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.

There are three types of win in a football match, and City’s 0-0 toil with AFC Wimbledon was not any of them.

Not any because, most obviously, the game ended in a draw. Neither City – who under vague manager Graham Alexander, and to no effect, dropped last season’s top scoring Andy Cook for returning high goalscorer Jake Young – nor the visitors troubled the scoreboard.

Following the game, Alexander said he felt City should have won the game 1-0, which is a little like wishing that you won £1,000 on a million pound lottery.

One

The arm wrestle win, or positive win, is when two teams play a similar way and one is more effective than the other.  If you are of a certain vintage you’ll recall great football matches which could be described this way.

The 1986 FA Cup Final saw Liverpool beat Everton 3-1 and going through the two sides one could pass players between the two sides and there would be little difference.  The Merseyside Cup Final was two versions of the same team – more or less – playing in the same way – more or less – and the winner was the team which did better on that day.

This sort of win is about a team setting a goal, and being excellent at achieving it.  It is not about out thinking, or even out fighting, although both those things are important, so much as it is about having a greater efficiency.

Two

The trap card win, or negative win, is something which City have more of a relationship with, especially under Phil Parkinson, and it operates as an opposite to the arm wrestle.  In a trap card win, the strengths of the opposition is acknowledged but used against the opposition.

This is Bradford City vs Chelsea.  Chelsea’s strengths are turned to be weaknesses.  Their expectations to be better become source of frustration as City nullified what they could, and leading Chelsea to commit more, leaving City to counterattack against a team that feels like it is an affront to even have to defend.

This is one of football’s more glorious versions of a trap card win, but there are many, many others.  Saudi Arabia beat Lionel Messi’s Argentina on their way to the World Cup.  Most of the time the trap card win is about a worse team allowing a better one to tilt their resources into one area, while equalising battles in others.

Trap card wins are rarer in football because they start from an imbalance which is not often seen in league football but, when watching Manchester City trying to pass around Crystal Palace, or Norwich, in recent years one can observe this in action.

Three

In contrast to those two methods of victory, the scissors/paper/stone win describes a game in which one team deploys a way of playing which is fundamentally different to the opposition.  This way of playing football is increasingly the linga fraca of the game.

When people talk about Roberto De Zerbi’s Brighton, Henrik Rydström’s Malmo and Xavi Alonso’s Leverkusen they rarely talk about the players being better, but it does not matter, because it is not the quality of players which is important so much as what those players are doing.  Does it matter if you win your one to one battle with Leverkusen’s attacking midfielder when they back those players up with central defenders stepping past holding midfielders?  Did it matter that you nullified the 2008 Messi when the space you left was exploited by other players?

A scissors/paper/stone win is part of top level football, but not exclusively.  During the early 1990s John Beck of Cambridge United had his team hoof the ball seventy yards and progressed not by being better, but by being different.

Indeed

It was this kind of approach which animated City’s former manager Mark Hughes.  Whereas Phil Parkinson largely performed arm wrestle wins in league games, and the Welshman tried to win by being different.  His scissors/paper/stone was about maintaining possession and controlling the ball.  This worked, to a certain extent, but came unstuck in the play offs just as Parkinson’s attempts had against Millwall seasons before.

Neither approach is inherently better – although scissors/paper/stone is more interesting to discuss – and all three have their merits, with most teams attempting some combination, but rarely are successful teams not attracted to one of these pillars.

Which brings us to Graham Alexander, and Bradford City.

How

Alexander is new at the club, although given the expected life span of a City boss not that new, and has so far done little to suggest that he has a way of playing in mind.  His teams play wide, sometimes, but often not, and they mostly play three along the back, but originally they do not, and they play two up front, but sometimes they play one up front and so on.

As a pragmatist, Alexander is struggling to show the ability to recognise and retain pragmatic success.  Formations which start to work are changed for formations which might work.  Players who have found a place, are moved out of place, and it is all very without flavour.

Which is not to suggest that Alexander does not know how to be a success, or that he will not be, but that he will not be unless he can decide a way that he wants his team to try win games.

Are City going to out run, out fight, out battle?  Are City going to out think, out plan, and out smart?  Are City going to be and out and out better team that the rest of League Two?

All these things are possible, but the past three months of football have been beige, and the expectation that City will outperform their rivals but being so featureless seems to guarantee mediocrity.

When Fleetwood Town scored the second of their two late goals to equalise a game that Bradford City were strolling in one could not help but wonder two things: Just how the visitors from the East Coast found an extra two gears after a performance that suggested they had finished playing for the season, and just what Phil Parkinson would be saying to his Bradford City players after the game.

On the first point one has to give credit to Fleetwood and their manager Graeme Alexander for turning the game around. For long periods they looked uninterested in not losing the match, and incapable of doing to stop Bradford City winning without breaking into a run.

Nathan Pond equalised in the last moment capping a very good display from the defender but for long periods of the game the visitors were pedestrians watching the football go by. It speaks to their character that they came back into the game from the position they did, but it should worry Phil Parkinson that they did.

Which moves onto the second point which was the problem with the level of application which the Bantams put into the game and how this differs from Monday night. If Monday night was City exhausted this was City playing without wanting to expend too much energy.

Things started well enough when Billy Clarke slipped down the left and Jon Stead put in the ball from close range and Christopher Routis finished a fine move just after half time to suggest that the game could be won without much of a stiff challenge from Fleetwood but during the afternoon City lacked a level of application which would have won the match with ease.

Which is not to minimise the tiredness of bodies – it was obvious that the players are still suffering the long season – but when that tiredness is allowed to manifest itself with inaccurate and unproductive play then it becomes a problem and that was a problem today.

To win matches players must show character and showing character is a lot of about wanting to take up a position that gives a team mate an option for a pass rather than sitting behind an opposition player. Showing character is about making sure that when one is the only target (or one of few targets) for the pass then one attempts to take up a position where the pass is easier.

City’s midfield two of Routis and Yeates, and Clarke playing off the front man, were all too ready to watch the ball being hit long to James Hanson and Jon Stead from the safety of marked midfield positions. The full backs delivered little and the front two took up few threatening positions to be delivered too.

These issues compounded but would not have been a problem were it not for the late rally that Fleetwood mustered. When the visitors got going they found a City team who were not controlling the game so much has enjoying the remainders of it.

And one could point at Billy Clarke’s last twenty minutes where the ball passed over his head far too often and he engaged in neither attack or defence or François Zoko’s failure to hold the ball and preference for trying to spark a low percentage chance out of every ball rather than high percentage retention but to do so would be to inadvertently make a virtue from a performance which seemed better than it was up until the final moments when it got the result it deserved.

Without putting more on the line City will not win games, and not win promotion.

Which is not to damn City’s chances. In Parkinson we have a manager who has made a small art out of getting a team to believe it is better than it is, and then making the players that as good as he told them they were. Think back to the games before Millwall at Valley Parade and remember how Gary Jones returned with people suggesting that City had not improved the side since the summer.

The FA Cup run has created the idea that City are too good for League One and – on our better days – that is very true but those better days come from levels of application that far exceed what was seen today in the last ten minutes for sure, but in the previous eighty too.

Parkinson knows this of course. His stock in trade is getting overperformance from players. Not for nothing is Jon Stead’s game at Chelsea called the absolute best single player performance of the season.

Which is the continuing problem with Bradford City’s promotion bid. As with the recently finished FA cup run the push for promotion requires City to overperform often and – when things do not favour Phil Parkinson’s side – they are dragged into a plethora of clubs in the middle of League One.