BfB

It took until Friday morning to realise that Bradford City’s 4-1 defeat to Newcastle United at the end of September 2025 in the Third Round of the Football League Cup felt odd because it seemed more publicised than the final of the competition twelve years earlier in February 2013 where City were beaten by Swansea City.

The cogs that turned wheels in my brain to come to this realisation were slow in turning. In the particular part of Bradford I grew up in one could point a TV Antenna North East and pick up a better Tyne Tees picture than you could a Yorkshire. Newcastle United are a familiar thing to me.

As the week ticked on and I heard again how Yohan Wissa’s injury was set in a different light by William Osula’s two goals against Bradford City, or that Newcastle Manager Eddie Howe’s Newcastle team now moved onto Arsenal on Sunday, the cogs turned.

Twenty minutes after the Swansea final, no one really spoke of it again to any great degree, and it merits a footnote in the competition history now. The likes of Chelsea, Manchester City, and last season our host Newcastle United win this trophy now, but once achieved they think of it as a lesser thing. A stepping stone to bigger and better.

It occurs to me that big football clubs are, as contradictory as this sounds, bigger than big football.

Huntington

There is only one thing to say about the game, which is an analysis of the role of Max Power and its impact on the evening. Power started in the Hunting Ten role, which is possibly what Eddie Howe was referencing when he said that Bradford City manager Graham Alexander approached his selection and tactics in a unique way. The Hunting Ten plays in an advanced midfield role, but does so in a way which a defensive midfielder would.

Pressing, cutting off passing lanes, coordinating counter pressure are thus more important in that role than passing, dribbling and shooting. This approach has worked well this season, City are top of the League One table.

Power plays the Hunting Ten, Tommy Leigh the Quarterback Six, but this was swamped by Bruno Guimarães and Joelinton operating either side of Leigh and Lewis Miley engaging Power. Two down after twenty minutes and Graham Alexander moved Power back alongside Leigh, and left the press of Nick Powell and Bobby Pointon with Stephen Humphrys unconnected and uncoordinated.

Humphrys might not have enjoyed the night. The man pregnant with goals is now looking worryingly like he might just have trapped wind, or perhaps hot air. He had a chance to make the game 2-1, but Aaron Ramsdale’s positioning was excellent, and he took the ball with ease.

Mixed

Powell and Pointon might find their feelings mixed. Powell could have expended more energy by probably not got a greater reward, the press having been abandoned, both wider players probably should have been repurposed.

For Pointon the night might be most sobering. Pointon is a left-sided attacker with aspirations, Newcastle’s Anthony Gordon is a left-sided attacker with aspirations but as brilliant as Pointon has been all season the variety, depth of outcome, and alacrity of Gordon’s play shows the Bradford lad what outline scouts and managers are expecting further up the Leagues.

This is not to criticise Bobby Pointon, but at some point between the top of League One and playing Barcelona in the Champions League the requirements for his position get a serious upgrade, and where and when that happens is unclear, but happen it does.

Boyhood

By the time Andy Cook emerged to score his goal, the gambit had failed, but it was a noble failure, and Cook’s well taken lash summed up the night. It was great, but really, it was illustrative.

Alexander’s plan had been to keep the game as close as possible after an hour, and then unleash some more direct wing play in Josh Neufville for Brad Halliday and Tyreik Wright for Ciarán Kelly. It is a plan which worked for previous City managers, and many managers who have giant killed, but would not work tonight.

City tried to make a thirty-minute match, but ultimately, Newcastle United were too good at opening the visitors defence to allow that. The ball from Bruno Guimarães to William Osula slipped between Kelly and Matthew Pennington into a space which would not have been a space in a League One game.

A note on Cook’s goal, which came after another boyhood Newcastle fan, Lewis Miley, had given the ball away. He was later backed against his critics. That well cut out pass was the one thing Miley did all evening which was at all unimpressive, and the rest of his play had an assured fluidity about it.

English football, at the moment, seems great at taking Number Six midfielders and trying to make them Number Eights but should Miley resist the urge to move forward, then there is a massive space in the national side just waiting for him.

More

Powell, Pointon and Humphrys then might all feel like they could have done more, but probably they did as much as they could with Alexander changing the midfield behind them, who did as much as he could to stop an opponent who were still chasing City into corners at 4-1 up in the 95th minute.

Which started the slow turn of cogs that resolved on Friday morning. Newcastle United are a big club, and this is not City’s first experience with a big club in the cup, but something has happened in the ten years since Chelsea away, or Swansea City at Wembley.

The bigger clubs at the top of the Premier League have amassed such momentum now that they are moving away from the rest of football faster than the rest of football can move towards them. In Astronomy, this is called the Red Shift, and it has always been happening.

Like all Bradfordians I’m annoyingly familiar with Leeds United but I mean no disrespect to them when I say that the likes of Newcastle United, and Arsenal, and Liverpool and Manchesters City & United have such a momentum that the old markers of “big club” Leeds hold dear are increasingly unimportant compared to global reach and the ability to monetise the stadium and match day experience.

The distance between a team at the top of League One, and those who have just been promoted to the Premier League seems smaller than the distance between the bigger teams in the Premier League and those who have just joined.

What distance means in this context, I’m unsure of. Robustness perhaps, and the capacity to make mistakes. Manchester United are a terrible football club and feel like they would be better run with random decision making, but few would suggest that Leeds United or Burnley or Sunderland had a better chance of winning the Premier League in the next five years than The Red Devils.

Say

So Wednesday night goes to Thursday and to Friday and the lesson is that big football clubs are now bigger than football competitions and that the day-to-day machinations of big football clubs seem more important than the end of season prizes they win, or at least they are more talked about.

City faced the holders of the League Cup, but that context seemed not to matter, and what did matter was our small part in the continued story that is a big football club which has becomes self-sustaining to the point where individual games seem less important than the act of being. Newcastle United are the act of being a Newcastle United supporter and engaging in that discussion.

Which is not to say that winning more Cups, or a League, would not matter to Newcastle United, it would, but that the club like others seems to have transcended the need to worry about individual results and take a more assured view from a loftier position. You would say good luck to them without a qualm, but then one must also say Jamal Khashoggi.

You must say his name: Jamal Khashoggi.