BfB

Football reveals itself in the playing, and when kick off happens in the 2025/26 League One season, Bradford City start filling in details to the plan manager Graham Alexander has. The grind of a League Two season tells you much about a squad of footballers, and their character, but it can never tell you how the squad compares to other teams in a league which seems foreign.

Are City bonded by the experience of a tough League Two campaign and take that into the new season, or are City the team that had it not been for 90+6 would have been starting a League Two season in which it would be difficult to consider them favourites for promotion. This is the liminal space that potential offers.

The story of the summer is the exit of captain Richie Smallwood, and some incomings who, with the possible exception of striker Stephen Humphrys and uncharacteristically young Jenson Metcalfe, can seem homogeneous. There are no marquee signings, no exciting new Number Ten Shirt, just the idea that Max Power might be good, or it might just be his name being amusing making you notice him on the Football League Highlights.

As a manager post-promotion Graham Alexander has carte blanche to approach the season as he wants. What he is doing is reenforcing the cornerstones he constructs his team with. Should each cornerstone hold, one might imagine that the season will go well, if not it will be poor.

The Battleship

Those cornerstones seem to be, and in order of importance:

• Frequent rotation in all positions.
• Variety in positions, and nullifying opposition preparation.
• Stability in competitive performance at Valley Parade.
• Momentum is an identity.

#1 Rotation

Frequent rotation in all positions.

Alexander’s squad for 2025/26 is made up largely of players in their later twenties/early thirties and has two or three options in every position. Given this, it seems that no player will be expected to play a full forty-six game season, which has allowed Alexander to adopt a recruitment criteria beyond stamina.

A thirty-three-year-olds Antoni Sarcevic and Curtis Tilt become different propositions when they are rotated out of the team without a significant loss in quality, and Alexander showed last year that he was capable of managing fitness levels over the course of the season with frequent rotation.

How this will manifest would be an often changing team without a settled line up for most of the season, and once again Alexander trying to go deep in all competitions to work with the squad’s expanded capacity for playing games. There is no first team and back up, rather a group of players of which the fittest and most suitable play.

Should this work, then Alexander et al would deserve credit for finding a way to exploit the recruitment market by signing players who other teams would not, specifically because they would worry about requiring a full season of appearances from them, while Alexander requires at most two thirds. No one at League One level has worked out how to balance Sarcevic fading fitness with his obvious quality, and this would be how Alexander would achieve that. This allows City to have a competitive side with the assumption that a fresh Sarcevic, Tilt, or Matthew Pennington would be better than a tired but excellent League One player on the darker Tuesday nights in the Winter.

If it goes badly then City are a group of players who never seem to know each other, because they never settle on a fixed team, and players feel irritated because they are incapable of building up playing momentum with the rapidly changing team. Given that City open a League Cup campaign which would provide a good number of Tuesdays away at Championship Blackburn Rovers progress could be limited.

This is probably the most significant of Alexander’s cornerstones, and performances last season suggests that he knows how to manage the squad. There is a competitive advantage to be had there.

#2 Variety

Variety in positions, and nullifying opposition preparation.

Graham Alexander’s Bradford City quad had two outfield players who specialised. Richie Smallwood was very much the only deep sitting midfielder, and Andy Cook was very much the only centre forward, and every other player was expected to rotate. What we saw some of last season, and can expect more of this, is that each player brings a variety in how roles are played, which makes City an irritating team to prepare to face.

Returning to Sarcevic and his fellow attacking midfielders, his version of the role is about finding pockets of space and unexpected outcomes while, for example, George Lapslie’s version is running beyond the forward player to become an auxiliary striker, while new recruit Josh Neufville is about pace, and Bobby Pointon is about power. One can expand the list, and the variety of ways of playing in these key positions underlines the difficulty in playing against it. Prepare to face Sarcevic, and Neufville sprints past your backline.

If this works then it will see opposition managers kit bashing defences together having anticipated playing against a team which offers one thing, while facing one which does something else. It provides a great uncertainly, and from that Alexander can find opportunities within games. It will be slow defenders trying to mark fast forwards, or teams which are bamboozled by how City have changed how they play by changing who they play.

Again, if this does not work, it becomes a team without identity drifting from game to game without any patterns of play, or control, and players are frustrated wanting stability.

All of which sounds exciting at centre forward, and manageable in the centre of defence where there seem to be at least a half dozen players, but few will get excited about the prospect of a central midfield built around the concept of unpredictability. The Max Power, Alex Pattison, Tommy Leigh, Jenson Metcalfe seem to be the four players who will be tasked with those roles, and except for Metcalfe they all tend to be more attacking.

How Alexander is able to apply this Variety Thinking to the positions to demand stability is going to be where the season is won and lost and, on this measure, there are question marks.

#3 Performance

Stability in competitive performance at Valley Parade.

Form at Valley Parade was superb last season, and the prevailing assumption seems to be that that will continue this year. That assumption is that the increase in quality City will face in League One will not render the defence significantly weaker.

This assumption could be wrong. Opposition pressing, or accuracy in passing, or energy levels to run behind the wing backs, could make a significant difference in a higher division and leave City’s backline breached.

What this would look like in games in City’s defenders looking confused at each other as the thing which worked so well last year, has stopped working, and given how fundamental a strong defence is to Graham Alexander’s team, there is no real solution that can be conjured on the field.

Should things go well for City then this is not a problem, and defensive stability, especially at home, continues to be a definitive strength for Alexander’s approach and given that a good defence scales up a division more effectively than a good attack, it benefits City greatly.

If this is not the case, then City will be relegated. There is no way to fix something as fundamental to Alexander’s squad as the block of three defenders be ineffectively at Valley Parade. The opening fixture against Wycombe Wanderers is instructional. If it is the case that a play-off chasing team is able to cut through City then there is a significant reason to expect the season to end in relegation.

My thoughts are that the defence is going to be key once again this season, that City have recruited well to bolster it, and that City will carry on being strong at home and use that for the basis of the season. There are twenty-three games at Valley Parade. Winning fifteen would secure a place in the division, but with away form poor last season, unless that number is reached it could be difficult to see where points would come from.

If, though, City are as strong at Valley Parade this season as last, then there is an admirable foundation to build a season on.

#4 Momentum

Momentum is an identity

No one really mentions it, but City had a bit of a day the last day of last season.

Whatever it was in March which had esteemed publications writing about City being promoted had vanished following Richie Smallwood’s red card against Swindon Town and it felt like a win over Fleetwood would be limping over the line, but the atomic distance between success and not seemed to explode. Doncaster Rovers, Port Vale, and AFC Wimbledon all got promoted, but they all wish they had been promoted the Bradford City way.

This is momentum as an identity. Taken to extreme, momentum is what clubs like the 1980s Wimbledon showed or the earlier Watford side. When players talk about “joining a project” the project can probably be best described as planned momentum. City have that momentum spontaneously.

This creates a kind of momentum that Darren Moore’s Valiants are not going to have, and it seems grossly unfair that that is the case, but it is the case. What momentum looks like on the field is vague, and unsure, but the 90+6 goal has nourished the soul in closed season in a way which a respectable second, or a proud first, just does not. Supporters feel it, management feel it, and if players feel it then City have the kind of bonding which Phil Parkinson’s side bruised at Wembley used to win promotion.

Can a team live on momentum alone? Absolutely not. Does that momentum generate a spirit which helps the squad bond. Probably. If the City preseason trip to Austria has not had at least a daily joke about banking the ball of Antoni Sarcevic then someone is doing something wrong. If the likes of Will Swan, or Josh Neufville, or Stephen Humphrys are not excited about the idea of playing at Valley Parade after watching the Fleetwood game, they never will be.

A team will not grow too anchored to the past, but used in the right way, the momentum can only be helpful. People need a reason to believe, and this could be it.

End

In frustration, dear reader, do you shout at the screen to ask me for an actual prediction. The tools outlined above, correctly utilised, give City such a wide variance of finishing position in a league which I have no calibration for that speculating on a finishing position is just guessing. I would imagine that City will be around the 8th and 14th in League One more the positions lower or higher, and that point progress would be roughly linear.

Assuming Bradford City’s defence retains the solidity it had last season, I’d probably expect City to get around 1.35 to 1.5 points a game and finish between 8th and 12th. This analysis, which is more generous to City than most, is based on the robust home form continuing as a result of maintaining a defence which concedes under a goal a game at home.

Should the defence fail, indeed should any of the cornerstones outlined fail, and remembering League One as unforgiving and a return to League Two is a distinct possibility. If City concede two goals a game, we clearly lack the firepower to score three. If City end up using only a first eleven, then the players will look poor in comparison to others. If we play the same permutations against everyone, we will become easy to play against.

If the defence fails, expect relegation. If the rotation and variety fail then expect a finish between 18th-20th with the team starting to look increasingly stolid as the season goes by. If the momentum fails, then 14th-18th.

However, given that the squad is constructed with a high floor for picking up points consistently, rather than high ceiling performances, it seems unlikely that City would challenge the play-offs. Any challenge that would emerge would be through a bloody minded ability to gather wins and draws on cold Tuesday nights when the rotation and the momentum bring in fitter, sharper players than the opposition, and that is not outside the realms of possibility.

It is a big “if”, but something to think about.