BfB

You get up, you go to the gym, you walk the dogs, you pick up poo, City win at home. You get up, you go to work, you deal with more poo, City lose away. You get up, you feed the cat, you turn on the wireless, you look at the table and City are pushing for promotion again.

This is the routine.

You chat to friends, “Will City get promoted, again?” and you don’t know, but you notice that you’ve been having this conversation for a year and a half. You read some articles, you listen to some Podcast, you carry a Ming Vase. Why is it that City can not win away? Why not ask why they can win at home? Why ask for logic to be found in any of this?

This team was going nowhere, this team is going somewhere.

It was winning every week, and winning every game, and top of the league, and winning a lot, and then a routine. Win at home, excitement, joy and overwhelming. Lose away, crushing and catastophising.

And then came Wycombe Wanderers away.

Backwards

Bradford City’s 2025/26 follow up to the 2024/25 season has been historic. Never before has this club gone from promotion campaign to promotion campaign. If you are over sixty and the name Bobby Ham provokes a surge of memory you might recall a time when City went up to the Third Teir and finished 10th, and that was City’s best ever post-promotion performance. Until now.

Life can only be understood backwards, but has to be lived forward. Watching City best another team at Valley Parade is seeing City struggle against the same inadequacies that torture us away from home.

No one should try appreciate history as it happens, but rather, seeing the graft of Max Power in the midfield, the blossoming of Jenson Metcalfe, the trials of Stephen Humphrys and the extravagant solidity of the defensive line is bliss in itself. Their successes, like their failures, are honestly earned.

Navigation

The Straits of Hormuz are closed, and so is Chat Hill, the roads between Thornton, Queensbury and Clayton. One of these two things will have a greater impact on my life than the other, but I’m not sure which.

World Leaders sound like a Call of Duty chat room swearing and rattling sabres like a kid with a stick. It is not laughable, but hearing an Arsenal fan sum up the 1-0 win at Sporting raises a chuckle.

“If you can’t take the handbrake off on the last day before the end of the World, when can you?”

Overload

That back three – at time of writing Matt Pennington, Aden Baldwin and Curtis Tilt – are both the solution and the cause of City”s worries. On the narrow Valley Parade pitch they command the space, away from home space appears between them, and gaps are exploited.

What manager Graham Alexander has shown is an understanding of how best to use the home field, and in doing so has created a way of overloading opposition teams by attacking with seven, and sometimes eight, in a way which finally showed a way to open stubborn defences.

Tilt or Pennington step forward, supported by a wing back and covered by a deep central midfielder and City have more players than the defenders can muster to repel the Bantams, creating space around the field and – when countered on – the narrowness of Valley Parade means that gaps left can be closed quickly.

That it does not work away from home is not the point, that it works at home is.

Tin

Someone who wants my vote to turn Bradford Council to Reform UK is canvassing me with ineffectual rhetoric. If I believed what he was saying I still would not be impressed by this 1950s Cosplay he is promoting, but I don’t, so I wonder what he really wants?

What do any of them want? The flags that were hung in the summer are tatty rags ripped and damp whipped around lampposts, a disgrace to the country they patriotised. These flacid displays of performative commitment are for Summer Soliders, and Tin Soliders at that.

“Am I supposed to be impressed by this 1950s Cosplay you are promoting?”

Soulition

Alexander has spoken at length about how much of his approach to games is personalised to the opposition. The way that Power and Metcalfe move or stay, the depth the wing backs play it, the paths to goal used in the game are all created on the training pitch.

When asked about switching his formation away from home the City boss bristled. Does this man not know that playing twice a week the City boss hardly has time to set the team up for the formation which is working, rather than play football Jazz with four at the back? Would he care? Does anyone care?

And just as this discussion seemed to stain the season, Alexander found a solution, and he found it at Wycome Wanderers away on Easter Monday.

Path

Josh Neufville and Tyreik Wright fly down the flank, Ibou Touray and Harrison Ashby do not, and one should not try draw trends on individual games but Touray and Ashby sitting deeper allowed for the back three to go tighter and close the gaps. Not a revelation exactly, but with Tilt and Pennington coming out equally as the wingbacks Alexander is able to suggest the overload albeit with one fewer player.

One of Pennington or Ashby can come forward, but which that is, allows the Bantams to finally pin the opposition without leaving space in the backline, at least for now, and given that Exeter on the final day of the season might be a little too chaotic for tactical experimentation City have a game with Barnsley, and most probably a play off away game.

Which means that that next Saturday at Oakwell, City get to try find out if the tactical approach that won at Wycombe is reuseable, and if it is, outline a path to promotion.

Ends

Which sounds absurd of course.

“This ends of the big spaces of Wembley, with City’s back three being picked off” I’ve said in the past. That undersells the character of the Bantams but recognises the failures. Breaking routine to play a few tunes we talked about Ethan Wheatley, about if promotion was a good idea, about the spaces at the back because life is to be lived forward, but with five games left City are third and Not The Top Twenty are suggesting that Cardiff in second might be catchable.

This football rises in the Summer and sets in the Spring, but exists in the glorious magic hour sun set of possibilities, drenching the afternoon routine with golden potential.