BfB

We live split between two worlds.

There is the real world in which on the second of October it is raining as Bradford City head over to The Wirral to play Tranmere Rovers having lost 3-1 to Walsall at the weekend. This is a world in which football supporters, like everyone, feel the rising costs caused by economic mismanagement and poorly aligned incentives within that economy. This world feels increasingly hostile and increasingly unforgiving.

The real world has a duplicate self. This Doppelgänger world is a creative fantasy of a million minds working independently, but with the freedom to add almost any construct which can be imagined to explain the actions of the real world. It is the shadow of the real world.

At its most harmless, this shadow world is a fun place to be. It is a place where dogs and cats talk to each other, where cars have names and respond with ignition when asked nicely, where picking six numbers of significance to you will win you a fortune.

At the extreme, it is a terrifying place where the world is run by Satanists who use their power to do unspeakable horrors to children. In this world you are poisoned by the people who present themselves as helping you, and you are to be the subject of a cull in the population.

But we, all of us, live between those points.

Lacking

When 3-1 down to Walsall, Bradford City were playing poorly, and it seemed that they were playing poorly for want of on the field leadership. It seems true to say that if a team wants to win a football match then the sine qua non is to work hard, and that hard work was lacking.

No player, it seemed, could be accused of having played poorly, though. Match Magazine would not be giving out fours and five because no player was exceptionally poor, but none was especially good and none were making the effort to ensure the quality of the performance.

For a long time, Bradford City used to venerate former captain Stuart McCall. McCall was the definitional player who made those around him better. That kind of presence was conspicuous by its absence as the Saddlers rode to victory, untroubled.

Barcelona

The result of this result was a booing of manager Mark Hughes which made the papers, so to speak, but was probably not something which a man who has played at Bernabéu for Barcelona will lose much sleep over.

Hughes’ failure was distinct from the vitriol. He was being booed for losing a football match in which his team had shown a lack of leadership, and spent a good deal of the match hitting the ball hopelessly for two forwards to ineffectively chase. His failure was to attempt to graft the solutions of the shadow world onto reality, and to have allowed his thoughts to become confused between the two.

As such, Hughes is condemned to the fate of all in public life, in which he has to indulge the fantastic constructs of others while maintaining the hard grip on the reality of playing a football match.

Weather

There is a logical fallacy known as post hoc, ergo propter hoc – “it came after it, therefore it was caused by it” – which has it that anything which follows an event is the result of that event. Putting the washing on the line did not cause late afternoon rain, it is just a related coincidence.

The world which sits alongside the real one is heavily invested in this version of cause and effect, and much of the imagination that world demands comes in addressing the cognitive dissonance that results from the unreliability of this way of thinking. It did not rain this time, because I only put out jumpers, and no jeans.

That imaginative combatting of cognitive dissonance only works within the other world, though, because the hard logic of the real world reveals it. You can tell yourself all you want that the washing you have hung out and global weather patterns are connected, but they are not.

Removing

So a world is constructed where dropping Richie Smallwood is removing the player who holds back the long sweeping passes from back to front that would free up City to play two rampaging strikers, but a reality governs in which eleven players have lost the leader on the field.

A team which shod of a man who can take the ball under pressure – as was Smallwood’s role – end up whacking the ball forward towards Andy Cook and Tyler Smith only for Walsall’s Donervon Daniels to head clear.

This is the real world. Smallwood is not the problem which fiction creates, and having possession at the back is not football denied or delayed, it is the way the game is played specifically because of the ineffectiveness of rapid delivery to the final third for most teams.

Untethered

This is the hard problem which much of culture, including football, grapples with. As the unforgiving real world grinds and the enjoyment of fantasy becomes near limitless, the conversation has become dominated by the fanciful, the ephemeral, and the untethered.

It is the job of Mark Hughes, and the people who employ Mark Hughes, to know the difference between those two worlds.

Football is a game played on a Saturday afternoon.

I’ve spent most of my life, which ebbs to a fiftieth year this month, watching it at Valley Parade and some of those ninety minutes have had a life changing impact. The game of football unfolds as a grand narrative of point and counterpoint, of disappointment and direction, of the drama of the real.

That decorated footballer and manager Mark Hughes entered the narrative was a curious moment in that drama, but that curiosity has given way to a metronomic, sincere competency. Mark Hughes’ Bradford City have become a watch word for stability.

Always Mark Hughes’ Bradford City. Never miss the prefix.

That prefix features frequently in previews of this season. Mark Hughes’ Bradford City are placed firmly in the five teams which could get one of the three automatic promotion places this season and their position is clear: Understudy.

Dawkins

When biologist Richard Dawkins coined the term memeification in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene he spoke of how culture could be passed in the same way that genetic code was. The useful was retained and propagated. It is useful if an animal can reach the higher branches, so the animals with long necks live while others do not, and then: Giraffe.

The rise of meme culture, inherently tied into online culture, it has grown to a rate where it has consumed Dawkins almost entirely. In Meme culture, an outcome of memeification, a concept’s complexity is stripped away to allow it to pass between groups without friction.

So memeification is changing culture, football, and next season will govern League Two as Wrexham return to the Football League.

Matthews

Wrexham are a proud football club, and have a proud history, and they are managed by the peerless Phil Parkinson whose name is a byword for better times at Valley Parade.

Wrexham have moments of knocking Arsenal out of the FA Cup, and of being knocked out by Rhyl. Sir Stanley Matthews wore a Wrexham shirt, as did Alan Hill. Ryan Valentine scored to keep them in the League, but they dropped out of the League.

None of that matters, though, because they were bought by Hollywood’s second-best Ryan and a guy called Rob from that TV show you always promise yourself you’d watch but never did.

Hamlet

I have not seen much of Welcome To Wrexham, in which Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney navigate the perils of being the owners of a small football club, but I’m told it is not without its charms.

The pair act as Stoppards’ Rosencrantz and Guildenstern constantly away from the action while contemplating their importance to it. Phil Parkinson comes over as an honest, good football man, which is certainly my memory of him, and the player serve up a slice of their lives.

But Wrexham is not Manchester United, and football at this level is difficult even when one has more money, a path forward, and the will to succeed. Welcome to Wrexham, some of us have been here quite a while.

Not Crewe

So it is not Wrexham who are most fancied to win this League but Ryan Reynolds’ Wrexham, and they are followed by Notts County who are pulled into the swirl as the Baby Jane of Wrexham story.

Salford City, owned by a group of former Manchester United players seemingly headed of Sky TV’s Gary Neville make the mix, and so do Stockport County who are remarkable for being unremarkable in this instance.

This is the impact of memeification. The complexities of League Two stripped away to a list: Ryan Reynolds’ Wrexham, The Bad Guys Notts County, Mark Hughes’ Bradford City, Gary Neville’s Salford City and also Stockport County.

Stockport County are interesting. Manager Dave Challinor has a kind of minor note in post-technocratic football alongside the much more important new Brazil and Flumense manager Fernando Diniz and Malmo’s Henrik Rydstrom. These teams are less interested in creating the kind of preset patterns which mark out modern football and are more interested in harnessing creative thinking in attacking play. New signing Nick Powell’s role in that may prove decisive this season, and Challinor may break out of his meme as “the long throw man”.

Nigel Clough’s Mansfield Town, Just Stop Vegan Green Rovers, “Owned by a bunch of idiots” Crawley Town and so on. Maybe it has always been like this. Maybe it is not a bad thing.

Pitch

Often when talking about football we avoid talking about football. We talk about the football themed theatre that surrounds the game – and Wrexham are the prime example of this – but we avoid talking about what happens on the field. Transfers, quotes, filmed training, player interviews, speculation. These are all things around the football which are mistaken for, but are not actually, football.

The discussion is of a become a replaying of personal dramas tangential to the game itself. League Two offers these for Bradford City next season with Parkinson’s return a moment of reflection of how far we have come since he left for Bolton Wanderers, and Derek Adams‘ return a similar moment when Morecambe arrive.

Those moments, I imagine, will be used to define those games but have little to do with them. Increasingly, football is a more technical pursuit. Adams at Valley Parade brought a move towards player data performance at Bradford City which Mark Hughes continued without question.

The Bloke

Within the last generation all football has moved away firmly away from being defined by passion, and the laudable desires to give 110%, into a more scripted approach. Watching Brighton on the field is like watching a Musical, where actions give way to set responses. Watching Hughes’ City team play the ball away from the back has a similar feel.

City try draw on an opposition out of the resting defence, who set traps in passing lanes to quickly force turnovers, while the flow of players between the forward lines give a series of rotating options to disrupt that defence.

“No, we did not play 442 and boot it long to the big man, and we don’t smoke between games or have a pint before the match either.”

GAAaS

Key to how Hughes will play is the performance of Kevin McDonald who comes in to replace the departing Adam Clayton. Clayton’s fulcrum pivot role at the base of the midfield was key to City’s excellent second half of the season, and McDonald’s job is to do the same while being fitter.

The deep sit midfield has retained Alex Gilliead and Richie Smallwood, although the latter was under contract, and if every two players reflected the football of technical analysis rather than instinctual readings it is they. “Get forward”, “Get stuck in”, “Get it in the net” are heard, best passing rate, high win percentage, GAAaS are observed. It is Reals before Feels for Mark Hughes, and for football.

Ryan East suggests himself as the first reserve in those positions, although one might hope he might start to suggest himself more firmly, and many of the more forward minded players can drop in to the three-man pivot midfield.

The two-man double pivot where Smallwood and probably McDonald sit behind three forward midfielders is another option and the success of that depends on the progress of Jamie Walker. Walker was, at times and between the tackles, the best player in League Two last season, which seemed to be so noted by the opposition who focused him.

Scots-ish

If Walker plays well, City win, on the whole, but the key to him playing well would seem to be to have enough options around him that he is no longer the focus of the opposition’s attention.

Enter here Alex Pattison joining from Harrogate Town. Pattison and Walker are not similar players – Walker drifts into space to find the ball, Pattison picks it up deep and moves forward with it – but they perform a similar task of changing midfield possession into attacking and the hope will be that the one will distract from the other. Likewise, a fully fit Emmanuel Osadebe could do the same.

Alongside these three are the likes of nominal midfielders Harry Chapman and Bobby Pointon, and Tyler Smith and Matt Derbyshire of the forwards, who will be peopling the positions behind Andy Cook. Perm any two from four, and play the ones who are performing well.

In a world of memeification Cook is the Medieval Siege Engine rolled up to the Castle walls. It takes an age to get it where you want it to be, but when it gets there, there is no stopping it. Cook is terrific and has the kind of energy which a manager wants. For all the appearance of a blood and guts number nine Cook conserves his bursts, and can be trusted on the field.

And so Hughes’ trusts him with Bradford City’s season. Attempts have been made to add a few more goals from the midfield, but Cook’s thirty plus are factored in. Verdaine Oliver stands by, and is useful in that way.

Best

Footballer turned Podcaster turned Footballer Ben Foster turned up to play for Wrexham in a signing which was mostly a brand alignment exercise, and now he is being talked about as League Two’s best goalkeeper by people who probably do not know their Corey Addai from their elbow.

Harry Lewis is the best keeper I’ve seen in goal for City since Jordan Pickford, and perhaps the best City owned keeper since Matt Clarke and Gary Walsh. I would suggest that he is too good for League Two, but seeing Lawrence Vigouroux leave Leyton Orient to sit on the bench while Burnley blood England u21’s James Trafford is a sobering sight.

Vigouroux was the best keeper in League Two for some time and he may well claim the number one shirt at Turf Moor but if he does not then talent is wasted, and Lewis avoids that waste by keeping goal at Valley Parade. Long may it continue.

Sam Stubbs was the heart of improvements in the second half of the season and will in the back four alongside – probably – Matty Platt. Ciaran Kelly, Ash Taylor and perhaps Timi Odusina give Hughes’ the option of a three-man back line with two-man pivot and three in font of that. That formation is still a work in progress after some creaking pre-season but is seems obvious that Hughes wants to blood it to give himself more flexibility in how City play.

As wide defenders Liam Ridehalgh and Clarke Oduor on one side, and Brad Halliday and Daniel Oyegoke on the other fill out the options.

So Now Then

It is tempting to suggest after a full season that Hughes has to – in some way – “get it right” this season and CEO Ryan Sparks has talked about setting high standards as a quixotic mantra. My belief is now, and always has been, success is a product of good behaviours and not the other way around that Sparks seems to understand that too.

Hughes’ has City doing the right things and his changes in the squad seem to underline his belief in bringing in players with a high level of professionalism. Matt Derbyshire’s arrivial and Jake Young’s departure set a tone about seniority, experience, and what one does in the positions one is given.

The Mark Hughes name seems to be enough to get City mentioned in hallowed circles but seemingly only as the understudy for the likes of Wrexham who might fail. There is a stablity in what City have, and lack of variance, and that is not true of the other clubs in the division.

For what it is worth I think that Wrexham, and Notts County, may faulter but Stockport will not, but what do I know other than that everything will be decided on the 113 x 70 yard space on a Saturday afternoon where the noise around football drops away and there is just football.

Those afternoons are glorious. They are a moment where complexity runs amok, and where the simple is impossible. Every action, the result of and part of a chain of complex pre-actions which could never resolve in football, the cacophony of discussion is replaced by the symphony of the real.