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.

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.