but it is effective and stands as an example of that effectiveness.

No matter where City open 2025/26 it will be in a new age of football at Valley Parade where undeniable will be the proof that there is something more than “smashing it on the diags to the big fella” and a functional, profitable, record-breaking team playing a different type of football will stand as testimony to that.

We enter an era of options, of ways of playing, of understanding the multi-faceted way in which football is an interaction between teams rather than a quixotic attempt to force systems to work. A football of which there is more to discuss than which players gave 100% in the grind to the middle.

And we will not be able to unsee what we have seen, nor pretend, nor ignore, the realities of how the game must be played. When recruiting managers will we be so easily impressed by the idea that they will play more forwards as if it denotes more entertaining play? When signing players will we look not at what they do better than others, but what they do differently? What are the effects from this cause? And what is the cause?

Waxed on, waxed off.