BfB

The end of the 2025/26 League One season for Bradford City – a defeat by Bolton Wanderers in the play-offs – lumbered slowly, towering over the landscape.

November 2025 and Bolton Wanderers were recording an xG which suggested they were a better team than their results suggested, while Bradford City struggled to maintain their position.

Months later when City went toe-to-toe-to-toe with Bolton three times in four games with the Trotters edging their home play-off, and winning on the counter in our home game, it was obvious that Bolton were a tiny bit better, and that that tiny bit was decisive.

Favourites

So Bolton deserved it, but so did City, and so City were the next best team to the teams who were promoted, probably, and should be favourites to get promoted this year, right?

Leicester City’s demise sees them rub shoulders with the Bantams once more. Sheffield Wednesday too as they try get out of the mire they ended up in. Oxford United are under transfer embargo and seem less of a challenger and more in hope of finding stability.

Plymouth Argyle and Luton Town finished the year strongly and are well fancied to do well this season, as are Milton Keynes Dons who join the League from below. Huddersfield Town suggest themselves if they get it right but getting it right includes having Edin Rahic picked Martin Drury in charge and if he does well then City fans will have to start reassessing too much.

Could

So City are one of a number of “teams who could”, without the resources of Leicester City or Sheffield Wednesday but with the League One know-how, without the momentum of Luton or Plymouth but with the established credentials. Graham Alexander’s side have an arcing energy and no little wherewithal seeing City as something of a balanced choice for those looking at League One this season. A bit good at a lot of things.

What City are good at is a curious mix. The backline has lost Curtis Tilt, Neill Byrne and Ciaran Kelly but added Macaulay Gillesphey and Reece Welsh. Gillesphey and Welsh suggests an upgrade in the case of the former and an interesting opportunity in the latter.

Still, the middle three of Matt Pennington next to Aden Baldwin next to Gillesphey seems strong, and having Welsh, Joe Wright and Ibou Touray to swap in feels less like last season’s portrayal as the team of being a constant rotation and more of the manager having a set three, and three back-ups.

Those three, and the narrowness of the Valley Parade pitch, gave reasons for optimism. The manager knows how to defend that width – or lack thereof – and has the players to do it.

Goalkeeping

Less assured is the goalkeeping position which has seen Scotland’s fifth-best sticksman Jon McCracken join from Dundee to compete with Sam Walker for the green jersey, and Walker exit to Watford with the best wishes of all suggesting that he might have got the inkling that that competition would be a little one-sided.

Former Rotherham and Sheffield Wednesday keeper Cameron Dawson replaces Walker. Dawson was dropped by Rotherham for the game at Valley Parade with his replacement heading wide on his debut in the last moment, and perhaps one might reserve judgement on a keeper when the team he plays for are acting with such uncertainty.

These changes though will probably see McCracken pressing his claim first and – if he does well enough – trying to get into the Scotland squad opening up opportunities for Dawson as the first choice goes away for the three-week international breaks which will scythe through League One in October/November.

Power

On the other side of the backline Callum Connolly arrives from Stockport County to replace Max Power who returns to Wigan Athletic. Power’s range of accurate passing will be missed, but probably Connolly will not be asked to replicate it but rather to sit atop the back three breaking up play and pulling the ball into him to recycle it.

Connolly represents one of three alterations which Alexander makes to the City way of playing this season. He will not be asked to be the quarterback hitting the ball long behind the full-backs as Power was, but rather to play shorter passes to wing backs and wide defenders to have them looking for those passes, or to look for one of the attacking midfield three in front of him to build an attack.

This is a more defensive way of playing, but resolves itself to more intense, high-tempo attacking. In losing Power and Jenson Metcalfe, City have lost a midfield, but the response is to question if a midfield is needed in football at all? If the purpose is to deliver the ball into places where the attacking three can start building offensive play when the opposition have yet to form up then why finesse the passing at all? “Knock it Les, can we not knock it?” and so on.

Heart

Metcalfe’s exit was hard to take – young players toy with the heart – but getting the most out of a player who could be in turn superb and too subtle is now Millwall’s problem and City have replaced him in fresh-faceness with Henry Cartwright, but more realistically with new captain Antoni Sarcevic dropping back into a ten role further forward than Metcalfe’s eight.

This is Alexander’s second change and the one the season will pivot on. With a Six and a Ten City leave an acre of unclaimed midfield space with the inevitability of being overrun in the middle third presenting the opposition with opportunity, hoping to dash that opportunity against the rocks of the solid back three and Connolly ahead of them.

Commit too many players to that middle third, teams are tempted, and Alexander’s side will outnumber you on the other two and this is a fine idea in principle, but one does worry that football had trundled on all this time with players in the midfield and that City’s abandoning of that is a little unorthodox.

Embarrassment

The attacking unit is augmented by Sarcevic being more of a forward player than Metcalfe, and by new recruit Adam Phillips who excited many on his arrival from Barnsley. He and Kayden Jackson compete for the right-hand side of the attacking midfield line of three, while Bobby Pointon and Will Swan do the same for the left-hand side.

Again, here City seem to have an embarrassment of riches. Phillips admired, Jackson obviously capable, Pointon very able and Swan carrying on his habit of being the man in the right position to put a ball into an empty net in the first round of the League Cup against Rochdale last weekend.

Last season much of City’s attacking play came from a third-man pass pushed into Stephen Humphrys, with the forward pushing the ball back to one of the attacking line from the other, or from Humphrys chasing the ball into corners and looking for players coming through into the box. Those angles of attack will change.

Tramlines

Jake Beesley arrives from Burton Albion as a League One target man instructed not to play outside the tramlines of the edge of the penalty area, he represents a third change by Alexander and one which makes redundant both Humphrys and the way of creating chances.

The balls previously played to the channels for Humphrys to chase are replaced by the pass for Beesley to compete with defenders for, necessitating the attacking midfield line to be far closer to the forward to latch onto opportunities he creates before the auxiliary defenders can clear.

This is a football with more chaos, and City’s attacking midfield three will look to preempt and benefit from the chaos which Beesley and the direct ball to him creates. This is City’s point of differentiation for the year – the thing that makes us different – and how it pans out will define the season.

Interesting

Early on City play Plymouth and Sheffield Wednesday away, and Burnley at home in the League Cup, and should all those teams use the open central midfield to pick off the Bantams then Alexander’s rude awakenings will come early. Should City watch them pass the ball limply in front of them for an hour before hitting the big man and burying the knock-down then this could be an interesting season indeed.

Regardless the squad needs some work. Tyreik Wright and Josh Neufville are great wing-backs, but with only Ibou Touray in reserve covering or playing in two positions, there is scope for one or two recruits. Likewise, with so much of the season depending on opposition breaking on Callum Connolly, cover is needed before the end of August.

Jake Beesley’s role is important and having Nick Powell to back that up seems to be a triumph of hope. Powell, if fit, is useful in a few positions as is George Lapslie who once again seems to be a round peg seeing round holes but not being placed in any of them. Stephen Humphrys is surplus to requirements while Alexander opts to play with a target man rather than a creative forward, and will probably move on, which is a sad end for a player of real talent who the manager decided he should move away from, in a stylistic sense.

Answered

All of which results in questions as to how City will do this year and an annoying sense that that question cannot be answered. There are three Bradford City concepts going into the year, and they are perhaps best considered individually.

The brilliant Bradford City have stolen a march on everyone with their midfield-lite approach and emerge as a polished, experienced group who are hard to score against, and flood forward with a high press and attacking in numbers.

They are the team which the opposition suggest they should have beaten but by the time March comes around and Plymouth and Leicester City have both been dismissed at Valley Parade then begrudging praise is offered and the home game with Sheffield Wednesday on the 13th of March sets City apart.

Resisted

The attacking midfield will have resisted the idea of dropping too far back, allowing the counterattack to be triggered habitually. City will have possession at the back and have played more two-line-splitting-passes than any other team.

Callum Connolly will have personal interception and tackles won figures that beat the team in 24th place and the wing backs will be praised for their ability to track overlaps and cut off the ball to the space next to the defensive three as much as they are for their attacking play.

The word “Pragmatic” will be used, a lot.

Broken

The broken Bradford City will find out quickly that controlling the ball is important, and there will be a scramble not only to get players in after an August of losing while other teams keep the ball away from us in the middle third, then play key passes at will, but also to redefine the likes of Adam Phillips as a central midfielder.

This is a world where City struggle because what they lack – the ability to control the ball – is not something that can be synthesised. Every Bobby Pointon or Kayden Jackson possession loss results in a wave of attacking, and then goals, and Graham Alexander’s future hangs not on the boldness of his attempt to evolve how his City team play but on his ability to stabilise a failure to evolve.

This gets ugly. Phrases like “taken the team as far as he can” are used about the manager, and the likes of Pointon exit to fund a signing who can replace Max Power’s ability to control a game.

This way is relegation, but Broken City would have enough to avoid that, and Alexander would probably have enough credit to ensure he was the manager to avoid it.

Mid

The mid-Bradford City might be more probable, if only because most of football is the story of the gap between success. This is the season where City’s evolution works in some weeks, misfires in others, and the way City embrace a randomness in how they are playing has created something both entertaining and infuriating.

The football where the difference between a win and a loss is if Jackson or Phillips were rocking on their heels when a ball came forward, or sprang out of the traps to get crucial possession, on the specific instance of a two or three dozen passes forward. Some weeks it works, some weeks it does not.

In this way City lose ground, moving from the reliable to embrace more chaos, but do so in a way which is admirable. Graham Alexander is looking for ways to improve a very good team without the resources of the teams around him. Innovative evolution is the best way to do that, and the attempt is laudable regardless of the results.