By Jason McKeown

Mark Hughes has been sacked as Bradford City manager after a really disappointing start to the season. The Bantams have won just three of their opening 11 league matches, slumping down to 18th in League Two. Back to back defeats at home to Walsall on Saturday and last night at Tranmere cranked up the pressure on the City boss, with supporter discontent become more and more raucous.

Kevin McDonald is the somewhat surprise choice as caretaker manager, assisted by Mark Trueman. The 34-year-old will take temporary charge for this weekend’s home game with Swindon. Glyn Hodges leaves with Hughes.

In many ways, the events have proven very predictable – the only surprise is how quickly they have unfolded. After the play off frustration of May, it didn’t take a great leap of imagination to expect a more challenging season that would result in Hughes losing his job somewhere along the way. I think most of us would have predicted a February parting ways, or perhaps that he’d not quite make it to Christmas.

Instead, here we are. Already. And Mark Hughes joins Terry Dolan (1989) and Stuart McCall (2018) in getting the boot less than a year after a Bradford City play off defeat.

The speed of the unravelling is shocking though. Right from the surprise opening day defeat at Crawley, a downbeat mood has settled over the club and its fanbase. A play off hangover for sure, but one that in time clearly ran deeper as the problems began to mount. Performances have been largely unconvincing, with the odd underwhelming victory mixed in with the odd woeful defeat. The 3-0 whacking to Derek Adams’ Morecambe was a big nail in the coffin, with the way the former City boss celebrated towards Ryan Sparks said to have prompted the beginning of some uncomfortable conversations.

At the recent Harrogate game, where Stefan Rupp was an unexpected attendee, rumours swirled around the ground that a City defeat would result in Hughes getting the sack. City rescued a point late on, but it wasn’t enough to prevent home fans vocally turning on Hughes. Constructive talks were subsequently said to have taken place between Hughes, Rupp and Sparks. The resultant 4-1 thumping of Newport suggesting the corner had been turned. But two really bad defeats to out-of-form opposition – sound-tracked by yet more supporter discontent at Hughes – has triggered the end.

When we look at Hughes’ downfall, we’re talking about 12 defining games. That is the 11 league matches so far this season of course, but also the play off semi final second leg defeat to Carlisle United last May.

Up until City came out of the tunnel at Brunton Park that day, I think it’s very fair to say that Hughes was a generally popular manager with supporters. And he’d done a largely decent job. Yeah sure, there were concerns – a season of at times slightly muddling performances, and a failure to push harder for an automatic promotion place that on several occasions looked well within their grasp. But 2022/23 had been the best campaign City had experienced for a good while. Fans were engaged in the team, with really good supporter numbers home and away cheering Hughes’ promotion push.

What happened at Carlisle changed all that. A truly awful team performance, worsened by Hughes’ approach. The decision to substitute forward Scott Banks for defender Matty Platt will forever live in Bradford City infamy. On such a big, pivotal afternoon for the club – they didn’t turn up, losing meekly to Carlisle United. And whichever way you framed it, Hughes was responsible. A so-called elite manager with proven pedigree, failing when it really, really mattered.

It’s fair to say that Hughes’ popularity never recovered from that afternoon. He needed a strong start to this season – and he didn’t get one. Adding to the frustration has been the significant way Hughes tried to change the team’s approach, with the 3-5-2 quickly proving unpopular given it left City stodgy. It wasn’t broken, and all that.

As I wrote last month, I think there were fair and understandable reasons why Hughes went down this route. 3-5-2 is a proven formula for success at this level. And with the division becoming much tougher due to the arrival of clubs with significantly stronger finances, trying something different had its merits. In pre-season, it looked really promising. Defensively concerns, but going forward City’s high press intent was exciting.

The great frustration is that League Two this year is both colourful and utterly mad. Teams at the top are succeeding through possession-based football, and outscoring their rivals. You score three, we’ll score four. Clubs at the top are shipping in goals, but they don’t seem to care. We aspire to be like this, but as soon as the season began we became paralysed by our own fear and retreated. Hughes has been revving the engine whilst being too afraid to take off the handbrake.

We wanted to be an attack-minded, possession-based team. Only we can’t attack. And we can’t do anything good with our possession. Oh yeah, we’re also defensively awful at the other end. Ineffective in both penalty areas.

Under some pressure, Hughes ditched the 3-5-2 and went back to 4-2-3-1. But having recruited for three at the back and an approach with wingers, too much of the summer transfer budget has been devoted to the wrong areas. The issue best summed up by the late window punts on Adam Wilson, Rayhaan Tulloch and Chisom Afoka. All inexpensive. All unproven. Chuck a few darts at the board. Hope that something sticks. When if we’d kept with the intent to play 4-2-3-1 at the start of the window, more financial resources could have devoted towards wide forwards instead of defenders.

It’s just a mess. It really is. As manager, Hughes carries the can for that. He’s always going to be the first to lose his job. But that’s both fair and deeply unfair at the same time. Because to us outsiders looking in, Hughes and head of recruitment – Stephen Gent – seem to be operating on completely different pages.

This is a problem that has probably been there since last summer, but only started to come to light last January and this close season. In Gent, we have someone who appears to be trying to unearth diamonds in the mud. Seeking out young players, unwanted by others, with the potential to thrive with the right platform. But in Hughes, we have someone who wants to play it safer, rely on experience and preferably in players he already knows and trusts.

Witness Ryan East and Jake Young. Two players we can probably say with confidence are Gent-identified signings. East got to start just five games last season. He actually looked decent when given an opportunity, and with Alex Gilliead and Richie Smallwood struggling as a pair, cries for East to get more of a chance were not unmerited. But come January, City went out and signed 34-year-old Adam Clayton – a player Hughes had managed at Man City. East’s path was blocked. Clayton in time proved not to be the answer. It’s a situation no one wins in.

Then there’s Young, with all of three league starts under Hughes last season. It’s no real secret, it seems, there was a disagreement between player and manager. Young was frozen out, actively pushed out of the door, while 37-year-old Matt Derbyshire arrived in January. Another player Hughes knew. Young is now on loan at Swindon, scoring a hatful. Derbyshire can’t get near the team right now.

Hughes absolutely takes some of the blame for this, but others are liable to. Who is overseeing this structure? What conversations are they having? City have a top heavy squad and it’s hard to argue there isn’t adequate overall investment in there. But the clash of ideals leaves too many players sat in reserve, eating up budget whilst not being able to contribute anything on the pitch in return.

The result is City have used a top seven budget to create a bottom seven team. And as much as it is wrong to pin all the blame on this for Hughes, the tools are there for him to do a lot better than this.

I think that’s what’s been both striking and heart-breaking this season. I drove to Tranmere on Tuesday night with two friends and for more than two hours we didn’t stop talking about City’s problems. Everything kept coming to one unavoidable conclusion – Hughes was mismanaging the situation. Players deployed in positions they’re less familiar with. Team set ups that allow too much passive, predictable football. Really bad structures for corners, especially defensively. Players struggling for form, but asked to do things they’re less comfortable with.

The move to 4-2-3-1 was welcome, but equally added to the impression that Hughes had lost his way. What was Hughes’ first choice XI? By the end it seemed he was shuffling the cards and hoping for the best. If he had a plan to get City firing, it was not obvious to the rest of us. I really, really wanted to believe in Hughes. But the eyes don’t lie.

Before we move onto talk about the future, I think there is something important to say. I really don’t believe the Mark Hughes era should be consigned as one of failure. Everything is always so black and white these days. But for however ugly this has ended, a lot of good has come appointing Hughes. The decision to give him the job was, in my opinion, not a mistake.

We’ve talked about it a lot before, but the club was in such a low ebb in February 2022, before Hughes came in. It was a striking, leftfield appointment by the club. No one saw it coming. And watching Hughes talk so glowingly about the club, and act so appreciative to be here, gave everyone connected with Bradford City a much-needed morale boost.

Season ticket sales have increased under Hughes. Interest in the club has risen. And for a time, the type of football he was trying to play, and the intent, was really heartening. We had some good times last season – the Stevenage, Salford, Colchester, Grimsby and Sutton home games will live long in the memory. We had an excellent away record too. To be part of last season’s League Two promotion run-in truly re-awoke the club. For sure, those defeats to Swindon, Crewe and Carlisle were painful, but as I wrote after the play off heartache. “It hurts so much right now, because Bradford City have turned themselves back into something worth caring about.”

Hughes gave us back our respectability. Our self-worth. He showed that we are still capable of succeeding. He reminded us of how truly wonderful matchdays at Valley Parade can be. And yeah, I get it that all this counts for absolutely nothing right now, as we sit just six points above the relegation zone. But the beast did stir again. We saw a tantalising glimpse of a brighter future.

And so (big sigh) – we’re back to saying Mass. As Hughes clears his desk, the big question quickly turns to what happens next for Bradford City. And on that, those who have the power to answer need to extremely mindful of their responsibilities in all of this. Hughes did not fail by himself. As Sparks prepares to dish out his fifth manager contract in three years, he needs to make sure that mistakes of the past are not repeated.

The first thing to say is that by sacking Hughes now, City are clearly trying to avoid writing off the season. And as much as people like me despair of the short-termism that engulfs this club, this is not a time for a long-term outlook. What I’m trying to say is this – we need someone to come in who will hit the ground running. They need to be able to look at this squad and the work Hughes has done, and be prepared to build on it, rather than go against it by tearing things up to start again.

We always make this mistake of looking for the next Bradford City manager to have the opposite qualities to the one we just booted out. That’s sort of understandable if you’re changing managers at the end of the season or in the summer. But it simply won’t work now. We cannot go back to being a bipolar football club that can’t stick to one plan.

This is not a perfect squad by any means, but we need someone to come in and work on getting the best out of them. Trying to change the playing style too significantly at this point – with games coming thick and fast – most likely means a stalling period. And with City having already lost a lot of ground on the promotion pacesetters, there isn’t really time for that.

Equally we don’t need a manager to come in who is quickly go on about needing lots of new signings in January. We’ve signed 30+ players in the last 18 months. We need to calm down and develop a more settled environment. Not have yet more churn.

The point is you can’t write off the season now, otherwise why bother sacking Hughes so soon? Get someone in who can work with what’s there. Stick to the principles of what Hughes wanted to do – only do it better.

Finding such a person is also key – and this is where the spotlight falls on Sparks. You can understand the reasoning behind each and every manager appointment he has made so far, but ultimately none have worked out. To everyone watching, it looks like Sparks needs help with this next appointment. Is he prepared to go and get it?

If Sparks still believes in what Gent is doing at City, he needs to involve him too. The bottom line is that Gent’s recruitment approach will only work if there is a manager alongside him thinking the same way – and who is prepared to use the players he finds. It’s a bit of a crossroads moment in some respects with Gent. Either you double down and back him, or you’re moving him on too.

So there’s an awful lot riding on this. The stakes are incredibly high. Because if it goes wrong from this point – well, it could really, really wrong.  

Categories: Opinion

Tags: BCAFC, Mark Hughes